This is part four of the forgotten indie series. catch up on pervious entires:
part one / Part two / Part Three
Intro: Taking a cue from the Forgotten Gialli film series put out by Vinegar Syndrome, which highlights movies from the Italian thriller subgenre that have fallen through the cracks, I’ve created my own indie-rock variety. As is the case with any form of art, what is considered “forgotten” depends on the audience, not necessarily the availability. This series will focus on albums put out around the early aughts, sometimes delving into the late 90s, but I hope to avoid anything beyond 2010, and earlier than 1990. Most of the records spotlighted will be from my personal CD collection.
Context: Once again, all three of the spotlighted records are widely available across multiple music streaming services. Said services are not the world, but with that in mind, as of this writing, the most popular song on Low Kick is “Have You No Shame, Girl?” with 71,017 plays. “Static on the Radio” off Drill a Hole has a sizable 5,207,815 streams (no doubt because of the Aimee Mann feature), and “Moonpie Eating” off 1958 has by far the fewest, with only 4,338 plays.
But enough about metrics, on to the records.
Solex – Low Kick and Hard Bop
(Matador, 2001)
Solex is the project of Amsterdam based Elisabeth Esselink, utilizing kitchen sink instrumentation and sample based production—fractured pop songs with a riot girl edge and Norwegian tinge. A sound that seems as much inspired by Le Tigre as Stereolab. Sonically, it’s not too dissimilar from the project that put Solex on the map, Solex vs. the Hitmeister, which was recorded with an old 8 bit sampler she found at an auction. She upgraded to a new sampler and a digital 16-track recorder for her second album, Pick Up and her third and final album for Matador Records, Low Kick and Hard Bop, the strongest distillation of her basement sampling sound.
On Low Kick, Elisabeth comes into her own as an artist; her delivery is irreverent, her lyrics are Netherlands slice-of-life, the song titles are often stamped with exclamation points. Solex has something to say, and the entire record sounds like she is just a few inches away from your ear, yelling it, banging pots and pans to get your attention.
I’m not sure Solex got the attention she wanted, or maybe she found that the attention she got was the wrong kind, but she would follow up Low Kick three years later with a deeper dive into her ramshackle brain, under a new record label—the sardonically titled, The Laughing Stock of Indie Rock. A celebration of her place in music, or a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Video:
Lyric:
“We went to the local fish-shack restaurant and ordered two dozen crabs dusted with cayenne / Steamed up and served with a pair of wooden mallets / I never had anything like that”
Recommended if you like (RIYL):
Lo-fi Bjork, a one woman Stereolab, Morr Music from the Netherlands
Jim White – Drill a Hole in that Substrate and Tell me What You See
(Luaka Bop, 2004)
For a moment in the early aughts, Jim White was the darling of the alt-country scene, a Florida raised story-teller that found himself on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop record label and flirting with the big time. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, the title of both his debut record and a documentary film about the American south that featured White alongside fellow fringe country music artists (Johnny Dowd, The Handsome Family, Sixteen Horsepower), was a minor hit on the indie film circuit, bringing even more attention to what looked like a New Scene of morose, Southern-fried artists influenced more by Flannery O’Conner and Cormac McCarthy than Nelson or Haggard.
Jim White’s third full length finds him at his most accessible, with many of his idiosyncrasies pleasantly ironed out thanks to the glossy production by Joe Henry. It boasts major collaborations with Aimee Mann, M. Ward and the Barenaked Ladies. It’s his most cohesive collection of songs both silly (“Combing My Hair in a Brand New Style”) and sweetly sentimental (“That Girl from Brownsville Texas”). It should also be noted that, comparatively, these are long songs, often drifting upwards of six minutes. The meandering length plays to White’s strengths, allowing the tracks, and his stories about Weird Southern America, to breathe. White may not have been the white country savior the industry wanted, but he was the one we needed.
Video:
Lyric:
“Guess I been busy killing time counting bullet holes in state line signs / I led a life of lonely drifting trying to rise above the buzzards in my mind”
RIYL:
Southern Gothic with humor, the poeticism of a rusted out Chevrolet, Townes Van Zandt with a film degree
Soul-Junk – 1958
(Sounds Are Active, 2003)
In the early 1990s, Glen Galloway left indie-rock band Trumans Water to focus on his god-calling solo project, Soul-Junk. Album nomenclature began with 1950, and proceeded upwards (1951, 1952, etc). Extended Play releases started with 1949, and proceeded downwards (1948, 1947, etc). By the early aughts, what began as Galloway (rechristened, Glen Galaxy) reading Bible verses to discordant indie-rock had morphed into something much different. The crowning achievement of the bizarre Christian futurist world that Galaxy had created is easily 1958, an avant-garde fusion of boom bap hip-hop, free jazz and Bible beating nerdcore rap.
1958 defies easy categorization, and to most ears, will sound like the wailings of a maniac (or, based on the number of guests: maniacs). I would not disagree, but listen closely and there is a message in the madness; mostly about Jesus, and salvation, but also about what it’s like to be a Believer in a post-Y2K, post-9/11 world, where your religion is co-opted in flag-waving and the Church needs a PR reboot. Galaxy isn’t putting himself forward as any kind of spokesman, mostly because his audience would have no idea what he’s speaking about, but in the techno-babble hum of his 192kbps Hezekiah story, there are lessons to be learned.
Video:
Lyric:
“Let the son of God give the spit-blood-dirt Visine between cracked lids”
RIYL:
Cool Xians, Sufjan Stevens on holy acid, Danielson Famile with beats
Mimsy Farmer Fanclub 