Some people are born, headfirst into a cradle and never really escape that blanket security. Grow, eat, job, no time for life? They will always keep their cards and their souls close to their chest. The best experiences come from offering it to someone else altogether. Wes Eisold probably clawed his way out of the womb for fear of wasting his allotted time. The man, the musician, the poet, is a distillation of pretty much everything the counter culture has to roll out. Pageboy haircut tops a mind tank-melting pot of hardcore primitives and poetically twisted affectation.
The rolling panzer of American Nightmare / Give Up The Ghost defined for many kids, their flourishing adolescent glut of angst. The second wavers still paraded the likes of Gorilla Biscuits and H2O on their big apple shoulders, dashing the hopes of all but the truest punks willing to hark back to the '88 revival sound. I've never understood why the crew cut youth of yesterday are so unwilling to open up and embrace whatever mutant sounds the apple mac generation are crafting - without dismissing it as spurious faux-punk on first glance.
Equal Vision put out the insanely heavy, insanely mosh inducing debut LP 'Background Music,' which, after the self titled EP & the 'Sun Isn't Getting Any Brighter' EP stirred the mortar that would go on to cement Give Up The Ghost's place in modern hardcore culture. I am in no doubt that when they whipped out the likes of Am/Pm in whatever back alley sweatbox they were playing in, bedlam would ensue.
We're Down Til' We're Underground' continued the lightning war, yet saw Eisold & co. feel their way through the mesh of hardcore limits as a more realised sound coalesced into being. This album is an outright fucking tirade, a professionally orchestrated outing with the grime, grit and self reflection that hardcore punk can frame so well.
The heartstrings that lashed such a volatile band together eventually gave way, with a fallout that was felt throughout the listening community. They were just so incredibly good, so strong but equally listenable - along with The Suicide File they had inflamed the north eastern scene and beat it's chest raw. A collective driftwood of available musicians flooded the talent radar and one by one they each found new projects by which to ply their trade. Tim Cossar now flies the flag for metallic hardcore heavysets The Hope Conspiracy, and Jarvis Holden united with post-hardcore king Daryl Palumbo to birth the power pop snaps & crackles of Head Automatica. Wes pretty much just wiped the snot from his nose and threw himself head first back into the swarming mass of young bloods thirsty for the next chapter.
Some Girls congealed together rather naturally, as Wes joined forces with Justin Pearson of The Locust (and a plethora of other bands), to thrash out a more rudimentary, light speed soundtrack of warped destruction. In late 2003 they kicked out an LP All My Friends Are Going Death on Deathwish, which has subsequently I hear been remastered, mixed and issued along with some sweet etching, all on limited edition colour vinyl. Some Girls' unbridled fuck-you-we're-gonna-play-our-way coupling of attitude and sound flipped the coin completely. The union of past Unbroken, Tristeza, Holy Molar and Give Up The Ghost members was a rabid formula.
The second full length dropped in 2006, this time Epitaph swooped to put it out. The writing for 'Heaven's Pregnant Teens' was a maturing process for Some Girls. They kept their animalistic message crystal clear, and left no stone unturned in their quest to reach the desired ear slaying caterwaul.
Some Girls died a death unfitting of a band made up of such live wires. The band was 'quietly put to rest' in October of 2007, freeing up Wes once more. The rolling stone that gathers no moss had hooked up with the incomparable Chauncey and others as a side project before the Some Girls split, the cacophony resulting from forcing hardcore punk into a kinship with danceable electronica beats rattled the cages of even the staunchest 'punk as fuck' kids. The preppy long island new wavers most probably had their J-Crew socks blown off by the likes of XO Skeletons
XO Skeletons went on to record 'Bored By Heaven' in a series of sessions, later releasing it free to download.
In post Obama victory America Wes has spread his runners further left field, founding and currently running Heartworm Press out of Philadelphia, PA. Heartworm is a collective escape for talented punks and other such scene luminaries who can write better than the average dirtbag and have more than half interesting stories to tell. Some of it, if not all of it is genuinely brilliant, well crafted drug enduced stumbles through the inner workings of a teenager's horomone bank.
Musically hes moved even further into the darker corners of the electronic world with Cold Cave, concocting devilishly sombre slices of experimental synth-noise / no wave / dark wave. Whichever tag of the week is going through the hip-kid processing machine applies here. I think tagging Cold Cave as 'Cold Wave' is one step beyond the borderline of ridiculousness. Nevertheless some of their bites make me think of what Faithless might have sounded like if they had an even bleaker outlook on life and wore trenchcoats indoors, or had played jaw crushing hardcore for ten years prior. So check out what some people called the 'catchiest twelve minutes of 2008', The Trees Grew Emotions And Died
