Low, “I Could Live In Hope” (Vernon Yard, 1994)One of the most beautifully bleak (and influential) records of its era, Low’s debut is slow, stark, steady, single guitar lines and quiet voices against a subtle, deliberate rhythm section. The best moments hit like sunlight on a desolate, snowbound landscape.Try 1, 97/29/13
Low, “I Could Live In Hope” (Vernon Yard, 1994)Pioneering “slow-core” band, playing big, resonant post-punk-inflected rock with lots of wide-open spaces, brilliantly shuddering drone-chasms, explosive dynamic shifts, blizzards of guitar-shards. Good music for long winters.Try 1, 710/13/11
Carrie Lucas, “Portrait of Carrie” (Solar, 1980).On Shalamaar’s label, this sparkling, kinetic record showcases Lucas’s fine vocals on music that owes equal amounts to disco and Funk.Try 1/3, 2/3.11/12/12.
Luna, “Penthouse” (Elektra, 1995)Second album from Dean Wareham’s post-Galaxie 500 outfit, and it’s a fine effort. Television/Velvets-style strum-drone pop (Tom Verlaine guests here) refined into a stylish-yet-gripping groove of life in end-of-the-century NYC.Try 1, 51/23/14
Lunachicks, “Babysitters On Acid” (Blast First, 1990)From one of the most austerely arty labels of its time, pure drooling rock-and-roll fun. The Lunachicks came from Queens, and there’s a bit of the same outer-borough trash-culture primitivism here that was all over the first Dictators LP, and the same cherry-bomb-in-the-mailbox sense of mischief. But where the […]
Human Switchboard, “Who’s Landing In My Hangar?” (Fat Possum, 2019; original release 1982)This criminally neglected Midwest postpunk/proto-Indie masterpiece is finally back in the public spotlight, and it’s about time. From Kent, Ohio, they melded neurotic Velvets-derived strum-pulse with organ-driven garage-punk simplicity and punch (à la? and the Mysterians, from nearby Flint, Mich., a decade earlier). […]
The Hundred in the Hands, “Red Night” (Warp, 2012)Dark electronica infused with hard-edged guitar and pop hooks. Has a compellingly obsessive, insomniac sensibility, evoking subway tunnels and penthouse terraces alike, with sleek elegance and nightmare clatter.Try 1, 5, 7, 87/12/12
Hunx, “Hairdresser Blues” (Hardly Art, 2012)Now bereft of his Punx, Hunx returns with a solo effort even better than its fine predecessor. This is fuzzy garage-guitar-pop, but instead of blurring the girl-groupisms into a stylized wall Hunx camps them the fuck up into larger-than-life drama, giving this the real feel of its Spector-era models, as […]
K-Holes, “Dismania” (Hardly Art, 2012)Garage-punk with a sewage-thick guitar attack, pummeling rhythms, and no-wavey sax blasts. This one really stands in conjuring up the sense of gutter-level nastiness and desperation of its ‘70s sources.Try 2, 5, 77/12/12
K.U.K.L., “Holidays In Europe” (One Little Indian, 1986)Second album by Björk’s early band, their last before they mutated into the Sugar-cubes. The best tracks here flicker with tantalizing hints of that band’s mutant pop sense, interwoven with K.U.K.L.’s distinctive Icelandic take on postpunk/Goth grooves, stark, elliptical, gnarled, chaotic and enchantingly estranged.Try 1, 25/5/12