The Cutters release debut album, ram knife through D.C.'s heart.

D.C. punk band The Points defiled serious punk rock in the nation's capital. Frontman Geo (George White) spat beer on his audience. He wrote hooky songs about girls, and how they suck. Following years of Dischord rock music built on questioning the rules—about society, social strata, and sincere things like that—The Points declared a ban on the rules of punk rock.  (Quite directly, in the song "Rock n Roll, No Rules.")

Now, White has a new band based in Houston, Texas, where punk doesn't really need his help. Nevertheless, White, who still lives in D.C., should be commended for his message control. On their new eight-song release on Sinkhole Texas, The Cutters—White's fivesome including members of Talk Sick Brats, Cop Warmth, and others—stick to the basics: chicks, shit that sucks, drugs, and apathy.  It's an ass-kicking debut, and available, naturally, through Dischord distro.

DOWNLOAD: The Cutters – "Make It Up to You"

An occupational hazard in music criticism is the inevitable blurbology: over-hyphenated elevator pitches in favor of a new run of B-sides that "totally could have been A-sides" from a band seemingly defined by the number of genres it inhabits.

This was also the case in college. For example: someone mentions a group called, say, Dr. Pain and the Smooch of Death. "They're pretty cool," this person shrugs. (The shrug is always a warning sign.)

"What's it like?" you ask, bracing yourself.

"Oh, I dunno...it's, like, post-Punk-core with a dash of jizz-rock thrown in," this person will nod. You too will nod, and this person will endeavor to ply you with the grainy tracks in question; if there's weed in the room, you soldier through.

There is no tonic for the proceedings, except to get high or become an actual critic. That was the case, at least, until the emergence of Das Mötørbike, an unusual, genre-bending group of imaginary Germans who played imaginary mash-ups of imaginary styles.

Dan Sachs, who claims that he and I devised the group during a freshman-year bender now remembers that his roommate Nick Mott was responsible for the Mötørbike concept, says that its chimeric nature makes Das Mötørbike hard to pin down.

"It's very hard to describe," Sachs said in a phone interview. "There's a lot of ether-metal/dreamscape rock, but in their career they've explored hillbilly death-metal, and also they've made their way through an emo phase, so they're really all over the place."

That elusive sound, Sachs insists, is what keeps the group relevant.

“It's an amazing thing in any creative endeavor to see a group change their vision once, twice, much less on a tri-monthly basis,” Sachs marvels. “It's virtuosic.”

The Mötørbike was more than a transplendent listening experience—they were the ultimate rejoinder to the music know-it-all. When one of those bastards would start hyphenating, we’d see his hyphens and raise him an umlaut.

“Have you guys heard the new Mescaline Spurs record?” someone would ask. We’d nod deprecatingly and mention DM; half the time, the person had heard of them.

“Oh yeah, Das Mötørboat, that shit’s cool, I guess.”

“Way cool,” we’d nod. “Pre-funk with a little post-nasal thing going on. Very groovy.”

Sachs calls it odd that so many kids claim familiarity with the group.

“When you google [Das Mötørbike], nothing comes up,” he observes. “It’s probably that they’re just so underground. You can’t even google them? It gives it that much more cachet, that much more coolness in certain circles.”

Thanks to City Lights editor Mike Riggs, Das Mötørbike is now immortalized on UrbanDictionary.com. Which might deal a fatal blow to my cocktail-party banter.

*Das Mötørbike will not perform at DC9 at 8 p.m. tomorrow evening. But you and your hip friends should totally still be there.

Photo courtesy of littlepois

Former Washington City Paper music critic Rickey Wright is dead.  Wright passed away at 4:31 p.m. on February 19 in Seattle after suffering from a series of small strokes. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about John Lennon's "Imagine."

Wright was probably one of the most prolific talents the Washington City Paper has ever had perhaps on par with Jenkins, and the great, beloved Joel S. I never met Wright but I was around when he was around in the mid-to-late '90s. I marveled at the fact that he could write on just about any band or genre and not appear to sweat it. (Most of us sweat it).

Wright's prose was effortless and to the point. He didn't mess around with silly metaphors. Nor did he make you feel stupid (he never loaded his pieces with arcane references to deep cuts, alternate Replacements b-sides, etc.). He just wrote and wrote.

"He was a save-your-ass kind of writer," recalls former Washington City Paper Arts Editor Glenn Dixon. "If someone didn't come through, and there were constantly people who didn't come through, Rickey would do the job. He'd write it well. He'd get it in on time—always. He was never without ideas and he could cover any kind of music. I can't tell you how rare that is. I'm really sorry."

Wright penned pieces on everything from Travolta to Ben Lee to all of pop music in 1997 to Metallica and Soundgarden to R.E.M. to Charles Mingus to Johnny Cash to Led Zep to Curtis Mayfield and Millie Jackson to Luna and Teenage Fanclub to Wesley Willis to British ska to all of '90s rock to G. Love to Boston to the Shangri-Las to the Replacements. Wright's final posting on his Facebook page was a list of his 12 favorite Beatles covers; he included two remakes of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."

Idolator had this to say about Wright's passing:

"Wright was an editor for Amazon for some time (that job brought him to Seattle), and his work appeared in publications like USA Today, the Village Voice, Blender, Harp, and the Seattle Weekly. He also won the 1999 Rhino Music Aptitude Test, a fact that seems somewhat trivial at first glance, but if you've actually seen the test or some of the people who have failed it miserably, you realize what a testament to his musical knowledge that accolade really is."

