Autumn Dirge

One of my favorite all-time bands is the dearly departed indie darling, The Autumns. Their dream pop stargazing style took all the best elements of the Cocteau Twins and Slowdive and successfully created something of its own, meshing dreamy instrumental montages with heavy doses of viscerally-doting lyrics. The band boasts a canon of four full-length albums and three EPs, all varying in theme and overall style. The band was a niche act, fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist Matthew Kelly, who owns one of the most unique voices I've heard in indie music. The small, quiet legacy of The Autumns couldn't contain him, as he went on to with and contribute his talents to acts such as The Sounds of Animals Fighting and Pyramids.

In 1996, The Autumns emerged on the scene with their four-song EP, Suicide at Strell Park. Opening track "Pale Trembles a Pale" ranks as one of my favorite songs of all-time, heartbreaking and optimistic within the same stiffled breath. There's something I feel when I hear this song that I can't quite explain, something ethereal, something eternal, but the same can probably be said for any other Autumns fans walking the planet when they listen to this one. We don't listen to it. We feel it. There isn't a weak spot on the EP, with Cure-like tunes "Apple" and "Rose Catcher," and the slow, somber finale, "Suicide at Strell Park." One of the best EPs ever recorded in my humble opinion, Suicide was a debut wonder that gave a brimming glimpse of things ahead.

Two years later, The Autumns released their first full-length, The Angel Pool. The album still ranks in my top ten of all-time. It's one of those rare records that you can just let play, not a weak song on the entire recording. The albums opens on the ethereal chime of "The Garden Ends," a slow, somber, shoegaze anthem for the hopeless romantic, promoting an eternal sadness through lead guitar licks drowning in a tranquil sea of reverb and delay. Much of the album sticks to the same glue, though my personal favorite, "Eskimo Swin," is a more upbeat number, heavy on the intricate guitar work and simplistic enough on the mellow bass line. One of my favorite lyrics comes from the tracks - "trip wild-eyed through my heart's poison ides." Another favorite is "Embracing Winter." The song is good, but once the end draws near, the band creates a soundscape of ethereal bliss, beautiful chords and melodies hanging over one another like layers of kudzu.

My other favorite on the record is the last track, "Glass in Lullabies." It owns such a great chord progression, a track that doles out a fifties vibes before diving into complete solitude, giving away notions of a pair of tragic Route 66 lovers caught between the thread of life and death. The end of the song is absolutely heartbreaking, an uber somber tune carried away into absolute desolation. I was never able to see the band live, but I would be willing to bet that "Glass in Lullabies" was the show closer just as it is on the timeless album, one that far too few people know exist. "Glass in Lullabies" is a sad tune, a lamentation of epic proportions, sure to leave its lasting embrace on the listener.

In 2000, the band drifted away from their dreamy origins, sliding into a cleaner sound altogether. While it was not The Autumns I was used to, I bought up their new LP, the ultra-poetic In the Russet Gold of This Vain Hour. Track one, "The Boy With the Aluminum Stilts," is undoubtedly the best on the record, one brimming to life with a Cure-like bass progression before a clean guitar melody joins in to complement it. Fans could better appreciate Matthew Kelly's voice, his belted out chords and his delicate falsetto on In the Russet Gold, as we could better hear it without the assistance of reverb. He showcases his range well on second track, "Unfolding and Fading" and third song, "Siren Wine," is one laced in guitar harmonics and intricate plucks.

Track number seven, "Bicycle," sounds, well, like a bicycle. How is that possible? Ask Matthew Kelly. Through harmonics, he he climbs up and down the length of his guitar as he croons the falsetto-heavy ballad, one I saw him perform at a recorded live show. Other highlights on the record include the optimistic charmer "June in Her Frost and Fur," the minor chord-heavy "Minstral Chimes at Night," and the piano and strings closer, "In the Russet Gold of This Vain Hour," which sounds like a complicated romance from the Regency period of England. The album is a massive departure from the dream pop sounds that built the band's fan base, but we stuck with them regardless as they spread their wings into newer territories. A kindred spirit in Cocteau Twins bassists Simon Raymonde produced the album.

In 2001, the band released two EPs, both very different in flavor. The first, Le Carillon, was an ode to fifties doowop, casting images of the band standing and smiling and delivering chirpy pop ballads straight from American Bandstand. The EP was nice to own as an Autumns fan, but was the least Autumns recording up to that point. It was almost like a subtle experiment, a film that a touted director tries outside his regular comfort genre. The band did a really nice job of capturing the sounds of the decade, so Matthew Kelly knew exactly what he was doing on the effort. I mention Kelly the most because he was backbone of the Autumns, the only member to play on every single release the band made.

