Everything Cool Has Been Canceled -Available at End of an Ear!
from the Austin Chronicle:
Texas Platters
BY GREG BEETS
Foot Foot
Everything Cool Has Been Canceled (Bunkhaus)
Drawing on a brain-addling bouillabaisse of serrated psych-punk and surreal freak-folk, Foot Foot's strange emanations make easy relations of their International Artists and Trance Syndicate forbears. With their third album, the Austin quartet builds up their own brand of rib-sticking iconoclasm. Beefed-up production helps, but sharpened songwriting is key. Guitarist Bryan Lawhorn's opening salvo, "Alien Nightmare World," lives up to its harrowing title with taut, anxiety-fueled bursts of hold-and-release fuzz-pop. "I Have Been a Fool" has the faraway veneer of an obscure juke joint tearjerker reimagined by Galaxie 500. Bassist Patti Lou Ryland – Lawhorn's wife and granddaughter of John Henry Faulk – lays the sludge hammer down on "Tearing My Mind Apart." Think Black Sabbath on a Half Japanese budget. Then drummer Justin Andrews' vocals on "Charred Torso" taps a harrowing acoustic wisp reminiscent of Skip Spence's Oar. If you only know about Foot Foot from Pong's name-check, it's time for a closer look.
***.5
Recorded: live on March 16, 2003 at the Beta Lounge in San Francisco
In 1967, San Francisco’s Fifty Foot Hose were certainly one of the
innovators of a sound that took Psychedelia to new heights and was
captured on the band’s one record, Cauldron. They are a totally
unique hybrid—on one hand pulsating bay area acid rock, on the other,
fractured electronic freakery, becoming one whole cohesive being. The
sci-fi-ish video game-like artwork hinted at the sounds within, as did
the Limelight label’s pedigree for truly progressive sounds. Band
leader, Cork Marcheschi, used homemade electronic devices to create
crude and experimental soundscapes and instrumental compositions that
were sprinkled throughout the album.
Often starting shows with a swelling rumble that exploded into the
first song, they soon developed a rabid following on the SF scene,
though there was the occasional totally wrong gig, like when a
very-pregnant Nancy had to perform at a Catholic Girls’ school! Still,
the group wowed the crowds, performing with greats like Chuck Berry and
Fairport Convention.
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