Ross Johnson (Panther Burns, Alex Chilton, Jeff Evans) teams up with Cloudland Canyon (Kip Uhlhorn) and fellow Memphians on his latest Spacecase single. “Women, Money, Children” covers The Baron’s usual subject matter (see song title) with some stream-of-consciousness forays into East German/Cold War history (Ross drove through the former GDR to West Berlin in his Panther Burns days; I believe this is the first English-language reference to the GDR in a song since The Fall’s “Athlete Cured” back in 1988.) “I Know Why They Leave” is Ross and Kip on a ZE/Brain Records-influenced trip. The single’s top-notch cover design comes courtesy of Natalie Hoffmann (Nots, Optic Sink). Limited to 300 copies.

From ranting on ALEX CHILTON’s Like Flies on Sherbert in 1979 to drumming for the PANTHER BURNS, Memphis noisemaker Ross Johnson lives to rabble another day on this single with CLOUDLAND CANYON. It trades the psychobilly stomp of Vanity Sessions, which JOHNSON recorded with Jeffrey Evans in 2014, for the psychedelic and experimental sounds provided by CLOUDLAND CANYON—synths, looping sound bites, drum machine and distant guitars. While the prefix “psych” transfers from one project to the other, so does JOHNSON’s ability to spout strings of confessional complaints and late-night reveries. “Women, Money, Children” on Side A chugs along with a desert-rock sort of feeling; bass and drums keep a steady pace for fuzzy little guitar leads under JOHNSON’s bar room logic of “Why is it that the ones you want, don’t want you / And the ones that want you, you don’t want?”—the otherwise straight-driven rhythm swerves in endless diatribes that lead to places like “Radio Free Europe” by the songs’ end. “I Know Why They Leave” on Side B forgets the rock beat for a programmed sound of synth percussion like a dark section of a FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD song, with the dub production of LEE SCRATCH PERRY sung by a drunk Phil Alvin. If you enjoy lyrics from the patriarchy of rock’n’roll yore and the aforementioned blender drink of whatever’s happening on the B-side, then belly up to this release.
-Willis Schenk, Maximum Rocknroll