VANEK'S TOP LIST OF 2015

This thing was on top of our year-end list.

2015 was a year that went by entirely quickly, but when I sat back to think about what new music stood out I came up with a decent list pretty quickly. In Missoula I think we were lucky to have a major renovation done to our largest real-deal, non-sports hall live music venue, the Wilma Theater, which had been in dire need of it. The Wilma was always a funky and sweet place, and while I tend to prefer my buildings well past their prime and dingy to new and shiny, you can only see Yo La Tengo so many times with sub par audio and not start to wonder. So, thanks to the Top Hat's Nick Checota, the place sounds and looks great and here's to a sweet roster in 2016.

Additionally, this August's Total Fest was the last one, you can read about why here. I think it was the correct way to wrap it up, and I encourage people to direct a good amount of their live-show attention to smaller and mid-sized venues like the ZACC, VFW, Palace and Stage 112, all of which are helping keep Missoula vibrant with affordable shows chock-a-block with great locals, and amazing touring national talent. Camp Daze will happen June 2-4, 2016 and I'll be there.

V/A Long Time Comin': Lost Sounds From the Treasure State
Unquestionably, this double LP is at the tip top of my listening heap for 2015. This thing took Dave Martens (Best Westerns, Magpies, etc. etc.) many years to assemble, and his hard work digging up the great, never-released, or long-forgotten gems included on here speaks to a garage rock past in Montana that had scenes from Sidney to Kalispell and all points in between. It fascinates me that Montana bands were getting national air time and attention via the more democratized and culturally important radio. There are as many stories behind this record as their are bands, and the copious liner notes help contextualize all the great stuff that was going on about fifty+ years ago. The first pressing is selling through quickly. A+ stuff.

Dan Deacon "Gliss Riffer"
Dan's ideas continue to push electronic music and pop music in general, and I continue to really dig what he does, as indescribable as it can be.

Broken Water "Wrought"
This great band just called it quits, after probably 8 years of doing it. I always found their sheets of sound mesmerizingly hopeful and great.

Ciudad Lineal  "El Nuevo Hombre"
Spaniards (or I think actually Catelonians) Ciudad Lineal from Barcelona make decidedly 80s Cold War synth jams. Kid of Cure-y, I guess, but a little more awkward and eastern euro vibed.

Hammerhead "New Directionz
Duh. Hammerhead regrouped fully and officially this year, with Jeff and Paul's return to the snowy and windswept prairie of the north. And they self-released a full-on return-to-everything-you-loved LP.

Shahs "The Bodyguard"
Missoulians Shahs released a great full length this year, and it's a progression from their mostly Tom Helgerson dreamy tropical synth to something a little more layered and complex. Sorry this sounds like Wine Spectator. Trust me, mon.

DIÄT "Positive Engery"
Australian two-piece living in Berlin, making decidedly un-modern sounding and cold post punk/new wave. I hate saying the words "post punk" as much as you hate reading them, but I think they're pretty close to correct here. Damnation is this great. Heavily, heavily rotated.

Benjamin Von Wildenhaus "II"
As the title says, this is Benjamin Von Wildenhaus's second LP, and his first was a revelation. This one continues to mine the same great vein of subtle and wild, uh, guitarscapes. Uggh, right? Who said that word would be okay?

Miss Lana Rebel and Kevin Michael Mayfield "The Midtown Island Sessions"
Most of these are in no particular order, but this record is my co-top record of 2015. We'd been waiting impatiently for the next phase of Lana and Kevin's output, following up on their excellent A Real Subtle Beauty, and this album rings true to all the greatness of their songwriting and performance abilities. Heavy rotation.

Flesh World "the Wild Animals In My Life"
More stellar, depressed but frenetic kind of post punk, this time from somebody from Limp Wrist. I really dug this.

Swamp Ritual "S/T" 
Heavy Missoulians whose riff mastery became pretty clear in 2015. Riffin' bong-rock at its finest, with only a bass and drums behind it.

Shopping "Why Choose"
British band whose sound is like a kind of modernized Gang of Four. Super LP.

Nots "We Are Nots"
Memphis band on Goner who played here. Niki saw them and gave me the CD, I loved it.

Sleaford Mods "Key Markets"
British (I guess) hip hop that's so smart and political that it's kind of creating its own world around it and their documentary Invisible Britain is apparently great news too. Here's hoping that Big Sky Doc Fest or the Roxy get it next year.

John Carpenter "Lost Themes"
Arguably, the thing I waited most anxiously for in 2015, and it didn't disappoint one bit.

