Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0096 (May 23, 2025)

Some thoughts for all of you on this holiday weekend. Memorialize THIS.

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My back is killing me from standing at a show last night so this is a quick one, while I collapse into massage tools and pain relief. Enjoy!

THE PENNYS self-titled 12” EP (Mt. St. Mtn)

Bay Area/NorCal pop exchange rolls a new combo: R.E. Seraphin and Tony Jay/Cindy/Flowertown feller Michael Ramos, as The Pennys, alongside guest contribs by Yea-Ming Chen (of the Rumours), Owen Adair Kelley (in Talkies, with Seraphin), and Luke Robbins on occasional vocals. There’s no getting around their self-imposed definition that these six songs sound like a straight up cross between Ramos’ and Seraphin’s other works, the dusky Twilleyisms meeting a breathier, moth-lit demeanor. This actually works really well, because pop is malleable (if we’ve learned nothing else from this music since the ‘60s, let this be the lesson), and there’s enough talent and texture at play to bend this into the smoke curls and incensed crypt of this secret, tender collection.

ROBERT FORSTER Strawberries LP (Tapete)

One of those “one sheet tells you everything” releases, but it’s Forster, so add that to what you already know (co-founder of The Go-Betweens, living legend) and ride with it. He’s in his late ‘60s and has always “had it” so get ready for tales of life lived, love felt, experiences had (really love “Breakfast on a Train,” using a sort of circular narrative to tell the story of these two people and what transpired between them over the past 24 hours, and “Foolish I Know,” a melancholy tale of regret towards a man who doesn’t share the same feelings for our narrator), and a weathered but bright voice to steer us through it all. The kind of record Ray Davies (or Dave Davies) could have made, but didn’t. Cleanly produced by Peter of Peter, Bjorn and John, it’s a bright spot well outside of the emotional minefield we all went through a few years back.

STEREOLAB Instant Holograms on Metal Film 2xLP (Duophonic/Warp)

An air of refreshment washes over Stereolab’s first new album in 15 years, during which time they’ve been busy on their own, as well as having reissued their entire catalog down to the singles, and played sporadic sets that spoke to a historical endpoint. Getting away from the stylistic logorrhea of their last couple before the creative pause, this sounds focused and assured not only of their range but of a specific era, with some real 1971-76 milemarkers in these songs: the opening polyphonics lead to “Aerial Troubles,” which might as well be their take on The Sweet’s “Love Is Like Oxygen,” but where that song sounded like a true pivot away from that band’s bread-and-butter onto someone else’s, this just sounds like Stereolab landed the UFO outside their studio, scanned their brains and modulated those ideas for their own. Much of the rest seems of a piece with those Popshopping comps of yore, library and light pop/electronic missives like you might hear in a Quelle in Munich where Hans-Peter’s mom took him to buy new jeans, because he put holes in the old ones (“hösen mit löchern sind “in”). You’ll find no argument from me, though, because the groop once again plays with a “unification” sound not really heard since the Dots & Loops era, when they first bridged their retro stylings with the present, confidently building a place of exotic comfort. The arrangements, the vocal charts, the layers of complementary electronics ... nobody does this better, right? That double-time break in “Immortal Hands,” with all those drum treatments and deep toms? The ecstatic getaway anthem inside “Electrified Teenybop”? Nobody!

AMATEUR HOUR Går i kras LP (Appetite)

If the Förlag era is matured beyond potency, its seeds have taken root in other places, be it in Gothenburg’s exquisite store and imprint Discreet Music, in the stretches of the Appetite label, and of the groups formed out of the moment continuing to grow in the midnight sun. The noise drainage of their previous opus Krökta tankar och brända vanor is replaced with a more homespun aesthetic, the soundtrack of a soul flying away. Folk influences are stronger here, even amidst the electro grot that still cruds in the corners, culminating in the near-protest vigor of “Hammered,” and a pronounced Lynchian sleepwalk across the poppier half of the album, and a prevalence of English language vocals. What’s interesting is that some bands would simply start here and have nowhere to go, where for this Swedish trio, the road yawns forth.

SOCKEYE A Bunch of Straightedge Fucks Tried to Ruin Our Fun – But Failed CS (Wheelchair Full of Old Men, 1989)

I got into a conversation last night where someone mentioned seeing Drunks with Guns multiple times in the past few years (and an ancillary comment about how Doskocil looks like the late Mitch Hedberg, an avenue that kind of makes sense yet will never see the light of day). What hit me was seeing that band more than once, how it would’ve been very difficult if not for our era of abundance. None will ever see Sockeye again (and most didn’t in the first place) but I am truly missing this Ph.D. level take on lowest-rung punk, crafted with abandon by true professors of agitation (plus one guy who couldn’t stay out of jail) in the same trough that DWG dug out for them. Aggravating every second-wave straightedge guy in earshot, the sanctimonious types who redoubled their efforts because that’s all they could do to stand out, this is a welcome and fulfilling document of the boys givin’ ‘er at a punk festival in an indoor skate park, where the venue and audience withstood a full 20 minutes of a “clean” set before the venue owner pulled the plug upon hearing “L.B.P.” What preceded is peak Sockeye, and I believe they would’ve played for 48 hours if permitted. Music hit its inflection point on this day. I think I heard some veiled threats by their main targets, a NE Ohio sXe band called Confront, somewhere else, but who do we remember after all of this? The winners. What an entry point into the deep chasm of Wheelchair Full of Old Men releases. Get it today.

rhyming “sewer” with “tour” — Doug M