The Open Up And Bleeds

THE OPEN UP AND BLEEDS

www.myspace.com/openupandbleeds

The first thing that you have to do in listening to The Open Up and Bleeds is turn up the volume. This Swedish, Stockholm based band demands you turn it up, possessing a big sound which helps break out of the punkish core that fuels it - a punk rock centre which they happily namecheck: Iggy Pop (obviously), The Stooges, Stiv Bators, Klaus Kinski, etc. Their first album is a fine expansion of what they have been developing for a while: the early recordings on their first EP was rougher with a decidedly storming-it-in-a-bar, almost rockabilly feel. Even then the band’s ease with pop-punk, rousing melodies and songs was obvious, never quite knowing whether to dance or start a fight. Singer/guitarist Joel Segerstedt alternated with a fuck-off and fuck-me attitude, one moment confrontational and the next introverted. One of my favourites from this first release is "Lonely City", about the ironic uniformity of the punk movement: "My little brother is a punk rocker," Joel declares, but the tone is dark, doomed and seemingly grieving. Get it at suicide records.

The next three-track EP revealed that The Open Ups had developed so that now they had less swagger and more epic venturing that included new wave synths and swirls and 10 minute odes to decay of the urban, suburban and personal kinds.

All this remains on their first album. They are quite the formidable unit. It is not that there is anything groundbreaking here, but that the songs are so complete and enjoyable. The Open Up and Bleeds run on words of discontent. Andreas Thunmarker’s drums alternate between patient pounding (e.g. on "OK is not OK) and thunderous explosions. The guitars by Joel and Markus Johansson roll, soar and spike. Thomas Meyer’s basslines sometimes slur, but often are the kind to run through the streets at night to.

The dissatisfaction is easy to feel… it’s in the slightly strangled but compelling vocals of Joel and the restlessness of the guitars. . The titles are a giveaway too: "OK is not OK", "I Don’t Want to Die", "In Darkest Hours". These are mid-tempo, brooding tracks depicting characters struggling with pessimism and disgruntlement, broken up by bursts of rocking out such as "This Noise". "I’m waking up in such a mess," Joel sings, and it’s thrilling and cathartic.

But it is not all bleak, because beneath this veneer of unhappiness, there are also semi-nostalgic tales of being in bands, as well as much evidence of affection in the numerous named people and small tales Joel tells. The title "Everyone I Know" comes with the suffix "is from bands I’ve been in" and leaves the fourteen year-old protagonist "stuck there" on a stage for the first time; whereupon the song also leaves him stranded adrift an instrumental passage that captures a frozen moment of nerves and self-doubt before giving relief with a final chorus burst. All this to a synthetic pulse that comes dangerously close to disco. Well, perhaps not quite disco, but it does work and is decidedly new wave. It is the inclusion of these pulses and sweeping synths and effects that help to boost the Open Ups’ sound, to help give each song a distinctive feel. With songs like "Stiv Bators in All of Us" and "Let’s Go Back to Modernism", it is hard to think of many songs that sound so tunefully desperate for a smack around.

And then there is "Cut Me A Live One", which finds the Open Ups at their most evocative: "crosses on your eyeballs/and scars upon your chest"; "body bags and stretchers/blocking every the door" (these lyrics are written by Markus; all other by Joel)).The music channels that other Swedish band of disillusionment Broder Daniel, a big and yearning sound whose haunting effects is helped immensely by the subtle, singalong layers of vocal. For me, this track is the true revelation of the album, near impossible to shake.

Rounding up with "The End", the album finishes on a 10 minute epic that feels like a gritty neo-realist European film about the disaffected and alienated. The rush of the whole album thins out into a cacophony of synths, designed to leave you hanging and lost.

And then you are done. It needs to be noted that there is grand, clear production by Henrik Svensson that is notable often in the inspired thunderous drum treatment and vocal layers. The Open Up and Bleeds will not be cast as pioneers, but the music is sweet, the energy infectious, the edginess and anxious essence casting ambiguity over the simplest of statements. It is an album for when you want to rock out; to run away to, to sing along to.

An evident act of love and hate, The Open Up and Bleeds album is a winner; one eye on the darkness and one on the dance floor. It’s a charged, thrilling time feeling bad. I won’t argue with that.

