What's up guys, Chris here. For my first post on DBR, I'm reviewing California Lightning's sole 7", which was the first thing that came to mind when Rob mentioned this blog to me. I first heard this record get namedropped on VLV by James Fella, owner of the excellent Gilgongo label out of Tempe, AZ, and filed it in the back of my mind to pick up if I ever came across it. A trip to the Williamsburg Academy in 2008 yielded the Troubleman Unlimited pressing of this 7" in the dollar bin, and it's been spun pretty consistently since then.
California Lightning are a two-piece guitar and drum band from San Francisco, concurrent with the beginnings of Erase Errata. Singer/guitarist Jenny Hoyston and drummer Bianca Sparta, both of whom are members of Erase Errata, had this band on the side or something. I don't know, there's no information about this band on the Internet! I gave "Other Animals" a listen a little while ago and to be honest, it holds up way better than most other early 2000's "dance-punk" records. Eat shit, Radio 4! California Lightning sound almost nothing like EE, however - they might be best described as "dark indie pop," although "dark" and "indie pop" as qualifiers don't really apply to California Lightning. Maybe a couple contemporary comparisons would be a faster, scrappier Broken Water, or the first Sex Church 12" that came out a few years ago on Convulsive, but with almost all "garage" influence stripped away. Something that turns me off about a lot of indie pop is that singers (both male and female) tend to sound kind of 'precious' - you know exactly what I mean, that Aladdin soundtrack shit that Velocity Girl can get on sometimes - but Hoyston's voice is anything but, as you can hear on opener "Penitentiary," which sounds like a more pitched-down and atonal Black Tambourine. The second track on the A-side, "Angel Outfit," continues the downer jangle of the first track, but quickly slips into a weird, almost Hot Snakes-style sizzler of a two-note guitar hook, a curveball that would hopefully bum out your local Burger Baby expecting the nth copy of a copy of the Vivian Girls in the past five years. B-side "Just Broke Up" takes more of a rhythmic no wave slant, not far off from a stretched out DNA song or "Sister"-era Sonic Youth, specifically bringing to mind the unsettling "Pacific Coast Highway".
So, why is this record floating around in dollar bins, instead of being hailed as a minor modern classic? Well, it was released on Troubleman Unlimited, a label that your local record store probably has a ton of records on the cheap. This isn't a dis to TMU, they put out some great records, and a lot of quality records can be picked up on the cheap by virtue of thousands upon thousands of copies being pressed. I'd also guess that part of the reason why this record floats around in dollar bins is because nobody knows what it is. There's not really any information about California Lightning online. This record came out around 2000, just enough time for the webzines of the time to have gone down permanently. There are also multiple pressings of this record - copies exist under the band names "California Lightening" on the original Sound on Sound pressing from 2000, and "California Lightning" on the TMU repress, making things even more confusing! The Discogs entry has the additional E, but I used the TMU spelling because that's my copy, and "California Lightning" sounds more badass, like the Tampa Bay Lightning or something. I guess they did a split 7" with Sic Alps in 2004, too, but I haven't heard that (and my previous experiences with Sic Alps have been underwhelming, to say the least). Anyway, pick this up if you stumble across it, or just head straight to Discogs - there's a copy up for a whopping 97 cents right now.
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