Hardcore for Nerds

Hoover - “Shut” (by tonyandcarrie)

Resting on their laurels just a bit, Hoover take it to that hc/emo bastion of Rapid City, SD. Note Erskine and Farral rhythm sectioning as if they knew of long-range sniper rifles trained on ‘em.

hoover emo post-hardcore

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Regulator Watts - ‘Mercurochrome’ from The Aesthetics of No-Drag (1997)

angstspo

regulator watts 90s post-hardcore emo hoover

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Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

I’m enjoying Taoist Drunk talking about her appreciation for rural New Jersey, partly because it mirrors something I really like about my home city of Dublin, or specifically the southern suburbs, which butt up against the comparatively gentle ‘Dublin Mountains’ and the neighbouring county of Wicklow, also known as the Garden of Ireland; but also because it reminds me of a post I had planned for my old blogspot about this Harold and Kumar movie, using the screencaps above, and one of my favourite albums ever, DC post-hardcore band Hoover’s Lurid Traversal of Route 7 [1], the instrumental title song of which relies heavily on the sound of crickets and creating an atmosphere of tense emptiness, something both comically and dramatically reflected in the aesthetics of White Castle, emerging in the idyllic dawn shot of the burger joint itself [2]. Or, okay, that’s about as far as I got.

[1] As it happens, the titular Route 7 is actually in Virginia, as guitarist Joseph P. McRedmond explained to me in an email:

“Alex [Dunham] gave it the name as the song was based on his guitar part, and it’s kind of hard to get around Northern Virginia where we lived at the time without traversing Route 7. We did a lot of late night drives after rehearsing along Route 7 to go to this old Tasty Diner to drink coffee and eat grilled cheese and fries.”

[2] Whereas, as IMDB helpfully explains, the plot of the film is in reality a ludicrously unnecessary journey - a traversal, even - of the whole state of Jersey, passing through its dark centre above:

“”While the geography of New Jersey in the movie is very accurate during Harold and Kumar’s journey from north Jersey to south Jersey, there is simply no need for them to have driven so far to find a White Castle. The trip from Hoboken to Cherry Hill is 85 miles and takes about 2 hours (without traffic), and there about 20 White Castles along the way. In fact, Harold and Kumar didn’t even have to get on a highway to find one; there is a White Castle on Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City, which is adjacent to Hoboken.”

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Regulator Watts - ‘Candy Bullet O’ from The Aesthetics of No-Drag (1997)

This is one of the times I regret not having a physical copy of this album, and thus no lyrics sheet*. It’s pretty impossible to work out what Alex Dunham is singing about, from sound alone, so all one is left with is the chorus-y part:

“said fuck her, said fuck her slow

nine to five at a standstill

seven minutes to go”

which isn’t necessarily all that much help. The fact that ‘candy bullet’ is the name of a vibrator makes it fairly clear what the ‘O’ refers to, but beyond that?

It’s far from the best song on the album (that probably has to go to the equally suggestively titled ‘Ballad of St. Tinnitus’, or the simply phenomenal closer ‘Witchduck’**) but it’s, well, pretty forceful - or as I described it before, “hynotic [and] penetrating” - and another example of the post-Hoover aesthetic Dunham pretty relentlessly churned out on this and the Mercury CD; before calming down a little and expanding on the more focused song-writing of Radio Flyer (though the fire definitely came back when he joined former Hoover bandmate Fred T. Erskine’s band Abilene for their second album, Two Guns, Twin Arrows). Great music to wrap yourself in and remember what it’s like to have screaming guitar and pulsing bass rhythms ricocheting around your mind.

*though I think at least a couple of my followers might have it?

**here’s Andrew writing about it, in a way that doesn’t make it sound masturbatory at all (j/k!):

“It’s due to Alex Dunham’s prowess at his instrument that things stay so interesting, and he continually twists and pulls at his guitar strings with his fingers, wringing squeals, screams, and tortured harmonics from it even as he keeps the main riff moving along constantly. It’s amazing to hear him unleashed in such raw, powerful form, especially considering that he’s Regulator Watts’s only guitarist. He didn’t do this much in Hoover, even with Joseph McRedmond’s rhythm guitar available to keep the song grounded. It’s almost as if being locked within the musical constraints that come with being the sole guitarist in a band have somehow freed him, given him license to reach limits on his own that he never tested when he was playing with someone else.”

