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Kill The Lights #86
A Column by Reef Valmont

'Engage…'

Who is the happiest column in the world? KTL 86, that's who.

'Oops #1'

At last Friday's At last Friday's Drop CD release show at Sit n' Spin, Piper Down's Shane Berry ("he makes a sound like a trainwreck") was man enough to control the Loveless merch booth for us for quite the long period of time. He was taking names from people who said they would be back for a CD and threatening to hunt them down of they took off without a brand spanky new copy of 'The New Horror Guidelines' in their pocket, he was hawking wares like he was auditioning for a role in 'Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels II,' he was the man. The only error the mighty Berry made was giving 3 Loveless t's to a beautiful young woman who only wanted to buy 2. Oops! That beautiful woman was, though, my very own fiancee so KTL understands the error and even applauds it. Next week - Shane Berry ("sound…trainwreck") sells Loveless shares to Tiffany Richards at less than market value!

'Text Of The Week'

KTL reads a lot of album reviews. Probably too many. We even read several reviews of the new Pearl Jam album today. However, just last night, whilst reading a review in these very pages of the new Voyager One album, we came across what we consider the finest, sweeetest, most spot-on sentence of the week. Read the beautiful words of Matthew Parker ("he's crazy like a banana") here then jump over and read the whole thing. And yes, we are fully aware of how picking a review of a Loveless release written about in Pando by someone we know is completely and utterly 'conflict of interest,' but honestly, bitchcakes, we really don't give a fuck. Enjoy.

"Voyager One create a seamless musical existence so free from the ironic-pop/rock trappings of the local scene that it's often hard to remember that the quartet hails from Seattle and not some dusky planet with three moons and time-lapse desert sunset clouds."

'Radiohead Are Just Genesis With A Distortion Pedal'

No, they're not, but that's what a computer-created voice says at the end of the 'Pop Song' EP just put out by Australian band The Drugs. The reason we mention this is that your very own Piper Down ALSO have an OK Computer voice at the end of THEIR EP (the piss-poor demo) which proclaims Piper Down to be the greatest band in the universe and lists off the bandmembers, including, in his second mention of the week, Shane 'giveaway' Berry ("he still makes a sound like a trainwreck") How many bands out there have taken the OK Comp voice idea and fucked with it for comic effect? KTL guesses AT LEAST twelve. Maybe thirteen. If you know of any bands that do the same thing and want to let KTL know, write them down, print it out, roll it up real tight, dip it in astroglide and bend over.

'Oops #2'

With a record-setting THIRD mention, it's that man Berry again, the King of 'Oops!' If you picked up The Seattle Weekly this week - and we KNOW that some of you do - you will have seen a new feature called 'Whadchagit?' where ravenous Weekly freelancers jump on unsuspecting record-buyers outside record stores, snap their photo and ask them what they just bought. The very first 'Whadchagit?' featured (does he have a professional publicist or WHAT?) Shane "free t-shirts ahoy!" Berry ("if he don't make your ass shake then get your brain checked") outside of the wonderful Orpheum on Broadway. Oops! Shane was holding the new Nevada Bachelors CD, when we all know he should have been holding a Loveless release. Luckily for Shane, The Weekly Dogs didn't spot the (thankfully) cellophane-wrapped 'Greatest Hits of Samantha Fox' CD nestling in his cargo pants.

'Fight Club, WA'

Commiserations go out to our pal John Richards, your voice of the morning, who seperated his shoulder this past weekend when he formed his own fight club with the bums outside the QFC on 15th. Never underestimate the pent-up rage of a down-on-his-luck man wearing a bushy beard and carrying a big stick.

'Records Of The Week Gently Reviewed'

Stereolab - First Of The Microbe Hunters (WEA/Elektra)

Whenever I hear Stereolab I get the same mental image of Stereolab fans sitting in their bedrooms dissecting all the bleeps and whirs of the latest release. Probably pasty-faced young men with inadequate social skills who spend way too long staring at lava lamps looking for molten images of their not-yet-met true love's face who, lets be honest, they will never meet because they're pasty-faced social inadequates who listen to fuckin' Stereolab. I have other problems with the band too. First, I don't trust anyone with a half-French singer. Fully French, sure, I'll take that, but who the fuck would admit to being half-French when they could get away with being fully anything else in the world? Even Canadian. Second, take away all the trademarked dots and loops and Stereolab are just Sade with less emotion, and Sade was never flaming and throbbing with passion to begin with, was she? She could have done ads for Maytag Iceboxes. Third, (and someone has recently said this way better than I'm about to,) it's all very well spending hours poring over your pretentious-fantastic songtitles to get them just so for the geeks, but it's a fine line between 'Echo Stylus Reverberates Sweetly Through The Space Fridge' and 'Frodo Was A Paranoid Dwarf, Spoketh Zandark The Magnificent Wizard.' Next!

Shannon Stephens - So Gentle Your Arms (Self)

From icy to sultry in just one line. Local chanteuse Shannon is popular in the house of John Richards, who played me this song a few months back from an advance CD he received in The Loserboy Mailbox. I understand John's love of Shannon, because Shannon sounds like she's about to crawl across the floor and snake her way into your lap after you watch her slowly strip and rub herself in baby oil. Not in a skanky strip-club dollars-down-the-panties way, you understand, but in a loving together-and-adoring-lets-have-dirty-dirty-sex way. Now I can't hear Shannon without unwittingly having the image of The Richards Boudoir popping into my head, John in his best Loveless Records boxers getting all Barry White and shit. You, however, have never seen John's Love Chamber so you should enjoy this sweet, sweet dirty music without these unwanted - and quite frankly - disturbing connotations. Cursed is the columnist….

The Drugs - Jacques Chirac (Elastic)

It's back to French-bashing with Australia's greatest band named after a bad habit. With some romper-stomper keyboard craziness and scuzzy blitzkrieg guitars, vocalist Ian Baddley and the rest of The Drugs run down pop's back alleyway like a trio of shaven-haired Russell Crowes in trenchcoats, kicking the shit out of anything Gallic they might run across. "We went to Paris," they scream, like pissed off children, "fucking shopping! We didn't want to! But we did!" The rest of the song features a chorus telling Parisians to fuck right off and eat their frogs, several times. The song comes with the following disclaimer, too - "The Middle 8 of this song contains vulgar sexual references spoken in French. It is intended as fun. The DRUGS apologise to any French speaking people* that may take offence to this section." (*Except the Belgians who can go and fuck themselves) Genius, of sorts.

Primal Scream - Shoot Speed Kill Light (Astralwerks)

It seems as if radio is picking up on this, the real final track on The Scream's new album 'XTRMNTR,' and rightly fucking so. I know it's only May, and December seems a million miles away, but 'Shoot Speed Kill Light' is, thus far, the undisputed song-of-the-year. Guesting on this white-hot slab of sexually tense art-rock-techno is the one and only Bernard Sumner of New Order, doing that guitar sound that only Bernard Sumner of New Order can do. He's getting all 'Power Corruption And Lies' and 'Low-life' and therefore, obviously, this song is one of the most beautiful things in the world. On top of this you have Sir Bobby Gillespie shaking his hair and slurring out the title of the song over and over until your head spins, and….oh man, I gotta go lie down and listen to Stereolab, this is just too much all at once.