The second EP was a covers effort, one in which the band paid homage to fellow dream popper Lift to Experience, The Smiths, Nick Drake, and David Lynch. The first three tracks are all equally great, with first tune "With the World Behind" coming off like a tormented poet's dying declaration. "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" is next, a song The Autumns make their own, even slower and more grounded than the original Smiths classic. My favorite on the EP, "Time of No Reply," was originally performed by Nick Drake. It's a slow, vulnerable ballad, one that gives off shades of the dreamier elements that made the band who they were in the beginning clean with somber, swarthy guitar effects.

The Autumns made us wait three years later for a new album, 2004's self-titled effort. The band mixed clean guitars with reverb-heavy ones to create a subtle mix of The Angel Pool and In the Russet Gold, but also something all its own. One of the highlights from the record is "Deathly Little Dreams," a tune closer akin to the dreamy days than anything else they had done since. It gives a slow, delay and reverb-heavy build-up before breaking out into a drum and guitar dream sequence that made fans of The Angel Pool proud. It provides a simple enough melody on the way to its full explosion into the realm of the ethereal and the fully emotive.

 Another highlight on the record is "Cattleya," which ushered in percussion and piano along with cleaner guitar sounds. It sounds more like a song taken from In the Russet Gold with the more earthy elements it offers. Two more highlights on the record instrumentals "The Moon Softly Weeps a Lullaby" and "Flies in the Eyes of the Queen." Despite the beauty of the songs mentioned, the self-title album was probably the weakest LP overall to date. Had they stuck to same sounds that staked their claim on the shoegaze genre, they would have played themselves out. I get it. Kelly and Co. had to expand their tendencies, but I sure missed the older stuff, sounds we would never hear from the band again during their tenure.

In 2007, the band released their final album, "Fake Noise From a Box of Toys." The first single heard from the effort underwhelmed, but the more I gave the rest of the tunes a listen, the more I could appreciate the sounds. "The Midnight Knock" was the best track on the album, and the closest thing I could recognize to the Autumns fervor of old. The band got a little more noisy on the album, breaking into choppy, fragmented segments, which was the biggest departure from the Autumns we previously knew. They had enough of their classic melodies to swoon us into believing again, but broke new ground with their guitar work, which led nicely to Matthew Kelly's next musical project, The Sound of Animals Fighting.

Matthew Kelly wasn't a regular contributor to the new band. Kelly lent his guitar and vocal talents to only a few of the songs under the guise of the "Wolf" in a band dominated by mysterious animal masks. The band created soothing and serine melodies, only to break off into fragmented segments of spastic indie rock. The song, "The Heretic," was Kelly's best and most Autumns-like contribution, taking from the band's 2006 debut album, Lover, the Lord Has Left Us. He plays on and lends his voice to a few other tracks as well, but "Heretic" is certainly the most memorable. The Sound of Animals Fighting was an odd landing spot for Matthew Kelly, but they represented something wholly new for him to dabble his talents in.

In 2015, Kelly next went the black metal route with Pyramids, a far cry from his time spent with The Autumns. Kelly's instantly recognizable falsetto over the waves of metal guitar and rhythmic double bass drums are a strange dream of lush meadows draped in black lace and bubbling, steaming rivers. It's a frantic, relentless experience, but one that Kelly makes his own, bringing to mind acts like Deafheaven and The Body. Kelly takes us down a wild but calculated labyrinth in Pyramids' debut album, A Northern Meadow. Pyramids went on to record another albums and a collaboration with another band Nadja, though those don't seem to have included Kelly.

Matthew Kelly has dabbled with a few others bands after moving on from Pyramids, such as Minus Music and The Soviet League, neither of which I can find samples for. Neither project seems to have been too serious, nothing like the The Autumns, The Sound of Animals Fighting, or even Pyramids. Kelly did record a solo effort in 2007, just one song he recorded on his laptop, a cover of one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums - "Hives Hives" by Xui Xui. Kelly, and especially The Autumns, loved a good cover, as evidenced by their Covers EP. This blog post is mostly about them, with Matthew Kelly serving as their version of Billy Corgan. The band was a revolving door for the most part, but Kelly was the only constant, leaving quite a nice legacy behind for an indie band no one has heard of. I would never had heard of them had I not been introduced by a couple of dear friends of mine. I heard "Pale Trembles a Gale" at their behest, and have never looked back.

