74.

Yellow Swans
At All Ends
(Load, 2007)

At All Ends was a revelatory moment for me. It marked the first time I was ever able to describe the Yellow Swans’ music as beautiful. Of course, that’s pretty subjective. I’m positive there are plenty of people who would haughtily disagree with that assessment. But the transition was clear; At All Ends (in addition to all the cassettes and CDrs released around the same period from the band) was something different. A whole new direction for the band and, indeed, a high water mark. The industrial noisiness wasn’t gone, just honed into some lucid, beautiful sandstorm of sound. Perhaps it was this epiphany of evolution that led the band to pack up shop, knowing that they had finally achieved something of supremely transformative power.

-Thistle

15.

Lightning Bolt
Wonderful Rainbow
(Load, 2003)

Wonderful Rainbow holds an unexpected romantic sentimentality for me. When Sassigrass and I first started dating we shared a bunch of music with each other and of the truckload of CDs I flung at her, Wonderful Rainbow was the first to stick. Later while playing the album in her room, I jumped atop her bed and proceeded to play a ridiculously technical air-bass line (I believe it was during “Crown Of Storms”) with all the proper punk swagger that is understandably missing from Brian Gibson’s statuesque live performances to the laughter of Sassigrass and, unexpectedly, the slightly embarrassing laughter of my future mother-in-law as she entered the room unannounced. Cute huh? Perhaps the cutest story ever to accompany this deathly pummeling monument of noise and rock that is Lightning Bolt’s Wonderful Rainbow.

-Thistle

Sightings - Through The Panama

Sightings

Through The Panama

(10.2007, Load)

Verdict = Superb Sound But No Heart

Sightings previous excursions in free form no wave have been destructive to say the least, however, on Through The Panama the band has pulled out all the stops delivering their most coarse material to date. Completely drowning out contemporaries like Clipd Beaks and Liars in the noise category, Sightings take their version dance punk deep into the vast swamps of their grinding past. In doing so Through The Panama makes some gains as well as takes some losses. The gains are obvious; for sheer tonal aggression Sightings are untouchable, scorching the grounds on which their transmissions flow like blasts of napalm. With Through The Panama, Sightings are waging war on the ear drum. The loss accompanying such a greedy audio display is that of the soul. Now that may not be a loss for some; I mean this was most surely the plan from the beginning for the gruesome hipsters and the ends to which most of their fans seek them out. Maybe I just have a soft spot for a bit of humanity in my noise, despite the monstrosity that the music embodies. Here, underneath the monstrous exterior, everything seems cold and robotic. Again, just depends on what you are looking for. The album is absolutely thrilling; there is no doubt about that. It is just not very often that I feel that I’ll need such a dose of horror bustling through my speakers. This of course is meant as much as a compliment as it is a potential deterrent.

- Mr. Thistle

Sightings - Perforated

Mouthus - Saw A Halo

Mouthus
Saw a Halo
(10.2007, Load)
8.0/10

Mouthus created Saw a Halo (along with everything else they have released since their inception) as the solution for bad neighbors. You know, the kind that have innumerable occupants that are awake at all hours of every day - that never learned how to use their "indoor voice" - who seem to be endlessly and obnoxiously laughing outside your bedroom window. Mouthus is for the kind of people that seem to feel that since they are outside they should just open up the backdoor and turn up the bass on their stereo so that they can hear it while they talk with their cousin who is pounding her own tunes in the car parked five feet away from that same backdoor…and all at 3 in the morning. I obviously have an axe to grind here and Mouthus is the solution. They always have been when the battle gets dirty because dirty is basically synonymous with Mouthus. However, on my first listen of Saw a Halo I was shocked. The opening track, "Your Far Church," is a virtual U-turn for the band, with Mouthus appearing to be turning a sympathetic leaf to those who have endured their crushing audio shrapnel. The opener is drifting acoustic ditty that actually resembles a song. For Mouthus that means vocals with discernable lyrics and instrumentation that can be argued as melodious. You might even be able to pass it off as pretty. However, a minute before "Your Far Church" closes, Mouthus' signature audio destruction begins to leach in and the following track, "Armies Between," transforms into what we have come to expect of the grizzly duo. The remainder of the album tracks a glorious progression in production (the album is their first recorded in a studio) and textured gristle from 2006's The Long Salt with additional depth and movement (including another track featuring discernable lyrics!). The album is another successful speaker destroying, neighbor defeating machine of a record. Turn this up to eleven and watch your neighbors moving trucks arrive. Recommended for noise addicts with no sympathy.

-Mr. Thistle

Mouthus - "Your Far Church"

Yellow Swans - At All End

Yellow Swans
At All End
(10.2007, Load)
9.5/10

Beauty is not usually the first word associated with guttural noise produced by Yellow Swans. Last year's Psychic Secessions saw the band careening through extended blasts of distortion heavy industrial electronics that must have been the envy of their contemporaries. Yet even with a long history of setting polluted gristle to tape and clearing rooms playing it live, Yellow Swans' latest Load Records release, At All Ends, is actually...pretty. Now I need to insert a qualifier here: this is the Yellow Swans. Nevertheless, gone are the deep guttural growls and screeching electronic squabbles of previous albums. The beauty Yellow Swans have made here is buried deep with deafening walls of multiple layers of distorted guitar, beauty that is waterlogged in trenches of feedback. At All Ends contains a deafening grandeur whose terrible magnificence spreads ominously throughout its pieces. The album spans five tracks, each a heavy sheet of glacial gorgeousness. Each sings sorrowfully like a glorious sea liner sinking into frozen waters, inch by inch, to the horror of its passangers. A definite shocker, Yellow Swans have produced one of the great surprises of 2007 and marked themselves as one of the most dynamic groups on the modern experimental noise-scape. At All Ends is a revelation of gorged heaviness that sparkles with undeniable heart; a work of intense depth and beauty.

-Mr. Thistle

Yellow Swans - "Our Oases"