Feral trumpet/drums exchange, torn from the hearts of James Toth aka Wooden Wand and Lucas ‘Bones' Crane. Crane's trumpet playing sounds a little like Cosey Fanni Tutti or Pete Nolan playing Cherry-styled bugle calls and Dixon-spits with a sad, martial force while Toth's drumming style works the kind of horizontal planes previously levelled by Denis Charles into new realms of punk. Free fucking folk. Recommended. Limited edition of 150 copies w/liners by, ulp, Carlos Castaneda...

Hand-numbered/self-released edition of 200 copies art edition CD-R from Wooden Wand, packaged with a card envelope pasted onto a thick piece of wood. This is a major return to loner form for Wand, with 10 tracks that take the isolated ambience of Nebraska and dose it with the apocalyptic glam of Bowie’s “Quicksand”. Wand’s writing is at an absolute peak here, with a surreal allusive style that sets mid-60s Dylan against Gram Parson’s “Hippy Boy” in a post-Siltbreeze universe. He never sounded better. Highly recommended.

Brand new album from The Vanishing Voice minus Wooden Wand and Satya Sai in an edition of 200 copies with gold silkscreened sleeves. Starts off in a beautifully evocative almost Mirror-esque glassy trance style before levitating through screaming radio waves ala MEV into something quite unlike anything else in their back catalogue, something that more closely resembles the more Bower-reverent moments of Pete Nolan's early Spectre Flux material. Either way, it sounds fantastic and might just be the best release by this cabal to date.

From alla the pre-release noise surrounding this new album from Wooden Wand you might've been led to think that was gonna be some massive misstep into the tepid waters of airbrushed mainstream oblivion for Mr James Toth. But then that's the problem with press releases; send em out to a bunch of jobbing journos and they'll swallow the program without even tasting the meat. And if any of those duds had bothered actually listening to the rec they'd have figured out that alla that 'big-time' production hoo-haa was just another red herring. Fact is James And The Quiet sounds a lot like the last few Wooden Wand albums and feels more like a further refining of the less improvisatory road that he has been heading along since The Vanishing Voice pretty much set out on their own. Which means it's a fucking doozy. Sure it has a slightly more 'produced' feel, but all that really means is that James's voice has more space to hypnotise and the arrangements seem to sit a little neater around all the kinda serpentine shapes that his quixotic song-writing logic has always seemed to demand. In fact, if anything, this album feels even more stripped back than previous entries, with James and Jessica's vocals working malevolent harmonic smoke rings around blasted country ballads with the kind of supernatural grace that will almost have you reaching for Chris D's Divine Horseman side in order to compare notes. Anyone who has caught him live recently or kept up with the archival From The Road series will recognise a bunch of the songs here but honestly, they never sounded better. So, it's another record from James, and another fucking great one. Simple as that. So can the fucking press release. Recommended.

Third limited-edition CD-R (run of only 150 copies) from this new project led by James Toth aka Wooden Wand and featuring Jessica Toth and original Golden Calves vocalist Max Mev Wicker. Following in the wake of their shelved second album, Jazz Improve, Contemporary Suicide Music feels more like the repository for alla Toth’s more outré sonic strategies, almost as a companion to his more classic song-based work as Wooden Wand. Here there’s a whole bunch of weird, private press style gambits, with tracks that range from devouring, almost Hototogisu-esque dinosaurs-in-the-fog style drones, squiggly early-Tietchens inspired synth magic, instrumentals that sound almost exactly like Department Store Santas playing “That’s Just Fine” by Spacemen 3 and some shredding solo punk guitar. Another highly recommended instalment.

Limited to 250 hand-numbered-copies from the band formerly known as Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice. This one features four 'phases' across one long 30 minute track that sees the whole cultus broke down into its constituent parts. First up we get a sumptuously stoned and minimal Diehl/Taveniere jam that then segues into a great "Dark Star -esque Crane/Toth face-off which in turn morphs into a Nolan/Toth jam before the whole group kick in with a fanfare of heavy psychedelic electricity. Recorded live at Strange Maine, Portland, Maine April 2007. Comes with tour diary extract on double sided A4 sheet on the inside of the package. Both the insert and the sleeve are printed on a very thing paper (kinda like newsprint) with tiny red flecks built into the paper.

Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies from the duo of James and Jessica Toth (aka Chazz Improv and Norma Bates) with Max ‘Mev’ Wicker, their first release outside of Toth’s own Mad Monk imprint. Some classically bleak Kraut-inspired dirge bombs cut-up with the kind of blues breakdowns and deranged avant-gardisms that best defined Toth’s previous Hassara outings.

New limited to 150 copies self-released CD-R from this Wooden Wand offshoot featuring James and Jessica Toth (aka Chazz Improv and Norma Bates) and Max Wicker: “Latest and best from this mysterious tribe finds them in full synthesizer horror mode. Taking cues from the soundtracks of John Carpenter, the mutant space techno of Allan Bryant, the time-lapse mesmerism of Robert Fripp, and the intrepid synthesizer experiments of Ruth White, Hot Lead deals in nightmarisharpeggios, shapeshifting noise and ominous melodic variations. Recorded direct to 8 track - no boring, sterile microhouse polish here - and comprised of mostly solo tracks by individual members. Complete with dreamy Sisters of Mercy fanboy cover art.” – MM.

Excellent new release from another solo project of James Jackson Toth/Wooden Wand. This one is dedicated to maximum guitar destruction/amp confusion and sees Toth taking his electric guitar the fuck apart in a way that parallels Mats Gustafsson’s work with the saxophone. Extending the explorations of players like Rudolph Grey, Ray Russell, Donald Miller and Stefan Jaworzyn, this is guitar as maximum sonic disruptor, played like it was the first time he ever encountered it: “Thrash, Jr, named after Houston Mazda (RX-7) Cup driver Thomas Thrash Jr, is yet another guise of James Jackson Toth, and released on Toth's new MAD MONK ANNEX CDR imprint. This racing-themed album comprises three extended pieces of bleak and visceral solo guitar cacophony / catharsis. If Hassara was “boogie,” Thrash, Jr is “bombardment.” From the artist: "Like most American kids my age, my life was changed irrevocably by the music of bands like Courtesy Flush, Army Nightmares, Lil Johnny Eightball & the Secret Society Dildos, and The Canker Sores. This premeditated and unprovoked attack on my electric guitar is in tribute to those bands and their myriad imitators." “Lux Interior” is a duet for raging rainstorm and goat hoof-guitar, “Victory Is Hers” is a naughty little respite of delay blast and Toth’s patented “animal-tapping” fuckitude, and "Militant Walls (Is Poser Noise For Pussy Emo Fags)" finds Toth turning up the gain on his solid state amplifier and proceeding to audibly pull his Stratocaster apart - you can literally hear the entire tremolo system being slowly removed. Ouch! "Makes Rudolph Grey sound like Steve Vai" - William Blake Cobblestone, local television personality. "The best guitar noise album of the year" - The Other Dude in Claudio Two, Claudio Two. Improvised and recorded entirely live over two stormy Nashville nights, with nothing added post production.” – MMA. Limited edition of 150 copies.

Private press album from Mister James Jackson Toth aka Wooden Wand aka Wand. Recorded on the lam downwind of some fairly destructive personal/artistic episodes, rejected by his record company, fuelled by bad blood and mental cobwebs, Born Bad is both the most intimate, the most bloody-minded and the most revelatory album by Toth to date. The sound is very stripped down and lot more countrified than the bulk of his catalogue. Imagine Nicodemus or Jim Collins playing Gram Parsons “Hippie Boy” (reputedly Dylan’s favourite Parsons track), or how about Townes Van Zandt circa the nihilistic/black hole style of “Nothing” given a one-chance live album for Siltbreeze or how about just Dylan circa The Basement Tapes, prowling his Woodstock home with a shotgun while fans creepy-crawl across the roof? Either way this is a stark postcard from the void and won’t stick around for long. Edition of 500 copies, already sold out at source, hand-screened covers, limited numbers available. Recommended.

