Past Music Columns

Local Release Roundup

The return of Crucial Conflict, debuts by Dr. Manhattan, the Prairie Cartel, and Pretty Good Dance Moves, and a UK-only release from Puerto Muerto

By Miles Raymer

March 20, 2008

CRUCIAL CONFLICT
Planet Crucon
(Buckwild)

On the strength the 1996 single “Hay,” Crucial Conflict sold millions of copies of their debut album, The Final Tic, but they couldn’t maintain that commercial success—they were probably just too strange for a public that hadn’t yet made crossover superstars out of freaks like OutKast and Cee-Lo. The combination of elements that made “Hay” so memorable—whole-posse hollering, twanging jaw harp, a guitar feeding back on one long, keening tone—still stands as one of the most improbable in hip-hop history. The intervening platinum-free decade may have tamed Crucial Conflict’s outre impulses—the crackling weirdness of their early records has given way to a synth-heavy style that sounds like a slightly funkier take on Dirty South ringtone rap—but it hasn’t dampened their infectious enthusiasm. They yell out the big-ass hooks on Planet Crucon with as much gusto as they did on any of their old jams, and that energy props up even the occasional tired-sounding beat. Crucial Conflict bring a vibe that feels like the elusive house-party sweet spot, right when it’s started to get wild but before anyone calls the cops.

DR. MANHATTAN
Dr. Manhattan
(Vagrant)

I have a feeling that if Dr. Manhattan had got together while Taking Back Sunday and Dashboard Confessional were still coming up, before the faux-epic emo-pop bubble of the early aughts burst, they would’ve been tempted to jump on that bandwagon. They have a taste for toothache-sweet hooks, they occasionally indulge in sweater-tugging melodrama, and they’ve got that nasal vocal style down pat. On the other hand, they seem like such smart-asses it’s hard to imagine them ending up just another bunch of guys with asymmetric haircuts doing the loud-quiet-loud thing. On their self-titled debut, they routinely derail the songs’ flow by chopping up the rhythm in an interesting way, sort of like Panic! at the Disco but without any of that lofty Brechtian theatricality—they seem to be doing it just for shits and giggles. Same goes for the pirate-ship accordion on “Baton Rouge” and the entirety of “Tracey’s Buns,” a piss-take on acoustic love ballads that sounds like “Hey There Delilah” by Plain White T’s remade by a guy who huffs paint. When Dr. Manhattan actually go for faux epic emo pop (“Minds Like Ours”), it’s like they’re doing it just to prove they can—and then of course they let the song drift off into buzzing synth noise, so we don’t get the wrong idea.

Murder by Death, Dr. Manhattan, O’Death, Kiss Kiss
Sat 3/29, 9 PM, Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace, 773-478-4088 or 866-468-3401, $15, $13 in advance, 18+.

THE PRAIRIE CARTEL
“Fuck Yeah That Wide” and “Keep Everybody Warm” b/w “Homicide” and “Keep Everybody Warm (Acid Jacks Rejack)”
(Self-released)

I realize the Prairie Cartel are more about jeans and T-shirts than platform combat boots and dreadlock extensions, but when they bust out the four-on-the-floor beats and grinding guitars, they totally sound like something out of the Wax Trax catalog. Not that I mind—I’ve been on a vintage-industrial-dance kick ever since this woman at Skylark gave away a whole box of CDs she couldn’t sell at Reckless and I picked up some of the Nitzer Ebb and Ministry albums I’d sold from my own collection years ago. The two songs on the A-side of the Prairie Cartel’s debut EP (available as a 12-inch vinyl single or download) toy with that Nitzer Ebb-Ministry axis—heavy guitars, heavy beats, a dude yelling at you—but they’re pretty much mosh proof, thanks to a layer of ravey synths that’d make you feel silly stomping around. The flip side cranks the hedonism: “Homicide” is a roughed-up, rocked-out take on disco that still manages to wink at the style’s flamboyant roots, and the Acid Jacks version of “Keep Everybody Warm” lives up to the remixers’ name—the Australians throw around tweaky 303 bleeps and burbles like they’re on a Mardi Gras float. Next week the Prairie Cartel perform a vampire-themed set as the Final Salvation at Collaboraction’s fifth annual Carnaval, to be held in an old church.

LA Jesus, Anacron, the Prairie Cartel, Darkwave Disco DJs, Jordan Z
Sat 3/29, 9 PM, Church of the Epiphany, 201 S. Ashland, collaboraction.typepad.com, $25-$75.

PRETTY GOOD DANCE MOVES
Pretty Good Dance Moves
(Self-released)

If you’re not sure what kind of dancing this Chicago-Brooklyn duo hope to inspire, your question should be answered about 30 seconds into “P.G.D.M.,” the opening cut on their self-titled debut EP, when a minimalist IDM beat kicks off underneath the bleepy, Amiga-style analog-synth melody. Jimmy and Aaron, as they prefer to be known, are obviously thinking of the dance you do to the Postal Service, assuming you’re one of those people who can dance to the Postal Service. Personally I associate the Postal Service more with waiting in line at a coffee shop or going for a really emotional walk after finding out your girlfriend dumped you via Facebook, and I get the same feeling from Pretty Good Dance Moves. They have a lot of ideas, and their ADD songwriting style does keep things from getting boring—I especially appreciate the charming vocal interplay between Jimmy and Genevieve Schatz of Company of Thieves, who voices the woman’s parts in the collapsing relationship these five tunes describe. But the record’s bogged down by an overall mood that rarely strays from a tiny patch of emotional territory bounded one one side by polite sadness and on the other by mild ennui. Staring into a glass of pinot grigio at your kitchen table does not count as a dance move.

PUERTO MUERTO
I Was a Swallow
(Fire Records)

A band has to be a little pretentious to compose a new soundtrack to a classic cult film, the way Christa Meyer and Tim Kelley did for their 2005 album Songs of Muerto County. Luckily this husband and wife team are comfortable with their own pretension—Puerto Muerto’s one-sheet describes them as not just “intelligent” but “smarmy.” But to their credit, the movie they rescored was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which isn’t exactly Fassbinder, and their somewhat frou-frou take on country—embellished by Meyer’s gothic, ethereal vocals, often laid down several tracks deep—is rooted firmly in old-timey shit-kicker music. This collision of artsy darkness and hillbilly twang, reminiscent of Carla Bozulich and her Geraldine Fibbers, makes me want to see a bunch of goth kids two-stepping along to it, though if that ever actually happened it would probably tear a hole in space-time. I Was a Swallow is getting a CD release in the UK only, but by mid-April it should be available as a download at Tunetribe.com. It might be worth the import price, though, to get your hands on the cover art, where a half-nude Meyer stares significantly into the distance while Kelley reclines in the careful slump of an elegantly wasted rock star—it’s the cherry on top of this shamelessly arch album.

Mekons, Puerto Muerto
Tue 3/25, 10 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, $20.   

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