Shannon and the Clams "Gone By the Dawn"
I always have a blast watching this band. They're incredibly good musicians, and songwriters and something about them just makes them transcend so much of the rest of what's out there.

Live:
Fireballs of Freedom at Total Fest.
Red Fang at the Palace.
Big Business at Total Fest.
Earthless at the Top Hat.
The Whip at Total Fest.
Dead at Total Fest.
Black Cobra at Total Fest.
Built To Spill at the Badlander.
Humpy at Total Fest.
Everyday Sinners at Total Fest.
I think I'll need to get out of the house more this year.

HAMMERHEAD TONIGHT (MONDAY, OCTOBER 5) AT THE VFW

Hammerhead.

The 1990's were a curious time. Folks interested in underground music were hugely record label-conscious, or at least I and most of my friends were. You got a lot of stuff just because Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, or Tom Hazelmyer had put it out on their Sub Pop or Amphetamine Reptile labels, respectively (or SST, CZ, Kill Rock Stars, Boner, etc.). I thought of places as having their own sounds. Seattle always sounded very much like halfway between Mudhoney and Gas Huffer to me. The Twin Cities sounded like Hüsker Dü, Boise like Treepeople, Olympia like Beat Happening, Ellensburg like the Screaming Trees. It didn't make a ton of sense in retrospect, but so it goes, right?

All that has largely faded with the advent of ala-carte song purchasing/stealing courtesy of the internet's "here's everything, no waiting necessary." and youtube to MP3 capabilities, etc. My point isn't to say anything was better about the old way, just to kind of set the tone for how Hammerhead came onto my radar. Missoula was somewhat of a stopping point between the Twin Cities and Seattle, and we hosted a lot of the bands who's music got released by Tom Hazelmyer's Amphetamine Reptile or "Amrep" label. We had the Cows, God Bullies, Janitor Joe, Steel Pole Bathtub, and probably several more I'm not remembering through town. And regardless of whether anybody knew anything about the band or their music, there was some kind of a cache that came with being associated with this label that had put out all this raw, weird, angry noise.

Hammerhead were different, though. They had a paranoia and desperation about their music that just kind of set them apart, and made the others seem a bit like more of an act. Hammerhead were from Fargo/Moorehead, and came with the full-on endorsement of North Dakota transplants the Fireballs of Freedom who helped add to the super-human mystique that surrounded the group. It didn't hurt that Hammerhead were and are a spot-on tight power trio, with great musicianship, better tones and huge volume. They stopped playing or broke up, not sure what the exact story is, right at the end of the '90s. Jeff Mooridian and Paul Erickson went on to form Vaz, which has been very productive for the past 15 years, releasing some of the decade's best music, from my vantage point.

Roughly five years ago rumors started that Hammerhead was reforming, if ever so briefly, to play the Amrep 25th anniversary show. They also used the occasion to record a few songs for an EP, called "Memory Hole." We got them out for a Total Fest set shortly after that, and they continued to play sporadically, recorded an album called "Global Depression" for Learning Curve. This summer they released a record called "New Directionz" and are doing their first tour in something like 15 years to support. They're coming out with the band Qui, who played with the Jesus Lizard's David Yow for a while. Both bands and Missoulians Naked Limbs play tonight, Monday October 5th at the VFW in Missoula. Show starts at 9PM, $6. Here's a nice video to whet your appetite.

MOSTLY-GIRL PUNK PARIAHS: SASSHOLE

Guest Blogger: Becky Hensley

Moving to Missoula was a transformative part of who I have become.

I was coming down off some seriously bad vibes from living in a small town in Wyoming and the only answer seemed to be moving to Montana and shacking up with my boyfriend who had moved there months earlier to live with his brother.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was moving to the Volumen house. The first one, actually.And from the moment I pulled my car into the city, packed with everything I could fit in a beat up ’86 Buick Century, life was different.

My gut told me that the boyfriend wasn’t going to pan out, but I stuck it out hoping I’d find a friend or two to help make sense of staying in Missoula.

The Volumen dudes suggested I meet up with Sasshole.

A phone call came in, ”Meet us at Squire’s Pub” - I could hear laughing in the background and for a moment I felt like it might be a prank.

I had heard about these Sasshole ladies and what I had heard scared the living shit out of me.

Stories had filtered through emails from my boyfriend about these women. Kia, Jen & Milli would go harder and faster than anyone else out there. They’d put cigarettes out on your face, drink you under the table…literally, and if you couldn’t keep up…GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY.