Excellent collection of demos, home-recordings and out-takes from James Toth, recorded to portastudios between the years 2002-2007. Up-close, intimate atmosphere on this and combined with the quality of Toth's throwaways (which for anyone else would be prima material) this almost has the feel of his Nebrasaka, a series of dark, loner postcards from the other side of America that would bolster and explode traditional country, folk and ballad forms. Excellent. "To quickly address the elephant in the room - certainly, collections of demos, outtakes and home recordings are mostly bogus, but obviously you're reading this, so obviously I've somehow been coerced into releasing this batch of tunes, and you've bought it or stolen it or borrowed it or gotten a promo or whatever, so let's cut to the chase. In my defense, all of the cuts contained herein are 'songs' in the traditional western sense - my experiments in "surf harmonica" and "doom zydeco" will not be chronicled here, deep and plentiful as those archives may be. Everything here was recorded by me on either a Roland BR-8 digital 8-track or it's flashier, more cosmopolitan cousin, the BR- 1600, with incalculable assistance from Jexie Lynn, who accompanies me on many of these songs and who's encouragement and creativity allowed many of them to be. Most of the recordings were done at my then-home in beautiful Knoxville, TN between October 2002 and January of 2007, just prior to the retirement of the Wooden Wand name.  You've already pardoned the narcissism, now pardon the cliche: I stand behind these songs as snapshots and enjoy them despite their many flaws. I hope you do, too." - Wand.

Second limited edition (with slightly different sleeves) of this much-anticipated new private press album from Mister James Jackson Toth aka Wooden Wand aka Wand. Recorded on the lam downwind of some fairly destructive personal/artistic episodes, rejected by his record company, fuelled by bad blood and mental cobwebs, Born Bad is both the most intimate, the most bloody-minded and the most revelatory album by Toth to date. The sound is very stripped down and lot more countrified than the bulk of his catalogue. Imagine Nicodemus or Jim Collins playing Gram Parsons "Hippie Boy" (reputedly Dylan's favourite Parsons track), or how about Townes Van Zandt circa the nihilistic/black hole style of "Nothing" given a one-chance live album for Siltbreeze or how about just Dylan circa The Basement Tapes, prowling his Woodstock home with a shotgun while fans creepy-crawl across the roof? Either way this is a stark postcard from the void and won?t stick around for long. Recommended.

Edition of 500 copies compilation LP with exclusive tracks from Akron/Family, Joanne Robertson & Matthew Ashworth, Wand, Natural Snow Buildings, Married In Berdichev, Moon Duo, The See See and Seadog. Comes with a full colour zine featuring artwork by Jake Blanchard, Pete Fowler, Andrew Rae, Will Sweeney, Sarah King, Olange Gularte, James Trimmer/Mirt and Mat Pringle.

Glorious new privately released album from Wooden Wand with a virtual goddamn big band line-up that features guitar, pedal steel, plenty of organ, drums and slide. Wand has really hit his stride recently after a wobbly period around the Ryko LP and this might just be his most fully-accomplished and all-out gorgeous recording yet. The band have that constant, unfolding/revelatory style of The Hawks/The Band circa ’66 or Dylan’s studio band on Blonde On Blonde, allowing Toth to really roll with the phrasing and his songwriting here has a similar visionary/infinite aspect as classic late-60s Dylan, pushing past simple verse/chorus arrangements in favour of a constant unfolding. His lyrics are still some of the smartest/funniest/rawest of anyone of his generation and the degree of underground smarts and hard-won knowledge he brings to the table – he served time under Matthew Valentine fer gawd’s sake – means even the straightest of pounders are surreptitiously bent. The backing band are fantastic:  powerful, euphoric, hard rocking and the combination of off-the-cuff backing vocals, ripping guitar solos and epic beams of organ makes this the most rewarding singer-songwriter record of the year. In a righteous universe Wand would be the dude on the front cover of Mojo but in a world where dweebs like David Gray are touted as the heir apparent to Bob Dylan, well, I’ll continue to file him alongside Arthur Doyle, NNCK and The Bummer Road and feel damn good about it. Edition of 500 copies, ‘official’ version reputedly due on Fire Records sometime in the future. On coloured vinyl. Can’t recommend this enough. 