Poetry in Motion

It's not a big stretch to argue that Jeff Buckley was a Romantic poet for the modern age. He had the playful bravado of Byron, the impulsive abandon of Shelley, and the optimistic duality of Keats. The liner note pictures on his debut album paint him as a true bohemian, unknown though confident, boasting a V-neck tee, a gaudy jacket, and an amulet strung from a lengthy necklace. Disheveled with decadence but brimming with soulful innocence, his storytelling ability was shown in his lyrics, likened to long-verse poems - verses like cadences, choruses like an idee fixe. Buckley was a true wordsmith, lines uttered like brushstrokes, painting pictures with the short stories unfolded throughout the 10-track album. Though sketches and live tracks and posthumous recordings were released following his death, Grace is our only snapshot of Jeff while he was alive, and it was enough to leave behind a legacy.

Track number one, "Mojo Pin," is about a dream, and it slowly fades into view as such. Jeff cranks up his croons early and often, fading in and out of play until his soft, subtle whispers ease into the fold. Jeff waxes metaphorical and romantic with lyrics about a muse with hair like "black ribbons of coal." Much like his heart, Jeff wore his influences on his sleeve, especially towards the end of the song, when he gathers steam for an emotive outburst, exploding into a Led Zeppelin-like frenzy of guitar hacks and feral vocal squeals. Jeff had a vocal range that was second to none, and while he demonstrated it throughout the entirety of the album, he started with "Mojo Pin" to ignite the flames.

The next is "Grace," a tune that picks a talented trek up and down the guitar strings before the bass and drums join to set the upbeat song into motion. The guitar lick is optimistic and original, mathematical and practical in one. Lyrically, Jeff dabbles into the great duality of life and death, a sentiment that forever ties him to the ill-fated poet, John Keats. I have long juxtaposed one alongside the other, referring to Jeff as the modern equivalent of the Romantic. Like Keats, Jeff's ironic lyrics imagined his own demise, reassuring "it's my time coming, I'm not afraid to die." His time was coming, and he tragically drown, just like Keats died of consumption. Both were far too young and brimming with a talent that wasn't fully realized until after their untimely passing.

"Last Goodbye" was my favorite song in the world for years and years, and it probably still is. It was the Jeff song that got the most airplay on my local radio station, and was the reason why I made "Grace" the first CD I ever bought in a time when cassette tapes ruled the day. It's such a unique song, as it paints a soundscape of a rare optimistic heartbreak, the joy in pain, a well-defined bass line over orchestral accompaniment and Jeff's dashing acoustic guitar in a bout of bittersweet rusticity. Jeff fondly remembers his lover, chiming "You gave me more to live for, more than you'll ever know," and "Kiss me out of desire, baby, not consolation." The break-up is ending on good terms here, unlike like the pining aspirations on upcoming tunes.

"Lilac Wine" is the first of three covers on the album. Some of the Romantic poets were known drinkers, and while Jeff spills hints of his excess with the track, it still manages to come off sweet and sincere. The first few lines are poetic and ultra aware of themselves, and while they weren't written by Jeff, he makes them his own. "I lost myself on a cool, damp night, I gave myself in that misty light, I was hypnotized by a strange delight, under a lilac tree, I made wine from the lilac tree, put myself in it's recipe, makes me see what I want to see, be what I want to be." The song paints him as a sensitive young alchemist, experimenting with his would-be love potion. The tune is a sweet little crooner for sure with subtle accompaniment from the drums.

The next track is "So Real," a feral lullaby with an off-timed, strange little chord progression through the verse. The song seems to allude to a dream, a theme Jeff tended toward along with his duality of life and death throughout the record. The track becomes noisy and wild by the bridge, just before Jeff reminds the subject, "I love you, but I'm afraid to love you," a line that sums up the odd ball charm the song ushers out. The video is even odder, dishing out a bit of fantastical irony for a track entitled "So Real." Jeff wears his influences once again, the verse chord progression bringing to mind "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin. Jeff surely doesn't stick to that same format, as he soon soars into a fuller, more meaty chorus.

Track 6, "Hallelujah," is probably Jeff's most well-known song, a stripped down, lonely version of Leonard Cohen's original. The posted song is a slightly different version with Jeff playing in a live studio setting, but it sticks to the same glue that makes the album such a gem. His vocal range is the real musical instrument here, beautiful and angelic, innocent and unaware of the power it possesses. Most of the people I introduced to Jeff Buckley were done so through this song, and I suppose that makes it an unconscious attention-grabber even when there are other songs on the album that hold higher overall quality.

