From the Vaults: RE-EVALUATING THE PAST (August 10, 2006)
You know, I think I have really great musical taste. But it hasn’t always been so great. I used to swear allegiance to a lot of embarrassing things. Or were they embarrassing? Everyone dreads parts of their past, but is it all bad? Here is where I find out…
This week: Tooth & Nail Records
I used to be a huge Tooth & Nail loyalist. Nowadays I tend to avoid it like an elevator full of fat guys. So was I on to anything with that label or was I fooling myself? What holds up? What is humiliating? Here is a look at some of my old Tooth & Nail Albums. Help me to figure out which ones are class, which ones get a pass and which ones are ass.
CLASS
Joe Christmas North to the Future
Tooth & Nail’s very own Pavement - a jammy, breezy, aloof band for the slacker generation. And just like Pavement they were really, really good. But unlike Pavement, Joe Christmas was really, really underrated. I never really understood why these guys were on Tooth & Nail in the first place, they never fit the aesthetic and they weren’t in any way overtly evangelical or even faith based for that matter. But this album holds up amazingly well and still gets plenty of play in my stereo. “Scrabble Girl” (streaming below!!) is a jam song that soundtracks the closing scene of the movie in my brain (it’s probably a love story). The line “there’s something rad about the exciting and the new / there’s something rad about getting to know you” is such a classic bit of Malkmus approved 90’s nostalgia that it actually proves to be timeless. You can literally get this on amazon for $0.75, so there’s no reason not to check this out.
Danielson Famile Tell Another Joke At the Ol’ Chopping Block
Now here is a group that puts its faith and evangelical bent at the forefront. Luckily, what made Danielson more bearable than many of their outspoken Tooth & Nail cohorts was the fact that Danielson was unbelievably weird. They were the first and last Tooth & Nail band (perhaps even the first Christian band) to sound completely different than anything else. Danielson’s new album may have received a little mainstream love due to the recontextualization of Daniel Smith’s shrill and scratchy voice within a Sufjan Stevensesque expansive pop veneer, but these early albums are unflinchingly out there and difficult. Luckily, in a very odd way, the songs tend to work really well, some are even inspirational. “A No No” and especially “Smooth Death” stand out as the best examples of Smith’s unsettling creepy crypto-worship. The Danielson albums need to be heard to be believed.
Pedro the Lion Whole EP
Before David Bazan and Pedro the Lion went on to make the exquisite It’s Hard to Find a Friend, and before they went on to ruin it all with a string of ham-fisted concept albums and a whole schwack of “no shit, Sherlock” message songs (”wow, all this time I thought hypocrisy was good“), they released this charming little EP on Tooth & Nail. Filled with intimately recorded (live in a basement, one take - that’s my guess) and none-too-subtle odes to drugs (”Fix”), grace (”Whole”) and rest (”Lullaby”). The album peaks on the slowcore experiment “Almost There.” One gets the impression that this song may be one of those band-despised fan favorites with it’s ultra-slow, ultra-shaky screaming harmonies. The song does not mesh with the rest of the Pedro the Lion catalogue, but it remains mesmerizing and hypnotic.
Starflyer 59 (The Entire Discography)
The old stand bys. Starflyer were one of the first Tooth & Nail bands (I think their first album was in ‘93 or ‘94) and they remain on the roster to this day despite the rotating music styles that have defined the label at various times (first it was grunge, then punk, then ska, now it’s mall emo). Starflyer 59 started off as a bunch of young shoegazers suckling at the teet of Kevin Shields with albums like Silver, Gold and Americana (they’re the ones with the annoying solid color album covers). Those albums all hold up very well in a mid-nineties loungy My Bloody Valentine way (”Housewife Love Song,” in particular shines). Eventually the band solidified their own sound by mostly doing away with the noise=beauty, MBV dirges and and settling for more pensive and even more hook filled songs - less guitar, more organ; less MBV, more Beatles. They’ve never released anything absolutely mind-blowing, but they have remained very good and it sometimes seems like they’re due for a really amazing album. Whether or not it happens doesn’t matter, Starflyer 59 have always been a beacon of consistent goodness in a sea of shitty, shitty music.
Also check out: Sal Paradise Further - More Pavement aping. Still pretty good and very cheap on Amazon.
PASS
Frodus Conglomerate International
Frodus were a great spazz rock band in a time where I thought that great spazz rock bands were essential listening. I’m not so sure anymore. Refused were great band too, but I only really cared about them and their influence when I was listening to a lot of crap screamo and stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I still think fond thoughts of both bands, and they’re both far better than who they influenced. It’s just that sometimes you get so burned out on a genre that you can’t even bring yourself to listen to the truly great bands of that genre. I still keep this album around for the time when I do want to come back to this kind of stuff. I know it will be great then. It’s just not right now.
