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Russian Tsarlag, “Gagged in Boonesville” (Not Not Fun, 2013)

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I suspect Not Not Fun deliberately release one album every year that I would absolutely love, hoping that I will miss it in order to punish me for not paying more attention to them. I have no idea what 2012’s masterpiece was (there almost definitely was one), but Gagged in Boonesville has now joined Peaking Lights’ 936 (2011) in instantly flooring me upon first listen. Stylistically, it most closely resembles what I would expect if Jandek and Dirty Beaches teamed up to make an indie pop album, yet it is somehow far weirder and more disturbed than even that highly improbably event could be.

Providence, RI’s Carlos Gonzalez has been recording as Russian Tsarlag since 2007, but his output has been entirely restricted to a slew of limited cassette-only releases until fairly recently. Despite that, he has still amassed quite a devoted following due to the fact that there is literally no one else on earth making music like this: nearly every description that I have seen includes some type of newly coined hyphenated genre involving the words “sewage,” “slime,” or “mold-covered.”

The reason for that is quite simple, as literally everything about Boonesville sounds broken, murky, haunted, and out-of-tune. Yet despite all that, Carlos genuinely seems to trying to make melodic, hook-filled, and emotionally resonant music. That fundamental perversity is what makes Carlos’ work so wonderful: it is like someone in the most nightmarish, rat-infested dystopia imaginable set out to write a smash pop album using a broken guitar and a water-damaged tape machine before they succumbed to leprosy (or their roof collapsed…or both happened simultaneously).

Appropriately, there is some kind of over-arching theme to the album that involves a tenement building being “mentally poisoned by an ancient poster of Medusa haunting the basement,” but that would not have been at all apparent to me if I had not read it (though it does partially explain the terrible, terrible cover art). As gloomy as that sounds, only “Island of Lost Souls” truly feels like a dirge, as it consists mostly of a simple, minor key piano melody and mumbled, downcast vocals. While it is definitely the album’s weakest piece, it avoids “mere filler” status by opening with a dreamlike loop of Johnny Cash singing the line “I’ll see you in my dreams,” which illustrates another great thing about Gagged In Boonesville: there are a number of moments of genuine warmth and Romanticism lurking amidst all of the shadows, rot, and uneasiness.

The instrumental “Become Solid,” for example, is genuinely beautiful and weirdly hopeful (despite its mutilated-answering-machine-message accompaniment), while the twangy and wistful “One Way Out” sounds like a classic Roy Orbison love song distantly emanating from a heating vent. Such touches make it seem like album’s characters are totally unaware that they are essentially living in a horror film, tenderly (naively?) clinging to their hopes and dreams despite their fundamentally doomed situation, which is kind of beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.

Boonesville’s stand-out songs are a bit more rocking though. My favorite of the batch is easily the perverse would-be anthem “Feels So Good,” which could not possibly sound more blown-out and somnambulant. On most other albums, its tempo would be rightly described as “plodding,” but in this context, its leaden pace is a pulse-quickening sign that something is actually alive amidst the ruins and is possibly having a very depressing party. Both the title piece and “Green Woman” are great as well, approximating a hallucinatory, slowed-down, and pitch-shifted New Order. Most of the remaining songs stick to that territory too, filtering wobbly synths, a steady drum machine beat, clean guitars, echo-y vocals, and catchy hooks through a distinctly “cough medicine overdose” aesthetic that works remarkably well.

That said, the most stunning aspect of Gagged In Boonesville (for me, anyway) is how natural it all sounds. Aside from perhaps the stuttering, backwards weirdness that opens the closing “Plastic Door,” I never get the impression that Carlos is willfully trying to make his music seem otherworldly and warped through some kind of artifice or theater: this is probably just what comes out when he attempts to write a song. It almost feels like the work of somehow who has spent their entire life at the bottom of a well and has only encountered other humans through faintly overheard snatches of the radio, except there is somehow an infectious sense of macabre fun amidst all the filth and longing. 

Obviously, something so ruined, forlorn, and grimy is unlikely to attract much attention outside of serious subterranean music obsessives, but Gonzalez is an absolute genius at whatever the hell it is that he is doing. It is truly rare to find an artist as creepily, hermetically distinctive as he is and practically unheard of for something so ugly and so wrong to be so subversively entertaining and infectious at the same time.

Listen here.

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Peaking Lights, “936” (Not Not Fun, 2011)

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This husband-and-wife duo has been lurking around the cassette underground and amassing an enthusiastic following for several years, but their work has always been a bit too abstract and lo-fi to make a big impression on me. That has now changed, as 936 is a massive leap forward, artfully shaping the band’s noisy, experimental impulses and long-standing love of dub into a batch of killer, bass-heavy, hook-filled songs. I am absolutely obsessed with this album.