If "Last Goodbye" is my favorite track, "Lover, You Should've Come Over" is a close second, if not the best overall. The song begins unassumingly enough, with a lowly accordion crooning out a barrage of tiny melodies to give a brushstroke preview of the fuller tune to come. Jeff paints pictures with sorrowful, pensive lyrics, surmising what it would have been like had his lover come over, changing the outlook of their complicated romance. He's a young Romantic here, lyrics bringing to mind Keats and his would-be love, Fanny Brawne. "Too young to hold on, and too old to just break free and run." "So I'll wait for and I'll burn, will I ever see your sweet return, oh, will I ever learn? Lover, you should have come over."

Track 8 is a cover from an unlikely source. "Corpus Christi Carol" is a modern nod to a medieval church hymn, all brought by Jeff's choir boy range. Corpus Christi means Body of Christ in Latin, so the track certainly brings to mind votive candles and illuminated naves and religious ceremonies conducted throughout a dimly-lit cathedral. The unassuming hymn is really in a league of its own on the album, as the closest song in feel, "Hallelujah," lays out clearly its stark differences. Interestingly enough, "Corpus Christi Carol" was written in 1504, it's literally medieval schematic resurrected by the minimalism of Jeff's solo guitar. Listen with an open mind and hearts are soon to follow.

"Eternal Life" is probably the most relevant to Jeff's tragic, untimely death, but as a whole, it's probably my least favorite track, and the one that is the least Jeff. The album closes out on the haunting high-note of "Dream Brother," track number 10. There's a certain exotic, gypsy vibe to the song, tangled in minor notes and eerily elegant chimes until the chorus is ushered in. While it seems to be about a pair of proposed twins separated at birth, a few of the lines take pot shots at his absentee father, music legend Time Buckley. "Don't be like the one who made me so old, don't be like the one who left behind his name." Jeff had a strained relationship with his rolling stone father, and being that the only mention he makes of the original "Song to the Siren" crooner, speaks volumes here.

Grace is a greatest hits of a debut album. No one song sounds the same. Instead, we are treated to 10 tracks that each stand on their own, in their own genre with their own distinct feel. Usually I don't care for bands who do this, but all of Grace's songs break off into the many sub-genres of rock and indie fare, which still fits into the greater scheme of a game-changing alternative rock album.

In 1997, Jeff was laying down track for his new album, My Sweetheart, the Drunk, when he took a break from recording to swim in the Mississippi River. Much like the young, impetuous Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, Jeff mysteriously drown with no traces of alcohol or drugs in his system. Posthumously, Sketches for My Sweetheart, the Drunk was released, including 10 studio tracks, and 10 more 4-track "sketches." It was certainly an unfinished opus, but it remains beloved in Jeff's canon as a fleeting glimpse of his greatness on tracks like the social system overture "The Sky is a Landfill," the R&B slow jam, "Everybody Here Wants You," and the haunting, crooning a cappella offering, "You and I."

While the quality of the tracks touch down somewhere near Grace, there's no denying the debut album as one of the greatest ever recorded in the history of the music industry. Jeff developed a following in Manhattan and turned down the advances of his father's producers and record label in order to carve his own way. His voice is an instrument all to his own, climbing unreachable scales and soaring loud and long, frilly and unbroken, powerful and poignant, faultless and frail. I recently re-bought Grace, as I gave one copy away and lost the other in a move. I never need to be without the fragile comfort it provides, without its promising portrait left without its painter, without its poetry in motion.

Taming the Muse

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, artists and poets acquired their own inspirations in order to create and complete their works. Inspired work seemed to be so much more powerful and meaningful by comparison, fueled by the extraordinary icons that partially gave birth to it. For better or for worse, muses breathed new life into the art they inspired, immortalizing them and casting them as goddesses, saints, and other fantastical entities.

Among one of the most famous of these muses was the Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957). In some of her paintings and portraits, she appears feral and exotic, with wild eyes and whimsical tendencies, draped in the limelight she garnered from her multitude of suitors. Though she was married to an Italian Marchese, they lived at separate residences, allowing her to throw all night soirees in Milan and Venice, those in which she hosted the Italian elite with wild cheetahs at her side and live boa constrictors draping her neck. She captivated the hearts of artists and literary figures alike, claiming she wanted to "commission her own immortality." Robert de Montequiou, Romain de Tirtoff, Jean Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, Gabriele d"Annunzio (with whom she had an affair), and Michel Georges-Michel all made her their literary muse. Artists such as Giovanni Boldini, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Adolph de Meyer, Romaine Brooks (with whom she had an affair), Kees Van Dongen, and Man Ray immortalized her on canvas, painting her image in a vast array of poses and finery.

Casati was a true muse to the many men she captivated, a turn-of-the-century tour de force of the European bourgeoisie elite. Once the Marchesa found out who she was deep down, one of her primary goals in life was to be "a living work of art." She was certainly that with her extravagant costumes and her captivation of some of the most skilled artisans Europe had to offer. There was something about the Marchesa, and on her epitaph read a quote taken from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety."

