The Next Big Thing

Trash comes in many forms these days. In my experience it always alluded to a certain quality, a romantic notion not shared by conventional society. It's become synonomous with a putdown in terms of social class but when applied to music these boundaries are still unbreached. Of course there's calculated trash but that will never measure up to the beating organ of the stuff that comes from within. So there's CANDYE KAYNE's "White Trash Girl", the latest album from that Big lassie of the blues. Her voice is as big as her person and a warm breeze of bar-room r&b. Lovingly laid down in the climes of Austin, TX - the record reeks of character, the like of which the Universal Musics of this world could never understand. This is something that could really be cultivated. Both in terms of building up a justified celebrity and also in terms of the music. She wouldn't be a "novelty" after the first coupla verses because this is an artist that genuinely has talent.

A big, dirty rasping ability that doesn't require airbrushing or smoothing out. This collection of originals and standards is the kinda thing that should be travelling around these alleged shindigs like the Edinburgh Festival. I'd be right there in Princes Street Gardens if there was the prospect of hearing her holler Bull Moose's "Big Fat Mamas Are Back In Style". Candye isnae fat though, she's just big-boned and she can swing like a highwire gymnast. Contact Ruf Records in Germany for availability details.


And (honestly, I didn't do this purposely) that brings us to HEAVY TRASH. Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray's rockabillious side project that's currently blowing through Europe. Like the CK album it comes in a fabulously art-directed digi-pak. Though these things will never match a record jacket, these two items are very well dressed. And they're less likely to get totalled in the mail.

Anyway, HT is likely to have your average Cramps fan salivating and owes a lot to that hiccuping vanguard while being altogether cleaner and more countrified. Their self-titled Stones-kissed twangfest is available on several imprints worldwide. Check their website for your closest harbinger. This Trash augments their irresistable rattle with a certain degree of style in presentation that offers a formidable prowess in terms of concept. The only fault I can see with all this is that they spelled Jon Graboff's name wrong on the jacket. A daft oversight really being that it's the same as Spencer's. But anyway, I bet this is a whole lotta yuks in a club so hopefully the circus will head this way eventually. I think we could use some of their tomfoolery right about now. I'm a sucker for songs that celebrate the great Jim Dandy. HT recall the America that we love, not the one that's dragging everybody to hell in a handbasket. A wise man recently likened the state of the nation out there to be "the shuffling of chairs on the deck of the Titanic". Iraq presumably playing the role of the iceberg.

And on that sustained chord with a smidge of echo...