Aural Fixations

HOUSE OF FREAKS
Monkey On a Chain Gang
Tantilla
(Rhino Handmade)
Thank the deity of your choice for Rhino Handmade. The fine folks masterminding the limited edition reissues have seen fit to give a remastering job to the first two records by one of my all-time favorite bands, Richmond, Virginia's much-missed House of Freaks. 1987's Monkey On a Chain Gang and 1989's Tantilla not only benefit from much-improved sonics (especially on Chain Gang, which always sounded a little thin), but also boast a ton of bonus tracks apiece. These reissues should serve as models for the rest of the nostalgic CD community.

Outside of the band's cult following, though, why should anyone care? Because the duo of singer/guitarist Bryan Harvey and drummer Johnny Hott made some of the greatest music to ever come out of the American South. Monkey On a Chain Gang is a beautifully arranged, thoughtfully written, passionately performed masterpiece of soulful, rootsy rock & roll. Hott rumbles and pounds on his trap kit and cocktail drum, but knows when to lay back and add just the right accent, instead of filling every empty space with a hit. Harvey is a remarkable guitarist, a dynamic, melody-conscious lead/rhythm player that sounds like both Fogerty brothers playing at once, and he's also a great singer, a perfect balance between passion and control. Even better, the duo has original songs worthy of its collective talent. Harvey like to draw his lyrics from history, creating two pounding rockers out of the deadly trip made by slaves across the sea ("Bottom of the Ocean") and the experiments that produced the atomic bomb ("Dark and Light in New Mexico") and elegiac folk rock about the four decades between the dropping of that bomb and the present ("40 Years"). The furious "Black Cat Bone" explores Southern voodoo rituals, while "Long Black Train" takes the familiar folk/blues death imagery and gives it an interpretation that goes from hum to hurricane. The Freaks don't live solely in the past, though; "Cactusland" attacks the futility of finding success in Los Angeles (where the band had relocated for a time) and "My Backyard" and the raging "Crack in the Sidewalk" (probably the pair's best-known song) rock social protest into the ground. The pain and anguish in the spooky "Lonesome Graveyard" is simply timeless. The pair also waxes more introspective, injecting a stalled relationship with new life in "Give Me a Sign" and attempting to stare down despair in "You Can Never Go Home." The exciting, memorableMonkey On a Chain Gang as it stands is one of the best debut albums I've ever heard, and yet, Rhino Handmade wants it to be even better. Besides the improved sound, this edition has the two B-sides from the "Bottom of the Ocean" 12-inch single, a cover of the folk standard "Corrina Corrina" and "I'll Treat You Right Someday," one of the catchiest portraits of spousal abuse you'll ever encounter. It also contains a half-dozen live cuts, including then-unreleased songs and a cover of "Parchman Farm Blues," that prove the band didn't need extra players to make a joyful noise. Early versions of Chain Gang tunes "Give Me a Sign," "Bottom of the Ocean" and "Crack in the Sidewalk" find the duo's vision fully formed before it was unleashed on the world. Finally, the reissue includes "While You Sleep" and "Barn Burning," a pair of aggressive songs recorded early in the band's career and never before released. This edition of Monkey On a Chain Gang is a great package and, I would argue, an essential collection of American music.

Tantilla is another fantastic record that suffers only by comparison to Chain Gang. Delving even more deeply into the history and fiction of the American south (and gaining the band the "Southern Gothic" tag as a result), the record also fills out the sound, with more guitar overdubs, John Leckie's lush production and guest Marty McCavitt on supremely tasteful keyboards. But the focus is still on Harvey and Hott's energetic performances of superb songs, into which race and Southern guilt figure more heavily. (Shades of the Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera 10 years later). "White Folk's Blood" is sung from the point of view of blacks wondering about the Caucasian justification for slavery, while the protagonist of "When the Hammer Came Down" follows the desperate path of a runaway slave. The singer of the acoustic "Big Houses" is a Civil War veteran, while "Kill the Mockingbird" is based on Harper Lee's classic novel about race relations in the South. "The Righteous Will Fall" and "King of Kings" draw imagery from the Southern Baptist denomination of Christianity, though the latter is about sex more than God. This isn't a concept album, though, as plenty of songs pursue more universal themes. The ghostly "Broken Bones" sifts through the ashes of a dead relationship, while "Sun Gone Down," ironically probably the poppiest song in the band's early repertoire, is about death. "Birds of Prey" presents a drifter that could hit contemporary back roads as easily as those of any other time, and the theme of "Family Tree" is always relevant. "I Want Answers" declares atheism as passionately as XTC's then-recent "Dear God." Again, Tantilla is already a magnificent record, but the Rhino folks pull out the stops to make it better with the addition of a baker's dozen bonus cuts. The All My Friends EP is included in its entirety; this light-hearted followup to Tantilla featured the band collaborating with various Virginia cohorts, including future Sparklehorse majordomo Mark Linkous. It's not deathless music, but it contains some fine songs, including the sardonic, rocking "Meet Your Heroes," the amusing if morbid "Ten More Minutes to Live" and the jazzy, cynical "You Can't Change the World Anymore." Additionally present are three songs taken from the Tantilla sessions; "I Confess" and "Remember Me Well" would end up on the Freaks' lone major label record Cakewalk, while "Anything in the World" is a fine, no-bullshit pop song. There are also three demos of songs never formally recorded; "War at Home," "With These Hands" and "1914" may not be the finest performances in the Freaks' repertoire (the vocals sometimes sound as if they're in a different key), but they're not bad at all, and fans will be happy to hear them. Finally, this edition ends with a electrified concert take of "Big Houses," always one of the duo's most striking songs on stage. Tantilla is another fabulous Freaks record, a more than worthy followup to Monkey On a Chain Gang.

House of Freaks jumped to the majors for its next album, 1991's Cakewalk. The album contains some fine tracks and a full band sound, but can't hold a candle to the previous records. Harvey and Hott made two loose, off-the-cuff disks with ex-Dream Syndicate frontperson Steve Wynn, ex-Long Ryders guitarist Steve McCarthy and ex-Silos bassist Bob Rupe as Gutterball, before closing out their Freaks career by returning to the two-man format with the deliberately weird, low-fi Invisible Jewel in 1993. Then the band split. Hott has drummed for Cracker and Sparklehorse. Harvey seems to have disappeared, outside of his commentary on the band's fan site. The world is a sadder place without House of Freaks, but at least we still have the two best records in its catalog to keep us smiling. Michael Toland