In a time when being a woman and being an extraordinary author didn't seem to go hand in hand, there was certainly Mary Shelley, but there was also George Sand. Sand was her nom de plume, as her actual name was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. At the age of 18, she, like the Marchesa, married a man she didn't love, soon divorced him, and had a relationship with a young lawyer at the start of what she called a "romantic rebellion." She went onto a slew of relationships with nine different men, the most famous of them being with novelist Alfred de Musset.

In 1831, she and author Jules Sandeau published a collection of short stories, the two signing off on it as Jules Sand. She published her first novel, Rose et Blanc, in 1831 and wrote another in 1832 by the pen name George Sand. Fellow writer Alfred de Musset's 1836 novel The Confession of a Child of the Century was autobiographical, chronicling his relationship with Sand from 1833-1835. For the relationship to end one year and for a book about it to be published the very next means that he put its heart and soul into its completion like a man possessed. In 1837, Musset published Nuits (Nights), chronicling his intense relationship with Sand, from his early despair to final resignation. He also published a novel anonymously, Two Nights of Excess, an erotic lesbian effort in which one of the two characters is thought to be based on Sand. Musset wrote three novels based on his love for Sand in a very short amount of time. This type of enduring gesture saw to the 1999 French film, Children of the Century. Musset wrote of her, "Tell her that I love her with all my heart, that she is still the most womanly woman I have ever known." Perhaps in response, perhaps in a general statement on the many men she inspired, Sand is quoted as saying "There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved."

Gutav Klimt is one of the most underrated painters in history in my opinion, crafting a style that had never been done before, and has never since been duplicated. He frequently used the female form in a series of erotic poses, often placing his muses into the roles of historical heroines. One of those was Austrian designer and model, Emilie Louise Floge. Sources refer to Floge as the life companion of Klimt. When the painter's brother married Floge's sister, he spent summers at the family estate, a circumstance that only brought the two closer. His most famous portrait of her was before his gold period, but experts believe that his famous work, The Kiss, portrays Klimt and Floge locked in the painting's awkward, romantic embrace.

Klimt seemed to be ever confused by his relationships with his models. There seemed to be nuances with every one of them, those that kept the models as intimate parts of his life with complicated roles in it. Another of his more famous works, Judith and the Head of Holofernes, was an extension of, but a separate rendering from Caravaggio's and Gentileschi's original works on the subject. For it, Klimt used married model, Adele Bloch-Bauer, whose husband commissioned the painter to create five works portraying his wife. It's been surmised that Klimt fathered four illegitimate children, and rumors swirled that the distanced painter took on multiple affairs with his models. Whether this was the case with Bloch-Bauer, nothing can be set in stone. Klimt's rendition of Judith portrays a half nude model, wearing what one art critic called a "charge of voluptuousness and perversion." The expression on the model's face does come off this way, especially standing with a breast exposed, holding the head of the oppressive general Holofernes. The portrait is a perfect encapsulation of Klimt's golden period, and while Adele Bloch-Bauer and Emilie Floge were hardly the only models Klimt painted, they were certainly two of the most rendered to his canvases.

I was first acquainted with Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a poet. Turns out, he was much more revered as a painter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a small collective of artists, art critics, and poets formed in 1848. The group was looking to push the Mannerism style of the day past the mechanical influences of Raphael and Michelangelo. The Pre-Raphaelites were were about vivid detail and color, with founding member Rossetti's number one muse taking the form of Jane Morris. She defined the ideal of Pre-Raphaelite beauty with her pensive stares, her well-defined jawline, and her ample lips. Rossetti's later wife and fellow Pre-Raphaelite model, Lizzie Siddal, shared several commonalities with Morris. They were both the women of Rossetti's life, Rossetti painting Morris, the wife of his friend William Morris, exactly 20 times before meeting Siddal.

Despite Rossetti's ambiguous fascination with Morris, that all came to an end when he met Lizzie Siddal in 1850. For a decade, she was his greatest muse and inspiration, and in 1860, the two finally married. She continued as his muse until her death in 1862 from a laudanum overdose, following the stillborn birth of their child. Rossetti buried a slew of his unpublished works along with her, but eventually had them dug up in order to have them published. While this sounds a bit indelicate, several of the poems were written about Siddal herself, and he could have had them exhumed in order to honor her memory (that, or he was broke). Rossetti fell into depression and despair following her death, and the poem, "Without Her," possibly one of the ones exhumed from the grave, gives the most immediate account of life without his eternal muse.

