Every good record should hold the elusive concept of the Yin and Yang; the soft and hard; the quiet and loud (or in this case, the loud and the LOUDER). 

Despite Terralite and Iudica’s (the band that singer/guitarist Brian Michael and drummer Nate Fidd were previously in) aversion to acoustic guitars, they do venture into more pop balladeering on their debut record as Terralite.

But then again perhaps it’s unfair to judge their work based on any previous effort under their previous Iudica label…

But what is really different about Terrallite compared to Iudica? There was a different bass player, and now there’s another new one.

More significantly in terms of the overall sound, band dynamic, and potential dissociative identity disorder is new member Thom Grover, who is taking on increasing songs as the lead singer and songwriter. This as opposed to Brian Michael who clearly appears to be suited to be band leader, steering the ship unapologetically. 

While Grover’s voice is getting stronger, and his songs (if they are his creative babies completely) are showing more dynamics than Iudica songs, Brian Michael’s writing is still more confident and demands more control. 

While the majority of the songs on the record are good, and, more than ever before — groovy, the thing that stood out to me on the second and third listen through is that there is a slight split of personality happening throughout the record. This may be a Paul & John type thing where previously there was collaboration now the singer is the songwriter and never the twain shall meet; it’s like a mutiny aboard a ship where the crew are loyal but as with every enterprise new blood must flow. And a changing of the guards sometimes presses subtly but relentlessly, like a gigantic elephant in the room..

Yes, after my third listen, I wanted to say: this is a schizophrenic album.

Too late. 

I said it, but perhaps it isn’t entirely fair.

There is some cohesiveness that runs throughout and hints of the embryonic glue that delicately justifies it as a complete album.

You could split the album in two and call it a double EP – but now we’re splitting hairs. 

Despite this tug and pull, the band has pulled something off that is a sign of more great things to come; they are still together and getting better.

I suggest catching them live too, they are a great live band now, but one of the highlights of the record is that it does their live sound justice. That’s not easy to capture.

There are also fewer drum rolls – thank god – but maybe that’s more of a sign of the increasing power and strength of the songwriting than the playing itself.

Michael, for one, has grown as a singer and is perhaps closer to knowing what he wants from music. There is more sophistication in the songwriting and the arrangements. There is more vulnerability in his voice, which is more honest in my opinion, after all, we are not gods.

‘Coming Out’ – here comes the single (I think).. I can definitley hear this one on an alternative rock station. 

(The angels of grunge are wondering where the syringes are).

They remain loyal to their dirty high school blues and mascara-ridden (yet no sign of bleeding black streaks, yet) emo, loud guitar-driven rock n roll.

They are certainly breaking out of their mould, and venturing into new territory (for them). It should make for an even more dynamic show. 

Having said all this, they are true hometown, USA, working-class rockers, and for that, I salute them!

-Terry Chagrin

Editor’s Note — This is a preview. Prototype will be released to the public on November 17th.

If you’re familiar with the current superhip Troy (or Albany or Saratoga where he hails closer to/from) music scene, you’ve heard of Sinkcharmer. Or if not Sinkcharmer, one of Paul Coleman’s other projects. Haley Moley, a band he formed with his wife Jen Maher Coleman and other local musicians Andrea Kosek (aka DJ Goldeedust) Pat Thorne, and Mike Broomhead (the latter two making up DJ Partyhorn). Or maybe Architrave, an already legendary danceable electronic post-punk duo he also formed with his wife Jen. OR any of the dozens of local production and engineering jobs he’s done for other local artists…

Point is, if you’re reading this, you probably know who Paul Coleman is and have heard Sinkcharmer. So we don’t need to describe him to you. But we’re gonna anyway (how else are we gonna write enough to fill up the 100 or so words neededd to fill up this space)?

To us Sinkcharmer’s a cross between late 70s/early 80s post-punk/dance/new wave and east coast 90s lo-fi/alternative artists. In fact, Sinkcharmer began all the way back in the late 90s in Boston. But he seems to have found his home and greatest fanbase here in the Capital District.

Back in 2017 Coleman released ‘Sit Up Straight’, a collection of terrific little sequenced pop gems. This was followed up with ‘vs. Reactor House’, a series of singles and comps. However, to date no full record has been released to as much fanfare as ‘Radical Luck’, an album so sought after by the local press that writers were contacting Coleman begging for pre-releases and interviews before he announced the release date.

Well, as you and I both know your pals at Times Boredom are the most ingenious damned hackers in the business and we bug everyone’s laptop that makes music here in the Capital District. So we didn’t ask. We took! And then, lazy bastards that we are, we just sat around listening to the album and enjoying it so much we didn’t get around to reviewing now, after he’s released it to the general public. So much for the hype.

But fuck do we love what we hear. More and more everytime we play it through. Like previous mentioned releases Coleman balances out electronic drum machines and sequencers with lo-fi nerdy pop vocals and signature postpunk guitar tones (i’ve heard he plays a tenor guitar and switches it to a bass with a pedal — also that he built his own guitar from spare parts he found at the junkyard and several processors he built the same way).