Reissue of a bunch of key documents – the Golden Calves Money Band LP and Century Band 12”  – from this pre-Wooden Wand/Vanishing Voice freakout jam band led by Mr James Toth and released in the mid-90s. The sound has that classically fractured post-ESP Disk Siltbreeze feel fully down, with Skip Spence style oblivion ballads further dislocated by almost Shadow Ring-styled idiot avant and drug-dazzled cultic jam blasts ala early Tower Recordings. The spirit of Jandek hovers over the bulk of the recording and Toth makes expressive use of Sterling Smith’s barbed guitar sonorities while orbiting the kind of cultic downer ballads that he would base much of the Vanishing Voice material around. A beautiful sound from a beautiful time. Comes with some hilarious in-depth liners where Toth fesses up to the multiple inspirations behind these still-magical recordings. If you’ve never heard these before then it functions as a key to a whole lot of what was to come later. Highly recommended.

Fourth album from Woods, the trio of Jeremy Earl, Jarvis Taveniere and G. Lucas Crane. This is another hook-filled collection of maximal folk-punkers, rendered in a style that somehow reconciles the whole K Records International Pop Underground feel with timeless psych rock and contemporary free folk ala the MV/EE cultus. If anything, the tracks are a little more extended than previous records, with one particularly blazing stand-out being “September With Pete” that flashes between a loose Crazy Horse-styled barn buster and the Savage Sons Of Ya Ho Wha. Also features a nice cover of the Crosby, Stills & Nash track “Military Madness”. Still one of the best contemporary underground groups to truck in songs-as-songs. Recommended.

With a title like At Echo Lake the fifth album from New York’s Woods intimates a modern rock aesthetic fully informed by historical manifestations of teenage along with a concomitant feel for the specifics of time and place. The distance between 2007’s At Rear House and 2010’s At Echo Lake may at first seem only semantic but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. Over the past few years Woods have established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outré company of vocalist/guitarist/label owner Jeremy Earl’s Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully-constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics. At Echo Lake feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here – the opening “Blood Dries Darker”, the euphoric “Mornin’ Time” – is so lush that lesser brains would’ve succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns but At Echo Lake is more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers, nowhere more so than on “From The Horn”, a track that is as beautiful in its assault on form as “Eight Miles High” or Swell Maps’ “Midget Submarines”. But despite the instrumental innovation that the album heralds – G. Lucas Cranes’ psychedelic tapework on “Suffering Season”, guest musician Matthew Valentine’s harmonica and modified banjo/sitar on “Time Fading Lines” – At Echo Lake is all about the vocals. Woods’ secret weapon is the quality of Earl’s voice, osmosing the naive style of Jad Fair, Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while re-thinking it as a discipline and a tradition. Here he is singing at the peak of his powers, in a high soulful style that is bolstered by heavenly arrangements of backing vocals. At Echo Lake feels like the transmission point for teenage garage from the past to the future. Deformed by contemporary experiments, bolstered by magical traditions from the past, it’s the sound of now, right here, At Echo Lake.

With a title like At Echo Lake the fifth album from New York’s Woods intimates a modern rock aesthetic fully informed by historical manifestations of teenage along with a concomitant feel for the specifics of time and place. The distance between 2007’s At Rear House and 2010’s At Echo Lake may at first seem only semantic but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. Over the past few years Woods have established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outré company of vocalist/guitarist/label owner Jeremy Earl’s Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully-constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics. At Echo Lake feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here – the opening “Blood Dries Darker”, the euphoric “Mornin’ Time” – is so lush that lesser brains would’ve succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns but At Echo Lake is more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers, nowhere more so than on “From The Horn”, a track that is as beautiful in its assault on form as “Eight Miles High” or Swell Maps’ “Midget Submarines”. But despite the instrumental innovation that the album heralds – G. Lucas Cranes’ psychedelic tapework on “Suffering Season”, guest musician Matthew Valentine’s harmonica and modified banjo/sitar on “Time Fading Lines” – At Echo Lake is all about the vocals. Woods’ secret weapon is the quality of Earl’s voice, osmosing the naive style of Jad Fair, Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while re-thinking it as a discipline and a tradition. Here he is singing at the peak of his powers, in a high soulful style that is bolstered by heavenly arrangements of backing vocals. At Echo Lake feels like the transmission point for teenage garage from the past to the future. Deformed by contemporary experiments, bolstered by magical traditions from the past, it’s the sound of now, right here, At Echo Lake.

