Music: Leather Nightmare 12” EP

I think this is the Leather Nightmare we were supposed to be hearing all along, and really the distinguishing features are mostly in the (impeccable) visual design, (matte black generic sleeve with printed stickers, black inner sleeve,) but judging also by frothy jokiness and real-life applicability, than this is the one you want too man.

I still like to assume LN are a cruel joke, the laughing, gaping asshole of Nashville's Genre-Rock scene du jour, delivered with a stoney-faced irony so impenetrable it might be real, maybe, the cutting and sardonic other genre... Better Bauhaus than Black Flag, tbh. Better Swans than sycophantic JTB-sympatico swill.

The riffs--and this is riff rock at its purest--are usually pretty good, memorable even. The lyrics are "relatable" too: “I gotta fuckin' cum,” like, I can relate to that, ya know. Elsewhere lead singer, Reid Barger sings about trying to get high w/o any weed, like when you scrape out all the resin from your bowl. These are real issues one wishes more artists would tackle.

Yeah man, Leather Nightmare were good. Supposedly they hit a self-imposed high water mark and called it quits before they could ever produce a real, all the way there LP. Maybe it's for the best. Maybe not? Still, I wouldn't want to get caught in The Rapture w/o owning this here 12” EP.

Black Jacket, Black Sleeve, Def. Recommended!

Music: Ttotals "Silver on Black" 10" EP

Ttotals' guitarist, vocalist, and de facto leader, Brian Miles, takes a heavy Jim Morrison tip on the first side ("Special A") of this 45 RPM 10" record. It's the first time I've noticed the similarity between BM's and the Lizard Queen's voices, but it makes a lot of sense.

Both Ttotals and The Doors deal/dealt in pop songs, abstracted beyond their logical purposefulness, to the point that they become almost-ambient, mind-wrapping art pieces, in which the listener's subconscious becomes a character in an exploratory world of reverb-drenched, stoner-rock dream-environs.

I mean, it's seriously easy to imagine Martin Sheen's head slowly rising from the steaming Cambodian river to these tunes.

Ttotals, at their best, get at the Punk-dream. They are, after all, two dudes with a guitar and a few drums, (OK, and a lot of FX pedals.) The raw primacy of punk is imbedded in their being. They're all id, man.

Side 2 gets into mushroom-punk territory with "Flowers Follow", and "Over the Years". It's still the classic Ttotals tones. They're secure and it's damn alright with me.

Really nice packaging: sparkly silver silk screen on semi-recycled black sleeve, (Art by Tim Norton, ex-of Holy Spirit Suckers.) Self-released by the band. Jam it.

Music: Lady Cop EP

Forgotten turn-of-the-mellenium Nashville hardcore. Total bash shit; these guys make the other local punk band with "Cop" in their name sound like Jimmy Buffett. Or, I mean made...

10 songs spread over two sides of the 33 RPM 7" means hit it and quit it, but every song develops and changes, living up to the old Gregg Ginn adage about punk music being "just as long any other songs", just played much faster.

Side 1 rips in with "Declaration of Offense", immediately setting the tone of blitzkrieg speed and in-the-red sonics and OK, these songs aren't too different from most quality hardcore, but lead vocalist, Lukin Nunn's piercing tenor really delivers. You can practically hear blood in his throat as he tears through the flesh of every track with just a hint of Jello Biafra vibrato.

Side 2 opener "Narcotic Painkiller" is hands-down the best song, featuring a descending bass lead and frequent stops like your banging head smashing into the sweaty-backed-dude in front of you. The cheesy light-strummed intro to "Punks in Love" provides a brief respite from the torrent of speed-rock, but the pummeling "Uh Huh Baby No" closes the EP with an abortion tale (I think? It's really hard to discern any of the lyrics...) that's true to form for any real "punks in love".

Nashville's own Twitch Records (home to Asschapel... OK where do I find an Asschapel record?)

Music: Leather Nightmare EP

Ugly sentiments, but this thing starts off kind of up-beat, actually! "Dead Little Whore" is four-chord chant-punk and pretty raging in that numb, face-down kind of way, droney diminished chords and shit.