What of her glass without her? The blank grey
There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
Without her? Tears, ah me! For love's good grace,
And cold forgetfulness of night or day.

What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
Sheds doubled up darkness up the labouring hill.

Some of the greatest muses the world has ever known, whether Italian, French, Austrian, or English, spurred some of the greatest works from the greatest artisans the world has ever known. The concept of muses are as old as the ancient Greeks, though the ones I chose to highlight realized their own powers of inspiration in the 19th and 20th centuries, throwing their delicate soirees and inciting their ideals of free love. Their inspiration gives us a snapshot of a time and place, and an idea that has long since been forgotten in the modern age, relevant most often in the medium of contemporary music. The great muse is an ideal that can surely wither with the passage of time and technology, though her shapeless form is one that is far from forgotten, her image captured on the dusty canvases and within the eternal lines of art, poetry, and literature.

Six Degrees of Spitfire

One of the first hardcore bands I ever really latched onto was Spitfire. They were out there alongside contemporaries like Zao, Training For Utopia, and Living Sacrifice, though they offered something a little more sinister, a little more frenzied, and a little more endearing to the Christian hardcore scene. Right around 1997, I was introduced to this burgeoning experience, and came across Spitfire while at 1998's Cornerstone Music Festival in Bushnell, Illinois. The insanely popular Zao were friends with the guys of Spitfire, and gave up 10 minutes of their own set time to the little known three-piece, consisting of screamer/guitar player Matt Beck, bass player Jimmy Reeves, and drummer Chris Raines. They probably hit as many wrong notes as right ones that night, but dear lord, did those guys go nuts and make the most of their little air time. After Zao's set, I headed over to Spitfire's booth and bought their EP, Straining Towards What's To Come, and bought their sticker to slap on my bumper. 

A year later, Spitfire released their debut album on Solid State Records, making them label mates with Zao. My girlfriend at the time worked at a music store and brought me an advanced copy of the album, titled The Dead Next Door. While she wanted to listen to her emo bands, all I wanted to listen to was Spitfire. Beck brought his signature barks and roars to the new record, along with some of the best guitar work I'd ever heard for a three-piece. How he managed to scream and pull off such nasty riffs at the same time, I'll never know. I had read how Beck had been such a big fan of The Smiths, and the opening track of the album proved to be his homage. "Please Don't Go Out Tonight" was a great tune to open the album with, and was clear evidence of musical growth within the band in the past year.

I remember thinking to myself that they made the most noise I could ever hope to hear coming from three people. I think that's one of the reasons they had been so popular at Cornerstone the year before. Other highlights on the debut album were "Marasmus," which was re-recorded from Straining Towards What's to Come, "Good Cop, Bad Cop," and the highly melodic "All Indentured Lovable." Reeves and Raines clearly destroy on the album as well in an effort where the noise is made completely by the four instruments advertised, no gimmicks needed.

Something strange happened the last time I Youtubed one of my old bands to see if our video was still floating around. I somehow came across a live show of Eighteen Visions - a show I had actually been in attendance for. In 2000, a friend and I traveled to Nashville to see Eighteen Visions, Spitfire, and Hopesfall - and a couple of girls. Seeing Spitfire again was an added bonus. I was a little taken aback to see a new vocalist taking the mic next to a guitar player who wasn't Matt Beck (Randy Vanderbilt). Jimmy Reeves and Chris Raines were still part of the act, so I remained optimistic. I later read that Beck was dealing with the some off-screen issues, but new vocalist, Jon Spencer, stepped in nicely to give the band a new look and feel. He spasmed and girated his way across the stage that night, freed up from the guitar restraints that had once limited Beck's mobility as a vocalist.

Having this fresh perspective of the band, I was ecstatic when they returned to the studio in 2001 to release the EP, The Slideshow Whiplash. The tunes were certainly different from The Dead Next Door, but Matt Beck still proved to be a mathematical genius, cooking up tasty new riffs in two of the EP's four songs. The recording was a little tinny, but the songs were swarthy and meticulous, with Spencer introducing an edgy, throaty, descriptive vocal style. His lyrics were brash and highly metaphorical on tracks like "This Ain't Vegas and You Ain't Elvis," and "Bulletproof and Tall as Jesus." The band gave fans a glimpse of good things to come, but sadly, they broke up in 2002.

One night in 2004, a friend and I were on our way downtown to see A Life Once Lost and Norma Jean. On the way, he played for me a band called Scarlet, telling me that as a Spitfire fan, I would like them. I immediately recognized Spencer's throaty rasps on "Revolver," the opening track to the band's 2003 EP, Something to Lust About. On guitars, Scarlet featured Randy Vanderbilt, who had been part of Spitfire for time after Beck left. Following the night's show, I went out to buy my own copy of the EP. Next to Deadguy's Screamin' With the Deadguy Quintet, it was the best EP I'd ever heard, musically chaotic with mathematical guitars and sick breakdowns, lyrics waxing on the glamorous macabre.

