Hard Skin - "Skinhead" [buy]
Hard Skin - "Council Estate" [buy]

Until I heard Hard Skin, the sum of my knowledge of Oi was limited to two Cock Sparrer songs, the few sets I caught by excellent Montreal skins Jeunesse Apatride, and a Sham 69 song I heard on a mixtape when I was a sixteen. Since then I've listened to some early Blitz and been obsessed with French Oi-revivalists Rixe, but on the whole I still know practically nothing about the genre.

But I friggin' love Hard Skin. Repping for their London neighbourhood of Gipsy Hill, they've written four albums and a bunch of singles of catchy skinhead anthems delivered in a furious cockney growl. Firmly mid-tempo, with giant guitar leads, Hard Skin's songs rescue the golden age of working-class rock n roll from the dustbin of history. Hard Skin play into the proudest traditions of the sub-genre: celebrating boozing at the pub, glory days and lost friends, and endlessly slag off the coppers in songs with ominous football hooligan gang vocals.

And if this all sounds tough as hell, there's also a self-mocking, tongue-in-cheek character at the heart of their songs. They're not necessarily joking, but they're not entirely serious either. And it's the black humour of their approach that makes these songs about the bleak conditions of life in working-class England (is a Brexit concept album forthcoming? we can only hope) get under your skin.

Hard Skin make two rare appearances in Canada this week. They play Ottawa on Thursday, March 16 and Montreal at the Oi! St. Patrick's Weekend, this Saturday, March 18 at Katacombes (1635 St. Laurent). More info here.

(Mural by Miami singer Ivy Jeanne in 949 Market Squat, 2001; photo by Miami guitarist Erick Lyle)

Miami - "The City That Never Sleeps" [buy the reissue of the crucial split with Shotwell!]

I've tried and tried to write about Miami, the band not the city, from California not Florida, a band that was hugely important to me at a weird time of excessive feelings and long Greyhound bus rides, but instead I just end up playing this new reissue of The City That Never Sleeps over and over again with a stupid smile on my face.

Here are the approaches I tried:
1) A nostalgic scene of first hearing the record as my pen-pal Cindy drove me to the white sands of Pensacola Beach.
2) Realization that I am old: Can you believe they're re-issuing this record? I remember when it first came out!
3) History lesson: Miami played generator shows on Mission Street in post-tech bubble San Francisco. Its members were (and still are; RIP Matty Luv) squatters, artists, zinesters, anti-gentrification activists involved in creating temporary autonomous zones and free spaces in a hostile, rapidly-changing city.
4) Feels: Listen to that howl. Has there ever been a sound that so perfectly captures the feeling of being young, alive, and flat broke in a soul-crushing city that you love and hate? (Well has there?) AwooooOOooooOOoo

These songs are fire. The City That Never Sleeps captures a tuneful, soulful, raggedy, powerful sound. Miami drew from X and The Minutemen and made something imperishably their own. This record was a beacon in the early 2000s, a bat-signal that said STAY PUNK and DON'T BE AFRAID OF CHANGE. Still good lessons today.

Cerro Verde - "I Lost a Game" [Buy]

(I hope I didn't write this story yet)

Me and my girlfriend, we used to play this game.

When we get home, before we go into our apartment, we both guess where our cat is. And we go in really really really quietly.

point system is set for difficulty of the guess. For example, my cat being at the door greeting us would be 1 point since it's most likely place. On the couch laying down, would be 2 points, on the bed, would be 2 points, by the window laying down, would be 2 points.

However, there are extreme place such as kitchen chair, 4 points. Under the credenza in the living room, 4 points.

Once, he was accidentally locked in the closet(I felt bad:( ) That would be 15 points.

If both of us didn't get it right, our cat gets a point.

I used to go for bigger points since I lost everytime, so I used to guess crazy one like in the oven smelling burned food, 29 points etc etc.

I lost this game.

I miss my cat, Moses RIP.

Earth Girls - "Say Goodnight" [buy]

Alex drew jagged lines on the scratch pad attached to the pen display. Other shoppers at the papeterie before her had left their marks behind, zig-zags, spirals, and squiggles in every colour. She dropped the purple gel-point back into its slot and picked up the neighbouring green felt-tipped marker, took off the cap, and drew a straight line. This one, she thought, and carried it to the cash register.

