[thechat] Everett True!

[Erika]

kissed & slagged us in our first review ever, hell yeah!

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2008/06/hugs_and_kisses_39.php

hurray!

Erika

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Hugs and Kisses?
The Relocated Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Portland, Oregon shenanigans

Wait a minute.

I want to write this week’s column about SERPENTONE. The cover to this 
Portland trio’s album Spiraling (why don’t Americans learn to spell 
properly?) features a woman playing guitar, hair flailing, head covered. 
I was intrigued when it showed up yesterday, mainly cos it’s now the 
only CD in my house and partly because it was sent by a lady who still 
bothers with handwritten letters. The music is an engaging, slightly 
naïve, take on the raw anger of Poison Girls, Babes In Toyland and yr 
nightmare Sixth Form anti-frat band: all vaguely obvious lyrics about 
vampire-ish, leeching boyfriends, Minivan Moms and S&M relationships, 
yellow belt level. I say it feels oddly naïve, especially as it looks to 
be dealing with the darker side of human relationships—but maybe that’s 
cos you can understand the words. (Hey, tip for all those looking to 
draw from Kat Bjelland’s still rigorously compelling exorcism: you can’t 
fucking understand the words. That’s the whole point.) That’s all to the 
good, though. The music is dirty, old school grunge, bluesy. Their 
MySpace page claims the band has been described as “Willie Nelson meets 
Nirvana” and “Neil Young meets the Dead Boys,” but frankly whomever 
described it as such is most-ways deaf. It is nothing of the sort. It is 
Portland OR rock music circa 1991, make no mistake. And yet Erika 
Meyer’s voice is quite something else: she often reminds me of the 
raw-throated polemic of Vi Subversa—especially in the lyrical 
structure—and sometimes, when she really reaches into herself, as on the 
blistering “Folding,” the unmatchable Thalia Zedek.

And then I noticed that all their photos had been taken by Rozz Rezabek, 
and I’m like, “Whoa dude, serendipity” or something, cos Rozz and I 
share quite a big something in our past, despite having never met (and 
never being likely to), and it seems that our musical preferences still 
collide a little in the present day
cos I’m really growing quite fond of 
this CD, even if it does sometimes come across as a little too obvious 
and a little too ‘amateur’ (whatever the hell that word means, and it 
sure don’t mean to me what it means to you) because that was always part 
of the appeal of The Poison Girls and, um, that former captivating rock 
band front-person turned infamous widow turned Z-list film star whose 
name escapes me right now, even if it does touch on the same damn chords 
being used in the dives and bars of NYC in 1975, and
hell, I don’t know 
what I’m trying to say, except


Have you any idea how unusual it is for me to enjoy an unsolicited CD 
these days? And to want to hear it again? And then, as I type these 
words, another one appears—the Zappa/Beefheart theatrics of the 
free-moving RUDE MECHANICALS’ album Glass Eye (loads of drums played 
like percussionist is doing the washing up, and off-mic oboe, and the 
feeling that these folk surely have to be the same age as me because 
they love Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Here And Now, Lindsay Cooper, Make Up 
and Skill 7 Stamina 12 just like me, surely?)
and you know how unusual 
THAT IS???

Very.