Brand new EP from the current greatest live band on the planet. This one expands on the more extended aspect of the group’s recent live set, with a long A-side that dissolves from collage and high lonesome song into vectors of intuitive string think that are as beautiful as any ’72 Dead set. The flip captures two shorter tracks straight out of the teenage garage. Fantastic. Bring on the LP.

Wild de-programming/subliminal hypnosis piece from Crane aka Non-Horse aka one quarter of Woods. Commissioned as a piece that would cure cosmic dread and the ‘fear of infinity’ aka apeirophobia as part of a series of ‘hypno tapes’ that use subliminals and extreme sound to re-wire your brain, this is one of Crane’s weirdest sides, with clattering drone works for strings and assorted junk that sounds like Tony Conrad leading The Velvets through a Ludlow Street raga recorded straight to tape while mutated vocal flicker backwards, float in the distance and mutate into choirs of lonely foghorns in a way that is supremely disorientating. Dunno if I’m feeling any better about infinity afterwards, but this particular take on the concept of eternal music sure makes me feel ‘good’. 

“Sixth studio album from Woods sees them further transition from back porch rural folk rock to their current fully developed sound w/finely crafted songs with enough elasticity to stretch out into extended jams on the bandstand. Sun And Shade is classic Woods but still represents a development in their psychedelic pop/garage rock song writing. When At Echo Lake came out VT described it as “more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers” and in that sense this feels closer to Younger Than Yesterday – the perfect document of their form. Woods in the studio is quite different a proposition to Woods live. Whereas live they are happy to stretch out into wild psychedelic jams, in the studio it is all about formulating classic songs, with a focus on melody and those amazing vocals. It’s not surprising given the personnel involved. Woods the studio group are predominantly the duo of Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere (augmented on this occasion by Glenn Donaldson of Skygreen Leopards/Art Museums et al) whereas live sees the addition of G.Lucas Crane on tape loops, vocals and FX and Kevin Morby on bass, guitar and drums. On this record Woods display their craft across ten songs and two radical instrumentals (think “September with Pete”) that are some of the album’s highlights. Opener “Pushing Onlys” - already a staple of the live set - is the perfect articulation of the Woods sound, setting psychedelic pop dreamscapes to a garage infused pulsating drive. There are almost too many highlights to describe but “Any Other Day” is a stand-out with its Byrds-like chorus and a riveting/phasing guitar sound straight off “Wasn’t Born To Follow”. It closes with these delightful drum fills that will bring a smile to anyone with a pulse. The cornerstone of the Woods sound is still Jeremy Earl’s sublime, infectious vocals (whether solo or multi-tracked) with a euphoric aspect that gets me every time. Sun And Shade includes some more tender and introspective moments that take his vocals to a whole new level. The delivery on the sublimely personal “Wouldn’t Waste” and “Who Do I Think I Am?” features some of the finest psychedelic vocals I’ve heard, with a softness of touch comparable to Arthur Lee’s performances on “Orange Skies” and “The Castle” on Da Capo. Other highlights include the Small Faces-sounding psychedelic pop of “What Faces The Sheet” and the percussion driven ballad of “White Out” with its almost calypso guitar.  But the two tracks that really set this apart as the definitive Woods release are the long instrumentals, “Out Of The Eye” and “Sol Y Sombra”. “Out Of The Eye” comes across as a kind of pop-infused krautrock jam w/a dose of Neu circa “Hallogallo” complete with motoric drumming and tightly compressed wah-wah chords. This is the only track to feature G.Lucas Crane of the ‘live’ Woods outfit and his box of tricks greatly enhances this uniquely odd space jam. There’s a moment where Jeremy Earl breaks into a flurry of notes as if impersonating the Byrds attempt to mimic the sound of Coltrane’s sax at the start of “Eight Miles High”. Woods are one of the greatest contemporary live acts and this sounds more like their live set, leaving me salivating for the UK Autumn tour. “Sol Y Sombra” is equally sublime, a percussion driven raga evoking the type of organic sounds and vibes that Jeremy Earl has added brilliantly to recent Matthew Valentine albums. Not as wildly psychedelic as some of MV’s “Environments”, this retains the Woods’s penchant for song and melody and therefore reminds me of some of the output of The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.
Overall, this is a classic Woods album, with those two long jams and the further perfection of Jeremy Earl’s vocal pretty much sealing the deal. I have always really liked Jeremy’s artwork and this might just be his best yet.  It’s Woods. It’s fucking genius and I highly recommended it.” – Andrew Ross. 

