Crow - My Kind of Pain
There is a good range of contemporary music playing in this town, but there aren't many gigs you can go to and would have the privilege to say -- in twenty or even thirty years time -- I was there. These days, bands aren't as shambolic or erratic as they were: lead singers remember the words, band members turn up, dangerous items are not thrown to or from the stage, and punters generally do not walk out of a gig bloodied or harmed. Not that it used to happen often, but it happened surely enough.
Seeing music and live performances is pretty safe these days. You can't even passively smoke, which is also a benefit. I didn't grow up in Melbourne. I grew up almost everywhere but here. The best part of my time was spent in Sydney. All of Australia's most influential music passed through that town, but not all of it got off the ground. It was there I saw drunken lead singers slouch off the stage mid-song and mid-set after floundering in their own lyrics. Where delayed supports would stare into the wings wondering where the heck the bass player was, and how were they going to play without him. Where I had knives thrown at me from the stage and also pulled beside me. Where I escorted bloodied friends outside.
But the music was uncompromised.
I saw almost every Crow gig and bought everything they released until 1995. Peter Fenton brought the original line-up together with Peter Archer - both on guitars and vocals, his brother John Fenton on drums, and Jim Woff on bass. You may have heard of Peter Fenton for his acting, but you may not have heard of Crow. That's a damn shame.
I was never back-stage with Crow, but reviews report the relationships between them were volatile. These may have been referring to later performances, because every Crow gig I saw was tight and packed with a driving intensity. Maybe that was one of the reasons why they were reported as "the best band in Australia since the Birthday Party" by Juice magazine. They were freaking amazing live and they translated that to their recordings.
But their volatility is evident. I have been through their back catalogue, and they have some real shiners. The intensity rises and falls. I don't know how they could have sustained it otherwise.
I don't have a favourite Crow album. Of all the bands I've collected, I rarely do. Most bands sustain what they do through their oeuvre. You'd hope so. I would not have followed them for years and still play their albums if they hadn't. For this review I've chosen My Kind of Pain, but my love of Crow's songs is across all the albums that I own.
Listen to it here: https://halfacow.bandcamp.com/album/my-kind-of-pain
I don't have a favourite Crow album. Of all the bands I've collected, I rarely do. Most bands sustain what they do through their oeuvre. You'd hope so. I would not have followed them for years and still play their albums if they hadn't. For this review I've chosen My Kind of Pain, but my love of Crow's songs is across all the albums that I own.
Listen to it here: https://halfacow.bandcamp.com/album/my-kind-of-pain
"Prisoner (for Jean Genet)" opens reluctantly, and builds following the lyrical theme. It's a lacklustre start with effects that seem more predictable these days. The song falters with a skip in the recording into "Your Motive", so oppositionally upbeat. The listener gets carried away with Fenton, who can be heard in the background singing off-lyric.
The album sways into "Railhead", one of my favourite all-time, and favourite Crow songs. It appears on two albums: The full length "My Kind of Pain", and the single "Railhead". (A very generous 'single'. I would call it an EP, with five songs.) The opening bass line opens to an ungainly guitar. Archer's vocals eventually come in on the third of the four-four beat. Everything is off kilter, but that's what I love. I have always been hooked by irregular timings. That, and Woff's bass that catches you unaware, can get you in the heart of your music libido. You can't help getting caught, but they put you down slowly.
Listen to the grazing guitar in the background of "Eyes R Bruised". It hangs like reaction on pain. Capturing that kind of emotion is what Crow do well. Listen to how it chimes in with the bass about two-thirds through. These guys know how to sonically translate what you know intrinsically.
If you don't know what "Swive" means, you should look it up. Like so many of Crow's titles (Railhead, Charley Horses, Helicon, Roll the Holy) they are intelligent. Another distinguisher, and what makes them great. They not only know how to define what you feel, but they open the field where you may not have travelled.
Crow is like a dark, weathered galleon lumbering and hulking in a beating storm. Maybe that's why I love what they do. When you've been there, you need someone who can tell the story about what you could not relate. They may have travelled different seas, but they know the route. And here is the example of the strength and breadth of their oeuvre: they stretch and encapsulate the anguish of space in disorder, where we see the bittersweet beauty that we cannot claim except in memory or longing. Like the eye in the storm that gives way when you don't expect it, "LHLH" (Love Hate, Love Heart), gives you beautiful respite.
This album was produced by Steve Albini. Reading between the lines, he didn't do the job the way Crow expected, and the album had to be remixed locally after he went home. This album was recorded late in 1993. Listen to the guitars -- this album was before its time, and dare I say, ripped off by a whole bunch of American bands through the middle of the 1990s. Albini might not have left as much as the band hoped for, but I reckon he took a little more than he should have from "Never Said". There's a fine legacy here -- that's another example of what makes this band seminal.
