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| Spacial Folk |
| band: Ascetic Junkies |
| Album: Don't Wait For The Rescue Squad! |
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Ascetic Junkies
"Don't Wait For The Rescue Squad"
Spacial Folk
"ABOUT THAT NEW EP: Wow! I say, Wow! The new EP seems to have activated my narcolepsy. I've been doing the dishes on automatic pilot while experiencing something akin to "A Day In The Life" with constant static shocks from a very positive Harry Partch making rose jam in a Park Pie Hat. My sink is overflowing with admiration for your peculiar brand of Sophisti-Folk. I will not be afraid."
~ Email from Billy's Bunker to Kati
"All masterpieces are personal statements."
~ Something I think I heard in art school
I don't know if I would describe us as earnest people. We're starting to shy away from the word "folk" because it seems to give venues the idea that we're going to be a quiet band, which we aren't. Lately we've been kicking around "indiegrass". Any ideas?
~ Matt Harmon
I call it sophisti-folk. I think I stole that idea from Kali somehow. It's folk though. They use a banjo. Kali Giaritta has a way of singing that hard "R's" like no one else save Cranberries vocalist Dolores O'Riordan. Matt has one foot in the lyric beauty of common speech and one hell of a big foot in the realm of blindside rhythmic whacky (id est, one foot in reality and the other foot in the way things are). These guys are plum nuts with a hard shell sense of humor, chocolate filling and some sort of pretzel logic tossed in like it was meant to be there. Wha?! That's the name of a club where folk was played in New York in the 1960's. It's a good description of the Ascetic Junkies. Once you add something out in the Dorian mode, something Eno in the atmosphere, and that peculiar Beatle George (St.) Martin arrangements, well you done whipped up some psychedelic folk. I'm saying this clear headed first thing in the morning with the coffee right there in front of me. It's . . . er . . . something else.
Two Portland madmen have reworked a song apiece on this disc to somewhere crazy between the familiar real estate of Strawberry Fields and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. I'm out here in Ohio, and I can say that somewhere near the end of this album from the rain forest of the Pacific Northwest, my Farmer's Almanac melted right there in the bookshelf. Yeesh! I hate it when that happens.
Now Kali and Matt may be about as available as anybody in music, and I would have interviewed them about these songs if I wasn't already happy with my own personal view of what these songs mean to me. The Ascetic Junkies are set to release a full length in a matter of months, and I'll be interviewing them for that one if they're still talking to me after this review. Down at the end of this page there's a link to their magnum opus "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." You may soon catch an addiction to an unflinching view of the world in these songs. The Ascetic Junkies are seriously habit forming.
THE SONGS
1. JENNY, DON'T DO THAT!
Now about the fun. Well now, these songs may cause people to dance, but they aren't light and fluffy. Jenny, Don't Do That! seems to take a swipe at a pretty girl, party girl, you know the type, popular chick with something naturally up it's sleeve. Opening enslaught: "Your heart is on a silver platter / Congratulations, you've learned to let go. / You've become unable to flatter / Because you know / You've been around, around, around / You've been around." Something about that description is more complicated than calling Jenny jaded. Now here's where it gets interesting: "Jenny, you should be happy / because I want you, I want you, I want you to / And you could find somebody who will make you happy / But you don't, do you?" Now, I don't see how that repeat of "I want you" could be an accident. What, you think Kali and Matt couldn't come up with some words to avoid the repetition? Naaaah! "You could find somebody who will make you, make you / But you don't need to." Another repetition. Okay, that one I won't comment. So far we've got a Dylanesque kind of finger pointing song, but here's the catch. Dylan always seems to leave his victims bloody on the tracks. The last line is where the love is obvious: "You are your own blanket, be warm."
2. FRENCH GIRLS
One more new song not a remix on this album and that's French Girls. It's fast and acoustic, but it might just about fit the pace of a Green Day tempo and that makes it damn near punk fast fars I'm concerned. And it's funny and quirky and full of snide comments about heaven, and French Girls saying "I don't speak English" in that lovely language, but you don't care "because you're not that into language anyway." One big clinker of a line right in the first third stands out because they print it white like a sore thumb in the album lyrics: "No one here has to stay sober." That's in heaven you understand. Sounds like "Paul," the subject or object of this song is going away. Sounds like he's going far far away. "Paul, I never get to see you anymore / And I hope you'll come and visit me before / You have to walk through that big pearly door." Yep howdy! That's the story you are dancing to in this song. Man that's sweet but oh so dark. Sounds like our friend Paul is taking his toboggan down the long run to the undiscovered country lubricated by Jim Beam, Jack, or some other quicker liquor. I guess that's what passes for an up tempo song in Ascetic Junky world. After all they are hooked on asceticism, right? No hedonist goes unpunished. That's the sting of this EP. Sounds like good music for a responsible sing along. Matt and Kali are kind of amazing.
3. WINDOWS SELL THE HOUSE (Cars & Trains remix)
Cars & Trains is something special in Portland. Tom Filepp takes the spacial bus to an expansive territory largely populated with things that move and leave trails when they travel with that electronic tingly feeling back of your neck. There's a hip hop electric pulse through this deconstruction of a tune from "One Shoe Over The Cuckoo's Nest" worthy of a Mother's love from maybe that first album "Freak Out!" I heard a little of this transportation music from that linked website, and alls I can say is buckle in and abandon all preconceptions. I like this guy.
4. DRACULA (Leigh Marble remix)
Leigh Marble's mix swings slow which right there feels right and unafraid of something deep. Basie said if you can't swing slow, you can't swing, but this one seems to want to turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. There's enough Echo in this remix to summon up Narcissus out of the daffodils and reflective ponds in a turgid mind. There's some serious Moonlight in this version of Dracula. That Marble guitar is set on sitar to set your heart aflutter. Leigh is an eccentric folk in the spare secret garden with deep roots in the new natural. He's also spacial. Click the link and see that his music is good.
all songs by Matt Harmon and Kali Giaritta
the top image of this review is linked to the Ascetic Junkies website
you can download the songs from this EP for a suggested price of whatever or nothin'
CREDITS
Recorded, mixed*, mastered, and produced by Mark Harmon
*Windows Sell the House remixed by Tom Filepp
*Dracula remixed by Leigh Marble
Kali Giaritta: Vocals, percussion, glockenspiel
Matt Harmon: Vocals, guitar, mandolin, keys, percussion
Stephen Colvin: Drums, vocals
Ryan Hilton: Bass, vocals
Graham Houser: Banjo, vocals
Ric Santora: Scribbles in Jenny Don't Do That!!, cactus and psychedelic tree art
Oran Stainbrook: cover painting
CONTACT
pen pals: AsceticJunkies@gmail.com
booking: SamuraiArtist1@gmail.com
web: myspace.com/TheAsceticJunkies
video: youtube.com/TheAsceticJunkies
blah blah: twitter.com/AsceticJunkies
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