#36: Drunken delusions (vol. I & II)
#36: Drunken delusions (vol. I & II)
Kid Acne; The Goon Sax; Smoko Ono; Revenge Wife; Buzzed & Loaded
Kid Acne
Hip-hop artist Kid Acne came my way via press release for his new single, “Flame Wars,” but he’s best known as a prolific illustrator and print-maker in his native England. That tracks, because does this guy look like a rapper?
Rappers (theoretically) can look like anyone, considering hip-hop is the world’s most popular music, but there’s some “Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins” kinda shit going on in that photo. A quick trip through Kid Acne’s discography reveals the kind of thick English accent Van Dyke (or Lin-Manuel Miranda) could only dream of replicating. The last line of Kid Acne’s bio? “And he still has acne.”
The Goon Sax
Gastro Obscura tells me that “goon” is slang for cheap wine in Australia, where it’s sold in disposable silver bags. (The continent invented boxed wine, after all, and wedding/baby showers have never been the same.) Apparently there’s a whole subculture of goon-sack games and people crafting empty ones into rafts and pillows and stuff—or in the case of this trio from Brisbane, starting an indie band. They began during high school, which wasn’t all that long ago:
The next tweet may as well have been “Kyle Ryan is far older than every member of the Goon Sax.” Unlike my high school band, which played a few shows and was promptly forgotten, the Goon Sax released two albums, signed to Matador, and worked with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey) for their latest, Mirror II. Maybe they had a head start because bassist Louis Forster is the son of Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens, a band that looms so large in Brisbane there’s even a bridge named after them. I’m less inclined to think the association helped much. While the band’s early material drew easy comparisons to their (literal) forefathers, Mirror II is something else altogether. Maybe they’ll get their own bridge some day.
Smoko Ono
Hasn’t Yoko Ono endured enough?
Chakra Fucker
I can find no evidence of this band’s existence online—googling “Chakra Fucker” brings back a bunch of super sketchy-looking links—but they were listed on a show flyer I picked up at a coffee shop in LA. I love a band that’s so underground they don’t exist on the internet yet. Even Nihilist Cunt had an Instagram account!
Revenge Wife
I vaguely remember seeing another good potential BNB name on that Chakra Fucker flyer, and I had Revenge Wife beneath them on my name list. So I hoped I could find proof of Chakra Fucker’s existence via Revenge Wife, but no dice. (Dammit, they’re always one step ahead!)
Revenge Wife is the latest “music, video and art project” of Elizabeth Nistico, formerly of indie-pop duo Holychild.
Holychild did pretty well for themselves, with a couple albums on Glassnote and a few big festival appearances, but the experience was also pretty awful for Nistico, judging by what she has said in interviews and in a letter she wrote to herself upon the release of her first single, “Earthquake.” A small taste:
I had an A&R who told my bandmate he looked at my vagina (up my skirt). After we told the label, I kid you not, this fucking guy looked at me during the most uncomfortable lunch and told me “you could have gotten me fired.” I seriously think he was expecting me to apologize to him.
That’s just one of a few gross things in that letter, which makes me think the “Revenge” part of her new moniker is aspirational.
Buzzed & Loaded
This is exactly the kind of photo I’d expect to find on buzzedandloaded.com:
That’s Buzz Brown, drummer. Drum rack, check. Two—two!—china cymbals, check. What looks like two kick drums, check. Aviator shades, check. Doo rag, check. It’s all here. The song titles fit too: “Whiskey Alibi,” “Love Ain’t Pretty,” “Don’t Mean Nothin’,” um, “Funk on the One.” You can find all of those on Drunken Delusions Vol. I & II, available to hear for free on YouTube. Just keep your thoughts to yourself:
Any comments you may have about the lyric video for “Knock ’Em” are welcome, though. (“Finalist for Rock Song of the Year at the JMA’s [Worlds Largest Independent Music Awards Show] picked from 39,000 submissions by Music Industry Experts,” boasts the description.) That’s good, because I have a question: Why is the entire video just a long shot of a bare, lithe (presumably) female torso covered with water droplets?
It has zero comments and 32 views so far.
POST-SCRIPTS
The “JMAs” are short for the Josie Music Awards, which are part of “the Josie Network of Brands, which includes a radio show, a cosmetics line, a pet boutique, the Independent Country Music Hall of Fame, and other “unique, cutting-edge brands.” They all fall under the mother-daughter team of Tinamarie and Josie Passantino. There’s a lot to unpack on their bursting-at-the-seams website , but I’ll save that for another time.
“Goon Sax” makes me think of Josh Modell’s highly controversial A.V. Club Inventory, “Don’t Blow It: 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined By Saxophone.”
Hey, speaking of The A.V. Club: My former colleagues Keith Phipps and Scott Tobias have started a Substack newsletter, The Reveal, about movies (“and a little TV”). Check it out.
Back with the bonus edition soon, I swear! I’m doing the interview for it in a few days!