Just like all the great Sinkcharmer albums, what I love about this one is how it seamlessly blends proto-goth rock with lo-fi Lou Barlowesque melodies, post-modern instrumentation and sensibilities. The album begins with reverb laden hollow ringing chords that would fit perfectly on an early Cure album. And then begins the best song about the pandemic I’ve heard as of yet; comparing it to an event with biblical proportions (because when it comes down to it, we all potentially will do so in twenty years). However, unlike the actual flood story, this one doesn’t seem to have an end. We go inside the ark, than go outside, the light’s to bright, back into the Ark! Just like all the times we keep thinking this fucking thing is over.

Season Six Script Planning is a BRILLIANT song about the randomly exciting and terrifying events that are taking place in America right now. America’s treating itself as a television show that was on its way out, so in season 6 we go off the rails, hoping it’ll keep everyone’s attention. But instead it may (or may not) be an entertaining romp, but it’s real fucking life. Whoever’s in control needs to stop fucking around, poking all the bears, making them dance for the cameras because there are serious consequences that no one’s taking seriously but, rather, are just treating like some dumb tv show.

The remainder of the tracks follow similar patterns pitting new wave beats behind sullen post-goth sonic guitar fields and monotonal vocal patterns with catchy hooks. Chaotic Dreams and Dwell seem to almost be a dyad of personal torturous emotions, and represent a far darker more introspective side of Sinkcharmer. Kept and Terrible Protector (the latter of which was originally included on the world changing 518 Covid Comp), are tracks that most remind me of Sinkcharmer’s Dinosaur/Sebadoh tendencies. That mid to late period 90s indie rock vibe with the dance beats is if nothing else a fascinating juxtaposition. And they’re juxtaposed (interposed?) by Stochastic Reality, a highly danceable tune with Nine Inch Nails like descriptions of an eerie controlling invisible power that feeds our pleasure centers to get us to submit.

And then of course there’s the exception of course of the cover of Madeline Darby’s Innovation, which is a terrific take on what’s recently become a Troy scene electro-noise classic. And, as expected, Sinkcharmer like any good folk song preparer makes the song his own; I doubt that people that don’t know the track or read the notes will even know it’s a Darby penned song (though if you’re reading this you should and you should head to Madeline Darby’s bandcamp page after this!)

Sinkcharmer is pulling esoteric threads from four decades of underground music to combine the perfect ear candy for the indie fan in all of us. Thanks for another great album; keep it up!

We know that several of you (as many as 3) are eagerly awaiting this year’s worst local bands issue. However, since we are a non-commercial organization that doesn’t give a fuck what our gigantic audience wants and would rather just make fun of them and ourselves, before we release the results of what some of you (we’ve gotten about 40 so far) think, we’re going to be the assholes we are and endorse who WE want to win.

Friends, Capital District scenesters, college kids and graduates who will only be here for a few years and then move back to the City or hipsters moving on to Portland, the truth is, our area doesn’t deserve Scum Couch. The readers of this particular super-hip avant-garde underground blog aside, our region’s ‘rock’ music (for lack of a better or newer term, since we generally deal in ‘bands’ that play ‘guitars’ and ‘drums’ or ‘synths’ and ‘drum machines’) is defined by 3 general categories; straight/traditional punk and hardcore (tough guy music), indie rock/pop (artsy hipsters and intellectuals), and minor league corporate rock wannabes (3 martini state workers and divorced/separated parents just looking for ‘fun after work!’).

This publication seeks to speak to a shadowy (though increasingly large thanks to a couple of local promotion companies that shall remain nameless — just kidding SUPERDARK SHOUTOUT!!!!) 4th group that is generally ignored by larger publications that actually make money (unless they’re friends or relatives of the writers or somehow got their attention the one night their music critic actually went out to see new bands). This group is a melange of rock, noise, experimentalism, and in general, original, unique, eclectic music creators and appreciators.

And that is where Scum Couch, for the past year in particular, has outshined those of us that thought we were the coolest underground noise makers. Mark O’Brien, the talented genius behind Scum Couch, has a way of blending the most effective parts of the past 40 years of noise rock, experimentalism, improvisation, straight noise music and most likely a bunch of really intellectual academic John Cage type stuff (that we really don’t know that much about and have never honestly listened to ourselves b/c we really like to listen to stuff like the Beatles and Nirvana too much and come on, we’re just being honest here…) into something that is often transcendent, always entertaining, and unique as fuck.

Everything Scum Couch records, though seemingly often entirely improvisational (much like the so-called lo-fi genre) is completely filled with only the specific sounds that are called for, the instrumentation that’s necessary, and the harsh, sarcastic and cynical vocals and lyrics that are called for to be appreciated by the disaffected, bored, and restless underground of the day that only seems to be growing further and further from commercial pop, never to be joined again.

