[music]
Rev up Cruise the metal highway with Orange Goblin The motorcycle equivalent of modern metal is like some stretched-out, shiny, tribal-tattooed contraption that looks like something from an Alien movie. That isn’t Orange Goblin. These Brits are an oil-covered old hardtail Panhead that growls and smokes and leaves your tailbone feeling utterly crushed by the ass-thumping a simple ride across town will deliver. It’s loud, unflinching biker metal. It’s metal for people who ride their bikes cross-country to festivals like Sturgis, not the kind for people who haul them in trailers. Orange Goblin debuted in 1997 with thick, grooveheavy rock that had more in common with the Kyussinfluenced stoner rock of the day. A Eulogy for the Fans: Orange Goblin Live 2012, the band’s eighth record and first live collection, displays how the Goblins have migrated since 2002 when they started swapping swing for speed and aggression. Most of this set, recorded at the UK 2012 Bloodstock Festival, draws from the band’s most recent studio efforts, but does include some gems from the early years. It consists of a live CD and DVD of
the Bloodstock set, as well as a live show from Hellfest 2012 in France, a documentary and a few short extras. If you lean more toward Motörhead for your metal fix, this package is essential. (Chris La Tray) Orange Goblin, Lionize and Kyng open for Clutch at the Wilma Mon., April 1, at 7 PM. $24. Advance tickets available at Rockin Rudy’s and ticketweb.com.
Pile Like many ex-punks in their 30s, I would like to go to an Avail show, but I have this thing with my knee. I therefore welcome post-hardcore, which takes the sonic elements of hardcore and arranges them in a structure that does not require me to jump over a 19-year-old who has just fallen on a pint glass. Pile is an exemplar of the form. All the familiar sounds are there: heavy guitar, flat vocals and a dry, trebly production that makes it sound like all the instruments were recorded within four feet of one another. It’s just not so damned fast. The transition to “post” requires some sacrifices, as it always does. The whole point of post-hardcore is
to escape the rigid chorus-verse-chorus-breakdownchorus structure of the original genre, and Pile sometimes unpacks this formula to formlessness. Certain tracks can only be described as lumbering. When these Bostonians discipline themselves, however, they remind us that the only two real components of hardcore are loud and louder. Pile is painting in black and white, with the appropriate sense of nostalgia for scenes that are no more, at least for the elderly among us. (Dan Brooks) Pile, Fat History Month, St. Elias and Missoula’s Boys play the VFW Sun., March 31, at 10 PM. $5.
Langhorne Slim One morning a couple summers ago, I found myself hungover, soaking wet and driving a borrowed Subaru back to Missoula, wearing only a Woolrich flannel coat and boxer briefs. I remember cranking the Black Keys’ fantastic EP, Chulahoma. I could’ve substituted that disc for a collection of Langhorne Slim songs. They provide a salve to the haggard mornings we’ve all had—music you play, say, after an all-night funny hat party in the Mission Mountains where you drank an entire bottle of Wild Turkey and fell into a creek trying to find your tent. Slim croons with a high wail reminiscent of The Rural Alberta Advantage or the Tallest Man on Earth. In his fingerpicking ode to traveler’s love, “Coffee Cups,”
off last year’s The Way We Move, Slim sings, “It’s early in the morning / what are we doing up still / drinking wine out of coffee cups / that’s fine by me / as long as I’m lying by you.” Most of his discography toes the line between these kind of quiet folk ballads and a raucous brand of back porch, blue-eyed soul. When you’ve got to play an hour-long acoustic show for kids at 9 a.m. on a Sunday, songs like these are Vitamin Water for your ears. (Nate Hegyi) Langhorne Slim and the Law and Missoula’s The Hasslers play the Palace Thu., April 4, at 9 PM. $8. Advance tickets available at Ear Candy or stonefly-productions.com.
Pissed Jeans, Honeys Do you remember the first time you did white drugs and shirtlessly ran around a backyard party telling anyone who would listen how much Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk changed how you heard the world? Honeys produces that same reaction—dilated pupils, prickly skin, anxiety, catharsis—sans hard drugs and the shameover. From the moment “Bathroom Laughter’s” fuzzed-out bass drives panzer-like into your temples, it is on. Vocalist Matt Korvette barks, growls, grumbles and groans. Guitars squawk and stomp. This is rawk and roll at its filthiest and it’s merely the opener to an album filled with so much thunderous ass-kickery that it’s a difficult proposition to
choose a favorite track. Speed is traded in favor of sweaty, slow swampass grind on “Chain Worker.” Overdriven bass and swirls of grunting doom-filled feedback are matched with Korvette’s belching hollers in a satisfactory sonic display of how monotony can rule our lives. The band does its best Rollins-era Black Flag impersonation on “Male Gaze.” Korvette admits that he stares at women although he knows it’s inappropriate and creepy: “It’s when a smile becomes a stare/ And it starts to burn,” he sings, before lamenting, “I’m not innocent, but I’m sorry.” Grown-up reflections and youthful energy rate this the most besotted pair of jeans yet. (Jason McMackin)
missoulanews.com • March 28 – April 4, 2013 [19]