skip to main |
skip to sidebar
(SharkAttack!, 2001)As my favorite poet once wrote with his boogie-woogie quill, “I’m back. I’m back in the saddle again.” And in my case, eight days after I boarded a plane for distant lands and left my turntable behind, that saddle is THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! Yes, it was good fun seeing monkeys atop motorcycles, museums of meat, and scores of destitute limbless with begging-cups extended, but nothing beats coming back home to unpaid bills and nightmares of bedbug-infested luggage. And 45s! More 45s! Boxes of 45s waiting just for me! Friends, rest easy knowing that those 45s were never far from my mind: I was actually thinking a bit about these Charlene records while I traveled, and what really struck me is how GREAT they all sound. The group’s self-production – even on fuzzier songs like “Summertimer” that forego the spacey sheen of other releases – is always stunning and expensive-sounding, further cementing my opinion that nothing in the Charlene camp is done half-assed, that they are in scary-full control of their entire musical operation. I said it before: this band seems to know exactly what it wants to do, and then it goes off and does it well. Dang! There’s an epic mid-tempo indie-psych quality to these two particular songs that’s quite rare in my listening experience; the best comparison I can come up with is, musically, Hit to Death In the Future Head, and, emotionally, early Spiritualized. “Talk Me Down,” especially, is both impressively towering and yet appealingly homespun. I don’t know what else to say… I can (and would) fawn over Charlene all day, but the bottom line just remains “you should hear the records.” SO DO IT. Still batting 1.000, it’s another winner outta these guys.
(SharkAttack!, 2000)
Uh oh. I’m leaving tomorrow for a vacation, and I can’t help noticing that dark omens are gathering all around me. Like the title of this single: “No Fly.” I’m supposed to fly at 6:00pm!! And late last night I heard – and enjoyed – the scary Bloodrock song “D.O.A.” for the first time. It’s about a plane crash!! And then this evening, I was invited to go see a screening of Ishtar at Anthology. That film was a famous ‘BOMB’!! Might a fiery death stand in the way of my quest to review every 7” I own? It seems a forgone conclusion, but stay tuned to Wednesday’s papers to find out for sure!
Until then, assume the worst and remember me the way I’d like to be remembered: Sitting on a bare mattress and reviewing the second Charlene single. Cuz it’s a killer, this one. “No Fly” is a thumping, crunching blisstrip, a track that startles with a near-radio-ready catchiness that nevertheless joyfully subverts itself with sudden bursts of feedback overtaking the twangy, rippling guitar lines. The vocals sound better than ever; they – and the song as a whole – are quite similar to Hopewell’s work, in fact, but even that pop-savvy band never produced such a flawless space/psych/whatever single as this, never found “No Fly’s” oughta-be-impossible balance between narcoticized and bouncy, moody and sunny. I mean, jeez, this thing’s gonna still be running through my head when that dang plane of mine goes down in flames over the Atlantic. Could definitely do worse than that!
(Castle von Buhler, 1999)
Charlene might well have been my favorite of the Boston bands around the turn of the century. They seemed to appear regularly as openers on prestigious bills, typically turning out the most satisfying musical portion of the evening, and I used to happily pay full admission to a club just to hear their abbreviated set (though oddly enough, I don’t think I ever saw them headline). The group also released a string of fantastic records – three 7”s and an album – between 1999 and 2002 before going into semi-hibernation; there have only been scattered mini-tours and a handful of new MySpace mp3s in the years since. Howzabout a new record, fellers?
“Taking a Dive” is their first single, and it’s a good introduction to the band’s sound: Dreamy, hazy guitarscapes with a strong melodic sense… somewhere between Flying Saucer Attack and “Big Day Coming” Yo La Tengo. Minimal tom thumps underpin the A-side’s wintry, echoing guitars, with what sounds like a mellotron flute-effect blowing through at the end; if Spiritualized was less grandiose and more resourceful, they’d have been making tasteful, delicate songs like this. Similarly, “Blackout” is a perfect drug-damaged lullaby that slowly builds to a modestly-majestic drum-heavy climax before fading away again. Excellent, excellent stuff. All of it! Charlene would develop a stronger rhythmic sense and get slightly more pop/rock-oriented on subsequent records (not, however, at the expensive of their psychedelic leanings), but this lovely, spaced-out bit of dreamrock is a fully-formed debut that shows they always knew pretty much exactly what they wanted to do as a band. No awkward fumbling about for these guys; it was all quality all the time from the get-go.
(SharkAttack!, 2001)
