Founded in the late ’00s, Glasgow’s Optimo Music is the quintessential Scottish label, and that’s exactly the way JD Twitch wants it. The producer, DJ, promoter, remixer, and proud Scot has amassed a catalog that directly mirrors the freely flowing exchange between DIY, anything-goes rock and cutting-edge dance music that has long defined the country’s underground. After all, Scottish artists were some of the very first on the planet to (1) blend punk and discoid propulsion (see Fire Engines’ 1980 landmark “Get Up and Use Me”), (2) fold alt-rock into house/techno (Primal Scream, of course), and (3) pioneer ’00s dance rock (the crazy prescient Yummy Fur did it a decade ahead of schedule).Among the slew of vinyl Twitch released in 2016 (including those sides on the Optimo Trax and Optimo Music Disco Plate sub-labels), it’s on The Pussy Mothers’ The Number 1 EP, MR TC’s Surf and Destroy, and Junto Club’s Warm Me Up that these deliciously anarchic qualities are most in your face. Surf and Destroy is especially telling: the title track is a throbbing orgy of acid squelch, post-punk atmosphere, and psychedelic guitar wash.In contrast, these qualities become more subtle on those records that (at first blush, at least) tilt more toward orthodox dancefloor groove. A track like “In Turbine,” from Underspreche’s Invito Alla Danza Part 1, is minimal, electroacoustic drone rock (complete with warm organ hum) from a duo who are no strangers to pounding club jams. Noo is another revealing example: Their Optimo Music Disco Plate Five is all about 21st-century Italo awesomeness filtered through a scrappy, slacker basement vibe. Noo, it has to be noted, was founded by Christophe “Daze” Dasen and Sami Liuski, who hail from Switzerland and Finland respectively. You see, that’s a part of Twitch’s curatorial genius; he possesses a knack for teaming up with artists who, while they may not hail from the Scottish underground, create music that totally reflects its unique sensibility.Note: while my playlist is stacked with tracks from Optimo Music’s 2016 releases, listeners will also discover a handful of older gems. Truth be told, the label’s full catalog is never far from my turntable. For example, I probably jam Golden Teacher’s Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — a boisterous collision of future punk, acid, and all manner of tribal funkery released in 2013 — at least once a month. Like most underground music from Scotland, this stuff simply doesn’t age.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