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orioleorgans:

hoover - electrolux

hoover

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“ My songs are made to be sung by many voices. All I ever want to do is make the whole room sing. Because I knew if everyone’s singing, they’re making a show, they’re part of the music. And it makes for something really phenomenal. I always tell people let’s all sing, sing the songs, let’s make music, fuck buying music, stop downloading it, make it. Be the song. Be the song.

—

Ian MacKaye in Tablet magazine (via anythingcouldhappen)

There’s an interesting symmetry between this - from a fascinating, wide-ranging and often profound conversational interview* in a Jewish magazine, touching on many of both the broader and more personal aspects of religion, community politics and people dying, as well as music - and this part of the excellent review of Dischord’s reissuing of Lungfish’s The Unanimous Hour in Pitchfork yesterday:

“”Hallucinatorium” was initially put to tape as a short-winded instrumental, but upon hearing it, Higgs felt inclined to lay down a few verses. The problem: The original recording was too short to accommodate all the ribcages, hexagon faces, and living prayers the singer hoped to mention. Dischord co-founder and Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye, who guided the recording sessions, suggested simply slowing the tape down in order to buy a few extra minutes— an idea he cribbed from hearing the Prince Far I song “Survival” played back-to-back with its pitched-down instrumental “version.” So instead of picking up steam, the song tumbles into a dubby dream-world. Against the screwed-down sounds, Higgs’ lyrics become deeper and heavier in their resonance.”

* it’s one of those interviews where the interviewer sometimes talks about themselves through their questions in more depth and length than the interviewee, and there are a couple of negative responses in the comments to that effect, but I think it works quite well here. It reminds me of an old ‘zine interview with Hoover’s Alex Dunham that someone kindly sent me scans of, which was that all over - but why do we got so worked out up about what an artist/writer/musician has to say alone, and not the conversation as a whole of which they’re part of (even if they’re the particular reason we are interested and why the conversation exists)? Especially as in that interview Dunham spoke about having a problem putting the word ‘I’ in his printed lyrics, that he equated it with self-centredness.

dischord lungfish hoover regulator watts fugazi

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Vinyl Sunday: Hoover, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 (Dischord reissue, 2010)

miscellaneous shot; also, previously, here and here

vinyl sunday vinyl photos hoover post-hardcore dischord vinyl punk

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epilogue I: 2010 in other LPs*

(*you know, records)

Foals, Total Life Forever - UK post-punk BBC4 remake of Q and not U (i.e., really quite good)

The Gaslight Anthem, American Slang - not as good as Titus Andronicus, but still better than the Hold Steady

Xiu Xiu, Dear God I Hate Myself - shouty, vulnerable artist utilises Nintendo DS in a unusually accessible album. but you know this already

Hoover, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 (reissue) - everybody knows this one of the best Dischord albums ever made, right? well you should. the 90s emo version of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, all intense personal issues and eerie night-time driving

Adebisi Shank, This Is The Second Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank - should give this away, since it’s not really my thing. even bought it at their launch gig, but live or on record I can’t stick with their banging tunes

Sinaloa, EP - only four tracks but that’s all you need for good quality, melodic not-actually-screamo. and the etching is indescribably/unphotographably beautiful

HFN 2010 foals Xiu Xiu gaslight anthem sinaloa hoover adebisi shank

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Hoover - The Lurid Traversal of Route 7

hoover vinyl photos

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Hoover - ‘Cable’ from Lurid Traversal of Route 7 (Dischord, 1993 - remastered 2010)

White - So my copy of the Hoover LP arrived a few days ago via Polyvinyl, complete with a small bar of ”Artificially Flavored Candy”. I got that the last time, except then it was artificial strawberry, and this time it was, no kidding, “White Mystery”.

Red/Blue - I was watching the midterm election coverage on the BBC when, about twenty minutes in, one of the anchors interrupted the analysis to remind viewers that red stood for Republicans and blue for the Democrats, unlike the recent UK elections (and almost every other left-right polity in the world) where red stood for Labour and blue for the Conservatives. Of course, the American parties each use red, white and blue themselves so it’s a bit of a toss-up which to assign to which, and apparently it’s only been a convention since around 2000, when the TV networks settled on a choice (the wrong one) and the red state/blue state idea picked up pace.

Green & Black - I’m pretty happy with the green vinyl for Lurid Traversal, which is the standard, light-ish and semi-translucent green that darkens up depending on the light or the slipmat underneath it (as in this picture) to approach the almost-black green of the cover, which itself depends on the light for it to be noticeable or not. An inspired graphic design choice (courtesy of Jason Farrell) for such a dark, moody but equally visceral and organic album.

art emo hoover politics post-hardcore tv american exceptionalism

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