Bleed Now
(Total Life Society - TLS002) CD $13.00
Scarcity frontman Matthew Wascovich is surrounded by veteran musicians who are also painters, writers, and heavy thinkers -- drummer Scott Pickering (Spike in Vain, My Dad Is Dead), guitarist Theodore Wiggs Nulls Flynn the Younger, and bassist Sebastian Wagner. Feeling like both a revival and a step forward, Bleed Now mixes classic punk with art and improv, in particular the authoritative heft of Saccharine Trust and Slovenly, the raucous blurt of Cleveland forefathers Electric Eels and Easter Monkeys, and the grit and pulse of Flipper and Suicide. Cover art by Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee). Insound calls it "intelligent, impressionistic free-rock ... an earful of splenetic discordance," while Pink Eye goes one further and calls it "a minor-masterpiece. Churning bass lines ... improvisational jazz motifs, spoken word, jagged Stoogesque guitars ... kind of like some art-punk-rocking-jazz-poet jam gone crazy for a night on mushrooms.... Most of the songs are pretty simple, riding a key through to the end –- falling in and out of chaos, the tempos change but the groove remains present."
Dissing The Reduction
(Total Life Society - TLS013) CD $14.00
Jonny Bell (Crystal Antlers) - bass, engineer, guitar, keyboards, saxophone; Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls) - guitar; Dennis Callaci (Refrigerator) - guitar; Nels Cline (Wilco) - guitar; Don Depew (Flaming Telepaths) - guitar; Jimbo Easter (Druid Perfume) - artwork; Doug Gillard (Guided By Voices) - guitar; Don Godwin (Impractical Cockpit) - bass; John Talley-Jones (Urinals) - bass; Ulrich Krieger (Text Of Light) - saxophone; Raul Morales (Mike Watt And The Missingmen) - drums, percussion; Caleb Mulkerin (Big Blood) - bass, guitar; Nate Scheible - drums; Matthew Wascovich - vocals, percussion; Tom Watson (The Red Krayola) - guitar; Mike Watt (Minutemen) - bass; and Norman Westberg (Swans) - guitar.
Fear Is Not Conscience
(Total Life Society - TLS005) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals).
Garford Mute
(Total Life Society - TLS008) 2xLP $32.00
(Total Life Society - TLS008) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Matt Wascovich’s voice … [has] an urgent angularity with the melodic sense of Jack Brewer and some of the rhythmic attack of Mayo Thompson,” notes Byron Coley. “[C]ombined with the great avant-garage thunk of the players (really beautifully recorded this time around by Paul Hamann at the legendary Suma Recording Studio), and the raw imagist power of the lyrics, the material approaches classic status from its own oblique angle.” Garford Mute is the eighth album from Scarcity Of Tanks and features: Dave Cintron - guitar (Terminal Lovers), Doug Gillard - guitar (Guided By Voices), Gnarlos - electronics (Bren't Lewiis Ensemble), Don Godwin - drums (Raya Brass Band), Tom Herman - guitar, bass, acoustic guitar (Pere Ubu), Elliott Hoffman - drums (Lawton Brothers), Andrew Klimeyk - guitar, bass (X-Blank-X), Scott Krauss - drums (Pere Ubu), Steve Mackay - saxophone (The Stooges), Rich Raponi - bass, guitar (Self Destruct Button), Weasel Walter - guitar, bass (The Flying Luttenbachers), Matthew Wascovich - vocals, and Mike Watt - bass (Minutemen). Artwork by Roger Ballen (South Africa).
Hinge
(Total Life Society - TLS010) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Doug Gillard: guitar, backing vocals; Don Godwin: bass, backing vocals, engineer; Nate Scheible: drums; Matthew Wascovich: vocals; and Michael Yonkers: guitar, electronics. Hinge was engineered by Don Godwin at Tonal Park, Takoma Park, Maryland. Artwork by Chris Yarmock. Liner notes by Jonathan Lethem.
No Endowments
(Total Life Society - TLS001) LP $15.00
Cleveland, Ohio based wordsmith Matthew Wascovich leads this amorphous unit of avant-rockers in a noisy fusion of hardcore word choice and houserocking skronkitude. Raw, high energy tracks loaded with avant-rock jamming and intense lyrical explorations remiscent of a Stooges-damaged Saccharine Trust. With Andrew Klimek (X-Blank-X, Johnny & The Dicks), Scott Pickering (My Dad Is Dead, Happy Flowers), Weasel Walter (The Flying Luttenbachers, XBXRX) and others. Our prom date at Weirdo Records describes their sound as "dispossession and discontent that could be from 1972 or now.... [V]isions of 8mm movies flickering aimlessly over the eternally dilapidated streets of Cleveland."
