A Year of Music

Stuck in head this morning: Torche’s “Fire”, a two and a half minute buzzbomb of droning catchy pop melodies running on consonant bass-heavy stoner metal rails. The fact that the lyrics are apparently sung in some otherworldly foreign key (which they keep in harmony, despite being at least half a semitone sharp throughout the song) only adds to its wayward charm, although it makes it somewhat awkward to have stuck in your head. I keep trying to force the singing into tune, but my brain won’t let me.

This song, more than any other in Torche’s catalog, lays bare their debt to Jane’s Addiction, who I would describe as “long gone and lamented” if they – especially Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro – had not so badly overstayed their welcome. As it is, their inescapable sensi frat-boy hijinx keep me from forgetting how the jocks in the dorms used to play Ritual de lo Habitual every day, sure as morning wood.

Stuck in my head this morning: an indistinct admixture of Thom Yorke’s “Skip Divided” (both the original version from The Eraser and the (superior, bass-heavy) Modeselektor remix) and Torche’s “Fire”. I find myself without a whole lot to say about The Eraser; it’s a solid collection of gloomy post-rock that sounds nice but doesn’t really contribute anything new. It’s the rare album that’s surpassed by its remixes. And Torche make an appearance in my post-sleep haze mostly because I was writing about them right before I went to sleep last night.

I should be in bed for real, but after my last posting about Torche, I can’t let go of something that’s been nagging at me for a couple months now: wot up with re-recording your first album, dudes?

The original version of Torche’s self-titled first album was released by Robotic Empire back in 2004, and it’s a monster of heavy music carved into catchy bite-sized pop song chunks. I have already attested elsewhere to its greatness.

The band are perfectionists (something that comes through effortlessly in their immaculate craftsmanship, barring their sometimes off-tune singing), and for reasons I don’t completely understand, they decided to partially re-record and completely remix the album and rerelease it in 2007. The only immediately obvious changes are that “Sex Addict” has become an instrumental (losing its charmingly direct chorus of “AND I’D LIKE TO TURN YOU ON” in the process) and a bonus track’s been tacked onto the end.

I think re-recording it was a mistake. It bespeaks a lack of confidence in the material that’s unfounded. The new version has heavier low end and sounds more like a conventional metal album, circa 2007. But I think I get what whomever engineered the original was trying to do: there’s a buzzy lightness to the original mix that reminds me of the hard rock I heard on the radio when I was a kid. Stuff like Boston or Aldo Nova (or The Cars!), where the compressed, midrange-heavy mix would sound good on cheap car stereos, and the absence of bass gave an airy feeling that really accentuated the pop hooks that give Torche’s music so much of its appeal. There are a million heavy bands out there cranking out tectonically heavy sludge, but very few of them have the skill to put together a set of songs like Torche. The band should have stood by their original work, because it was worth standing by.

Nobody told Torche that stoner metal’s never going to make the top 40, no matter how huge the sound, or impassioned the vocals, or tightly-wound the songwriting. This is metal geared for AM radios and huge arena crowds, and I can only hope they pull it off, although I already know in my heart they won’t. They’re neither troubled nor insincere enough to go huge with today’s audiences.

There is absolutely no flab to any of In Return’s 7 short songs, and while there’s nothing as instantaneously perfect as “Erase” from their debut album, with its amazing and perfectly placed string-bombs (I swear, that song makes me feel like a kid again), Torche finally appear to have gotten a grasp on their sound, and this is as pure and clean a pop-metal EP as I’ve ever heard. The music is as immaculate and gorgeous as the packaging.

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I had to investigate one of Andee’s claims, and after a quick experiment I can confirm that playing the vinyl for In Return at 45 does bring into existence something that sounds remarkably like a mutant, grind-punk version of Queen. The solos, in particular, become totally face-melting, but somehow the doomier parts still sound pretty heavy. Curious.

After reading this inspirational article, I decided to do my part for the music industry and pay a visit to my friends at Aquarius. Some of this stuff had been on hold for me for months now, so it was past time.

I spent a while distracting Andee and Allan while they feverishly tried to finish the newest edition of the infamous and sprawling Aquarius New Releases list. And “feverish” is right – there’s a certain amount of urgency to the proceedings, but they’re also not too tough to distract, the sustained effort of putting together the behemoth list having broken them down until they have the attention span of disease-enfeebled gerbils.

Here’s what I got:

• A Sunny Day In Glasgow: Scribble Mural Comic Journal (notenuf)
• August Born: August Born (Drag City)
• Buried At Sea: Ghost (Neurot)
• Dead Meadow: Howls from the Hills (Xemu)
• Malicious Secrets / Antaeus / Mutilation / Deathspell Omega: From the Entrails to the Dirt (End All Life)
• The Necks: Townsville (ReR)
• Paolo Parisi / John Duncan: Conservatory (San Sebastiano) CD + book (Mascietto Editore)
• Jack Rose: Raag Manifestos (vhf)
• Torche: In Return CD + 10” (Robotic Empire)
• Wolves in the Throne Room: Two Hunters (Southern Lord)
• Xasthur: Defective Epitaph [2CD Daymare edition] (Hydra Head / Daymare)

The Torche is packaged in a seriously beautiful gatefold sleeve with the vinyl in one sleeve and the CD fixed inside the gatefold, with art by John Dyer Baizley (by way of Pushead and Alphonse Mucha):

(Many thanks to Cosmo Lee for his excellent article on John Dyer Baizley’s illustration, which alerted me to the existence of this record. I shamelessly stole his high-quality scans, which are of course © John Dyer Baizley, used only for purposes of promotion and review.)

My record is marbled pale green vinyl; if anybody else with this stops by, let me know what color yours is.