Great new self-released limited edition EP from Matt Mondanile on his own New Images imprint. The version of one of his best loved tracks, “Killin The Vibe” that opens the set is a perfect/primitive Beach Boys style slice of dream pop with angelic west coast backing vocals and a squelchy beatbox bottom end and features contributions from Panda Bear, Dent May and Jarvis Taveniere of Woods. Two new tracks, “Sit Around With Ya” and “Couch Surfer” add to the feel of languorous suburban ennui while a final live take on “Killin The Vibe” cut with The Spectrals in Leeds in 2010 reverses the whole deal into the garage. 

Staggering document of the entire April Flower tour that took place in April 2011 and saw Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder joined by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower-Corsano Duo) on electric bass. This trio might be the single greatest ‘small group’ to grace MV’s back catalogue. Something about the way Flower is able to navigate with the vaguest and most subtly ‘implied’ directions seems to free the group sound to float all the way out there, resulting in some of their most effortlessly psychedelic and unequivocally beautiful visionings of deep rural psych. The set comes with 8 separate CD-Rs, all with their own Heroine style sleeve/title, housed in a tall oversize handmade art book with beautifully printed artwork, a VIP certificate and a thick booklet with colour covers that features a complete rundown of the shows, snaps and liners from Coot Moon and MV himself. It might just be the most gloriously crafted artefact to come out of the Child Of Microtones stable, a label that has long set the standard for tactile home-burned presentation. The shows come from Feeding Tube in Northampton 4/4/11, Saratoga Arts Centre, Saratoga Springs 4/5/11, The Church, Boston 4/6/11 (where the group are joined on drums by Chris Corsano for an amazing heavy psych set), State University Of New York 4/7/11, Death By Audio, Brooklyn 4/8/11 (where they’re joined by Jeremy Earl of Woods), Brickbat Books, Philadelphia 4/9/11 (a stunning set with guest spots from Willie Lane and Harmonica Dan), Wilkes-Barre, PA 4/10/11 and Mystery Train 4/11/11. The whole set is massively varied, with odd acoustic re-thinks of primo meat up against endlessly extended soft-as-snow renderings of haunted blues and full-blown free improvised navigations of the furthest environments. If I hadda pick a highlight it may well be the astounding Brickbat Books set that just sounds so great and has the group playing with at an all-time high of confidence and euphoria but really the whole set is a stone and one of the most necessary releases of the year. Edition of only 99 copies, so make your move. Can’t recommend this enough! To further prime you for the jams, our resident COMmentator, Blues Scholar Andrew Ross, gives us a close-up on one of the major discs:

