The 1986 Listening Post - Steven Kilbey - Unearthed

Steven Kilbey - Unearthed

#9/1166

January 2 1986

Steven Kilbey

Unearthed

Genre: Acoustic sort of dream pop

4.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Swampdrone

I’ve had mixed feelings about The Church. Sometimes they are just okay and other times they are fantastic. But I’ve always felt that they were following in the footsteps of The Cure. 

Here Steven Kilbey follows his heart to a more mellow and almost sweeter place and, in doing so, he belies his true influencers: Bauhaus. No, this doesn’t sound like Bauhaus but it DOES sound like what the Bauhaus guys will become, namely, Love and Rockets. 

Perhaps Kilbey heart L&R’s Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven or maybe he was just heading in the same direction and Ash and J. I don’t know but this hearkens to that sound and I totally dig it. (“Transference” is one of the closest examples.

Another excellent Australian import. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/unearthed/1475405769

The 1986 Listening Post - The Bangles - In a Different Light

The Bangles - In a Different Light

#8/1165

January 1986

The Bangles

In a Different Light

Genre: pop rock

3.75 out of 5

Highlights:

In a Different Light

If She Knew What She Wants

Following

It wasn’t a secret how much I adored The Bangles debut. A paisley pop connection perfection. 

Then they bought a song from Mr. paisley park himself and suddenly weren’t themselves. 

I know everyone adores “Manic Monday” but I maintain (and have for 35 years) that’s its a trite Tods off of bad rhymes and dumber ideas. I mean it sounds like a track that didn’t make it in to Around the World In a Day. And that album wasn’t good. Has anyone read the lyrics to this thing? She is poised cUz her lover chose the night before she had to go to work to have sex. It’s a rock song about complaining about having sex. 

What the what??

 The group that brought us “Hero Takes a fall” and “Going Down To Liverpool now moves units with dumbassery like “Walk Like an Egyptian”. (It’s stupid but it’s damned catchy, argh)

When they write their own shit it’s so so so much better. And, of course, “September Gurls” is such a delicious tune is impossible to screw It up. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/in-a-different-light/185868471?i=185868506

The 1986 Listening Post - Racer X - Street Lethal

Racer X - Street Lethal

#7/1164

January 1 1986

Racer X

Street Lethal

Genre: Speed Metal

4.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Frenzy

Street Lethal

Y. R. O. 

Right off the bat, you know what I like about this? They know what they are. They have a song called “Y.R.O.” which means, Yngwie Rip Off. I mean, come on. Gotta give em red for that. 

Also, it’s shredtastic. 

I didn’t much gravitate to this stuff when I was of age. But I loved Ozzy and Maiden and the like at the time. As I turned more and more to alternative music, partially due to a deep desire to be “hip”, I never returned to metal. One thing I’ve come to learn through this project is how much I really like it when it’s great. 

And this is great. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/street-lethal-feat-paul-gilbert/1049046409

The 1986 Listening Post - Bride - Show No Mercy

Bride - Show No Mercy

#6/1163

January 1 1986

Bride

Show No Mercy

Genre: Christian Metal

2.25 out of 5

The opening track tells me everything. This band took the riff from “Myself to Myself” by Romeo Void and repurposed it into shriek rock and no one is better for it. 

And they are still releasing records as late as last year. 

I’ll take my Jesus rock with a little less devil horns, thanks. 

Towards the middle of the record they sound like an early version of The Donnas, only nowhere near as fun or talented and then, on “Follow Your Heart” it’s full on Broadway Rock Musical and this swirling spectacle continues on Side Two and I wish they had started there. I’m not sure the rating would be higher, cuz it’s not great, but it’s weirdly interesting. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/show-no-mercy/155786560

The 1986 Listening Post - Vinnie Moore - Mind's Eye

Vinnie Moore - Mind's Eye

#5/1162

January 1 1986

Vinnie Moore

Mind’s Eye

Genre: Instrumental Rock

3.5 out of 5

Highlights:

In Control

Lifeforce

It’s been a while since I heard some quality guitar noodling. Rising Force was two years ago and the follow up left me…wanting.

I never heard of Vinnie Moore and he easily has the most banal name for a Rawk Gawd. But, boy can he play. 

For a while I wondered what he would sound like in an actual band with actual songs. Then I read that he was in Vicious Rumors and that album was…b…a…d…

Oh, well. This isn’t that. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/minds-eye/1049110830

The 1986 Listening Post - Wipers - Land of the Lost

Wipers - Land of the Lost

#4/1161

January 1 1986

Wipers

Land of the Lost

Genre: Alternative

3.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Just a Dream Away

Yeah, I know. This is considered “punk” but if it’s anything I’ve learned from the past few spins of Wipers records it’s that whatever was being classified as “punk” was quickly morphing into the sounds that we would come to associate with “alternative”, “120 Minutes” and, eventually, mainstream 90s radio.

