Album Reviews

Plastic Crimewave Sound
Flashing Open LP
(eclipse)

What it isn’t. He’s a guy, he’s a band, he’s a multi-coloured forward-thinking arthole of Tardis dementions. He’s a Futuretro freak, he’s a silibant gas, he’s a rock-N’roll-a-holic, he’s a pain-in –the-ass. He’s uptight, he’s outtasite, he’s kimming quite fowley every Friday night. He makes records, he writes reviews, he does great artworks, and (more to the fucking point) this guys got VIEWS! Gentlemen and (even more to the point) Laid-eeez, I give you Mister Steve Krakow AKA Plastic Crimewave himself…

I’ve made FLASHING OPEN into album of the month as much for Plastic Crimewave and his band stand for as how they sound. This LP sure ain’t perfect but it’s quantum yelp always stinks up the bedroom good, and has kept me coming to it these past four months or so, which is saying a great deal. Furthermore, this lot may be billed as “Chicago’s Premier Psychedelic Punks” but Plastic Crimewave Sound is a damn site more outsider than the simplistic billing forewarns. There are bad drugs at work here, and someone has been lacing this band’s curry with too much cooking speed (never a bad thing). Apart from Mr.Wave himself and his cute cohort, the excellently named (and still youung enough to be necking anything in the medicine cabinet past its sell-by date) female guitarist Cat Chow. The rest of these guys are old and their skin is cold. More Motley Hoople than Motley Crue, this neurotic gaggle of outpatients look like some two-bit evening school scientist re-constituted the Jerks while Teenage Jesus wasn’t looking. That’s right… the bass player, keyboard player and drummer of this cowboy outfit were forged of a Friday afternoon by a creator with one eye on the-weekend-starts-here. Sexy as Robert Fripp, hairy as Quine, rock-nroll as Robert Duvall – it’s hard to believe that Plastic Crimewave himself didn’t knock this minging trinity together from ferrocrete one particklier creative jazz coffee morning round his Chicago flat. Personally, I’d ratherbum Dr.Wobert’s be-bowler’d bass player than make it with any of these Sweeney Todds… until they pick up their instrumnets and play, dat is…Oooh yeah!!!

R. Mark Lux was the original bass player was the original bass player in Temple of Bon Matin – yup, this was the Edwin Shirley Greasy Trucker who contributed that pre-Motorshed Lemmy-in-orbit spiral fenderP-bass to their incandescent take of “Born To Go” (truly one of my all time faves, babies). Quelle provinance, motherfuckers! Drummer Lawrence Skog Petersmay be a hulking thuggish dullard (his own description), but his love of The Move and CAN makes this minimalist one hell of a Rooster Cosby type percussionist (only uses a floor tom, hi-hat and snare) whose lack of a kick contributes mightily to the DISCO SUCKS undertow of this tsunami. As you would expect (nay, insist upon), the keyboard guy’s a right munter – Nick Rhodes pretentions without the dosh. His book of polaroids having been rejected by every underground publisher in Illin’ Wah, the aptly named Andrew Lord Ortmann rationalizes it all by contributing a fascinating modified Korg MS-20 (uncontrollable as fuck in any sitch, just ask Thighpaulsandra!) to this band’s indelicate time-zone straddling ur-fug. So that’s the lowdown, now for the showdown: What It Is Opening with restrained reversed guitar and vocal mantra “No Vision”, FLASHING OPEN initially comes on like a San Francisco psychedelic band trapped in the plumbing of Pere Ubu’s DUB HOUSING. Or maybe it’s CHELSEA GIRLS-period Nico as backed by The Godz, playing “Eleven” with TENDERNESS JUNCTION-era Fugs production. Bootiful! “No Vision, No Vision, No Vision” intones Mr.Wave, as the ice shifts under his feet and the sibilant tappety cymbals prepare the listener for a whole side of this Living Dead progressive bunny-hop. Hail, I even put my CD on repeat and copped a 20-minute feast of this one track so it surely works as meditational music. Where’s the 12” remix Mr.Wave?