Yorkshire Puddin’ – MV & EE with Mick Flower

“Picking one of my highlight shows from the box set, I opted for the opening night where the core trio played the Feeding Tube Records shop.  For whatever reason, the Feeding Tube venue always seems to conjure up something special when MV & EE play (check out previous Heroines like “Muy Alto” and “Toasted Cookie”) with a real creative edge and great quality sonics. The performance here on the April Flower tour is no exception with a real high-end folk art performance that is totally killer. The sonic mix on the recording itself is up there with the best, with the vocals really clear in the mix and the bass sounds so organic, almost acoustic at times. If that wasn’t enough there are a few live rarities/new tracks thrown in for good measure.
The set opens with “Drone Trailer” and keeps with the transcendental arrangement of late but with the dual vocals of MV & EE sounding particularly enchanting. There’s some delightful interplay between MV’s melodic solo expressions mixed with Erika’s pedal steel during the main instrumental break.  Next up is the set’s mind-blowing highlight, which is a 30 minute passage which runs “Hammer”, “Space Blues”, “Crow Jane Environs” and finally into “Death Is Your Friend”. Starts with “Hammer”, which is a spectacular re-think of the song’s arrangement. Previous versions have had a West Coast/Crazy Horse style feel to them but this particular arrangement comes across like a folk/blues mammoth.  Sparse restrained clean guitar, almost acoustic at times, combined with Erika’s vocals (doused in echo with long drawn notes) which are simply heart-breaking.  Some lucid wah-wah infused soloing from MV which is continually pinned down by Mick’s organic bass seals the deal.  Hands down this is my favourite version of “Hammer” yet.  This segues into “Space Blues” (only previously included on Double Double Raw) which is a short instrumental passage with a real psychedelic edge.  Some great high-end bass work and almost jazz-like runs from Mick overlade with space FX on the slide sounding particularly great.  Next is “Crow Jane Environs” from Liberty Rose (COM34).  Only previously available on the duo performance from Blasted Wavelength this is a vastly superior version and this is its only inclusion in the sets in this run of shows.  With its traditional folk lyrics and an arrangement that displays MV’s admiration of British and Celtic folk this is a radical re-interpretation of the folk source but with a real dark/psychedelic undercurrent that none of the current ‘psych/acid folk’ imposters would be capable of creating.  Eerie vocals over finger-picked inverted and transformed chord structures – it’s simply stunning.  But the real star of the track is Mick Flower whose high-end melodic bass phrasing takes it to a new dimension, coming across like a cross between Bert Jansch’s “Jack Orion” and The Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe Eugene” – check out the psychedelic guitar jam that erupts around 4m30s.  It doesn’t get much better.  This segues into “Death Is My Friend” which is another live rarity.  Only previously available on the Deep Space Circuit and Double Double Raw sets although the arrangement here borrows more from the studio version on “Liberty Rose”, albeit with a more electric blues feel.  It features those “Freight Train” style vocals from Erika with a mid-song rap that is as seductive to rival Kim Gordon’s on “Kool Thing”.  This develops into a sublime electric blues jam with some great hypnotic blues licks from MV pinned by a repeating bassline from Mick Flower in the same style as he did to those arrangements of “Get Right Church” and “Canned Happiness” on the Steal Yr Slice tour.  For anyone that read the recent article in the Wire on Bill Orcutt, it really does feel like artists like Orcutt and MV are pioneering modern interpretations of country and folk blues whilst still paying their respect to the source – recognising “the fact that you’re not Robert Johnson”.
“Crash Palace Of Records” is another new track (only previously available on the All Good Habs set, although that was recorded after this tour and so this is the real live debut) with the arrangement staying pretty true to the studio version from this year’s stunning Country Stash – albeit a month prior to that album’s release.  “Environments” is sufficiently different from the versions with Mick Flower from the Steal Yr Slice tour to keep even the completists more than intrigued.  It still has that raga feel particularly with the addition of Mick’s japan banjo interwoven with MV’s traditional banjo and some great space FX from Erika on the lap steel.  However, towards the end it breaks into a newer stretched passage which has a real heavy underground Tokyo psych feel to it coming across somewhere between live Hendrix circa 1970 and Takashi Mizutani.  In fact, anyone that enjoyed some of the heavier moments from Herbcraft’s Ashram To The Stars with those industrial/mechanical sounding feedback-drenched guitars should check this out.  This segues into the set closer, the road anthem of “Feelin’ Fine” which has a particularly sweet frazzled tone on the guitar on this one.
Overall, this set is totally killer (but it’s that middle passage that will keep you coming back) and has to rank up there with some of my personal favourites like Toasted Clam, Muy Alto, Double Double Raw, Wobbly Hall and even I Left My Wallet In The Trossachs.  If that wasn’t enough there are another 7 sets in the box set such as the mind-blower from Brickbat Books featuring Willie Lane.  It’s highly recommended!” – Andrew Ross.