Spencer painted pictures not unlike the Nic Cage film Waking the Dead with lyrics like "A.M. rendezvous with strung out ambulance drivers, caffeine blues." On "Carbon Copy Killer," he seethes "Let me smear your makeup, let me break your face, let me break your porcelain face." Scarlet was the perfect successor to Spitfire, a point proven even further by their 2004 LP, Cult Classic. I liked the EP better overall, as I thought the songs were better composed overall, but Cult Classic stuck to the same glue that made Something to Lust About such a success. Spencer continued to lyrically dabble in the arts of sex and greed and the cult mindset with tracks like "Nymphoteens," "Lie.Fake.Money-Make.," and "Human Pollen." My personal favorite is "The Joy Decoys Are Coming," where Spencer screams, "Sleezy used car salesman telling you how to feel, if you want love, you can buy love, everyone is for sale."

In 2005, the same friend who had introduced me to Scarlet told me that Spitfire was back with a vengeance, and that Jon Spencer had left Scarlet to return to the band. He was not alone, as he brought Scarlet guitarist "Dangerous" Dan Tulloh in to play bass. Spitfire added a second guitar in the form of the ex-Norma Jean brute, Scottie Henry. Years before when Norma Jean was still called Luti-Kriss, mine and Scottie's bands played several shows together. He wore a Spitfire t-shirt one day, and we found further common ground as we gushed over the band. He eventually became part of it, bringing his sick, melee guitar licks with him alongside those of Matt Beck, already solidified as one of the best in the game. Spitfire's new album, Self-Help, picked up where The Slideshow Whiplash had left off, with track "Life and Limb" sharing several similarities with "Bulletproof and Tall as Jesus." Spencer even alluded to as much with the tongue-in-cheek line, "She gives me stilts to walk tall as Jesus."

Spencer's lyrics yet again waxed viscerally metaphorical, spouting lines on opening track "Meat Market," "I met my brother at the trough today, he tasted good." While the theme of the album is certainly self-help, he begins the ride by telling us how in our dog eat dog world, we often devour one another with little to no regard. Chris Raines brought back his punishing drum style to the record, and on "Meat Market," he brilliantly works his way down his set, beats following the meticulous timing of the guitar licks. Beck mastered the art of the gritty, guttural chugga-chuggas on Spitfire's debut album back in 1999, and brought it back for Self-Help tracks like "Leap of Faith" and "U.V I.V." On the latter, Spencer growls, "My skin leathers for us to be together" in an emotive, feral, endearing swoon for a would-be lover. This was ofof course prefaced by the sample of a calm, serine therapy session, dishing out daily affirmations until the grimy chaos on the song begins.

The latter half of the record is highlighted by tracks like "The Great White Noise," where Spencer croons through the chorus. "The Suicide Cult is Dead"  serves as another tongue-in-cheek allusion to his past dabblings in Scarlet's 2004 cult mindset. I can't be sure if he is referring to this in general, or if he's dishing out a subtle jab at his former bandmates, belting out lines like "Our second coming never came." Spitfire closes out the record with "Ohm Driver." Beck and Henry return to the same brutality, and Spencer returns to the same lyrical content that made "U.V. I.V" so good. "Ohm Driver" is it's doppelganger in a sense, with lines like "If this is a horror flick, then you are my leading lady." One of the best things about Self-Help is the band's mission to avoid monotony, with nearly every track falling into its own category, obliterating any chance of repetition.

On July 9th of 2008, Spitfire returned to studio to record their next album sans Scottie Henry. Dan Tulloh switched to guitar and recorded most of the tracks, while Matt Beck was featured on only three. Jon Spencer found a way to incorporate his piano and other keys, and reverted back to his fascination with the cults on an album titled Cult Fiction. The first track the band released from the album was the standout, "Crossed," which streamed nicely with the previous tracks from Self-Help and teased more of the same to come. It in itself was a little misleading, as the rest of the album came forth as dark and gritty and a little insidious. The tracks Beck contributed to, "Crossed," "Chemotherapist," and "Track Marxist" were my personal favorites. He was up to his old bag of guitar tricks again, experimenting with the thuggish chugs and hammer-ons that had made The Dead Next Door such a success. Spencer was certainly back to his old ways. The metaphors flew left and right as Beck and Tulloh belted out their sludgy licks, and Raines showed the most range of his long career with the band on the effort. It was skeleton crew sort of effort, and while the record often sounded like a completely different band from their previous record at times, Spitfire had finally introduced their fans to the darkest sides of their musical capabilities.