Just listen to that first track. There’s Sonic Youth and King Missile and Nirvana all over that shit. 

Unfortunately it doesn’t hold me the way Over the Edge or Straight Ahead did. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/land-of-the-lost/983124741

The 1986 Listening Post - John Prine - German Afternoons

John Prine - German Afternoons

#3/1160

January 1 1986

John Prine

German Afternoons

Genre: Folk Rock

3.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

Yeah, I know. Not entirely sure Price should be here but here’s the thing: Pop music is splintering in the 80s in ways heretofore unseen. The dam is bursting and just about everything counts, you know? Personally, I think this is all Malcolm McLaren’s doing. His incorporation of African rhythms through Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow really opened the floodgates. And also, Talking Heads, for sure. 

So, why include Price? 

I’ve never really known much of his work however one of my favorite songs of the 90s is on the album. Not his version, though. It’s Nanci Griffith’s version of “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” that put the name “John Prine” in my ears. Hers is a more mournful song, the original being a straight forward country folk ditty but it’s in that simple straightforwardness and the comparison of the two that we learn and realize that the song is just so perfect. 

Including Prine allows me to lay the groundwork for inclusion of bands like The Builders and the Butchers which are on the horizon…20 years down the line. Sometimes I feel like I’m listening to Jimmy Buffett but I guess that’s this album’s wheelhouse. 

I’ve not returned to Griffith’s album inasmuch as the last song on it reminds me of my later daughter too much. I was listening to it a lot when she was first diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis so this is the closest I’ve been to that song in a long time. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/german-afternoons/1102975433

The 1986 Listening Post - The Georgia Satellites - Georgia Satellites

The Georgia Satellites - Georgia Satellites

#2/1159

January 1 1986

The Georgia Satellites

Georgia Satellites

Genre: Southern Rock

4.75 out of 5

Highlights:

Keep Your Hands To Yourself

Railroad Steel

Battleship Chains

Can’t Stand the Pain

Take Jason and the Scorchers and remove Jason’s goody weirdness. Take George Thorogood and add some grime. That’s what Georgia Satellites sounds like to me.

More honest about their love for this sound than Bon Jovi ever was. Better at it then .38 Special. A helluva lot sexier then ZZ Top. 

From top to bottom this album is fire and fun. Having never heard it until now gives me mixed emotions. I bet I would’ve had it in rotation with Beat Farmers but I get to hear it for the first time with older, semi-mature ears. 

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/the-georgia-satellites/721019

The 1986 Listening Post - Big Black - Atomizer

Big Black - Atomizer

#1/1158

January 1 1986

Big Black

Atomizer

Genre: Post-Rock

4.75 out of 5

Highlights:

Jordan, Minnesota

Passing Complexion

Kerosene

Stinking Drunk

Bazooka Joe

What a great way to start off the new year. Straddling the line between punk and industrial Big Black is funny, nihilistic and pummeling. 

For the first time in a long time I actually want to go back and listen to their earlier EPs.

Wow.

Here’s a thing I didn’t know: Music industry giant Steve Albini is a founder of this thing. Again. Wow. 

There’s much hype about the song “Kerosene”, both for it’s content and it’s music. It is a post-rock thing of industrial wonder, as far as I’m concerned.

I love this record. It’s the logical next step in this sound’s evolution. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/atomizer-remastered/1120138003

The 1985 Listening Post - Jerry Jerry & the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra - Road Gore: The Band That Drank Too Much

Jerry Jerry & the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra - Road Gore: The Band That Drank Too Much

#526/1157

1985 Housekeeping

Jerry Jerry & the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra

Road Gore: The Band That Drank Too Much

Genre: Rockabilly Retro

3.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Gospel Surfer

Baby’s On Fire

Usually we don’t go back into previous years to review stuff we missed. We’re like a freight train at The Listening Post. 500 records a year will do that to you. 

But this one came to our attention before we started posting the new year’s reviews so, it juuuuuuust made the cut.

This is one of those records that, had I had an extra $1.00 on me while hanging around Sounds in the Village I might’ve plunked it down and taken this home for a spin. Oh, who’m I kidding? I’d’ve looked at that cover and figured it was a throwback to the early days of Rock N Roll and probably passed and waited until my roommate (the discoverer of Chet Bolin and Montevideo) brought it to the dorm. Unless it was the Uncle Sam cover and then I would’ve judged it as an incongruous melding of punk and retro-swing.

It kind of is that. 

And we would probably have played it, liked it, smiled, and then gave it away at the one and only Yeast Infection concerts, having scribbled the name of our band on it with masking tape. 

Cuz we did that. 

This record starts off like a promising precursor to Psychobilly and then just wheedles itself into pedestrian nostalgia rock.

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/jerry-jerry-and-the-sons-of-rhythm-orchestra/1204693461