Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0059 (January 14, 2025)

Mid-January hit quicker than usual this year; keeping busy is the key. Hit with so much giant news as soon as the year began: Los Angeles melting into glass; the astronomically wealthy using every channel to show us how boring and socially desperate they are; that Neil Gaiman exposé (despicable), along with the personal (needing to move, needing to make some giant changes in my live, but also realizing that my need to write about music is somehow every bit as important). I don’t think a new year has ever brought so much in my life into sharp focus. I hope it’s pointing to the right place.

Heathen Disco is here to stay. Tell your people, the good stuff’s behind the wall.

Here’s a review; four more follow.

Please send in more music and I’ll regard it: [email protected] / PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA

EMILY ROBB Live at Jerry’s DL (Petty Bunco)

I hear Max! Moreover, I hear Emily Robb, embarking on a solo journey on a recent opening stint for Lavender Flu in Philly. A chunky, two-chord waltz gets laid in via loop pedal to provide a foundation for improv in time, a signature style that understands the chunk an electric guitar is designed to provide, and soloing that always keeps that frame of sound in practice. Deliberate fretboard runs vs. open aluminum bat choogle fade out that backing riff into a rave-up (sounds like a burly lift off How to Moonwalk), and Emily takes flight yet again, playing all the combinations around it, glorifying the sound, bashing away with pruning shears as hands. In the same lane as some of the early Bill Orcutt records but with a soul sold to White Light/White Heat. Emily’s a foundational current that is holding together a specific scene across the USA and Canada, and anyone lucky enough to stand near its poles is going to feel that charge disperse clean through them.