Note: I’ve heard that Roadside Monument were quite good. Kind of a Jawbox type thing. Unfortunately I never listened to them and therefore can’t recommend them. They did put a split out with Frodus, however. You can maybe check both bands out on that.
Craig’s Brother Homecoming
I freaking loved Craig’s Brother when I was 15. They were tight, they were technically interesting, their singer sounded like Joey Cape and for the first time in Christian punk history, their lyrics weren’t dumbass. In fact, they were thoughtful and almost kind of poetic. Now in hindsight, the lyrics aren’t that great, the singer is very nasally, their playing isn’t that technically sound and they’re not amazingly tight. But, as far as skate punk goes, these guys hold their own. And as far as Christian skate punk goes, these guys are in a class by themselves. This is a fun album to return to every couple of years. Shame these guys were kicked off Tooth & Nail because their website had a picture of one of the band members flipping the bird. Pretty f-ing stupid, no?
Slick Shoes Burn Out
Super fast and super tight skate punk band with a wicked guitar player and shitty ass singer. Pretty par for the course. The singer was like fourteen when they released their first album and I think he wrote all the lyrics too. Listening to some of the early songs is embarrassing, but the guitar player (Jackson was his name) holds everything up with some crazy impressive chops. Eventually the singer got better, but Jackson left, turning Slick Shoes into a slightly above average pop punk group.
Value Pac Jalapeno
I absolutely worshiped this album when it first came out. It sounded like all the best punk bands of the day (Green Day on “Prom Queen” and Rancid on “Preacher Man” and about eight other songs). They had released a squeaky clean debut, but on this sophomore album they sounded way angrier. It was also the first time I had heard a Christian group say anything remotely resembling a swear (Singer Ryan Shelly sings “pissed off”). It actually sounded similar to something rebellious. Also these guys stayed at my house once and were really fun, so there’s a definite soft spot there. But now it’s a nostalgia trip that I very rarely take. It may have sounded angrier than their other albums, but since discovering band like Black Flag, the Jesus Lizard and Shellac it’s ridiculously tame. With that being said, this would be a good album to lend to your little brother. Through this he could discover Rancid and through Rancid he could discover the Clash. And with the Clash he’d be set for life. And he’d have Value Pac to thank for that.
Also think about maybe checking out: Further Seems Forever The Moon is Down - Pre-Dashboard Chris Carrabba emo that doesn’t suck as much as it should.
ASS
The OC Supertones Chase The Sun
Tooth & Nail shittily tries to jump on the mid-nineties skacore trend and fails miserably. Shitty Christian skacore band realizes skacore’s short shelf life and tries to jump on the burgeoning contemporary worship bandwagon and fails miserably. Everyone who comes within earshot of this album is worse off.
Ghoti Hook Banana Man
Tooth & Nail joke punk. I guess that description says it all. When I met these guys as a kid, they were super cool, but this was one of the first CD’s I ever freely gave away. The best thing about this album is the sound clip from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. This just goes to show you, Christians are rarely, if ever, funny. Also, a lot of them make really terrible music.
Joy Electric CHRISTIANsongs
Dear Lord, may you please smite Ronnie Martin, Joy Electric “mastermind.” Okay, you don’t have to smite him, but at least his hair. And maybe his garbage electro music. Tooth & Nail does the Pet Shop Boys and everyone runs for the exits screaming. This is the soundtrack for those camps where they try to “un-gay” people. Beep boop bop blap blorp bloop crap. Ass.
MxPx Ten Years and Running
Okay this hurts to say because these guys meant so much to me during my teen years, but…has there ever been a band that has benefited more from good timing? A bunch of church going high school kids release a punk album in the wake of Green Day’s monster success with Dookie. And they release it to an audience that love popular music but are afraid to buy it. What results is Christian music’s first punk band. And they were huge. Unfortunately, no one seemed to realize that these guys played like turd. It’s a weird thing, I loved these guys when I was young because they were the biggest Christian band going, but I couldn’t think of a song that I actually really liked. They were one of my first punk show experiences and for that I’m eternally grateful, but there is no excuse for the tripe these guys put to tape (how’s this for a lyric: “I remember the times we had / some were happy, some were sad.” Yowza). When I made a mass exodus of albums I had no use for anymore, the entire MxPx catalogue was the first to go. It felt good to rid myself of this albatross. They may have opened the door for Tooth & Nail to continue to exist, but their rise to fame (read: their rise out of the subculture) and their subsequent collapse (read: return to the subculture) couldn’t have been a bigger waste of time. Oh well, that’s youth for you, I guess.
Also avoid like the plague (of locusts): Squad Five-O - I don’t even know which album, these guys suck.