Lost in Space: on the Robinson homestead

LOST IN SPACE:

series 1, episodes 4-8

4: There Were Giants in the Earth

5: The Hungry Sea

6: Welcome Stranger

7: My Friend, Mr. Nobody

8: Invaders from the Fifth Dimension

"nefarious plot... dupliciuous plan..."

*

4: "There Were Giants In The Earth" - Things have settled now. We know that each episode, Maureen Robinson (space-eyed June Lockhart) will be concerned and anxious; Dr. Smith will be duplicitous and scheming; Will Robinson will disobey his father’s orders and get a talking to later on after calamity has been diverted; Judy and Penny won’t do much and Don West will be stolid. To be fair, Penny almost endangers herself by, apparently, wandering off with her monkey alien just as the family are trying to relocate; ordinarily, endangering oneself is Will’s job, but Penny’s dilemma is short lived and this incident seems to serve only to kill time and to show off John Robinson in a jet-pack (jet-pack!). Early on, John makes a voice-over report and states that they know "nothing" about the animal life on the planet… except, of course, for the bizarrely trouble-free and domesticated monkey-alien and the turtle things briefly glimpsed when Penny rides one.

Giantism is the theme for this episode, as the somewhat odd title implies: giants in the earth?? We get giant vegetables this time to liven up a period of quiet given to seeing how the Robinsons try to set up their own little farmstead. But this proves only to be an indication of things to come as we next get full-on giant fanged cyclops alien action. Again, "Lost in Space" is like a whole sequence of Golden Age science-fiction magazine covers come to life, and the giant alien is a prize moment, simultaneously hilarious and gripping. The special effects are ambitious, fun and despite the low budget, engaging and credible enough; and you can’t go far wrong with a man in a furry suit and absurd headpiece.

But an even greater threat appears to be the impending freezing weather, and so the family sets out South to avoid being turned into Popsicles. The early stages of the journey includes a camp-side moment with Will Robinson playing "Greensleeves" on guitar! (For a moment, I wondered why Will was playing Leonard Cohen before I realised I was recalling Cohen’s cover version initially rather than the traditional original. But for a moment, Will Robinson playing Cohen was a surreal possibility. Bill Mumy will go on to have a long musical career, of course.) This is all without Dr. Smith, who has decided to stay back in the space-saucer to mince around and take his chances, not wanting to give up home comforts and test the nastiness of the outside world and, well, he is just damned contrary because he is the villain.

As the journey progresses, there is trouble in camp as Don West begins to show defiant strains of dissent against the imperious goodness of John Robinson. Don’s distrust of Dr. Smith makes him trigger-happy when Smith becomes less nefarious, has some kind of change-of-heart and tries to warn the Robinsons of the crazy orbit and weather changes of the planet which are likely to spell their doom. This all ends up with the Robinsons not having to go South after all and returning back to the Jupiter 2. But not before they run from electrical storms and take refuge in a cave of tombs - which ends up being a disappointingly brief exploration and peril. Sheesh, aren’t these guys curious about ancient alien civilisations at all? And -

5: "The Hungry Sea": - on the way home there is a fun battle with whirlpools as the frozen landscape they initially crossed has now melted into a violent sea. There is definitely delight in seeing the fragile-looking but apparently super-durable "chariot" making its way across frozen seas and rocky terrain, and then swimming to land - again, the miniatures work is pretty impressive and engaging. Much of the imagery of these early episodes is highly memorable and the sea storm is another that seems to exceed expectations. This particular odyssey ends with everyone back at Jupiter 2 and - evidently not wanting to be outdone by Will’s performance the previous episode - the Robot takes up the guitar and strums "There’s No Place Like Home". Will seems jealous of this, decrying the Robot’s choice as a din, apparently forgetting that his own earlier choice of "Greensleeves" was not exactly rock’n’roll. And then comes the sensation that a shark is being jumped.

The long-term storyline of the early episodes, outlining the Robinson’s take-off into space and their eventual shipwreck on an unnamed planet starts to break up now. The overarching continuity will fall into more independent instalments which resets the storyline every credit sequence. There has been evidence of this already, what with the giant (what, just one giant?), gigantic vegetables of episode four being totally forgotten subsequently, along with the potentially creepy and fascinating implications of a tombs they stumbled into. This pilgrimage into the cosmos is likely to offer up a lot of come-and-go perils to keep things going over the seasons. The next episode seems to hint at instant desperation after the Robinson’s brief excursion South to avoid the crazed weather patterns, and also to the way "Lost in Space" will progress.

