A punk arsenal; time travel
The Muffs
The new album by the great L.A. punk band arrives, tragically, a few weeks after founder Kim Shattuck died after being diagnosed with ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A singular force, Shattuck, 56, and bandmates Ronnie Barnett (bass) and Roy McDonald (drums) formed in the early 1990s. Across six studio LPs and countless L.A. club gigs, they became one of the most beloved and admired area rock bands of their time, even if they weren’t the most commercially successful.
The bittersweet “No Holiday” was recorded after Shattock’s diagnosis and features songs she wrote from 1991 to 2017. Said Shattuck, “We decided to have a long album and use songs that had been in my arsenal but were weeded out for super concise albums. They were all great songs and we didn’t want them to go to waste. No way!”
At 18 songs, “No Holiday” is basically a double album, one that sits along a continuum of epic works that includes the Clash’s “London Calling” and Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville.” The determination, the vision, the energy — it’s real. Shattuck always expressed her fury in song, but when she rages on “Down Down Down” — a harsh, gutteral wail — she’s not doing so against some darkness in her past, but against the dying of the light itself.
“A Lovely Boo Hoo” could be a lost Kinks work, driven by strummed, distortion-free guitars, bass, drums and washes of background texture. “The Best” waltzes as if under a starlit night, a love song that in a perfect world will soon be a wedding-day standard. The delicate final piece, “Sky,” sounds as if Shattuck, an excellent producer, recorded it in a bedroom on an iPhone. When it ends, the silence is deafening.
Michael Seyer
Best known as guitarist for Long Beach outfit Bane’s World, Seyer has since 2016 been issuing memorable solo bedroom pop and dance songs. His fans overlap with similarly soulful auteurs Cuco and Jasper Bones. “I Can’t Dance,” the first track from his “Nostalgia” EP due Nov. 8, seems to time-travel back to a shag-carpeted world from long before Seyer, born in the Philippines and raised in Gardena, came into being. The distance is what makes the song, and his work, so alluring. .