But “No Vision” is a similar curve ball to the one that Comets on Fire threw at us with FIELD RECORDINGS FROM THE SUN’s equally mesmeric opener “Beyond the Ice Age”, and bears no relationship to the rest of the LP. And as we awaken into the 7-minute nightmare bludgeon fuzz bass riffola of “Caged Fire Theme”, we got malicious Hugh Cornwell vocalese over Monoshock-meets-Cometspost-Stoogedom multiple rhythm geetar rapid fire strumming a la Faine Jade’s “It Ain’t True” with Bobby Gillespie-period JAMC standing drumming. Mr.Wave is sure pissed off about summat interesting, but the band certainly ain’t about to let him high enough in the mix for us to clock just what it is. The burning tail-out is a luscious monoshock-type cat strangler of Grady Runyanesque proportions. “Go Away” is excellent remedial generic No Wave-by-numbers as played by (early 80’s Australians) The Makers of the Dead Travel Fast I a Barrett Floydian-mode. Here, Mr.Wave is a shark-eyed magician officially banishing a particularly annoying ex-lover by standing on the highest broch on the north of Scotland and fixing her with his evil eye whilst conjuring up a white van full of “tween time bailiffs-from-hell to redeem from her all the gifts he misguidedly laid on her ungrateful butt down the years. From a spindly Cloud 149-meets-Brave Boys Keep Their Promises balalaika tinitus lilt, the whole thing suddenly kicks into a 5am Glasgow City Centre garbage removal, as Mr.Wave’s Barrett-circa-Maisie drone pupeteer vocals off the highest local cliff.

It’s unfortunate then, that side one should finish with the inconsequential filler of “Perfect Glass Orchards”, which starts off boring and gets more boring until even the band are sound asleep. Hail, even Prince was bland was he wasn’t inspired. Still, this is no more a surprise blip and we gots to accept it (ye bastards). Especially as the opener of side two is a spectacular Basketball Jones-meets-Safesurfer-meets the Universal Panzies’ ”Star Bard” delirium grunt descent into a sub-bass abyss where only those with John Cale’s voice will survive with their souls intact. This is “Giant’s Eyes” – a disused Wilsford Shaft (Medieval Period, yeurgh!) ‘80s string synthesizer and frantic tempo changes fail to redeem Mr.Wave’s barbarian muse as he sinks lower and lower into filth and muck of promentalbackwashpsychosis that only the true voyager can even aspire to.

But wait up, salvation’s here with the frantic Solipsik-meets-Mars-type No Wave of “Husk”, in which a pre-chordal Mesolithic landscape is being invaded by a foul brood of chariot based Bobby Quine acolytes all intent on eating horseflesh and banishing the Dog from his rightful place in the domestic pantheon. Fuck ‘em, screams Mr.Wave and lets Helen Fordsdale loose on ‘em, here manifested as drugg addled Cat Chow, with enough attitude and No chops to whip their irritating Frippery and shoot it all up into the Two Towers’ air conditioning system. I guess the so-called Junky Lament of “Down & Out” is Wire’s “Lowdown” as played by all the fit members of John the Postman’s Peurile. That’s right, no fucker can play it properly but they don't half hit those strings hard, babies! Always the greedy and mutli-tasking artist, Mr.Plastic Crimewave is a tender soul underneath it all with a need for closure, babies. Cain’t be finishing the LP without shedding a tear or three, so we get wound down and out by the moody discomfiture of "Roar Back and the Waves” a tragic tail that only the true artist could conjure up. I mean, how sad is this opening lyric? “Sore cracks in the grave” Whoa babies. I’d never even thought about that concept before. Imagine dying just at the moment when you has a real bad wedgie and zero access to the petroleum jelly! Eternity with a sore crack is My Kinda Nightmare! NO no no, can’t handle it, Mr.Wave and I refuse to accept your metaphor, dammit… Oh OK then, yooz the man o’ the month so I’ll let it incubate a while and…This LP is a right hoot’n’holler hoedown, I can tell ya.

-Julian Cope’s Head Heritage (Dec.2003)