Custody Battle

10” 2010

I think of Custody Battle as the refined version of Anomic Suicide. It contains Travis and Pickle from said band and adds Zombie Religion singer, Loren, on bass. The sound is similar to Anomic Suicide’s in that it sounds like all the good players from the early SST bands formed a band that somehow didn’t suck. The playing is tighter and the songwriting has gotten slimmer and more minimalist and more focused. This is also the best recording of any of Travis’ many bands that I’ve heard. Because I know these guys it’s hard to separate how mean this sounds from what nice mellow guys they are. The music makes them sound deranged and heat fried. Ain’t one trace of that hippie love folk shit that is popular in all the bars up in Flagstaff. This is the type of music you can only see in basements and house shows where underage kids are getting loaded and making out and rocking out. Easily one of the best bands in Az. right now.

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Run-On Sunshine

Memory Game cass. 2011

If you’ve been to a show in downtown Tucson in the last 10 years and there wasn’t a short skinny guy with a funny hair cut named Mullarkey dancing right in front of the band it’s because there was a better show going on that night and Mullarkey was at that show. For many years at shows he was mostly a spectator, but he has recently had an explosion of creativity that first manifested in his karaoke displays, then the band Monster Pussy, then Run-On Sunshine and now every time I run into him he tells me about some new really unconventional project he has in the works. Run-On Sunshine is extremely unconventional consisting mostly of Mullarkey singing. There is sparse instrumentation consisting solely of acoustic children’s instruments provided by Autumn Bree (Kamikaze Autopilot), a fine singer in her own right, who actually has a much larger range than Mullarkey’s mostly monotone approach, but she doesn’t sing here. This is pretty strange music that is not for the causal listener, but there are some catchy melodies and Mullarkey’s love of Calvin Johnson is evident. The lyrics are as intimate as the delivery and are mostly autobiographical and very heart-on-sleeve, with moments of brilliant insight, like when he is reminiscing about his recollection of the old days and thinks “…these memories could be altered to fool myself” which is a thought that has entered my head many times since I started this blog. 

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the Vinegar Sting

Coronado Historic District Sampler CD circa 2002

Dick told me that Lenguas Largas have been playing some pretty good shows in Phoenix recently. The only time I ever had a good string of shows there was with the Blacks around 2000 when we would play parties at a house in Tempe occupied by members of the Vinegar Sting and Jack Doyle from Underground Railroad to Candyland. We played with the Vinegar sting a lot. They reminded me of some of the earlier Phoenix bands because there’s an anything goes aesthetic and the Sun City Girls were an obvious influence. Sometimes they did sets of all Sun City Girls songs. They were also informed by the Minutemen and some of the more artsy emo stuff from the 90s, like Harriet the Spy or some of the noisy rhythmic San Diego bands or even the Make Up on a song like “ACU.” It sounds dark but they are fun people. It sounds like they take drugs and that’s because they do. They’ve had to go on hiatus because their love of drugs has landed some members in trouble with the law, but they’ve been playing as recently as last year with new material. Years ago at a show at Cannery Row their drummer Andy did a crazy drummer freak out thing and his snare drum fell off the stage, which was on the second floor, directly onto the head of a girl, who was on the first floor and who was trying her best to ignore the band. Huge gash, blood everywhere and I doubt it’s related but the bar didn’t stay open much longer after that.

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