I never fell head-over-heels for the TropiCali punk-noise freakouts of Abe Vigoda’s 2008 album Skeleton the way that many did, and it mostly had to do with the damn adjective before “punk-noise”. I’m not good with chilling out, islands, coconuts, mangos, tiki torches or parrots. At all. As such, though the Skeleton songs hinted at dark, noisy undercurrents, the fact that everything was counter-balanced by the sound dudes in khaki shorts and flip-flops kept it from ever, well, resonating with me (sorry, that word does still exist in the english language, despite our attempts to own it).
This year, however, the guys in Abe Vigoda have release the Reviver E.P. , and this is, in fact, exactly what I hoped for: dark, storming, droney songs sounding like Byrne/Bowie fronting a Pylon-inspired post-punk collective produced by Kevvie Shields.
The highlight of these five songs is the pretty-much-unrecognized-by-most-music-media STEVIE NICKS COVER “Wild Heart”. I’m an unabashed fan of the original (it, in fact, is the very first song on my self-curated NICKS FIXXX mix), but what Abe Vigoda does with the song’s mantras of “I love you I do” and “I need this” end up pushing the song close to the territory that R.E.M.s “So. Central Rain” treads when performed live (see also: both songs’ repeated, plaintive, “I need this”).
Abe Vigoda: Wild Heart (Stevie Nicks cover)
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I mean, really, if THIS is the direction the formless and otherwise-disposable-to-me freakpunk scene of the past few years is going/growing? It’s interesting and welcome and I’ll be first in line.
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