“Lydia Lunch’s acerbic monologue in Scott Crary`s now-on-Netflix 2004 no-wave documentary Kill Your Idols chews up modern guitar music. She’s right — telecasters have been on the market since 1948, what’s left? We need to push forward with no wave’s intellectual concepts, vision and extremity. Don’t we?”

A while ago I watched Kill Your Idols and couldn’t stand it. Then I wrote about why I think Lydia Lunch is a grump. Now you can read it in FFWD.

Tyvek Mutant Love
Doubles Tapes 2011

“In mythic Detroit you can buy a house for $120 and multiple stab wounds, as long as you can stand American manufacturing rotting at the end of your block…” My review at FFWD [link fixed]

Earth Hour shut off the lights at the last Siesta show. Doesn’t matter, a thousand flashes lit Foxmoulder. There’ll be lossless reproduction of the whole night once the photos are compiled, starting with Fox explaining themselves. Gender issues and video games don’t need explanation if you’re clear enough, but the moment reminds them to breathe.

We walked down to Front St, we passed 30-somethings en route to clubbing. Big deal, plenty of arrested development at Siesta too. The LCBO is still open. The enterprising would’ve raked it in, pawned off drinks to all ages. Instead, we got a six pack and missed Violent Future.

Kremlin stretched their set, and why won’t he turn up the guitar? But they’re still in the good column. Purity Control abandoned, I hope for only the night, too much of their noise selves. The internet is stuffed with their spray-painted Beg for Absolution, but only with the hasty addition of the initially forgotten I. The paparazzi was too kind, they also omitted the fume-fueled make outs.

School Jerks boiled the room, two depths of hair, sloppy, and screaming at vegans, managing to keep the mic close enough to not crash. It held together until the fire started. No handle on what was happening, but it got extinguished, and offered a clean opportunity to leave. Less a sweater, but it was liberated anyways.

We got out of the street car and walked up to the Silver Dollar. Hunx & His Punx were already going. Wall-sized paintings of cosmetics cozied up the set of perfect pop to make your coworkers uncomfortable. It was a soothing, carefree unwind from the intensity of Siesta’s wake, then early Sunday pizza.

Urban Blight, School Jerks, Purity Control, Violent Future, Kremlin, Foxmoulder at the last Siesta Nouveaux show, and Hunx and his Punx at the Silver Dollar, March 31, 2012.

Tyvek at The Shop at Parts & Labour, March 23, 2012

I’m stupid, got tickets to Tyvek, took the night off, and didn’t think about having to get up at 8. Late last call, Tyvek on at one, as if we’re sticking to schedule. I met up with a friend and discussed the lack of Weeknd scandal, then walked into Parts & Labour at 11:50, Cell Phones just finished.

Outside, a regular from my friend’s work explained, (open beer about to be confiscated), that, “yeah, the guy in charge of the kitchen [not P&L or my friend’s work] is vegetarian, so he forgets about the meat but he’s a real nice guy. I brine the meat in shit and write him long notes as small as I can write, because I hate computers and typewriters make me want to puke all over myself.” Imagine that less coherent.

My fourth time seeing Tyvek, they’re back to three pieces. The Nothing Fits volume is gone, and Fast Metabolism is the merch table darling. They never abandoned their American it-was-easy-it-was-cheap desperation, but the last four years are peeled back, and maybe they’re imitating their younger selves. Detroit is in ruins, why not keep on the same debt punk circuit, making the right poor decisions? They’re a charmingly anachronistic reflection of the times, while the real sub-prime collapse soundtrack is being made by kids on laptops with parents underwater.

Photo from Youth and Rust. Used without permission.

Brand new Toronto hardcore. S.H.I.T.’s first demo is eight minutes and thirty brutal seconds that won’t let me forget to see them again, as soon as possible (sorry, I’m working Saturday night). Note the delay on the vocals and compare / contrast with Kremlin. Microtrend?

They’re giving it away:
mediafire.com / ?u5wg88oygaij1al

EMA and Nu Sensae at the Garrison, March 13, 2012.

Nu Sensae were forced on at 9:30, and punctual attendees got the news adding guitar was brilliant, and the new record better be phenomenal. Brody McKnight (ex-Mutators, Sex Negatives, etc.) doesn’t interrupt the chemistry, he augments it. The weight and noise loses a little of the minimalism but it’s another natural step after five years of growth.

