Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos - River Falling Love (1987)

It's all very young and hopeful- Morley'd go on to destroy rock with The Dead C and examine the leftovers with Gate- but man is it ever depressing 'cause the thing just sounds like a damn haunting. He's singing to nobody at all and the 'experimental' elements just tease and distract, all broken and falling apart.

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Gate - The Dew Line (1993)

Harsh 70s Reality was punk rock in the wake of rock's destruction (no idea who managed to destroy it but they seem to believe it happened!), Gate's The Dew Line is folk in the same spirit. Either detached or more introspective than we're used to, I choose the second 'cause it sounds like he's trying to tell us something however impenetrable his songs may be. Lo-fi end of the world/hermit vibes bum me out like not many other albums/artists, I count The Dew Line as almost a companion piece to On the Beach with shared aimless alienation/desolation/staring-at-the-sea-when-the-world's-dead-concepts, just a warning though: Morley's rendition is almost entirely abstract

B+

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The Dead C - Harsh 70s Reality (1992)

1. Driver U.F.O. 22:23

2. Sky 3:38

3. Love 11:51

4. Suffer Bomb Damage 3:40

5. Sea Is Violet 7:57

6. Constellation 6:43

7. Baseheart 6:53

8. Hope 9:23

The Dead C are a noise rock band from New Zealand who have been releasing albums since 1987. They tend to be very well regarded by critics and musicians alike for their focus on improvisation and their lo-fi sensibilities which leads some to call them free rock instead of just noise rock. Harsh 70s Reality is often considered their best album.

Love embodies the album's spirit of ambivalence- hazy indifference and latent violence. Hope is suitably the darkest track and the best way to finish the album- strummed detuned guitars and murmured vocals set the scene before frustration and violence emerge only to be drowned out by the sound of people talking. Even the 22 minute Driver UFO has its place- initially seeming like a way to weed out casual listeners, it becomes clear after a few listens that the band are masters at free-form noise jams.

There's a consistent atmosphere over the duration of the album leading some to declare it A rock opera for a post-nuclear war society which seems insincere or hyperbolic but it was only when I took the album as a whole and recongised its frustration, violence and apathy that it became a coherent story, which, yeah, is desolate and sometimes incredibly sad.

Harsh 70s Reality took something like three years to fully grow on me and I recommend those who don't completely love it persevere until it clicks.

A+

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