June of 44

Jeff Mueller was one of the guitarists of Rodan before the split that led to the band’s demise. Joining forces with the other guitarist, Sean Meadows (also of Sonora Pine), bassist Fred Erskine, and drummer Doug Scharin (ex-Codeine, also in Rex and Him), he formed June Of 44.

The result of mixing such diverse sources of ideas, Engine Takes To The Water (Quarterstick, 1995), is a thoughtful “slowcore,” conceptual in the vein of Slint and Bitch Magnet, yet still accessible in the sense of Codeine. Thus, Have A Safe Trip Dear opens with a sparse sequence of chords and takes almost five minutes to gain form (and momentum). In I Get My Kicks For You one waits in vain for anything to happen: the long, nerve-wracking sequence of detached chords ends in a clumsy distortion, with nothing else occurring. Even in the more rock-oriented June Miller and Mindel, the group remains anchored to a skewed, haphazard style. Suddenly, however, Mooch opens with the chimes of a guitar melody, and Sink Is Busted indulges in a relaxed harmony, suggesting the possible birth of a new style of pop deconstruction. June Of 44’s instrumental recipes are original, unpredictable, and almost always evocative. What the group perhaps lacks is a singer who does more than simply chatter.

Among the notable novelties of the mini-album Tropics And Meridians (Quarterstick, 1996) are perhaps a more granite-like noise in the long nine-minute jam of Anisette, the hypnotic jungle of mantra-psychedelic chords in the seven-minute instrumental Lawn Bowler, and the ultra-catonic blues whisper of Arms Over Arteries (six minutes). This journey into the depths of sonic space ends in grand style with the dissonant dub of The Trees That They Once Lived In (later retitled Sanctioned In A Birdcage), amidst a clamor of guitars and a frenzied sermon. The whole has an almost classical bearing, measured and meticulous. Their song is an open structure, struck by subliminal neuroses, excited by intermittent emotional jolts, torn by subterranean anxieties, and punctuated by discontinuous sounds. Their method consists of a coherent accumulation of harmonic conflicts. The singer remains a pompous declaimer, but not very flexible, making him the weak point of an otherwise instrumentally impeccable lineup.

After the excellent debut Engine Takes To The Water and the even more excellent Tropics And Meridians, Jeff Mueller’s group released another high-level EP, Anatomy Of Sharks (Quarterstick, 1997), containing “outtakes” from the album sessions. But these are exceptional outtakes: Sharks And Sailors (eleven minutes) prances along propelled by psychotic screams, jagged guitar tones, and hypnotic percussion (Shellac on a bad day); Steamer is no less intense in terms of syncopation, shrieks, and dissonance; Boom is an onomatopoeic title, as the track is literally built around a “boom” that repeats for five minutes and is swept along by an exotic carnival of percussion, trumpets, and rattles.

Jeff Mueller is also active, along with Jason Noble of Rachel's, in Shipping News.

It’s hard to resist the allure of the absolute, and Four Great Points (Quarterstick, 1998) makes the task even more daunting. Of Information And Belief is typical of their method of gradually organizing harmony, starting from a lazy chaos of chords, using the sturdy structure of the rock song as scaffolding (in this case also featuring a classical-style violin arrangement). The classical nature of their experimentation is even more evident in The Dexterity Of Luck, six minutes of delirium over a driving rhythm that fuses Jamaican dub and Persian raga. The melancholic atmosphere of Air #17, built around a duet between typewriter and trumpet, unfolds into complex, painstaking counterpoints between trumpet and guitars. These are tracks that allow no respite for six or seven minutes, in a constant search for greater formal perfection.
The more playful side of the album is represented by rock songs like Cut Your Face, which rely on the noise ethics of Jesus Lizard and similar bands: compactness, controlled nervousness, challenging timbres, tragic vocals. Does Your Heartbeat Slower is perhaps the lightest thing they’ve ever composed, a dissonant variant of Lou Reed’s conversational boogie. Shadow Pugilist repeats the same Reed imitation but at half speed and with a dizzying chromaticism in the guitar chords.
Even comical is the Dadaist interlude of the second instrumental, Lifted Bells, oscillating between robotic cadences and siren fanfares. The instrumental Doomsday is their take on trip-hop, two orders of magnitude above Portishead, a continuous cycle of reverb and chimes.
Nothing in this music is accidental; every chord is calculated to advance the logic of the piece and ensure maximum impact. I suspect Bach would have loved June Of 44. The quartet represents the best that rock can offer today in instrumental terms and perhaps crowns the rise of the Kentucky school (think Squirrel Bait and Slint) to the pinnacle of contemporary music.

June Of 44 increasingly deliver their challenging sonic explorations with ease, no longer even attempting to reconcile them with the conventions of rock music. On Anahata (Touch & Go, 1999), the vocals (whoever sings) are no longer singing at all, but merely sound—just as “unpleasant” as the other instruments (more spoken than sung). The harmony of these cantankerous sounds has the allure of challenging logic. In Wear Two Eyes, Fred Erskine’s trumpet solos are embedded in a persistent guitar fuzz, set against Doug Scharin’s stuttering rhythms.
Jeff Mueller and Sean Meadows’ guitars—distorted, metallic, abrasive—often reign supreme with their incomplete phrases and half-melodies never fully resolved (Escape Of The Levitational Trapeze Artist). Compared to the previous album, June Of 44 perhaps show less daring: instead of abstract pieces, they aim for an experimental but accessible format reminiscent of new wave songs. Tracks like Cardiac Atlas resonate with Television, Pere Ubu, DNA, and Teenage Jesus.
Each song experiments with a different style: Recorded Syntax intones a neurotic litany over insistent guitar and drum patterns; Equators To Bi-polar evolves into soft pop arranged in a Caribbean style, a sort of samba for atmospheric guitar flourishes; Five Bucks In My Pocket ventures into funky-soul; and Peel Away Velleity is almost an homage to psychedelic garage rock.
The album is somewhat uneven, oscillating between the most challenging experimentation and poorly played pop, and it seems affected by the geographic distance between members (Meadows moved to Spain, Erskine to Washington).

June Of 44 are one of the finest bands of the late century. Their cerebral jamming has few precedents in rock history, as the improvisation relies not on psychedelic trance but on glacial, mathematical structures. The bass anchors the sound with cold precision, while the vocals are often reduced to a stream of agonized whispers.

The EP In The Fishtank (Konkurrent, 1999) is the recording of a live session in a Dutch studio. The majority of the album is even too improvised, but at least the hallucinated progressive-rock of the ouverture Pregenerate, the minimalist charge in Glenn Branca's style of Modern Hereditary Dance Steps, the ambient tribalism of Degenerate, and Every Free Day A Good Day (a revision in jazz-rock mode of Lifted Bells) are worth of their best repertory. Not coincidentally, these are all instrumental tracks.

Sean Meadows' Long Stretch Motorcycle Hymn Highway (Monitor, 2000), credited to Everlasting The Way, is a soundtrack/diary of a motorcycle trip around the world.