Ned Raggett wrote up a nice obit. Fred Mills has a tribute to Wright in Blurt. Matos has a deeply personal post on Wright as well. Here's a portion of what Matos had to say:

"Rickey passed away this afternoon at 4:31. Last week he'd had a stroke–apparently more than one, all small, over a period of time–and went to the hospital for treatment. He had surgery and underwent another stroke on the table; he spent most of his final week in a coma. Our friend Rachel and I visited him yesterday. It was not as awful as I'd feared it might be: he still looked like himself, which was encouraging even if everyone knew he wasn't going to make it. It's hard not to second-guess how much of this I should be saying, mainly because Rickey was the kind of person who deserves whatever honor you can give him, especially in passing. I've seldom known a kinder person, or a better listener, or anyone more enthusiastic about music or film or whatever–and even better, his enthusiasm was catching. When I'm excited about something I yell without meaning to, or just become obnoxious about it. Rickey never did that. He didn't have to."

If you'd like to read more of Wright in his own words, you can check out his blog.

Wright's last blog post had been a hopeful one. It is dated Feb. 4. It was about Obama. He titled it "I love my president." This is what he had to say He uses the post to print a quote from Obama:

"In the past few days, I've heard criticisms that this [stimulus] plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place . . . I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

There is an obit from his former employer the Virginian-Pilot:

"'He had quite a following when he was here and was influential in the local music scene,' said former Pilot writer Earl Swift. 'I’ve never known anyone with a more encyclopedic knowledge of music.'"

There is still lots more from his friends and fellow critics. Here's a really personal recollection of Wright (I'm just quoting a small portion; you should really read the entire entry):

"Rickey used to literally rock and roll. He never stopped moving. Either his leg was always tapping or he’d rock back and forth in his chair like a baby trying to comfort himself. He had a repertoire of postures. Always leaning forward with his hand on his thigh, fingers pointed in and elbow pointed out. He used his hands when he talked, flipping his palms upward in a gesture of offering.

Rickey always looked cool. He was a rock critic and looked the part. He always had a good haircut. He always wore the cool black ankle boots with the pointed toes. He knew how to wear a suit. He walked on his toes a bit which sort of accentuated his little belly. He always had just the right rock ‘n’ roll button on his bag or his jacket.

Rickey loved his cats, Chet and Kettle. When Chet was sick, he went through tremendous lengths and expense to try to keep him alive. When Kettle ran away, he consulted a pet psychic to find her, and found her. He used to talk about what a good soul Chet had and how you could see it in the little cat’s big eyes....

Rickey and I only ever talked about two things: music and love. Our last conversation was about the latter. It occurred around the beginning of January...."

And finally, a message from Wright's aunt. She had sent out an e-mail to his friends breaking the news of his death. She writes:

"This loss is tragic. Fortunately, Rickey was able to pursue and achieve his dreams. His interest in music was evident from a very early age and has always continued, unabated. His presence in so many lives has been uniquely meaningful and has brought joy to many.

I believe sincerely that we should celebrate his life. Rickey would like that. So, I’m going to turn on some music and think of Rickey and smile.

Take care.
Deborah (Rickey’s aunt)"

I listened to the five tracks that comprise Phantom on the Horizon over 40 times (some tracks more than others) during the process of reviewing the Fall of Troy's new album for the dead-tree version of City Paper. As a result, I can sort of hum at least one guitar riff, which you can listen to below (and nobody hums to prog unless that prog is Rush).

But I'm not sure if listening to an album as many times as I did is good for the review process. Stuff that I didn't like the first time around grew on me, though that fact didn't make it into my review (the 400-word limit doesn't leave much room for a discussion of personal listening habits). On the other hand, aspects that stood out at first–red-hot guitar solos and great screaming come to mind–gradually faded as I grasped the significance of the album as a complete composition. Compared to other media for criticism, it's easy and–taking  a random sample from the music critics I know personally–commonplace for us to fall for the music we're supposed to be reviewing skeptically. (Why is it that good film critics seldom have this problem?)

However, I can think of some great albums (Say Anything's ...Is a Real Boy) and great bands (Radiohead) that I had to listen to over and over again before I saw what was so great about them.

For your listening pleasure, a few seconds of "A Strange Conversation," the second "chapter" on FoT's Phantom on the Horizon:

And here's a snippet from the review (or you can just read the whole thing):

"[I]t’s a worthwhile listen for anyone looking to dip a toe a into contemporary mainstream prog scene led by Coheed and Cambria, blending screamo vocals and mathcore rhythms with punk antics and an art-school sensibility. That’s a lot to pack into a tune, and Fall of Troy has recorded plenty of inaccessible or just plain noisy music in the past. (“Whacko Jacko Steals the Elephant Man’s Bones,” from 2005’s Doppleganger, oscillates between cacophonous technical sections and tuneless, distorted interludes.)"

I want to clarify that I don't think Coheed (who I used as a gold standard of sorts) is mainstream, or that there's any such thing as "mainstream prog," but that within prog you can find accessible and less-accessible music (big, resounding "duh"). Coheed and Cambria, the Fall of Troy, and–to a lesser extent–the Mars Volta are easier listening than Dream Theater and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Behold...The Arctopus–that's what earned FoT and Coheed the mainstream tag.

I still haven't decided if Phantom will make my top-10 list. I'd like to include at least one experimental/prog act, and I'm currently considering Idiot Pilot's reissued EP Heart is Long–even though it falls entirely on the experimental side.

Would anybody care to plug a 2008 prog album?