Adore. Adore. Adore — Sprints set the year ablaze last January with their blistering, barnstorming & breathless debut Letter To Self. A record, like the cover art, full of red swirling fire — young & hungry, they know… Like I knew, when I heard the Dickies for the first time as a teenager — that if the Ramones pointed to NY & the Dickies to Los Angeles then my heart belonged out west; when they brought their pop-junk ramalama to Allentown this year they didn’t seem to quite know where they were – for me it was Homecoming. Which I guess makes the Sloppy Seconds show Prom Night – my wife & I have been ardent fans of these heartfelt vulgarians for three decades, ever since I pulled a promo CD of theirs out from an ignominious pile at the college paper we both worked at; The flames cooled around X a long time ago – black as an ember, they take their leave, but not before one last smoky bonfire.
There’s something singularly exhilarating when a hot mess gathers itself together, improbable & unstable, and produces something beautiful & enduring. Consider Cuddly Toys – 70’s UK punx, hapless, hated & hounded, molting sounds & styles from record to record – by the time no one was paying attention they had kludged together a glam-synth-punk classic; Or like Amanda Palmer. Untethered Amanda Palmer is a lot — a lot like cats in a bag. But re-tethered to her beloved Brian Viglione in The Dresden Dolls, her wild turbulence is focused – focused by love, camaraderie, and an strict obligation to rock. Their triumphant return to live performance this year was stunning – cinching together decades of bohemian energy… bridging punk by way of cabaret all the way back through Dada to the voluptuous panic of inter-war Berlin; Adore.
If hot mess has an aesthetic opposite it might be the intense Euro-rigor of Xeno & Oaklander. Pinpoint precise & fastidious minimal synth, all arranged painstakingly & deliberately, using purely analog electrical sound; recent releases, however, had become arid & formal; this years Via Negativa is clearly drawing on a revitalized power source; Revitalized power sources also drove incredible performances from elders considered long faded – a surprise return to recording from Anja Huwe, lead singer of the tremendous German Goth band Xmal Deutschland (proving Siouxie does sound better in the original German ;) … a moody set of left-of-dial covers by singer, actress, fox & Bowie associate Dana Gillespie, including Morrissey’s recent, necessary “Spent the Day in Bed”; and a superb, sepulchral live showing by the Sisters of Mercy.
Worship psycho-surf band Daikaiju daily for good luck & health! At one point, live, La Luz, led by surf chanteuse Shauna Cleveland, harmonized so beautifully that the merging of their voices turned synesthetic – sound gave way to sight and for a minute I “heard” their voices as a white glow – when the muse parts the veil, for a miraculous moment we can see the landscape of imagination itself… where, at art’s Wilde gate, stands Morrissey, hated & hounded, singing your life & mine.
Adore, adore, adore. Adoration, it’s easy to forget, is more synonymous with worship than love. Adore, adore, adore – say it often enough, though, and you begin to hear ardor in there too, ardently.… and ardor is the heat we feel when we love — a love hot enough to raise us to worship; which is a good a word as any for the ecstatic boogie & sweet release we find in the church of tunes.