Ohio Captives
(Total Life Society - TLS006) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Album number six by Matthew Wascovich’s group of lifers fueled by pollution, violence, driving around a bleak city, unemployment, liars, and scumbags with hearts of gold and malice. Challenging yet absurdly accessible out-there rock music recorded in Cleveland with Todd Tobias (Guided By Voices, Robert Pollard, Circus Devils). Scarcity Of Tanks’ working class ethos shows that though we may all still be bummed out by the daily grind, there are pockets of great music still being made all the time.
Ringleader Lies
(Total Life Society - TLS007) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
As any scholar of transcontinental avant-garage knows, when the city once called The Mistake On The Lake exports weirdo discord, it is unassailably top-shelf. Scarcity Of Tanks shift manager Matthew Wascovich and his crew certainly have the 216 brew pumping through their veins, but Ringleader Lies also resides in a space without a place — a scene without a hometown. This firm rejection of rock’s compliant and predictable snuggling with its own sense of self delivers hard-won darkness and exile. Virtuosity on the album lays within its economy. The ship is tight, the route, self-determined yet bereft of congratulatory sentiment, a crucial by-pass of the armies of mediocre dunderheads forever inner-tubing down rivers of flaming shit. This incarnation of SOT excels at nuanced heaviness, Pedro-esque flirtation with the infinite abyss within, and the classic Stooges / Suicide / Torch Of The Mystics slow burn, where grooves hammer sickening hypnosis into fragments. Each track delivers delicious tension in both form and feel; Wascovich’s sturdy visions of rust-belt dystopia are barked and crooned like some -opathic character in an unpublished Warren Zevon short story crawling across bent and grime-slickened cement in an amaretto-colored delirium. His insistent, calcium-charged voice is optimized when flanked by riff and texture. Guitars disorient from an assortment of vantage points, one layer groaning with stone-eyed purpose, another layer riddled with piercing, calisthenic ack ack, another writhing like a magnetic jump rope locked in a Faraday cage as part of some arcane beta-AI protocol. Beautifully recorded by Paul Hamann at the legendary Suma Recording Studio, the material transcends the classic moves upon which it is based, and without which it couldn’t exist. Long live disappearing.
Scarcity Of Tanks is Dave Cintron - guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, keyboard, backing vocals; Nels Cline - guitar; Noah Depew - guitar; Doug Gillard - bass, guitar, acoustic guitar; Gnarlos - guitar, violin, keyboard, electronics; Paul Hamann - bass, engineer; Andrew Klimeyk - guitar; Pete Mazich - organ; John Petkovic - guitar, piano, backing vocals; Scott Pickering - drums, electronics, percussion, vibraphone, xylophone; Lee Ranaldo - guitar; Rich Raponi - guitar, bass; Sebastian Wagner - bass, electronics, synth; Matthew Wascovich - vocals; Tom Watson - guitar; Mike Watt - bass; Norman Westberg - guitar, 12-string guitar.
Sensational Grade
(Total Life Society - TLS003) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third album by self-described "anti-heroes with no message [who] exist so that you don’t have to.... Distortion. Bass and drums that make you move. Guitars that make you feel sick or alive. Vocals that you cannot relate to most of the time." It used to be that performing rock music was a kind of evocation of Washington crossing the Delaware -- the famous painting of him standing in the boat with his crew, on their way to meet their fate, confident, proud, ready to be who they are and do what they do. Nowadays, it evokes a senior citizen getting paid minimum wage to stand by the front door and say "Welcome to K-Mart" to everyone who walks in. So in that way, Scarcity Of Tanks is a throwback to a consciousness where sincerity and a fighting spirit were enough, before everything became the product of arcane calculation, the most common side effects of which are cringes and grimaces, and yet that's acceptable if the money's there. You're gonna get taken higher, and it's gonna get done by Matthew Wascovich, Dave Cintron, Jeff Deasy, Brent Gemmill, Theodore Wiggs Null Flynn The Younger, Andrew Klimeyk, John Petkovic, Scott "Puff Tube" Pickering, so fucking get with it, grayballs. Recorded by Brent Gemmill in Cleveland, Ohio, during the summer of 2010 and early 2011, mixed by Don Godwin and mastered by Weasel Walter. Cover by Aleksandra Waliszewska.
Vulgar Defender
(Total Life Society - TLS004) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals), Don Godwin (keyboards, backing vocals).