Cock Rock

Azalea City Penis Club - Still Dead After All These Years

I’m still trying to work out whether Azalea City Penis Club is one of the best band names I’ve ever come across, or one of the worst. It’s lifted from the guitarist John Fahey’s autobiography, ‘How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life’, and was the name of Fahey’s teenage gang. While I’m still unsure about their chosen moniker, the one thing of which I am certain is that I am a big fan of the deeply deranged racket they have served up on their debut album ‘The Coffin Years’. Azalea City Penis Club is the work of the Bristolian trio of Dave Collingwood, formerly of post-rockers Immense (one of my favourite bands and long overdue an appraisal on this blog) and now of Gravenhurst on drums, and guitarists Simon Grant (training to be a doctor at Manchester University) and Robin Allender (also of Gravenhurst). The trio came together in the summer of 2006 to write and record the album, which has been engineered by Tony Goodfellow, another Bristolian, infamous for his work with the noise institution Geisha.

‘The Coffin Years’ is an album that suffers from multiple personality disorder, unsure as to what exactly it is that it wants to be, but delighting in the schizophrenic carnage that unfolds across the 8 tracks as it tries to work it out. Take ‘Coconut Calypso’, a rollicking 10-minute ride that sounds like Slint doing stoner rock. It works on the quiet / loud dynamic or rather, lurches between lovingly stroking your hair and whispering sweetly in your ear, and attacking you with a nail-spiked chair leg, ending on a pounding, tribal drum solo from the exceptional Collingwood. ‘Still Dead After All These Years’ is a similar beast, but without any of the niceties, just rammed full of monolithic metal riffs that fellow Bristolian psychedelic noiseniks’ The Heads would be proud of. The schizophrenic nature of ‘The Coffin Years’ is most apparent on the vocal songs like ‘Bridges’, which starts out as bewitching wyrd-folk, before freaking out, Mr Hyde-style, into Black Sabbath rawk, complete with an evil, mutated vocal. Another highlight is ‘Pictures’, which morphs from C86 jangle and twee Belle and Sebastian vocals, into more jagged, distorted riffing. The band wrote the album as a reaction against the serious nature of the majority of experimental guitar music, and I think they have succeeded in their mission. Inevitably, it’s all rather self-indulgent, but I’m happy to let them off, in exchange for the sheer adrenaline rush and visceral thrills offered by the music they’ve created.

Azalea City Penis Club have announced that this will be their one and only album, a statement which I hope is hyperbole as I could easily consume another bowl or two of this demented noise-metal-kraut-prog-rock. Having said that, I guess the beauty of this release is that this isn't a band laying down a statement for the rest of their career - they're just having a laugh and making whatever noise they feel like making. It's makes for a liberating listening experience.

'The Coffin Years' is released by Dreamboat Records as a digital-only release, and can be purchased from Bleep.com from May 21st 2007
‘The Coffin Years’ page on Dreamboat Records, where two further album tracks, 'Pictures' and ‘Sign Language’, are available to download for free!
Azalea City Penis Club at My Space
Official ACPC website
Gravenhurst website
Dave Collingwood at My Space
Simon Grant at My Space
Robin Allender at My Space
Buy John Fahey’s ‘How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life’ from Boomkat

Joe.