Cults were not the only topics Spencer had to talk about on this one. He commented on maternity and birth on tracks like "Arrythmia Drift" and "Mother Earth in Labor." In the latter, he howls "You've been raised up wrong, Lazarus, in this aborting world, mother's metal hanger and its cutting rapist wit." The interludes are composed of slow, drudging dirges, odd vignettes of lonely guitar strings and piano keys, and creepy, funeral pallor-worthy ballads. It was certainly Spitfire's most experimental effort to date. Seeing where the band had come from and all of its many line-up changes, Cult Fiction was a nice break from the norm. "Animal Kingdom of Heavens Gate" and "Pro-Life" were frenzied reassurances of the working themes, while the previously-mentioned "Track Marxist" spread an anti-war message that ended with samples of a crazed snake-handling service. In what I had read on Cult Fiction before its release, the band promised a much darker, heavier album. They did not disappoint. Spencer sends out messages of pro-life and anti-war, which makes his not-so-subtle politics seem pretty nuanced.

The band also tread new territory in their controversial album cover and their minimal use of profanity - a departure from their earlier work. This, along with the bleak, dystopian sounds of Cult Fiction, signaled a departure from the Spitfire we all knew. These were changes I was certainly okay with, as artists sometimes feel compelled to push their own envelopes in order to expand their wings, however ashen black they may be. Even now, I follow Spitfire alum Chris Raines and Jimmy Reeves, and former Scarlet members Randy Vanderbilt and Andreas Magnusson into their newer projects, expanding the six degrees of Spitfire.

When the band called it quits, they left their fans a poignant but cryptic message. "Was born. Started cult. Fulfilled prophecy. Died with dignity." There was not much hope of a reunion following the all but definite proclamation. As I continued to celebrate the band's legacy, a friend of mine cued me in on Sunndrug, the new band of original member Jimmy Reeves, which included none other than Chris Raines. Shortly after the release of their first single, "Denial," the group announced that Matt Beck had joined the fold as well, but soon after,  had left again. The name Sunndrug and the original members of Spitfire immediately brought to mind the Self-Help track, "U.V I.V."

"Denial" was a shard of post-punk brilliance, pulsing and grinding with crunching guitars and a cynical vocal sway, proving that vet Jimmy Reeves was indeed back on the scene. His new concept of style was reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails and Fugazi, while their newest single, "Bleed Your High," a social commentary on the mindless consumption of social media, gives more of a NIN and Quicksand vibe - which I love, considering that Quicksand's Manic Compression album ranks among my favorites. "Bleed Your High" is more in the vein of "Denial," driving and full of gusto. Chris Raines promises that the new material is even heavier and more in the vein of "Bleed Your High," which I am quite eager to hear.


Other tracks on the debut album, Exit Wounds, include the droning "Blackout." The rest of the tunes seem more about the sound effects and the keys, the beeps and the subtle beats, making "Denial" one of the few pulse-pounders on the record. When the guitars do rear their heads, they come forth as crunchy and nasty and bombastic, making for a wholly new post-punk experience. While the band continue to play shows mostly in the VA area, they recorded the new single with former Scarlet drummer, Andreas Magnusson, who, along with Randy Vanderbilt, recruited Oh, Sleeper vocalist Micah Kinard to form the metalcore outfit, Viles Ones.

This new band sounds like a perfect encapsulation of a Scarlet fronted by former Norma Jean and The Chariot vocalist, Josh Scogin. Vile Ones' 2018 EP Teeth is a brutal, 6-track affair with guitar work that harkens back to the days of Scarlet's Something to Lust About. One reviewer called opener "Bait & Collar" the weakest track, though it's actually my favorite, with the opening guitar tweaks likened to Scarlet's "Revolver." Vile Ones, along with Every Time I Die and Frontierer, give me hope for a bright future in the metal and hardcore genre, especially once they get around to releasing their full length.


To recap, the Six Degrees of Spitfire goes as follows: Matt, Chris, and Jimmy create Spitfire, Matt leaves, Randy and Jon join, Jon and Randy leave to join Scarlet, Jon leaves with Dan to join Spitfire, Jimmy leaves for New York, Matt leaves, Spitfire dies, Chris and Jimmy form Sunndrug, Matt joins, Matt leaves, Sunndrug records with Andreas, Andreas and Randy create Vile Ones. The gist? Spitfire was an electric, nuanced band that left a lasting legacy on a scene that either never knew them, or will never forget them.