#weirdon

[jerk-o-lantern]

Purling Hiss - Six Ways to Sunday

[kerriomalley]

Listening to Philly's Purling Hiss is kind of like listening to the kids that used to play with your little brother in your parent’s basement as they grow up. What started as Zeppelin-style riffs meets the Green Day or Pixies intro to punk rock-lite, then stumbles down darker, more expansive paths as number of bowls smoked vs. fucks given starts to tilt the scales to some kind of jumbled, imperfect authenticity. Read my review of Purling Hiss's latest release, Weirdon, and get weird with it.

[recordclublocal282]

Six Ways To Sunday - Purling Hiss from Weirdon (2014)

Purling Hiss hail from Philadelphia. They used to be way more lo-fi than this but over their last couple of albums the production value has increased and, well, now they sound awesome. I was chuffed to see when Woods played here that their bass player wore a Purling Hiss t-shirt so they definitely have cred...and some serious skills. Really, rock this loud and enjoy.

[akamusicphilly]

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[dustedmagazine]

Purling Hiss — Weirdon (Drag City)

Purling Hiss’s Mike Polizze came of age in the 1990s, a time when indie and underground shared space with classic rock on radio and TV– after “punk broke” and before the crash of the majors. And Purling Hiss's Weirdon represents what happens when ‘80s and ‘90s underground rock becomes internalized as a set of conventions, and gets recombined with familiar staples of the first wave of classic rock.

Almost 30 years after You’re Living All Over Me and Daydream Nation, no one can knock Polizze’s deployment of the musical techniques of the Our Band Could Be Your Life-era. Weirdon does not sound like a nostalgic repetition, nor does it photocopy any one band’s sound. In fact, Polizze is mining one of the few seams left open to rock musicians: the refinement of the heavier side of underground guitar. On the one hand, electronic and dance music is finally getting the attention it deserves in the US with a genuinely committed community of fans; on the other, upper middle class professionals are consuming more and more lightweight fare inexplicably calling itself rock, punk and/or experimental. In this situation, Purling Hiss manage to make rock that sounds immediate, powerful and concentrated. 

It’s as if the structural pieces of indie have been isolated and combined into a more concentrated, immediate and catchier form. In this, Polizze plays a similar role Jay Reatard did to Memphis garage, as a refiner and craftsman, adding hooks, structure, and a hint of polish here and there. The record’s first three songs epitomize this tendency, each one a dense rocker (“Forcefield of Solitude,” “Sundance Boogie Salon” and “Learning Slowly”) which packs a lot into its short running time. The most successful of the slower songs, “Another Silvermoon” anomalously sounds like a lost Wrens song, and is followed by a middle set that gets a little bogged down in genre exercises. But Weirdon ends on a high note with the intense “Six Ways to Sunday,” a Crazy Horse-inspired, 7-minute stomper. 

Polizze’s lyrics combine scraps of sayings, commonplace phrases (“Six Ways to Sunday/Eight Days a Week”) with simple statements and narrative vignettes. The words are unpretentious and unobtrusive. This allows Polizze to bend his voice around his expressive guitar playing; the result is not jumbled nonsense, but rather the expression of basic emotions in a pliant musical form. “It’s the end of the time/it’s about 6 p.m./I don’t know where I am,” goes a line from “Sundance Boogie Salon,” demonstrating his method– the grandiose replaced with the modest and anti-lyrical.  Reverb and multi-tracked vocals sweeten the sound, and Polizze’s voice is warm but controlled. His slightly nasal voice is strong enough to match the band’s volume without histrionics or retro affectation.   

Weirdon shows where the Drag City label stands in the underground rock marketplace — finding a larger crowd than avant noise, yet equally distant from the sort of lifestyle rock that would slip easily into commercials. While many of its long-running peers have gone under or lost the plot, records like this show why they’ve lasted. Purling Hiss’s rough but accessible rock, made with craftsmanship and taste, does a difficult thing. It pleases old indie-heads just as easily as it can draw in the new kids. 

Max Brzezinski

[redeyednblue]

New hook-filled single "Forcefield of Solitude" from lowest-fi psych-rockers Purling Hiss off their upcoming album, Weirdon, out September 23rd. Highly recommended. 

[fabricohmagazine-blog]

Purling Hiss has announced the release of a new album later this summer.  Weirdon will see a September 23rd release via Drag City.

- See more at: http://fabricohmusic.com/news/purling_hiss_annnounces_new_album/