The other morning, just after The Pecan went down for a nap, I got a message through thee social medias from Yanni Papadopoulos of Philadelphia’s Stinking Lizaveta. Now, we’ve never really been in touch, maybe an email here and there around releases or something like that, or I may have said an awkward hello at a gig at some point in the last 15 years, but it’s not like we talk. Nothing against the guy, he seems very nice, and his band certainly rules, but they’ve always had publicity representation, so that’s how it’s gone. Fair enough.

So this note comes over, and it says — direct quote, cut and paste — “Hi JJ, this is Yanni from Stinking Lizaveta, just found a forgotten track we recorded at a practice that kind of encapsulates everything I’m going for in heavy music. Can I send it to you?”

Honestly, what the hell am I going to say to that? “No?” “Don’t send it over?”

Here’s a guy who’s been kicking around in one of the ultra-underground’s most creative bands for well over 20 years, turning heavy rock into jazz and heavy jazz into rock, and he’s saying he’s got a song that brings to life everything he’s going for in heavy music? Come on. Of course send it over. Hook it to my veins and give it to me in an IV.

For anyone to say something like that out of the blue to essentially a stranger is not nothing. But especially for someone whose creativity has been so broadly manifest over his band’s tenure — their last album was 2017’s Journey to the Underworld (review here) on Translation Loss — and someone who does not strike me as being particularly given to hyperbole, I had to hear what that sounded like. Had to.

The track is indeed a rehearsal room recording that’s been given the title “The Odor of Corruption” as taken from a chapter in The Brothers Karamazov, and it was captured in 2018. Those familiar with Stinking Lizaveta‘s work — the lineup is Yanni, upright electric bassist Alexi Papadopoulos and drummer Cheshire Agusta — will find its four-minute run less manic than the instrumentalists can be at their most chaotic, but still with plenty of dynamic on display. A creeping initial guitar line trades into and subsequently out of a soulful solo, rising and falling and rising again into a crescendo that fades out, balancing atmosphere and mood against raw impact in Agusta‘s drums and the slow progression on which it all rests.

In addition to having to hear it, I had to know what it was about “The Odor of Corruption” that particularly stood out to Papadopoulos and made him get in touch in the first place. What is it that the song encapsulates? I asked him for an answer and you can see what he had to say under the player below, on which I’m proud to host the premiere of the song.

Please enjoy it:

Yanni Papadopoulos on “The Odor of Corruption”:

I was poring over some old music files and in a folder labeled “Stinking Liz ideas” and I found this track. The recording is from a rehearsal, done in a basement, with two live mics in the room running into the computer. We do this from time to time just to make sure we don’t forget things. Well, in this case we forgot all about this song. I put my ears to it and started to think, “This is what I’m going for in heavy music.” It’s funny how hard it is to appreciate your own work. Sometimes it will take me years to listen to my own band’s record, and it’s always best when it happens by accident.

I’m calling the song “The Odor of Corruption.” The title comes from a chapter in The Brothers Karamazov in which a young Alyosha anxiously waits to see if the body of his mentor, the good and wise Father Zosima, will rot after his death, or will remain pure and be declared saintly. The body starts to stink, as dead bodies do. Sorry, we are all mortal.

This track reminds me that a mission of Stinking Lizaveta has always been to be as present as possible in our music. I was talking to a fellow musician backstage at a gig recently and said, “I just hope to play reliable versions of our songs tonight.” He responded, “Isn’t that all anyone hopes for?” To which I replied, “Well, sometimes I hope for a little bit of magic too.” I enjoy good musicianship, but rock is about inspiration rather than technical perfection. Our band has found a place where we demand more than just mechanics from each other. It’s not always possible to access that real beyond the material world, but it is paradise when you do open that portal for yourselves and the audience.

Stinking Lizaveta on Thee Facebooks

Stinking Lizaveta website

Stinking Lizaveta on Bandcamp

Tags: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Stinking Lizaveta, Translation Loss Records

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 13th, 2019 at 9:54 am and is filed under audiObelisk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.