Wino - A Bottle Of Pills With A Bullet Chaser

  by Andrew Carver

published: 10 / 2 / 2009

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Review

Jeremy DeVine’s Temporary Residence label is well known for lavish packaging and a stimulating roster of bands, including Eluvium (recently the subject of a seven-LP package), post-rockers par excellence Explosions In The Sky, experimentalists Cerberus Shoal and glitch-hopper Cex, as well as handsome vinyl releases by artists such as Will Oldham, Mogwai and Songs: Ohia. Every label has to start somewhere, and Temporary Residence’s origins can be traced back from its current base in Brooklyn, NY to Portland, Oregon, then Baltimore, Maryland to Louisville, Kentucky. That brings us to Wino (not to be confused with the doom rock titan of The Obsessed and St. Vitus), the first band to have a release on the label and the recipient of a career retrospective covering its entire catalogue, 10 years after its dissolution in 1999. The lyrics to leadoff track ‘Dutch Oven’ draw from the boy-wants-girl themes of garage pop, but Aaron Hodge’s distorted howl and the deep grind of the bass and guitar land it deep in the noise ethic of New York bands such as Unsane, Swans and Cop Shoot Cop, Midwest combo Halo of Flies, or the ack-ack-ack of punks like Flipper and The Urinals. ‘Red Wings’ offers tribal drums by Richard Viers, and more electric churn and which almost completely buries the anguished lyrics in the tune’s last 10 seconds. Things clear up a bit following the addition of guitarist Joe Henessy, and one can hear additional musical elements (a bit of saxophone, for example) creep into the music. For every ‘Desperation’, with its scrabbling guitar work, shouted vocals and music as catharsis, there’s a ‘*****’ (yes, that is its name), which has more restrained, reflective vocals. Thirty-six tracks over two CDs is probably more than the casual fan of heavy, spiky music requires, but dedicated fans of the band (or label) will be glad to hear they won’t have to hunt down singles on eBay.

Track Listing:-

1 Dutch Oven
2 Red Wings
3 Yam Hand
4 Dogs
5 Inspiration
6 Desperation
7 One-Eyed Willie
8 Glass Blower
9 A Minute Fifty-One
10 Burn Down The Brick Factory
11 *****
12 Attack Utopia
13 Eon
14 Fast Freddy
15 Make-Out Party
16 Mountain River
17 Heaven
18 Winner Takes Nothing
19 Mensural
20 Johnny Deeper
21 Guns
22 What The Paper Said
23 Downtown
24 Truth Cigar
25 Spiked Heels And Leather
26 Blue Tree
27 Best Friend
28 Red Eye
29 Edward
30 Finish Line
31 Saturday
32 Searchin'
33 In The Light
34 Best Friend
35 Dead Bird Fight
36 My House

Label Links:-

http://temporaryresidence.com/
https://www.facebook.com/temporaryresi
https://twitter.com/tempresltd
https://www.youtube.com/user/temporary
https://plus.google.com/+temporaryresi