Midway through EMA’s once-in-a-while-tolerable, eons-long set I bought Gretchen Snakes’ (Brody solo) cassette The Complete History of Modern Medicine. It touches a few of the same spiritual notes as last year’s Blues Control and Laraaji collaboration, but stays sparser and darker. I was just disappointed to type out the mediafire link (/?154m8d5plhj… and so on) and find the files removed. Anyone, point me to a way to listen to it on the subway (excluding a walkman).

Atlas Sound at Lee’s Palace, March 6, 2012.

Making up for my teens, I met a work-friend outside Honest Ed’s. His friend had a bottle of whiskey, so we ducked into an alley and someone yelled at me for pissing beside their car. With the whiskey, his friend pulled out coke and by the time we decided to head into Lee’s Palace she was too sick and fucked to get in, and he didn’t have ID. They spent the show puking and might-as-well-be-underage listening from behind Lee’s.

Bradford Cox walks on and someone mistakes their Atlanta institutions and smashes a bottle. He covered My Sharona for an hour in Minneapolis last night, so everyone requests it. Marfan syndrome, past-slim, and loose outfit, death is inevitable.

The set is all loops, read: real-time scaffolding dismantling tight pop songs into tedious explanations of method. Harmonica comes into the third song and Atlas Sound is channelling anthemic Americana, supplanting his imminent death, suggesting suckers’ll be remortgaging their homes to see him in thirty years and their kids’ll whine he’s boring as Springsteen, and couldn’t we put that money towards pizza instead?

A string breaks and, oh yeah, he forecasted the birth of punk.

“You guys have the internet in Canada? What is it, Wednesday? I like the latest headline you generated. I liked the last hit generating, ad-clicking content headline you produced.” He gets his electric guitar and puts on sunglasses and guzzles his beer. “Broken string results in train wreck. Click click click click click click cluck cluck.” There, (accidentally?) the first bars of Forming. “You didn’t read my biography, ‘cuz I’m a punk and I don’t give a fuck! I’m a boorish American Republican.” He stumbles into O Canada, then abandons the joke and plays a couple more.

He jokes about it, sounds bitter about it, but his persona and antics are more exciting and subversive than his music, not grittier enough than the vision of indie he wants torn down. Then there’s an encore.

“Thanks, gee, thanks, thanks a lot for coming again. Is everyone ready to party? I don’t want to believe that they want to party, Martin. That was not enough of a response. Oh, no, it’s happening again, one last chance. You’re so convincing. Maybe tonight you’ll get laid. Maybe it’ll result in a pregnancy. Maybe you’ll get an abortion or maybe you’ll have it and get a mortgage. You better dance as much as you can while your sex organs still self-lubricate. I take it back, I don’t want it. No! Are you ready to fuck? Get ready to dance your ass raw.”

The encore is noisy and danceable in a broken, grinning / wincing way, and not an ounce indie. Instead, heavy breathing and processed screams. Delicate temperaments start filing out. Is this tour self-sabotage? Weeding out folks who won’t indulge his standoffish whims? Are we watching someone reconcile who he’s become in front of the whole internet?

“Who is he? I remember the punk. Can still remember his smell. Never wash his clothes, no.”

The room keeps draining. This is acoustic punk, not what they came to see. He drops his guitar and screams and bashes drums. More people walk out. He’s not a genius, but it sounds like actual pain. Then it stops at once with a bright thank you. No one wants an encore.

Where’s an alley I can piss in? None exist, just a pile of furniture discarded behind neighbouring condos. I’m as unzipping when I see the man in the window ten feet away. I keep walking. Around the corner is a porta-john. Serendipitous.

S.H.I.T. opened the countdown to Siesta Nouveax’s demolition. Their set was succinct and the vocals were great. Kremlin followed, young enough, but the guitar was quiet and the Alan Vega delay felt tacked on. They write different songs though, and I wanna see them again.

Segments of grinding blast beats cut up Purity Control’s set. The noise dredged out of their amps in between left my jaw closer to the floor than I ever expected from those pieces.

Blinding flashes accompany the resurrected SQRM, catching the animalistic performance. SQRM had the weirdest / best guitar playing of the night, and as they dig deeper into repetition they touch something powerful.

My expectations for Hoax were non-existent. The footage did nothing. It’s different being there in person when the singer cuts his forehead open smashing his head through a fan, then pulverizes his face with the microphone as blood drips down his cheek. Through the self-abuse they’re not getting sloppier, even with the rhythm section on the verge of collapse, the exertion tearing them apart. Hoax is taking themselves to the furthest degree, it’s incredible to witness.

Before eleven I’m on a subway home, and teens are diffusing across the city without voices.

Hoax, SQRM, Purity Control, Kremlin, and S.H.I.T. at Siesta Nouveaux, February 23, 2012.