DIMESTORE HALOES
Full Breach Kicks and Pelado Records present the almost lost forth
album by the Dimestore Haloes. We know a lot of you have been
waiting years for the final output by this long-running Boston
band and it is finally here. Over the years, the Dimestore Haloes
with their many singles and three prior albums, have built up
a worldwide cult-like following of people who listen to various
genres of music, and they did it by mixing '77 punk, rockabilly,
glam, power pop, and rock 'n' roll.
Throughout their time together, one issue after another never
quite allowed the Haloes to achieve the rock 'n' roll domination
they should have, but for those who appreciate them, they came
close. This post-humus release of their last album finds the Haloes
growing up some, but still with plenty of their signature catchy
pop hooks and '77 snot. You also get a bit of piano, a bit more
rock in their roll, and a good dose of Exile-era Rolling Stones.
If anything, the Haloes were beautiful losers in the proud tradition
of Johnny Thunders, ahead of their time and ready to
be appreciated today. This is The Ghosts of Saturday Night,
the Dimestore Haloes fourth album, considered by many to be their
best work.
Chaz Matthews, former front man of the Haloes, has a great new
solo album out called Amazing Graceless on Full Breach
Kicks as well, and both Chaz and the Haloes’ drummer Jimmy
Reject have cool punk rock-inspired novels available online. Rest in piece, Jimmy!
PRESS:
BMO’S WORLD – ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT:
“Hot Pink Stereo” might be the best song ever written about a piece of electronic home entertainment equipment. In fact, it’s one of the best rock ’n’ roll songs ever written, period. Chaz (Matthews) Haloe has a knack for capturing and expressing the feelings we’ve all had when listening to the Ramones, alone in our bedrooms, volume on eleven, thinking we’re alone in the world of conformity and mass media. By picking the scabs of his own disease, he helps us heal ours. This is what all true artists do – vent the communal spleen by conducting the equivalent of open heart surgery on themselves. Plus, he writes damn catchy melodies and plays some of the tastiest lead guitar you’re gonna hear anywhere, anytime. Laying all that on top of Jimmy Reject’s just-barely-under-control drumming and a more than capable rhythm section results in a heckuva good band that never quite achieved the success they deserved. Now that they’ve ceased to exist, we’ll have to satisfy ourselves with this long-anticipated release of their final studio album. It took two record labels, two years, and about a million false rumors and failed starts, but The Ghosts of Saturday Night is finally here, loaded with Kerouac references and drenched in glam-pop drunkenness. I don’t know whether they intended it or not, but this record reminds me of the best Rolling Stones records – plus of course, all those mascara wearing power pop bands from the end of the ‘70s. But the fact is that they’ve got a sound all their own. My biggest problem now is figuring out which of the albums I had penciled in to my top ten for the year is gonna have to move over to make room for this one.
NOW WAVE (LR) – ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT:
This album has them almost in a Replacements mode, with tempos slowed down and the noise not quite as noisy. The attitude has certainly never left though, and they're proud of it. The Dimestore Haloes bear the colors for us all, and a great record for sitting back and getting bitter and jaded right along with them. Definitely for the punk rock elitist in your family!
RAZORCAKE – ABOUT THE DIMESTORE HALOES:
The Dimestore Haloes probably never had a real shot at commercial success given the fact that their music was so good and the fact that they were all a little unbalanced.
NOW WAVE – ABOUT THE DIMESTORE HALOES:
The kicks of fuzzy guitars and punky vocals mixed with the sweetness of some of the hookiest melodies this side of Matthew Sweet was enough to get me drunk without a drink.
AVERSION – ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT:
Ask anyone on the block what the most rock ‘n’ roll night is, and the majority will tell you it’s Saturday night. That’s when the best local acts take the stage, or kids line up for touring acts. Beer flows freely, lovers and flings snatch kisses with little to no effort, and two-bit violence spills out of dive bars and into alleys. Heck, those jerks next door might feel charitable and put up with your party’s noise until midnight. It’s the few hours furthest removed from your crappy day job, your lonely weeknights, and the hangovers that, like clockwork, rule Sunday mornings.
The Dimestore Haloes join hands and sit around the Ouija board to summon the departed spirit of our favorite night on The Ghosts of Saturday Night. They’re raising all our rock ‘n’ roll dreams, our live-fast-die-young fantasies, and our few hours of excess in an otherwise over-scheduled and under-funded life. The Boston band doesn’t have the power to warp time and space to transport you to the weekend, but its blend of brash punk rock, classically influenced rock ‘n’ roll, and rockabilly is the best thing you’ll find on the inside of the workweek.