"Yessirree, ain' we just jumping the shark early?"

*

6: "Howdy Stranger" immediately resorts to the guest star mode of keeping things going. And it’s a galaxy-travelin’ lone cowboy called James Hapgood that drops by the Robinson homestead (he‘s good and haphazard, I guess!), the kind that likes to spin yarns, whoop and fight and not stay any place long. We’ve already determined that the Robinsons are derived equally from pulp sci-fi and western pilgrimage adventures equally: the wholesomeness of the family, the campfire acoustic sessions, battles with the elements, the old-fashioned gender roles, the way they stop at the "roadside" to "give thanks" that they have survived perilous moments… it is all there. What we now have, which was not so obvious before, is a galaxy potentially full of solo-adventurers too, which makes the Robinsons far more straight-up pilgrims than pioneers and also means that a guest star might drop by at any moment. There is some slight endangerment from a weed-like contamination on the cowboy’s spaceship, but the real conflict here is the Robinson parents tension around the opportunity to send the children back to Earth, and then with Hapgood to convince him to take them. This does seem a little late in coming since the programme to send a family into space was at least a decade in the making (according to episode one); you would think the Robinsons were pretty certain of what exactly they were letting themselves in for, even if they concluded that it was the unknown. For a moment, Will has another alternative father figure (he doesn’t seem interested in looking up to Don West much and he tolerates Dr Smith like a difficult grandpa) and COWBOY as Hapgood puts in a good enough performance, not too broad. But, again, the haste with which the show had a guest astronaut stop by for a moment already nods to a show quickly run out of steam and unable to perpetuate an ongoing rather than episodic venture.

Evidently it is time for each Robinson to get their moment, and episode 7, which has the crummy title of "My Friend, Mr. Nobody", is all Penny Robinson’s. Feeling a little ignored and not taken seriously by the rest of the family, Penny wanders off alone in the alien landscape and hears voices and promptly gets herself an ’imaginary’ friend of sorts. It is, of course, an alien force, a disembodied voice in a cave mimicking and learning from her words. There is some initial creepiness, but this falls away to Penny’s sentimental and borderline hysterical attachment to this disembodied voice (girls, huh?). Finally, Penny’s loneliness takes flight into the stars. I’m sure she’ll be fine from now on. More curious, although in no way self-aware, is the subplot of the Robinsons blowing up the scenery looking for natural resources to use and exploit. The Robinsons just need to wipe out an indigenous tribe now to fit right in. Anyhow, this leads to Dr Smith conniving to have Don West exploding Mr Nobody’s cave in order to get at the diamonds there. That Mr Nobody turns out to be a brand new galaxy is kinda neat. That this galaxy calls back to say goodbye to "Pen-nnee" is daft.

The daftness of 8: "Invaders from the Fifth Dimension" is more pleasing. Somewhat inevitably, since most of the titles suffer from delusions of grandeur, it’s also more of an intrusion than an invasion. The invaders are apparently, and eerily enough, disembodied skullish and mouthless white heads that spout exactly the kind of preposterous platitudinous threats you would expect. They disdain the puny human mind and the primitive human sensation of "love" (which of course, will turn out to be the exact quality that defeats the interlopers). They want part of Dr. Smith’s brain and he, naturally, offers up one of the Robinson kids’ brains instead. Dr. Smith nefariously convincing Will Robinson to do something dangerous or counter-productive is one of the "Lost in Space" key highlights and special effects, as it were. Smith plays on Will’s good nature and fools him before the kid’s natural and equal intelligence, honesty and feistiness gets him out of trouble. This means he’s always a match for the Doc, even if unconsciously and even if constantly duped, and all without forfeiting that good faith he always has. It’s a stalemate of sorts, leaving their relationship always open for another round of manipulation and rebuff. And I’m not exactly looking for character development at this point.

Anyway, once the aliens are gone and Will is okay, everyone treats it like a bit of a romp and a joke. Nope, a little "invasion" ain’t going to phase the Robinsons.

Looks like "Lost in Space" will use visitors of one type or another to keep the storylines coming, rather than focusing on what it takes for the Robinsons and pals to survive. It’s easy and enjoyable, but the best has already been and gone, it’d predict. They aren’t doing much exploring now, really, but it looks like it’s going to get pretty busy whilst they’re stranded anyhow. Hey, and what about those giant Cyclops??

Same Time. Same channel.

You can't go wrong with spooky mouthless disembodied heads.