While our Label Watch feature has been a stop start affair over the years (too much music not enough hours, etc. etc.), this latest edition has been on the boil for quite some time.
Total Life Society is the Cleveland, Ohio label started in 2004 by the fierce DIY titan, Matthew Wascovich. Home to his plethora of bands, led by the mighty Scarcity Of Tanks, who in March 2004 embarked on a journey consisting of 10 albums in the ensuing 15 years (with more undoutedly in the works). Wascovich is the band’s key orchestrator and its only constant voice; each album, seeing the singer draft in the kind of creative arsenal that redefines a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Scarcity Of Tanks make indie-rock that swings. And while the band has often been compared to fellow Ohio touchstones, Pere Ubu and Guided By Voices, they aren’t remotely aligned to either. While GBV’s Doug Gillard, John Petkovic and Don Depew have been a part of the SOT make-up, (so too Pere Ubu’s Tom Herman, Scott Krauss and Alex Ward), sonically, they fish in vastly different waters.
SOT are perennial shape-shifters. Outsider rock with flashes of blues-laden freak-outs (check out the below video featuring one Bill Orcutt), from Kid Millions and Mike Watt to Weasel Walter, Tom Watson, Alan Bishop and so many others, it’s this calibre of musicianship that has shaped sounds for Wascovich to weave his fever-dream sing-speak narratives through this wild patchwork.
Suffice to say, the Scarcity Of Tanks journey is a riot. The early dusty road indie-rock of Bleed Now (2011) and Vulgar Defender (2012). The mind-bending Hinge (2018), which also features Jonathan Lethem’s linear notes. The 21-song epic, Dissing the Reduction (2019), which is arguably the underground’s answer to Exile of Main Street, perhaps the pick of a very good bunch.
And talking of The Stones, Wascovich adds his owner flavour to this wicked concoction of the blues. There are echoes of The Stooges, Minutemen and even the metallic flashes of AC/DC. Often it all hits the same glorious frequency.
Wascovich is a lifer’s lifer. His many bands (including the Total Life Society label itself) swerving the status quo of social media, Bandcamp, and even a WordPress website or Substack (Blogspot conquers all). It feels good knowing this ethos still exists, as Wascovich continues to march to the beat of his own drum.
Straddling different orbits from poetry and drawings to skating and excelling in sports as a teenager (perhaps another thing in common with GBV? Robert Pollard, a proficient baseballer; so too Wascovich on the soccer field), as Wascovich explained to the Village Voice in 2012, the crossover in interests is “just life”.
And Wascovich lives it, untethered from the transactional behaviour accelerated by the black pits of social media. Music isn’t immune from it, either. Thousands of bands are on the grift, but for every one of them, you may just get a Scarcity Of Tanks or a Hidden Riffles (another of Wascovich’s bands – this one featuring Watt, alongside Swans’ Norman Westberg, US Maple’s Mark Shippy and Invisible Things’ Jim Sykes).
You can feel the reality in the Total Life Society sphere. Take the latest batch of 7” releases the label reeled off late last year (yes, the format still exists). Which is where we will begin. I mean, why not? Wascovich debuts FOUR of his new bands, which follow his excellent 2024 debut as leader of Flowers Destroy (again featuring Westberg, alongside Gillard, Jonny Bell and Raul Morales).
While SOT is just one of the intriguing chapters in the Matthew Wascovich story, another began at the backend of last year…
Matthew Wascovich (photo: Lazarus Cuyahoga)
Subterranean Clocks: We Wont’ Be Ruined / Unlock Control
Let’s start with Subterranean Clocks. The band that sees Wascovich drafting in his old sparring partner and regular gun for hire, Mike Watt, alongside punk alumni, The Ex’s Andy Moor and Fugazi’s Brendan Canty (drums).
And it lives up to the billing. Both We Wont’ Be Ruined and Unlock Control full of Moor’s guardrail-scraping guitars and alongside the elastic rhythm section of Canty and Watt, they lay the groundwork for Wascovich to lift these songs further off the floor. His vocals, riding against the grain as he finds new ways to present his art within the TLS paradigm.
As an aside, if you’re thinking the artwork looks like something The Ex may have used, it’s probably because it’s Moor’s handiwork from behind the camera.
Forming Division: Bring Them Down / Move
Consisting of Jonny Bell (remember that boss band Crystal Antlers? He was in ’em), a certain J Mascis (needs no introduction), John Moloney (ditto, but I just wanted to say Sunburned Hand Of The Man, because it’s a wonderful name), and Watt, out of Wascovich’s four new bands, Forming Division has been getting the most attention.
This is melodic proto-punk with added Mascis soloing flair. From generation brainwash and the images of a loved one crying when the lights go out, once again Wascovich’s fractured tales illuminate the realities of life (as the name of his label would suggest, of course).
Move is a little more of a house band vibe (think as a backdrop to Iggy’s wedding). All chime and melody, with a line like “Negative shadows and saving grace / The boulevard drifter without a face”, add it to the upper echelon in the book of Wascovich wordplay.
Rational Cut: She Walks Alone
Alongside guitarist Kevin Carle (Killer Dream), bassist Paloma Banuelos (Bombon) and drummer, Raul Morales (Flowers Destroy), Wascovich flits between the lines of 7” and EP here.
She Walks Alone and Strays, a one-two gut punch that underlines the years when indie-rock was consistently good. Short, sharp ditties with no fat to trim, these songs move mysteriously, making the mind drift to places that frame a scene where the Ramones and Jon Spencer are getting nicely acquainted in a smoke-filled bar.
Side-B sees the bourgening blues of To the Water held together by Carle’s guitar which creates new shades of darkness. Out of Wascovich’s four new acts, Rational Cut is the most broody of them all.
Repossession Time: Cages / Bury Our History
Backed by the 21 Vek’s Vasko Atanasoski (guitar), Rade Jordanovski (bass) and Deni Krstev (drums, guitar), Repossession Time’s Cages / Bury Our History artwork may just be a nod to Wascovich’s glory days on the soccer field. (Or as we say across the Atlantic, the football pitch.)
While streamlined in sound, there’s a political undercurrent on the nimble Cages (“Waiting around for you / To defend the attack… I’ll get you out of these cages”). So too on Bury Our History, and with a line like “Each in their denial/ I’m never gonna ride with you again”, personally this is my favourite of the bunch. Wascovich, unveiling the kind of sing-speak post-punk that FACS have mastered during this decade.
And like the aforementioned releases, here’s hoping there’s more to come. But with Wascovich’s decorated history in releasing music, it’s more a sure thing than hope. And for those new to his world, these latest releases are a good place to start.
For more Total Life Society titles, purchase from the Norman Records (UK), Ektro Records (Scandinavia), Textile Records (Continental Europe), Scat Records (U.S.) and Prop Records (Australia).
For more information visit the Scarcity Of Tanks site and these YouTube playlists.
