Basically, Alicja is the hardest working female musician in Memphis. Steve Selvidge already declared that her new hard rock outfit, River City Tanlines, was his favorite band this year. That’s a pretty good reccomentdation in my book. I’ll never forget the show they played together at Murphy’s this year. I videotaped the whole thing - I gotta find that tape!

If you haven’t seen them, I highly suggest you check out their NYE show at The Deli this year. If you;re not local, just keep your ears open, Alijca tours non stop and she will rock your face off. Guaranteed. She’s pretty cool to talk about your guy issues with too…but that’s another story.

Alijca Trout’s Favorite albums of this year:

In no particular order:

The Goodnight Loving, CEMETARY TRAILS:

Kevin from Dusty Medical tossed the cd version of this album in our tourin vehicle in Milwaukee and really I didn’t rip it open until we were fully bored on tour. We gave it a once over, sounded pretty good, but I wasn’t automatically addicted. Then on the drive home (7 hours that feel like 15) we stuck it in again, I remembered how catchy and poppy the first track was, then I remembered that Black Sunday had played a basement show with these guys, I remember how catchy and pretty their melodies were, and, well it reminded me of a Greg Cartwright project. Low and behold, he’d lent his hands producing this album. It rolled through twice in a row on that drive and we were hooked. This album has tender layering and great lyrics, yet it’s got the home recording layed back production, honest unperfected takes, hooks, pace changes, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the Reigning Sound or Wilco or the Palace Brothers, or even more raw punk garage rock ‘n roll. Say…the Faces, or T-Rex, or hell, Willie Nelson. Played this more than anything lately.

Le Jonathan Reilley I NEED MONEY:

I’m prolly the only person in Memphis with this album, this band is from pain and released a full length on a really small indie punk label from Madrid (Holy Cobra Society) this year, only reference I can say is that the label owner books shows for my bands and friends bands there, and he released a Lost Sounds picture disc some time back. But this album stood out to me, it’s raw, sometimes the vocals are a bit outta key, upon more listenings I started to look forward to these weird sparse off notes, but these guys have mixed Dick Dale with Man Or Astro Man? Guitar wise, and then the vocals are almost like the Intelligence meets Flock of Seaguls, the songs and sound is original. I dj-ed one of these songs and I felt I saw a lotta eyes and ears perk up.

Evil Army s/t : great!

Tragedy NERVE DAMAGE :

These once Tennessee natives stole away to Portland and apparently never looked back because their sound has nothing remotely Memphis nor anti-Memphis in it anymore. They seem to have come upon their own brand of music. From a distance you’d classify it as hardcore, but what I love is the melodic heavily layered orchestration and the dark black metal beauty. Do you ever notice that people LOVE movies that make them cry? Basically they take themes of the human condition like laws and policing and conformity and war and the daily grind and somehow they convince you to escape the rat race of capitalism and live underground in the light. Well, it’s all just an analysation, but when you hear it you hear aggression, symphonic electric sounds, brutal vocals, tragic words, and a drummer working his ass off and loving it.

Headache City: s/t:

They’re from Chicago, I’ve spun this over and over, poppy garage punk via Marky Smith(the Fall), and occaisional pretty punk girl vocals.

Interview with Alicja Trout

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