The Haloes aren’t wizards enough to make you feel as if you’re falling in love again or even catching your favorite act in an unannounced show on Saturday night, but The Ghosts of Saturday Night runs through the rock ‘n’ roll numbers with enough chutzpah to bring a smile to every rock lover’s face. There’s nothing groundbreaking – that’s always been the Haloes’ signature – but the band knows a thing or two about good, honest blue-collar songwriting. Although punk colors every note the band plays, there’s much more than three-chord stomp on this album. “City of Bottles” french kisses power pop, as handclaps punctuate big hooks overwrought with punk grit. “Hot Pink Stereo” channels the well-worn thrill of your favorite songs. Hints of The Georgia Satellites pop up in “Fastest Way Down”, while a million unloved and forgotten punk acts haunt the riffs in “Frustration”.
In a perfect world, there’d be no last call, no band’s last song and no end to Saturday night. It’d be a place where rockers such as the Dimestore Haloes were born to run, and the power of rock ‘n’ roll would save your soul faster than any Hail Mary in the world. Sure, we don’t live in a perfect world, but the Haloes aren’t going to let that stand in the way of their pursuit of the perfect punk ‘n’ roll tune.
NOW WAVE (LR) – ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT:
Recorded back in the antediluvian days when cell phones were just cell phones and didn't double as cameras, video game consoles, or masturbatory enhancers, the Dimestore Haloes’ swan song is just now seeing the light of day in good ole’ ‘05. But ultimately, it matters not when the album was recorded or released – this kind of rock ‘n’ roll does not date. Even more so than any previous Haloes full-length, it belongs not to its own time, but rather to an infinite age of rock ‘n’ roll cool – a parallel realm of existence where Chuck Berry still rules the airwaves, The Wild One dominates the box office, Jack Kerouac outsells J.K. Rowling, and all the young girls get wet listening to Gene Vincent.
Chaz Matthews calls The Ghosts of Saturday Night “the best music we ever recorded,” and it's hard to imagine any hardcore Haloes fan disagreeing. Had it not been marred by the worst production in the history of recorded music, 1999's Revolt Into Style may have gone down as the Haloes’ magnum opus. But Ghosts rivals and perhaps even surpasses Revolt’s superlative songwriting – and it sounds good too! It's the first studio recording to ever really do justice to the great live band the Haloes were. Musically, it's the band's most varied and accomplished release. Longtime devotees will be glad to find many traits of the "old" Haloes still very much in tact. But a pronounced shift towards less hurried tempos, more overtly pop songwriting, and a markedly rootsy flavor opens the band up to a much wider audience. This is an album for grizzled old truckers, surly young punks, middle-aged record collectors, suave teen rebels, aging greasers, hard-assed bikers, world-weary barflies, eternal James Dean types, alt-country enthusiasts, beat-lit buffs, heartbroken hoodlums, meth-mouthed suburbanites, glam rock diehards, denim-clad bad boys, Johnny Thunders wannabes, geriatric classic rockers, honky-tonk women, street fighting men, and anyone else who yearns for music with heart, soul, grit, and guts. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to any person with the good sense to know that Johnny Cash was more rock ‘n’ roll than every member of Linkin Park put together.
Ghosts is ripe with the longstanding hallmarks of Halodom. Matthews’ distinctive growl is something one either loves or hates, and this particular writer considers ole’ Chaz to be one of the most soulful and stirring singers in rock today. Here as always, he belts it with heart and conviction. And as a guitarist, he's even more impressive, adeptly ripping out fiery solos a la Keith/Thunders and perfect poppy leads a la The Buzzcocks. Ardent fans will go crazy for "City of Bottles" and "Care Too Less" (the latter featuring Kevin Mess on lead vocals). Both are great Stonesy punk tunes in the Heartbreakers/Joneses mold, and both are among the catchiest numbers the Haloes ever committed to tape. And when it comes to a good old-fashioned punk rock adrenaline rush, it's hard to beat "Adore Me" – the song Jimmy Reject was born to sing ever before has creepy stalker obsession been as fun as it is in this '77-style sing-along. It's got a melody you can whistle – and a guitar solo to die for! This is what solo Sid Vicious should have sounded like.
