John Polle

4 songs solo live at the Red Room 2011

The work of Idaho to Tucson transplant John Polle, reminds me of his fellow Idahoan, Doug Martsch. He’s the guy that actually replaced Martsch when he left the Treepeople before their last and worst, but not as bad as some people make it out to be album, Actual Reenactment. Since then, like Martsch with Built to Spill and Halo Benders, Polle has been refining his own unique brand of American indie-pop/rock with his bands the Solace Bros., Lenguas Largas and Discos. I think he might have played in the post-Treepeople band Stuntman too. Also like Martsch he does the occasional acoustic solo set. His guitar picking skills are really evident here and the songwriting is great. On these songs he sounds less like Martsch and more like The Tallest Man On Earth playing stoned. These four songs are taken from the “Live at the Red Room” CD series vol.2 (available at the bar). I think he has a two song 7” of him playing solo like this too. New records by Lenguas Largas and Discos have also just come out. John’s a busy man. Sorry no song titles, but the first song is a version of Discos’ “Up in the Air.”

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the Resonars

Lunar Kit LP 2002

On Matt Rendon’s releases as The Resonars he goes to the trouble to present the Resonars as a band with four real members who share the instrumentation and four part vocal harmonies, but everything is performed by Matt. It wasn’t always that way. They functioned as a real band that played live shows in the early years, but Matt, like all great musicians, probably came to the conclusion that he could get more done quicker by doing it himself. Plus it’s probably impossible to find good players that have as deep an understanding and love of 60s psych rock and pop music as he does. Sure you can find guys that wanna cover Hendrix and the Beatles at any shitty bar in any town, but Matt’s dipping into a much deeper well of 60s rock for inspiration. He can reproduce it so original and authentic sounding that when Dirty Steve, who also has a great knowledge of 60s music, first heard this album he thought it was some obscure gem from the 60s that flew under his radar. He has recorded a lot of my bands and the man can work studio magic with 60s technology. Title track refers to Keith Moon’s drum kit, the same model and set up that was used to record this record. He’s recorded at least two other full lengths since this record, all worth hunting down.

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My Feral Kin

The Blackened Flat Tax Cd 2008

This band played at my house when I lived in Flagstaff, but I missed the show because I had to work. My roommate, Dirty Steve, who is always looking out for my record collection, picked me up a copy of their CD. When I got home that night the house was trashed, our wood burning stove was demolished, the walls were covered in beer, beer cans everywhere, a few stragglers were passed out or still partying and hard drugs were consumed. After hearing this CD I thought that surly all this chaos couldn’t have been caused by this band, and it wasn’t. Those honors go to Sante Fe’s High Octane Hell Ride, who know how to party. I’m sure seeing the quirky indie-pop of My Feral Kin was a bizarre contrast to High Octane’s hardcore-thrash, but those are often the most fun shows. I’ve listened to this at least once a month since I got it. I lost the actual CD along the way and the above art work (which I found online) is not the same as I remember. Anyway I don’t know anything about these guys, but the music here is great. Wandering, dueling guitars make up most of the foundation while catchy high pitched vocals cover a huge array of instruments with catchy nursery rhyme patterns, except with words that are not nursery rhyme material. The structure is sometimes short and poppy, but some of the songs drift into extensive jams without beating the wandering to death. I can’t believe this band isn’t huge with the people that read Pitchfork and buy current Sub Pop releases. My half-assed internet search makes it seem like they’re not active, which is a shame because I would have loved to see how they’d followed this up.

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I Hate You When You're Pregnant

greatest hits from demos 1-6, 2003(?)-2009

When I was living in Flagstaff I had the opportunity to work, study history and party with Phil Buckman. He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met and he’s so nice that other people that had recently met him would ask me “is this guy for real!?” He was sooo nice that he came off as condescending to anybody with a decent amount of skepticism. Phil is genuine, which makes his one-man-band project, I Hate You When You’re Pregnant, even more confusing. I had seen all 6ft 5in of him perform in nothing but a pair of panties before actually meeting him, so it didn’t seem so strange to me, but a lot of the squares we worked with couldn’t fathom how this nice, mellow guy could have created such visual and sonic mayhem. For a guy who was a wee lad in the 80s he has a deep understanding of 80s pop music, which I find disturbing. He could have produced any of the early MTV hits, but IHYWYP is injected with a weird surrealism that makes the whole thing creepy. And he sings like he’s fronting an 80s hardcore band. Still, it’s catchy as hell. I would probably consider the lyrics to be genius if they made any sense, but the imagery each line invokes is enough to make you think “What The Fuck!?” These songs are my personal favorites that I culled from his CD demos 1-6 that he gave away at live shows and can be downloaded in their entirety (minus demo 6) here. “They’ve Got My Picture in an Issue of Thrasher” is my personal favorite because they once had my picture in an issue of Thrasher too. Phil was supposed to join my band, Taser Breath, to sing on a cover of Burt Bacharach’s “My Little Red Book” (done Love-style, of course) but it never panned out. If you heard either of those bands you realize how weird that sounds. Last time I saw him he was doing research for a book on the history of ranch dressing. I’m not even shitting you.

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P.S. One of the funniest things I ever saw was Phil performing at Centro Digna. In the middle of his set he did that rock-star thing where the lead singer does the run-jump-slide-on the-knees that you’d expect to see at an AC/DC concert. Only problem was that Centro Digna had tile floors and Phil had no pants on, so as he slid  the sound of the tiles peeling the skin off his knees created a high pitched screech that was so loud it cut through the music. EVERYBODY in the place doubled over in that surrogate pain reaction that guys do when they see another guy get kicked in the balls, but Phil got up and kept performing like nothing happened, bleeding knees and all.