"How & Why Wonder", like "Railhead", can carry you away. Listen to how it builds to the first minute. Those dirty guitars claim and redeem, then leave you on the flotsam. When a band can make your heart involuntarily bodysurf, then it wins me over. Like Pony Face , these guys are close on musical god-ship.
"Light" gives a beautiful musical progression as the album tapers back to the dawn. Listen to the lighthouse guitar in the background like a glare that blinds and falls, while the other works with the bass to create the rhythmic wave of progression. But then the rain comes in on the cymbals and then the drums, and the song gets thrown remorselessly off course.
The slow and deliberate guitars in "EJ" emulate the dark heart, while they call for redemption, and recognise the obdurate futility in the lyrics. Woff's bass takes it away at 1:06 and 2:38, emulating the truth we don't see in the pain of darkness.
Archer introduces "The Old Blue Rockpile" like a man on a chain gang. The guitars and bass follow him in vocal line. The tremolo suggests the haze of too many hours in the sun. Archer holds the strain at the midpoint, and the bass swirls like a carrion-seeker. The beauty, the ability to create this scape musically is, again, a part of the genius that makes this band seminal.
Crow create beautiful melées that swing through the left to right speakers and traverse erratic terrains. Their songs reel on giddy guitars and drive you to the precipice, just to spin you around before they gangle back across the field. But they know what they're doing. Like weathered seamen they are wise to the elements that carve and challenge. They know how to hold it steady in the storm and eke headway. Their haggardness is also their nobility.
Crow did not get the recognition they deserved. The ship broke apart because the lookout and the keeper had too wide a purview. But their's is legend.
Get your copy here: https://halfacow.bandcamp.com/album/my-kind-of-pain
Listen to the grazing guitar in the background of "Eyes R Bruised". It hangs like reaction on pain. Capturing that kind of emotion is what Crow do well. Listen to how it chimes in with the bass about two-thirds through. These guys know how to sonically translate what you know intrinsically.
If you don't know what "Swive" means, you should look it up. Like so many of Crow's titles (Railhead, Charley Horses, Helicon, Roll the Holy) they are intelligent. Another distinguisher, and what makes them great. They not only know how to define what you feel, but they open the field where you may not have travelled.
Crow is like a dark, weathered galleon lumbering and hulking in a beating storm. Maybe that's why I love what they do. When you've been there, you need someone who can tell the story about what you could not relate. They may have travelled different seas, but they know the route. And here is the example of the strength and breadth of their oeuvre: they stretch and encapsulate the anguish of space in disorder, where we see the bittersweet beauty that we cannot claim except in memory or longing. Like the eye in the storm that gives way when you don't expect it, "LHLH" (Love Hate, Love Heart), gives you beautiful respite.
This album was produced by Steve Albini. Reading between the lines, he didn't do the job the way Crow expected, and the album had to be remixed locally after he went home. This album was recorded late in 1993. Listen to the guitars -- this album was before its time, and dare I say, ripped off by a whole bunch of American bands through the middle of the 1990s. Albini might not have left as much as the band hoped for, but I reckon he took a little more than he should have from "Never Said". There's a fine legacy here -- that's another example of what makes this band seminal.
"How & Why Wonder", like "Railhead", can carry you away. Listen to how it builds to the first minute. Those dirty guitars claim and redeem, then leave you on the flotsam. When a band can make your heart involuntarily bodysurf, then it wins me over. Like Pony Face , these guys are close on musical god-ship.
"Light" gives a beautiful musical progression as the album tapers back to the dawn. Listen to the lighthouse guitar in the background like a glare that blinds and falls, while the other works with the bass to create the rhythmic wave of progression. But then the rain comes in on the cymbals and then the drums, and the song gets thrown remorselessly off course.
The slow and deliberate guitars in "EJ" emulate the dark heart, while they call for redemption, and recognise the obdurate futility in the lyrics. Woff's bass takes it away at 1:06 and 2:38, emulating the truth we don't see in the pain of darkness.
Archer introduces "The Old Blue Rockpile" like a man on a chain gang. The guitars and bass follow him in vocal line. The tremolo suggests the haze of too many hours in the sun. Archer holds the strain at the midpoint, and the bass swirls like a carrion-seeker. The beauty, the ability to create this scape musically is, again, a part of the genius that makes this band seminal.
Crow create beautiful melées that swing through the left to right speakers and traverse erratic terrains. Their songs reel on giddy guitars and drive you to the precipice, just to spin you around before they gangle back across the field. But they know what they're doing. Like weathered seamen they are wise to the elements that carve and challenge. They know how to hold it steady in the storm and eke headway. Their haggardness is also their nobility.
Crow did not get the recognition they deserved. The ship broke apart because the lookout and the keeper had too wide a purview. But their's is legend.
Get your copy here: https://halfacow.bandcamp.com/album/my-kind-of-pain
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