Decibrity Playlist: Indian

After dropping the best album of its career earlier this month with From All Purity, the dudes in Indian are in the midst of (hopefully) enjoying some time off before hitting the road at the end of March. Given that guitarist/vocalist Will Lindsay is also probably not all that enthused about stepping out into the frigid Chicago winter all that often (if you’ve perused our latest issue, you’d know that he recently moved there from Olympia, WA), the impetuses behind the playlist he was kind enough to share with us are not that surprising. As he explains, “In a more perfect world, this would probably be written about what I listen to on tour. Listening to music while driving for hours is probably my preferred way to listen to something. It’s when I feel I get the most out of it. Not to mention the lack of distractions during most of the drive on tour. Unfortunately, I haven’t been on tour in a while. I have been enjoying listening to music at home a lot though. After the embarrassingly nerdy and lengthy undertaking of cataloging all of my vinyl on discogs.com, not to mention discovering their marketplace, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my vinyl. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been listening to and why.”
Feel free to listen along here and pick up a copy of Indian’s excellent new LP here.

Primitive Man–Scorn (2013)
I’m not much for internet music forums but I do post at and read ilovedoom.com. Last January, one of the folks there posted a link to this entire album on YouTube. I was utterly blown away by how dense and heavy and crushing this album sounded, even over YouTube and my shitty laptop speakers. Further research showed that it was a split release between a French and British label. I found the British label’s site first and immediately ordered the vinyl. Luckily for everyone today, Relapse reissued it right away. The best metal record of 2013, without a doubt.

scorn

Waylon Jennings–Honky Tonk Heroes (1973)
Creative control was something that just didn’t happen in country music up through the early ’70s. Waylon Jennings was going to leave RCA specifically because of creative control and RCA relented so they wouldn’t lose him. No one in Nashville’s upper echelon had high expectations of what Waylon would do. Those expectations dropped further when it became known that nearly the entire album would be songs written by an unknown Texas guy named Billy Joe Shaver. Chet Atkins expressed reluctance and lost his role as producer to Tompall Glaser. The record did well enough on its release, but as time went on it has become an essential in honky tonk and launched the still underrated career of Billy Joe Shaver.

waylon

Various Artists–A Short Life Of Trouble: Popular American Ballads 1927-1943 (2013)
Portland, OR’s Mississippi Records releases a lot of great stuff. A lot of old blues stuff, quite a bit of field recordings from Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey sessions in the late ’50s and a lot of other great archival stuff. This album is billed as a collection of “Popular American Ballads 1927-1943”. I only recognized a handful of the artists, although most of the songs are standards or variations thereof. The inclusion of my favorite Carter Family song (“Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone”) next to my favorite John Hurt song (“Louise Collins”) coupled with Mississippi’s reputation was enough to get me to pick it up. This is a great mix of string bands and solo performers and a rather complete picture of the era they were intending to represent.

shortlife

The Devil Makes Three–I’m A Stranger Here (2013)
I love this band. They are my favorite currently active band. I don’t know how to really go about describing them. They will lazily be lumped in with folk or bluegrass or country, which is maybe kind of true. I once did merch for them for a tour and they were opening for a fucking “jamgrass” band, which someone apparently thought was appropriate. Nonetheless, this album is their latest release. It is also their best. They had label backing and a producer for the first time and recorded the rawest record of their career. Percussion has always been rejected by the band and they continue to do so live, but it appears on this form in the shape of things such as a post hole digger wrapped in chains. This one is going to be in heavy rotation on Indian’s upcoming EU tour.

dev

Sewer Goddess–Disciples Of Shit: Live Waste (2011)
Several years ago, Dave from 20 Buck Spin gave me a Sewer Goddess tape with some other tapes and records when I was starting to get seriously interested in noise, industrial, power electronics and the like. I was intrigued and continued to pick her stuff up as I came across it. Black Plagve released this CD in 2011. I generally don’t think that this material translates so well to a live recording but this collection absolutely nails it. The material is five tracks recorded between 2009-2010 and different shows. In more recent years, the material has started to include drums and guitar and this CD was my first exposure to this material. Raw, heavy and fucked up. The band’s output is consistently great but this is the one I come back to most frequently.

*Order From All Purity here.

**We update one Spotify playlist for each new Decibrity entry, so feel free to subscribe to that here.

Past entries include:

Alcest
East Of The Wall
Enabler
Wolvserpent
Drugs Of Faith
SubRosa (Part 1) (Part 2)
Vattnet Viskar
Skeletonwitch
Ihsahn
Earthless
Watain
Orange Goblin
God Is An Astronaut
Primitive Man
Gorguts
Exhumed
Ulcerate
Pelican
Scale The Summit
Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) (Part 1) (Part 2)
Mouth Of The Architect
Howl
Kings Destroy
Zozobra
Call of the Void
Saint Vitus Bar
Coliseum
Woe
Anciients
Soilwork (Dirk Verbeuren) (Björn Strid)
Intronaut
BATILLUS
Inter Arma
Helen Money
Misery Index
Ancient VVisdom
Holy Grail
Rotten Sound
Ancestors (Part 1) (Part 2)
Kowloon Walled City (Part 1) (Part 2)
Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride) (Part 1) (Part 2)
Early Graves
All That Remains
Bison B.C.
A Life Once Lost
Fight Amp
Witchcraft (Ola Henriksson) (Magnus Pelander)
Vision of Disorder
Grave
Anders Nyström (Katatonia) (Part 1) (Part 2)
“Best of” Rush (Part 1) (Part 2)
Dawnbringer
Ufomammut
Shadows Fall
Horseback
Greg Mackintosh (Paradise Lost) (Part 1) (Part 2)
Torche
“Best of” Meshuggah
Astra
Pallbearer
Barren Earth
Shane Embury (Napalm Death) (Part 1) (Part 2)