Tzusing - "4 Floors Of Whores" [Buy]

I have been listening to this song a lot. I thought this gives me energy since I have been out of shape and feeling tired all the time.

I imagined this would be a great work out song.

But I'm lazy that I have new years resolution for next year already to start working out in 2018.

Meanwhile, someone was getting rid of Nintendo Wii and I thought maybe I would use Wii Fit to lose weight at home! Then, I realized I tried that already 7 years ago and sold my wii.

I just lay in my bed and close my eyes and imagine myself lifting weight with this song. It's a good start!

ps. I dont like the song title though:( I looked up and it references to this building. Not sure intent of the artist. I hope it's not sexisim intended.

Moon - "I Come From Downtown" [buy]

The moon is always changing. Sometimes we see it as a thin crescent, a celestial toe-nail clipping. Other times it's a little wider, a big white grin staring down at us. In the fall it hangs full and orange, only a few feet above the farm fields. And a couple nights out of every month it's brilliant and bone white, lighting your walk home from the show.

Halifax's Moon have taken direction from their lunar namesake and embraced this perpetual change. I've seen them play live as a five-piece psych gang and also as a down-to-business power trio. But while their personnel is variable, groove is in the heart of all their songs, a funky tide-pulling force propelling them forward.

Drawing on the mid-90s Thrill Jockey catalogue, but subtracting its jazz affect, "I Come From Downtown" on Moon's new Paradise String EP is their funkiest cut yet. The tight rhythm section is filled out with chorus-laden guitar, synths, and tape effects. The un-rock, almost conversational, vocals invite the listener downtown for a visit. Come check out the different way things are done over here, the song summons us. This is the spiritual downtown, of course, the traditional home of artists and others. A spikey solo late in the song is a further enticement. And while you're downtown you might look up, notice the moon, and see it differently.

(photo by Spike)

The Beach Boys - "Surfer Girl (Take 6)"
Migos - "Bad and Boujee (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)

Sometimes the future works perfect. Like, last week, an app I was using saw through my playlists and directly into my mood and, via some chain of algorithms I could never possibly even pretend to begin to understand, delivered unto me this fucking wonderful Beach Boys demo I'd never heard before. The Beach Boys in February! What a gift! They all sound like they're standing in an empty California swimming pool, harmonizing at the moon under an impossible blanket of blinking stars. Plus that melancholy licking all faint and sweet just along the edges? Come on.

Beach Boys outtakes in particular are fascinating because they capture these songs in moments before their sadness and their pure glittering wonder have been totally balanced, so things always list a little to one side or the other. Some songs sound a little corny, kinda naked; others feel too echoey, like you're walking around your bachelor apartment trailed by a pack of velvet-tuxedoed ghosts who won't stop crooning lonely anthems in the background while you heat up a frozen pizza or whatever. Good harmony, the kind that rings you like a tuning fork, might make you feel bigger than anything else in the world, but it's a tenuous thing - the incomprehensible, un-fake-able product of luck and intent and technical skill and emotional charge. That's why charmless pop songs (or any songs, really) can leave you feeling like you ate a bag of steak-dinner-flavoured chips when you thought you were gonna have an actual meal; that's your very soul rejecting bad harmony, the disingenuous kind. The flatness of it.

Anyway. The point of all this is that sometimes algorithms don't work at all, because I listened to nothing but Beach Boys demos for like a week solid, and ever since, the robot brain has been trying to sell me on all these monotonously sun-dappled beige-y floating-guitar bands, the kind whose "jangly hooks" play in the background of the TV version of your life while you're out for a pleasant bike ride. I do not have anything against this type of song per se - I like a nice bike ride as much as anyone, and every single night of my life I dream about summer - but its recommendation as a Beach Boys chaser feels a little narrow-minded. As if the thing that gives me goosebumps about that music is primarily its sunniness. What I want is is for real harmony to run through me like a charge; I want to get the wind knocked out of me by convergence, by a song that feels joyful and haunting and sharp and familiar and brand new all depending on which way the light hits it, because it contains all those things at once, and more. The kind of balance that feels fragile and temporary and present; entirely, perfectly itself.

[buy Culture / Becoming The Beach Boys]