#curtis crowe

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Pylon

Randall Bewley, Curtis Crowe, Vanessa Briscoe Hay, Michael Lachowski

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Pylon - Danger

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Pylon in Athens, Georgia, August 1981. Photograph by Nick Arroyo

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Pylon Reissue Review: Pylon Box

(New West)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Now is the time to continue to give Pylon their due. You can hear the Athens, GA band’s influence among others in their scene, but also in the jagged punk of Sleater-Kinney, the darkness of Interpol and Savages, the frantic danceability of U.S. Girls, the garage rock propulsion of Shannon and the Clams and Sheer Mag, and the yelpy guitar and vocal chaos of Thee Oh Sees. Yet, Pylon Box is no mere reflection on the band’s legend. Remasters of their first two albums, dance-punk statement Gyrate and new wave masterpiece Chomp, along with a collection of Extra singles and alternate mixes and a Razz Tape of an unreleased recording of a band practice, combine to illustrate a band whose music and ideas sound as fresh in 2020 as they did in the late 70′s and early 80′s. Pylon is a punk band, but one that believes in idealism over nihilism, self-care over performative excess. In the Stephen Deusner essay accompanying the box set, the band talks about how, when touring, they made sure to eat three meals a day, hydrate, and take advantage of traveling by sightseeing on their stops; this wasn’t a band trashing hotel rooms and destroying TVs.

Indeed, Part of Pylon’s mythical status as, well, nice people, comes from the fact that they weren’t trust fund NYC art school brats but regular folks from a college town, one that brought the art rock to the party kids and the party rock to the art kids, following in the footsteps of the B-52s, combining just enough weirdness with wholesome character. The band was a self-described democracy, prioritizing product over process, laying it all on the line when they walked on stage as opposed to obsessing over studio minutiae. Of course, it helped that they were talented. Lead singer Vanessa Briscoe Hay was famously shy offstage but a guttural force onstage; Randall Bewley’s sharp guitar, Michael Lachowski’s impossibly limber bass, and Curtis Crowe’s groovy drums could get the greatest of skeptics moving and believing. You could hear their chops on both 2016′s Pylon Live, a recording of their final show before their initial disbanding in 1983, and on Razz Tape from this box set, their first ever recordings, unreleased until now. But despite their instrumental prowess, Pylon’s intangible attitude is what propelled them to the status they enjoy today. “Volume is pleasant / Let’s dance!” and “We eat dub for breakfast,” ranging in levels of sensibility, have become bonafide anthemic chants, as have the lyrics in “The Human Body”, wherein Hay’s voice barely rises above the ferocity of the instrumentation, mustering all her strength to impose declarations of physical safety. As much as straight-faced memorandums of “I’m putting in my earplugs” ironically resembles Dadaist surrealism, it’s also grounded in the band members’ day jobs at the DuPont textile factory, one that almost prevented the band from opening for the B-52s in NYC for the first time due to Hay’s lack of vacation days.

Despite their politeness, Pylon remained steadfast in their rejection of fame, almost staying true to their initial goal of playing in NYC, getting a writeup in New York Rocker, and quitting. They managed to sneak out the two studio albums remastered for this box set before initially disbanding at the threat of--gasp--opening for U2. (Later in Deusner’s essay, the band likens the democracy of Pylon to a “four-way dictatorship.”) The band eventually did reunite at the behest of R.E.M., released another album, and repeated the same break up/reunite process until Bewley’s tragic death of a heart attack in 2009. Hay continues to perform Pylon songs as part of Pylon Reenactment Society. But Pylon Box seems to purposefully focus on the magic of the band’s initial five-year run, what makes them the type of band that, were you to hear them now, would immediately pique your interest. Razz Tape does just that. Pylon invited Chris Rasmussen to record one of their early sessions that they could send to clubs as a demo, and he set up Bewley and Lachowski’s amps at 45 degree angles, three microphones set between them, above Crowe’s drums, and with Hay out in the hallway. The result is raw. The sinewy bass groove, sharp electric guitars, and disco drums of “Working is No Problem” sport a punky edge, while this lo-fi version of the band’s debut single “Cool” almost sounds like a spiritual sibling to Joy Division’s “No Love Lost”. You can hear the Gang of Four stylings on instrumental “Read A Book”, foreshadowing the band’s legendary opening gigs for the Leeds quartet illustrated in detail in the box set’s accompanying book. And Razz Tape makes a stunning case for Pylon’s instrumental versatility, too. The two versions of “Modern Day Fashion Woman” contrast, the first emphasizing Hay’s screaming, the latter swirling, distorted guitar and galloping drums, a tremolo effect carrying the song to its logical conclusion. There’s a similar expansiveness to “Information” and especially the extended version of “Dub”, which should put to rest the contrasting views among the band as to whether Pylon “jams” or not. (They do.)

The book associated with Pylon Live is a treasure, filled with hilarious stories of the punk scenes from Athens and beyond, including but not limited to how The Slits stole the TV that Lachowski would play his bass through, plus anecdotes from those around at the time (members of the B-52s and R.E.M.) as well as those inexorably shaped by Pylon (Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, Hercules and Love Affair’s Andy Butler). Karen Moline, the author of the band’s New York Rocker cover feature, shares how an impromptu birthday party for Hay attended by a certain famous rock critic, made it years later into a line in R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”: “Lester Bangs / Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!” While Deusner’s essay is mostly linear, tales from all over music history show the ever presence of Pylon to this day, since their inception. 

Of course, the main treasure is the music; the immaculate remasters of Gyrate and Chomp, and especially the unreleased material, Razz Tape and some tracks on Extra, from an “Untitled” instrumental that pre-dates Hay’s band membership, to alternate versions of “Reptiles”, “No Clocks”, and “Spider”, to unearthed live performances of “3x3″ and “Danger III” from the early 80′s. Whether you’re a diehard Pylon fan or have never heard of them, Pylon Box offers a uniquely accessible entry point. Dive in head first--you don’t even have to be cautious.

Pylon Box by Pylon

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