"Drink at the Water" is a little rustier but holds up the rest of side 1 fairly well, following a similar formula of deadpan vocal delivery and scorched-buzz instrumentation.

The recording is pretty crude, necessarily, and continues in Hag Bloom Tapes' (boutique/vanity label run by LN bassist, Nathan Vasquez,) tradition of cassette-recorded purity/mess.

Side 2 starts with a screech of feedback before chugging into an amorphous gallop with the beat and hihat-off-beats alternatingly emphasized. It all settles in during the first verse as vocalist, Reid Barber reiterates his fascination with perversity: "Leather Daddy's Cock".

B/W photocopied sleeve, a hooded Gimp says, "Come at me, bro." Right on.

Music: Hands Off Cuba "Volumes of Sobering Liquid" EP

The title is right. Four cuts of sober Kraut-fusion-lite.

The signifiers are all motorik and psych but stripped of the weirdness and edge usually associated with those terms. HOC give sort of a "Dad Rock" take on their influences.

That's not to say it's not pretty good. The level of musicianship here is high: most of HOC are session players, or play in other bands that value technical proficiency. Scott Martin's drumming is of particular note for its precision, but the playing here is over-controlled and reigned in: tasteful to a fault. Live, Martin unhinges a bit, making exciting transitions between his rapid stop-gap fills and hypnotic, contrapuntal beats.

Too-tasteful is a complaint I have with the other instrumentaion as well. Ben Marcantel's synth (Moog Opus 3) gets a prominent name check on the cover, but is really only audible/interesting on track 2, "Plastic Handle". At other times is could just as well be one of the soft organ sounds favored by the band.

"Ramrod", which begins side 2 chugs into a bright, pulsing motorik but too quickly gets comfortable in its Neu-groove, then drops it for some ambientish delay-guitar.

"Sabretooths" kind of rocks though, opening with a stuttering drum beat, doubled by filtered samples and Adam Bednarik's bass line spanning like an octave and a half. Cool Morricone guitar chords, some fills, and then the record is over.

Pen and ink artwork by Martin on 85% recycled sleeve. Sebastian Speaks.

Music: Ttotals EP

Everything through some kind of gated compressor gives this thing a pretty unique, if perhaps of-its-time, sound. I think it's a sort of Signature Sound for producer, Jeremy Ferguson, who's done similar work for Turbo Fruits and I guess a lot of other bands.

Super-star producer aside, Ttotals are some pretty o.g.'s who've seen enough to just play what they dig and dig it themselves.

And what they dig is both In and a little Out-There. Trippy, 1990s mushroom-gazing-at-the-sky music, with real "haze=clarity" vibes. Simple but pure. And Brian Miles strangles some pretty hallucinatory tones from his guitar/amp. Whammy bar feedback drones and the like. Simplicity. It's free-ing because nothing gets in the way...

Until the end: "Take Care of Me" is the last track and the biggest departure from the duo's ussual Motorik+Pop-Drone. Huge monolithic drums sound like they're crashing out of the sky. The guitar chugs and chokes like Nature taking its course: Killing off the weak.

Yellow vinyl, cool art screenprinted on some gnarly silver paper. Recomended!

Music: Trophy Wife EP

Not to mention there isn't a single damn word printed on this thing other than the band's name. I know some of these got inserts, but not mine, I've no clue what those inserts said.

Roughly four songs of strangled-sounding instruments and floating-sort-of-ghostly Pretty vocals. It's extremely affecting. I like it a lot.

I know there is a song about ambiguous rape. One of them has "Somebody jizzed in the/ light socket" repeated quite a bit. But the crass lyrics are masked by Sarah Cozort's dark yet effervescent voice. It creeps into your headspace; it's at once arousing and ominous and surrounded by the buzzing no-wavey din the other girls create. Really Gothic-ass stuff.

Newer material by the band is predicted to be more New Wave-y, but this EP transcends immediate genres, and really doesn't sound that much like Sonic Youth, a major influence.

Pick it up from Private Leisure.
Trophy Wife have broken up, but we'll be sure to review their forthcoming EP which you should also pick up from Private Leisure, a pretty good label.  Highly Recomended!