CCR HEADCLEANER

YELLOWGREENRED
Always a pleasure to obtain a new offering from the Bay Area’s CCR Headcleaner, a group of at least five people that seem to feed off each other’s sweaty energy in the creation of their unhinged, punk-adjacent stoner noise. Can’t go wrong with these four new home-recorded tunes, that’s for sure – opener “Mission Control” sounds like early ’80s GG Allin (musically, not vocally) until it’s caught up in a cloud of High Rise-style combustion. That’s my favorite tune here, but the rest are great too, like a slightly more focused Hospitals, Timmy’s Organism without any sense of kitsch, or perhaps if Keiji Haino was granted full conductorship of his favorite Chrome tunes. You can really sense the paranoia and frustration that comes with living in a once hippie-centric enclave that is increasingly eaten alive by Silicon Valley tech-bro gentrification (particularly in the tune “Ipso Facto Alcohol”), and I’m thankful that these folks react by channeling psych-rock with the same free-wheeling insanity of Royal Trux. I hope that CCR Headcleaner can continue to survive in this hostile environment, or at least take some pigs out with ’em when they go.

SMASHIN’ TRANSISTORS

CCR Headcleaner is BACK! Not that they may have gone away or anything but after digging what they dealt for a bit and then not feeling all too much of a buzz with that album they did for In The Red in 2016, I wasn’t too sure whether I’d come back around again to check out their stash.

Whatever caused that record to fizzle like a sparkler instead of exploding like a brick of M-80’s has been fixed here. “Mission Control” blasts straight off the earth like a rocket built from a million Harley Panhead motors and straight to into a black smoked galaxy. It lands on a planet inhabited by psychomotor stimulanted space critters who are building a race of Black Sabbath/Helios Creed supermonsters. Upon meeting the crew though, the planet bows to their feet for already achieving the plan.

Like Godzilla sleeping in a frozen underwater world who is then angrily awoken forced to come to the surface again, “Unified” starts like it is shaded with dark hues of blue and green before making a ruckus and turning the whole city a flaming red. It’s a quiet, loud, quiet, loud thing but it doesn’t sound like it was lifted from the Scorpions “No One Like You” or whatever Pixies song Nirvana got the idea from. It’s more like they watched a chain of electrical grid burst a series of blinding light and took it from there.

On the flipside, “Ipso Facto Alcohol” it’s like they’re trying to figure out jazz math but decide it’s just too brain-wracking. The result of a stumbly creepy crawl through the land of the Magic Band where they meet a creature feature movie host with a deep penchant for quaaludes.

By the time the record makes re-entry to this world with a sizzled sonic boom and the infinite echo of “Lobotomize The Cops” you brain and eardrums may have already been destroyed by an asteroid.

When this record arrived in my mailbox, the envelope was shrinkwrapped in plastic. The mailer had a bunch of wet stains all over it. I’d like to think that the band soaked it in marijuana tincture and it was not just a foul up from the USPS.

GET YOU A COPY HERE: https://ccrheadcleaner.bigcartel.com

still-single:

RECOMMENDED

Wow, I wonder if the band meant to use such a perfect title. I haven’t come across any “game-changer” exaltations based on how this album has been received by the surrounding semi-scumscape it wittingly or unwittingly targets, or at the very least how it sits with the two preceding CCR Headcleaner full-lengths. Then again, it’s not like I’ve looked for it. In a gambling mood, I guess.

Tear Down the Wall tears down some shit, alright. Let’s start with the rampant misuse of “dark-punk” or “noise-punk” in the descriptive or promotional context of the musical subset/sub-genre/sub-culture CCR Headcleaner now looks down upon from an exclusive perch shared with a tiny handful of contemporaneous entities that have also gone the distance behind albums released this year. Are we seeing a return of the same ineffable extra something-or-other that bounced In the Red well above the competition circa mid-to-late-‘90s (and maybe even into this century a bit)? Is that a clue? Not really, given that Spray Paint is one of the contemporaries I had in mind, to obviously clarify the mutually-shared exceptionalism to be rooted in something more profound than stylistic commonalities. And that’s “This record sounds nothing like Spray Paint” for anyone who might need a map or companion guide at this point.

The next topic needs to be the production, as what’s usually saved for last is too crucial a factor in this record’s ability to blow well past the “good” marker and on up to threaten the gatekeepers of “great”. Rare is it that I’m looking for the production/engineering credit halfway through an album’s second track, with similar impulses in the past ending with Steve Albini’s name staring back at me more than that of any other known sonic alchemist. Therefore, it was refreshing, to say the least, to see that Ty Segall recorded this monster. Serious kudos to him for capturing the essence AND sound of real heaviness as opposed to the idea or practice of “heavy” within the confines of a movement/scene/sub-genre.

Then there’s the songwriting. Tear Down the Wall is no one-dimensional parade of nihilistic dirtbag bulldozing from carpet to ceiling or just noisy-as-fuck excessiveness for the sake of it (other fellow travelers … I’m looking at you). There’s howling desperation, soulfulness, heart and genuine mood-moving force behind most if not all of this relatively disparate set of burners. From ultra-thick and formidable riffers to stuff that hints at the best Desert Sessions fare to fried-out psych that never bastardizes the term. I hate to end with this conclusion, but this record might be too good for its own good. Let’s hope to hell Tear Down the Wall finds an audience that understands what it has been given. (http://www.intheredrecords.com)
(Andrew Earles)