Interestingly, Peaking Lights’ first full album (2009’s Imaginary Falcons) already had basically all of the elements in place that make 936 so great: Indra Dunis’ deadpan melodic vocals, structured songs, strong bass lines, cool instrumental hooks, fluttering electronic weirdness, etc. The only catch was that they were seldom all in place at the same time (and that the album sounded like it was recorded at the bottom of a damn well). Essentially, the only thing that has changed is that Dunis and Aaron Coyes have merely found a more optimal way to present their great ideas.

One of the great truths in music is that experimentalism is much more palatable when a song has a good beat, a revelation that Dunis and Coyes seem to have taken to heart. Aside from the ambient-dragged-through-the-mud instrumental “Synthy” and the wistfully swaying “Key Sparrow,” every single song boasts a fat, propulsive bass line and a charmingly ramshackle drum machine beat (or an utterly ravaged live drumbeat). Both tend to be very simple, but very insistent and effective. One song (“All the Sun That Shines”) betrays an obvious reggae influence, but the duo otherwise do a pretty remarkable job in distilling the best elements of Jamaican music into their own unique aesthetic. At the very least, the music tends to be punky and under-produced in a way that no reggae albums ever are.

Also important is the fact that Aaron and Indra have grown quite a bit as songwriters. 936 is absolutely packed full of great, understated hooks and strong, sultry vocals. Indra has some serious presence. Coyes, for his part, displays an impressive intuitive understanding of how to balance rough, damaged, and low-budget sounds with surprisingly deft delay-heavy guitar hooks and muscular bass playing. Songs this catchy and soulful do not generally come out of the underground—this album sounds like a great lost new wave record slathered in grime and subtly hallucinatory weirdness. Everything flows nicely without sacrificing any bite or grittiness. This isn’t a clever pastiche or retro-nod, but an inspired and brilliantly executed synthesis: these are sounds that were meant to be together.

Aside from “Marshmallow Yellow,” which seems a bit listless to me, I am completely in love with every song on this album. I probably seem a bit evangelical or over-effusive, but everyone that I have talked to about this album has had a very similar take: 936 is something quite singular and likely to be one the best albums of the year. My only grievance is that the vinyl version omits two pieces, one of which is the final song, “Summertime.” For the record, “Summertime” is probably the absolute best song on the album. That leaves me utterly baffled, as I can’t imagine 936 ending any other way. That caveat aside, this is absolutely essential listening.

Listen here.

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LA Vampires, “So Unreal” (Not Not Fun, 2011)

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I never quite understood the popularity of Pocahaunted and I was pretty underwhelmed by the LA Vampires/Zola Jesus collaboration last year, so I figured it was pretty safe to conclude that Amanda Brown’s artistry just wasn’t for me. However, a helpful acquaintance recently sent me a link to a very amusing and heavily stylized video from this project and I now realize that I was far too premature in my dismissal. So Unreal twists pop music into something truly weird, wonderful, and unique during its strongest moments despite being somewhat inconsistent and a bit narrow.

Brown and her ingenious co-conspirator Sam Meringue (Matrix Metals) seem to have an intuitive understanding of some very important truths that many underground/experimental musicians tend to overlook. For example, bleeps, bloops, burbles, squiggles, tape manipulations, and general mindfuckery are a hell of a lot more appealing when they are couched within a song that also offers a strong hook or a cool groove. Also, innovative music can still be kitschy, fun, and sexy. 

So Unreal offers all of those things, which makes it (mostly) an instantly gratifying and memorable effort despite the fact that much of it sounds so aggressively wrong. Everything sounds warped, submerged, slowed down, deliberately plodding, too muddy, or too trebly: the overall aesthetic seems to be “sun-warped ’80s pop record (probably the 12″ remix version) misremembered through a fog of barbiturates.” Dub is also a strong reference point though, particularly in the bass lines, faux-horns, and the duo’s fondness for panning and other studio enhancements.

However, the alchemy involved in making something likable out of a stew of deliberately warped sounds, lumbering/dated drum machine beats, and cheesy factory synthesizers is quite complicated and puts a lot of pressure on Brown’s languid, heavily reverbed vocals to carry the songs. They’re not always up to the task (the opener “Make Me Over” falls pretty flat, for example), but her hit-to-miss ratio is fairly high for someone who probably never expected to be pretending that she is a sultry pop diva. I was also very impressed at how well her lyrics fit the music, as the repeated “is it the champagne talking?” in “Berlin Baby” perfectly captures the “jaded and dissolute in an imagined ’80s LA” feel of the music. “Freak me and I’ll freak you back” is another particularly endearing couplet. I’m sure there are more that I have not discovered yet.

The entire album is a bit much to take in one dose, given the limited palette, murky sound quality, and emphasis of style over substance, yet there are some extremely cool individual songs. I was most fond of the lazily sinuous groove of the title piece, but “How Would U Know?” is also pretty spectacular—the underlying music kind of sounds like Wham’s “Everything She Wants” being played at the wrong speed (which is a compliment, of course). This is definitely a creative breakthrough for Brown—it is a welcome surprise to hear an aesthetic perfectly captured that I hadn’t even imagined existing yet (early Bret Easton Ellis meets hypnagogic pop?). I am converted.

Listen here.