Rock Is Dead, Long Live Rock.
Although I’ve not been updating as often as I should or could, I did want to spend a moment saying a fond farewell to two bands that meant a great deal to me over the last few years. First off, anyone who had Myspace connections to The Stabilisers got a rather stark message on Sunday afternoon: “The Stabilisers have split up.” No news beyond that, but I do remember the band saying in some previous updates that they were thinking of a hiatus for family stuff for various members, and I guess a full-on breakup was the best way to resolve things eventually. Hopefully we’ll hear from the various members down the line.
Next up, shortly after they released their long overdue lp Walk Talk Rhythm Roam, Chicago’s The Living Blue surprised few by announcing a split up. I gather that most of the original band was gone, other than singer/songwriter/guitarist Steven Ucherek, so that makes some sense. The good news here is that Ucherek already has a new music project going, a band called Village. No, I’m not sold on the name yet, but the music? The music is awesome. It sounds not very much at all like what The Living Blue (or even The Blackouts) were doing musically–no one’s gonna call this “garage rock”. Instead, the Village tracks Ucherek has made available have a sort of loose-limbed spontaneity that induce an almost psychedelic vibe, but without resorting to gimmicks like delay pedals and backwards loops and whatnot. Again, connecting the Myspace dots, Ucherek blogged that he’d be going to Portland to record a full-length Village disc in March, and just updated his status there with “New Record Is In The Can”. Awesome. I’m not sure whether the Village tracks available on their Myspace site are the finished songs, or if they’re versions of those songs Ucherek pretty much self-recorded in Chicago while TLB was in it’s death throes….but either way these are some terrific tunes and I can’t wait to hear the album that results.
Popnarcotic 