Sitting across from them, I was nervous - trying so hard to be cool. They wore chokers, smoked cigarettes, wore ringer tees paired with sparkling vintage jewelry, and swallowed back bottles of beer in such an elegant and effortless way.

They were rebel girls. They encapsulated every part of how I had idealized Riot Grrrl culture and they were immediately the queens of my world.

After our first encounter, I found a home with these weird and wonderful and sometimes fucking terrifying women. They made me laugh, got me into parties, shared their beer with me, and became my very best friends. They supported me to pursue boys and be confident, they didn’t get mad when I puked on their butts or slept on their couches, and whether they knew or not, they enabled me to grow into an empowered woman.

They were passionate about their lives and they lived every moment like it was about to explode.

This passion and insanity plays into every part of what Sasshole is as a band.

Sasshole is silly, horrifying, offensive, dark as fuck, and always irreverent. They never take themselves too seriously, but you can always tell when they’re proud of the arrangements they’ve put together or a song is particularly well crafted. Because that part is important too…but they don’t really care if you know or not.

Kia’s voice is urgent and mewling and it’s sexy as hell. Her stage presence feels a little off beat, but always ends up connecting with the rest of the pieces of the band.

Milli is a force to be reckoned with. Her rock stance on lock, she plays her bass hard and she stares down the audience. Her voice punctuates the places where Kia’s falls away. She’s a powerhouse.

Girl drummers rule and Jen is no exception. She kills it and manages a flourish or two while rocking a serious brown lip and throwing her curls around. She is cute and dangerous and doesn’t have anything to prove.

And although I’ve fan-girl’d the heck out of the ladies of the band, Dave is one of my favorite guitar players in Missoula. He’s serious and deliberate and he shreds. He’s the straight man, literally, to this wiley crew and it’s always a treat to hear Dave shout along with Kia and Milli.

To say Sasshole changed my life would be an intense understatement. 

People talk about the soundtrack of their lives and I can say without a doubt that the music scene of Missoula in the early 2000s was mine.

I tried to use the present tense to talk about Sasshole as a band because in my heart they never broke up. They never took a break for kids or jobs. They’ve always been a band to me. And even after this last show, they still will be.

I’d recommend you not miss their set at Total Fest this year. And don’t be surprised if you end up covered in corn or peanuts or kitty litter.

It’s happened before.

sassholereunion
Ladieeees and gentlemen! Preeeesenting: JENNIFER LEAH TACHOVSKY and her band!
Posted by Lee Conway on Saturday, April 30, 2011

KETTLEHOUSE: BEER STEEPED IN ROCK AND ROLL.

Double Haul IPA: Decant or Drink from can.

KettleHouse started in a modest version of its current Myrtle Street location in the second half of the 1990s as you-brew place, with nice stainless 10 gallon brew kettles and carboys for rent, brewing supplies for sale and a business plan centered around Missoula's student/low bagger population not having the means to buy brewing gear, but wanting like hell to brew. That business did pretty well for a number of years, but it wasn't until they started turning some of their own recipes loose from the taps that the place started to fill on up and become a stalwart corner of Missoula's beer scene that it's become. Before Kettlehouse, there were Bayern and Big Sky, both great outfits in their own right, but Kettlehouse's game change for Missoula was the fact that they brought their great flagship beer recipes and a great vibe in their centrally-located, lived-in-and-okay-with-it, Myrtle St. taproom.

It's a place you might hear some P Funk, loud. Or Iron Maiden. Or Prince. For years, Kettlehouse' Al Pils won best bartender in Missoula, although technically his tending was limited to pouring Kettlehouse brew. Pils is cut more from the publican cloth than bartender style anyhow, writing long screeds on a white board about some NFL team or star whom he'd gotten sideways with recently, and having a believer's passion in the awesome elixir coming out of K-hole's taps. It's not hard to be evangelical about good beer, and Kettlehouse's beer is great. Myrtle St. location's expanded, it's kept its original beer laboratory charm, with that same great lived in feel.

Missoula's best bartender.

Kettlehouse has been a part of Total Fest in some way or another since we began.We still pickup kegs of Eddy Out pale ale for all our band barbecues, and they help us out by throwing a pint night our way to help raise funds for the festival.

And that's what's happening this Wednesday, May 13 over on the North Side location, on N. 1st St. By the ZACC! We get a percent of sales all evening, and if we hit 400 beers sold, well shucks, Total Fest gets an additional $250 to support the fest! Come down and have a beer with us, please!