Flat Worms

(Los Angeles, USA /// Castle Face Records, Drag City Records)

Four years after they went all the way to Antarctica, Flat Worms are back in gen pop with the rest of us – but, as intoned on the album opener “Sigalert”, “back again like I never was”. Is this a nod to the way time passes over our sorely vexed synapses? Or are we to believe that there’s hope to be found in this broken world? Kick back with Witness Marks and see what other traces Flat Worms have left us in the dust.

The album title alone leaves a foreboding impression. But look closer – “witness marks” aren’t something out of a forensic analysis – they’re actually practical: scratches placed in old clocks designed to aid continued maintenance down the road.

Sure, there’s big questions and more on the board; primarily if we’re at all distinct from the absurdity coming down around us, or just another character in the mirror? Flat Worms are looking inward this time, outlining personal space in relation to themselves and others – sometimes, even people they barely know. Among the slabs of slate-grey discontent, the flowers of compassion are blooming, and the simmering power of their trio grows exponentially.

Working once again with Ty Segall, Flat Worms continue to find new answers by digging into themselves and playing their kind of rock: hard and flat, bass and drums thrusting stalwartly forward with conviction, guitar twisting and spinning in outrage, deadpan vocals decrying a dire set of circumstances.

The democracy of working together, so often messy and frustrating, was found to be a powerful release for Justin, Tim and Will. Acting as one, Flat Worms navigated challenging times by coming together, finding release in the clockwork repetitions of practice and the shared creative space they occupied together against the encroaching world.

In the short century of their existence, Flat Worms have agitated against the status quo with a disquieting lyric bent to emphasize the psychosis of the times. These are positions taken within songs, sung out to individuals in the world. As evidenced by the lyrics-

“But I know I can always see you at the show
Even though it’s only temporary and it’s time to go”

Witness Marks surveys an evolving sense of community. Flat Worms are dedicated to persevering and using the power of their collective. Come witness!

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Cable Ties

(Melbourne, Australia // Poison City Records, Merge Records)

Cable Ties are a fierce, tense rock’n’roll trio. They take the three-minute punk burner and stretch it past breaking point to deliver smouldering feminist anthems. Post-punk and garage rock hammered together by a relentless rhythmic pulse. Jenny McKechnie channels her struggles into songs that resonate deeply, giving voice to feelings often buried in modern life. Shauna Boyle and Nick Brown are a rhythm section anchored in Stooges primitivism—relentlessly hammering out a bedrock for McKechnie’s guitar pyrotechnics and vocal wallop. Three friends summoning a rhythmic tide to deliver anthems that turn latent anxieties into a rallying cry.

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Silver Synthetic

(New Orleans, USA // Third Man Records)

Cory Hanson

(Los Angeles, USA // Drag City Records)

Cory Hanson’s third solo LP follows upon 2020’s luminescent Pale Horse Rider, upping the heat to molten levels, six strings at a time. In search of further adventures, Cory draws with vampiric glee from the madness coursing through the world outside; a spiraling shitshow that’s reawakened a compulsion in him—an old ambition, even!—to crush brutality and elegance together into a fresh set of rocks to hail down upon us.

Western Cum is a high-stepping, hard-dancing, first love/heartbreak, tonight’s-the-night, future nostalgia kind of good time—the sound of guitars through the speakers of luxury cars. Like the dream you had once, alone, asleep in an amplifier, blasting Guns N’ Roses through every last orifice in your body. And it’s coming through!

It’s another side of midnight somewhere; high o’clock too, and the dark, cactaceaen fantasias of the previous incarnation have hardened and dried in Cory’s pre-apocalyptic garden of choice, a sun-blinded plain of sedimentary rock. Down the highway, beyond the horizon, through the looking glass, etc—he’s fixed for rough times ahead, a gunslinger/anti-hero of legend/infamy, back in town with axe blazing and a rhythm trio dubbed “Slowhand” walking up the crazy horse he rode in on. You ready to boogie?

Western Cum’s map to the treasure is less about pastiche, though; more toward executing the songs by executioner’s axe, rolling their decapitated rhythm heads and soaring melodies, the panoply of Cory’s melodic impulses with guitars, guitars, guitars. Harmony leads are just the tip of the iceberg, but be quick — the guitars like to melt everything in their path! The eight songs of Western Cum are driven by the stalwart bass of brother Casey Hanson and the drums of Evan Backer with a few passing acoustics from Cory and the intermittent spirit-moans of Tyler Nuffer’s steel guitar. The quartet sound—two guitars, bass and drums—acts as beat-making principle/phrasing device, as well as template for Cory’s layers of six-string and vocal textures. From the rooftop of their musical safe house—the band in their makeshift hut and Cory ensconced in an outhouse—they let loose with a blast both face-melting and mind-blowing: a social service that gives constipation a good name.

With Western Cum, this debauchedand shameless world is redeemed in the same breath as it is repudiated. A massing of voices and guitars form an almost post-gospel harmony, bright and burgeoning, engorging the thermostat, prising the pressure from your chest before the final wink-out. Maybe it’s a mirage…but those things are just
another part of reality, ain’t they?

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WAND

(Los Angeles, USA // Drag City Records)

In late 2013ish Los Angeles California, Wand formed up and got right on it, playing, writing & plotting a path forward – a not-undifficult task for a special new band come to life in the twenty-teens and audaciously self-identifying as “Wand”. The original group – Cory Hanson (guitar, vocals), Lee Landey (bass), Evan Burrows (drums) and Daniel Martens (guitar) – recorded Ganglion Reef before too long and attracted the attentions of GOD? Records, In the Red and Drag City all at once. A deal was dreamed up and hammered down: first album with GOD?, second with In the Red, and then Drag City. What would the result of THAT be?

So began the years of furious activity; near-constant days of touring and recording and releasing. Between August 2014 and September 2017, Wand released Ganglion Reef, Golem, 1000 Days and Plum, a period in which they also reduced from quartet to trio (less Daniel) and then expanded to quintet (with the addition of Robbie Cody (guitar) and Sofia Arreguin (keys, vocals, percussion)). All this action had launched them onto the world-wide stage, which suggested increasingly more to do all the time. No prob: everyone was playing in other bands, and Cory started a solo career too. No time like the present! A maxi-EP, “Perfume”, appeared in the Spring of 2018 and the double-album Laughing Matter dropped in April 2019. Touring continued apace; it was only the CoCo craze of the following year that that forced any downtime – and even that gap was filled with the mixing of an epic live document, the 2xLP Spiders In the Rain, dropped in the pan in 2022. All this while Evan focused on his long-time other band, Behavior, plus Pink Trash Can, and Robby joined in on both endeavors, while Sofia played with Shannon Lay and Kamikaze Palm Tree, and Cory wrote and recorded two more solo albums!

When the smoke cleared on all the pandammit action, Lee and Sofia had decided it was time to get on beyond Wand, something the other three were still dedicated to doing while remaining in the band. Ayund… clock on the wall said it was time for another album, as it was suddenly a few years since Laughing Matter. That’s when Vertigo set in. Robbie began to record the new stuff at his place. The new Wand directive: recording only, no writing. That would come later. Surely the next great Wand album was somewhere at this end of this rainbow? Yep – by late 2023, all of it had boiled down to album-size, and Vertigo was soon slated for release on July 26, 2024. In the process, Wand had grown an extra hand – or more accurately, become a quartet again, with the addition of Evan Backer (known as Evan Too, for those keeping track). And what ho, more dates had been scheduled and played, and more scheduled. For the earth is round and we must continue in orbit. For Wand, this means North America in the summer and Europe in the fall, with Mars TBA. What next, man?

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