Tabs Out

Staffers – In the Pigeonhole

1.19.21 by Matty McPherson

I’ll admit I have a nasty habit of leaving the punk tapes on my racks. And I apologize! Because there are a lot of little strange nuggets passing through, in those black and white cases. Staffers’ In the Pigeonhole is one such that kinda fell through the crevices throughout the last three months. It’s a shame because for 26 rambunctious minutes, Staffers treat punk like it is a rowdy night at the local high school bar where they just restored the mechanical bull.

Now you might think it a little too hyperbolic or sketchy. No, not at all! DC-implant Ryan McKeever has a knack for the “loud post-punk pop” sound synonymous with Parkay Quarts. His history opening for like minded fellows Bodega, Lithics, and Media Jeweler suggest a kinship for taking the wry sound and squeezing out pop ditties and shanties. And his lyrics are equally brimming hazed dejections on presiding in this perpetual hell world. Yet, nine tracks, it never feels like it’s rushing, just brimming with natural flourishes and one-ups.

For In the Pigeonhole, McKeever is aided by like- minded pedal steelers, violinists, and saxophonists. Staffers have a cathartic kind of feel to their tunes. His sing-speak maintains this shambolic nature that pushes the sound further into folksy bar rock. Aided by partner in crime, Anna McClellan, their harmonies go above yelling into the void, begging you to join in the moment on “Though I Could Do It”. Other times, it is found through Colin Duckworth’s pedal steel action that introduces a country twang as clean as a keg pour with a two-finger head (for the ipa heads at home). 

On the standout last track, “Just Another Tuesday”, both the harmonies and twang meet in unison for a sublime “last call” this side of the Moss Cantina. Yeah, another Tuesday has been wasted, along with another year. But, that’s just the cycle of how things go. If anything, Staffers seem to know that, and their nice cut of post-punk pop to reflect keeps things warm as the nights stay chilled.

Edition of 200 available here and here

Hali Palombo – Cylinder Loops

1.14.21 by Matty McPherson

Last year, Nate Cross, the labelbossman behind Astral Spirits, pivoted Astral Editions into the cassette game. In an email interview last spring, he told me he was hoping Astral Editions would become a home for outsider and fringe tunes not strictly relegated to jazz. The inaugural tape Voice Games, a collaboration between Ka Baird and x was practically a game of telephone gone towards its most phonetic and surrealist. A novel split from the typical wheelhouse of Astral Spirits, that implied a greater freedom in Astral Edition’s sonic trajectory.

Hali Palombo’s Cylinder Loops is the first release of 2021 on Astral Editions and upon first glance it may look like a minor one: 12 loops clocking in at 18 minutes. Yet, I’ve been sitting with the loops for a month now and it might be the next keystone release for defining the label’s sound. 

Palombo’s 2019 and 2020 works have been tinkering with shortwave radio ghosts and fragments; Cherry Ripe practically summons dispatches from the bomb shelters of the atomic era. Sometimes mournful or monolithic, yet with an undercurrent of warmth and bittersweetness to this era. On Cylinder Loops, Palombo takes a dozen fragments (courtesy of UCSB’s Cylinder Archive), highlighting the ghosts in those auditory fragments. Palombo’s loops will be quite familiar should you have a sweet tooth for Lelyand Kirby and Ghost Box (there lies a hauntology tag at the bottom of its bandcamp page).

The cylinder loops have a wicked sense of space they conjure up. Demented carnivals (Loop 8), funeral liturgy (Loop 4), or flickering nitrate print (Loop 3) all provide images of a pre-WWI society on the fringe of a modernity it will soon be crushed under. Palombo then bends that sense of temporality; often pushing the sounds of these loops towards dispatches from futures akin to the dream worlds of Tim Hecker’s Harmony in Ultraviolet (Loop 6/9). The entire affair is precise, not a moment wasted. As a result, it lends itself both to trips across the midwest as much as a rainy morning lost in a foggy haze. You’ll best want to pick this one up before it fades away.

First pressing of 200 with artwork by Tiny Little Hammers available here

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