But really, it's the less rambunctious material that separates Ghosts from the rest of the Haloes albums. The 2001-2002 Haloes leave their younger selves in the dust, completing the leap from rag-tag punk rockers to accomplished rock ‘n’ rollers. "Black Glitter Baby Doll" and "Hot Pink Stereo" bridge the gap between "classic" Haloes and the beautifully-crafted pop heard on Matthews’ first solo album. Both songs rely heavily on melodic guitar hooks and anthemic choruses. The pre-chorus in "Hot Pink Stereo" features perhaps the corniest lyric you'll hear all year, yet I constantly find myself singing along to that very lyric – a true testament to Matthews’ considerable songwriting talents. And for most of the back half of the album, the band works a rootsy, country-fied groove that recalls early '70s Stones but still sounds distinctly Haloes-ish. "Fastest Way Down" and "Tattoo Black" have to rank amongst the finest songs Matthews has ever written. They're as heavy on substance as they are on hooks – and that's saying something! Both songs would find equal favor amongst all the young punks and the unruly louts at Bob's Country Bunker.
Many will remember the Dimestore Haloes primarily as a band that had all the "right" influences, and surely there was much to be said for a group that wore a love for The Clash and Johnny Thunders on its sleeve at a time when good taste was so rare and "alternative" music had become just another corporate-sponsored fad. But the Haloes were always far more than the sum of their influences, and I don't know how many people ever really "got" that. Their music bled a timeless rock ‘n’ roll cool – not an affected cool, but rather an unflinching spirit of defiance. And as a singer and lyricist, Matthews managed to take "simple" music and plunge it to great emotional depths. At a time when so much "underground" rock was fake and hollow and manufactured, the Haloes made music with soul. If you wanna know who the Haloes sound like on The Ghosts of Saturday Night, I can only tell ya, the Haloes sound like the Haloes.
RAZORCAKE – ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT:
The long-awaited final CD from glam-punks the Dimestore Haloes. The Ghosts of Saturday Night was recorded three years ago. Who knows why it took this long to get released, but now that it's here you've got no excuse not to grab it. Chaz Haloe is one of the best songwriters around, and this CD finds him at his social outcast best. The Dimestore Haloes were all misfits of one sort or another, so it's no surprise they never managed to achieve any commercial success, but that's just what makes them perfect punk rockers. The CD also features a rare vocal performance by their drummer, Jimmy Reject, who's now one of the most prolific punk critic/writers in the country. Jimmy’s new book is called Notes On Johnny Nihil and you can get it through Lulu.com.
PUNK NEWS – ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT:
The Dimestore Haloes are your theme for Saturday night. There's something about this band that harkens back to the days of Buddy Holly, roller rinks, and the `55 Chevy. There's something so undeniable about the rock 'n' roll spirit exhibited in tracks like "City of Bottles". The guitars sound just as crisp as they did when Bill Haley and the Comets’ "Rock Around the Clock" was showing the world just what music could be.
I don't know quite how to put it; the feeling I get from these songs is somewhat of an intangible one. I mean, what exactly gives a song the qualities it needs to sound like something out of the `50s? Maybe I can't rationalize just what that means, but I'd bet a lot of you will know just what I mean when you hear the sounds of that guitar. They're by no means complex songs, but tunes that you will undoubtedly hum along with, and carefree lyrics that just have a terrifically optimistic spirit. Over the course of the band's ten-year history, this, The Ghosts of Saturday Night being the last of those, the band has endured quite a few lineup changes, but as a testament to their collective resolve, the band kept going. And it's because they did that I can sit here and write about these ten, undeniably fun rock 'n' roll tracks.
The band's singer may not have the most pleasant voice at times, but remarkably, his sound is a very endearing one. Be it during the faster, punk-sounding tracks, or staying in tune for some good old rock 'n' roll, the Haloes simply would not sound the same without him. Regardless of how his voice comes across, he's the driving force of each and every song. "Fastest Way Down" starts out with a quick burst of some Jerry Lee Lewis-esque piano playing, and it just gets better from there. The more I listen, the less I can comprehend why I'm not bagging the band for doing some of the same things I'd often bag other bands for doing. During the verses the guitar is more or less lifeless, but my foot will still not stop tapping. The guitar and piano combination towards the end of the song is one of the album's best moments, truly a perfect display of the fun to be had while listening to these songs. The choruses are rich and full of the sing-along qualities that make rock and punk the choice styles of so many people. It only lasts for little more than a half-hour, but I'll be damned if these aren't the exact kind of songs that I'd be driving along to in my `55 Oldsmobile convertible with the top down, belting every word.
