Phantom Tollbooth
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Phantom Tollbooth
Homestead Records, 1986
Considering the year, the debut album from New York nutjobs Phantom Tollbooth could be considered an influencial landmark of screamo mathcore — had anyone heard the fucker. Their back catalog was a mainstay of cutout bins throughout the late eighties and nineties, probably the result of slightly weaker follow-up records and the lack of audience for the sort of selflessly unhinged and intensely cerebral hardcore The Tollbooth was dishing up. You can trace back the explosion of fractured mathy hardcore in the 1990s and early 2000s to this record, as demonstrated with bands like The Dazzling Killmen, Last of the Juanitas, and Brass Knuckles for Tough Guys. With discordant shards of guitar and jazzed-up rhythm section that wouldn’t find much of an audience until a decade later, this record should be considered a reference point for the evolution of hardcore punk.
DOWNLOAD:
Phantom Tollbooth - Phantom Tollbooth LP (21.1MB)
Judging by the amount of unsold Railroad Jerk LPs I’ve seen around and the neglect of any mention of this stellar single on discogs.com or allmusic.com, this NYC band never got the love it deserved. Once upon a time they were critically acclaimed and had a coveted touring slot with Extra-Width-era Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, yet somehow, anytime I play this or their excellent Third Rail LP for people it’s some big revelation and discovery. They caught my ear on the Matador label’s 1990 New York Ear & Eye Control compilation, from when the label was a little more adventurous, with a skronking, noisy mess of a song entitled “From The Pavement,” which I’ve included below. Railroad Jerk’s later releases became more polished and conventional, and presumably palatable to collegiate/indie/alt-country types, while their early work, like The JSBX, was a seamless amalgamation of raw punk noise with classic blues influences. In Railroad Jerk’s case, the blues influence had more of a chugging (in a non-metallic sense) railway hobo sound, with twangy vocals layered on top of sharp no-wave shards of bands like Mars, DNA, or Teenage Jesus & The Jerks. This early no-wave abrasiveness and snottiness, softened in later releases, is demonstrated perfectly on this single with two great songs only available on this 45.