Furthermore, Scum Couch completely disabuses any listener of the notion that anything it creates could ever be or is in any way seeking to be generally popular or saleable. Perhaps the most important barometer for those of us that genuinely appreciate left field experimental music is; could this ever be co-opted? Could this ‘music’ ever be in a car commercial?

Unless our entire society undergoes a completely radical transformation soon, the answer is, for Scum Couch, a definitive no. No to commercial co-optation. No to traditional band structure. No to traditional rock music or instrumentation. No to narrative structure, no to ballads, no to anything resembling what’s been on the radio in the United States throughout its history.

And yet the talent behind the project is unmistakeable. So many artist/musicians try to achieve a similar sound or record like, say, 2016’s ‘Weak Existence’ without anything near the level of success. This is noise. This is music. This is dreadful. Unlistenable. Brilliant.

And if there were any question of O’Brien’s self awareness as a talented anti-artist, anti-musician, which is often the highest definition of high art and pretention, his 2018 recording is titled ‘Contrived’, and the previous release of 2017 was titled ‘Ignorant Bore’. Both brilliant pieces of noise collages and challenging instrumentation that titles itself in a self-deprecating manner, knowing that all art and whatsoever be it called ‘serendipitous’, ‘improvizational’, back to Surrealist ‘escritures automatique’, dada’s ‘Exquisite Corpse’, Impressionism’s ‘En Plein Air’..

Dammit Georges you Pretentious frenchman get the fuck out of here!

“Aww-hhah hah!  I weel not apologizais! I weell take ma baguette and go, but you weell hear from mois aussi!  Je mean again! Allons Eee!”

The point we were trying to make before we started sounding so much like pretentious twats even we needed to put an end to it (and that we think Mark O’Brian was with his title) is that anything that is said to be arrived at naturally and without artifice is a total lie. Everything that is put on the canvass or the record is, definitively, CONTRIVED.

And with that, we realize that this entire article has become overly pretentious in our effusive praise of the avant-garde sounds of Scum Couch TM. So much so that instead of the kind of deadpan tawdry humor this publication trades in, we’ve written what appear to be the liner notes next to a painting for a graduate project in art history or a very poorly written draft piece for an application for New York Times art section writer. We had another 20 paragraphs on conceptual art and musique concrete, but we really don’t honestly understand much of that shit and just like to rock out with a little pseudo-intellectualism and pretention.  Not too much.

Yeah, we suck. And so does Scum Couch. So much so, that, if we had our druthers, they would win the ‘worst local band’ award for 2019. Because they’re so fucking good it’s like they come from a completely different world than the Capital District, a world where tough guy hardcore doesn’t compete with college radio friendly indie pop and pseudo corporate rock for after hours state workers and normal radio listening parents for the biggest slice of the tiny live music going audience.

Scum Couch isn’t looking for our vote. Scum Couch earned it. Long may they offend our ears, our tastes, and our notions of what ‘music’ is and should be! Long may they show a new generation of Capital District underground noise artists the way forward, a way without interest in monetary remuneration, a way without looking to be big and pretentious on the scene by standing on stage and pretending to be better than everyone by just looking at them instead of making music, a way of making intelligent music not out of a desire get laid (because they don’t play football or make enough money to go to Republican fundraisers), a blah blah blah blah blah we love you Scum Couch! Don’t ever change!

Hopefully next week we’ll put together the results of our actual survey for worst local band and you’ll be happy to see YOUR band or whatever band YOU voted for. But today is for our pick Scum Couch, because we hold you all in contempt, because you can’t appreciate what’s right in front of you! We hate you all so much!

Just kidding. We love our audience! See you next week when hopefully you’ll actually read!

FYI this was actually a very difficult decision to make. White Devil and the 666 and Blood Blood Blood were being heavily considered for our endorsement, however, we’re guessing they did better in the larger poll and therefore wouldn’t want or appreciate our lame personal endorsements.

And now, each of our writer/editors would like to make a personal note of appreciation for Scum Couch;

Scott Koenig: We love you! Stay cool! Stay cool forever!

DJ THINK NOISE: Nobody else knows shit about shit!  You make us old timers and our deep, torturous, forgettable local history proud!

Monty Cantsin: Art! Pretention! Artifice! Noise! Rock! Whatever it is you do, we love it! Keep on doing it!

Stephen Connick: Have a gr8 summer!

Nenee Tartaulus: I just came back to get my stuff. What’s going on here?

Anatoly Petronin: I do not vote for you. Sirsy forever!

Georges Robert: I geeve you stinky french kisses! Aw-hah haa!

Errr, just as a note we had to invent some writers and add some new ones because most of our other writers from more famous areas of the scene/bands didn’t want to contribute cause they, are, uh, mad at us for not writing about their band. Ok they’re mad at us for writing about their band too much. And not being funny.  And sending them messages on Facebook late at night when we’ve drunk too much about how cool they are and why can’t we be that cool and what kind of pickups does your guitars have and can we be friends IRL at the mall tomorrow…