Hazel

Hazel
Studio album by The Red Krayola
Released	December 10, 1996
Recorded
Studio
Label	Drag City
/

Track listing

No.	Title	Length
1.	"I'm So Blasé"	2:31
2.	"Duck & Cover"	1:53
3.	"Duke of Newcastle"	4:14
4.	"Decaf the Planet"	2:12
5.	"GAO"	3:21
6.	"Larking"	3:31
7.	"Jimmy Two Bad"	3:38
8.	"Falls"	4:56
9.	"We Feel Fine"	2:49
10.	"5123881"	2:34
11.	"Hollywood"	1:14
12.	"Another Song, Another Satan"	3:01
13.	"Boogie"	3:58
14.	"Dad"	3:36
15.	"Father Abraham"	4:14
16.	"Serenade"	3:28

Background

• Hazel was the Red Krayola's second full-length album with Drag City.
• It was proceeded by their 1995 EP Amor and Language and 1996 single Chemistry.
• In 1996 the group also recorded the soundtrack Japan in Paris in L.A.
• The album is named after Mayo Thompson's mother.

Press kit

• 
  Hazel press kit

Personnel

Like many Red Krayola releases from the 1990s, the credits are listed only alphabetically on the album.

Performers/writers

Michael Baldwin (lyrics), Werner Büttner (lyrics), David Grubbs (guitar, piano), George Hurley (drums), John McEntire (drums), Lynn Johnston (bass clarinet), Albert Oehlen (drum machine, electronics, lyrics?), Jim O'Rourke (electronics, guitar, bass?), Stephen Prina (keyboard, vocals), Elisa Randazzo (vocals), Mary Lass Stewart (vocals), Mayo Thompson (writing, vocals, guitar), Tom Watson (guitar)

Cover art

The photo on the cover is by Cambodian-American artist Khiang Hei. He took it in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square student protests in Beijing.

• 
  Supporting Patriotic Students, 1989

The packaging design is by Christopher Williams.

Retrospectives

Mayo Thompson, 1997

"We do lots of mail correspondence," [Thompson] says of his standard method of music by accumulation. "Albert [Oehlen] has a studio in Europe he uses and we send tapes back and forth. We seldom work in the same room, but I accept the conditions as I can. When I was 20 and had a band, we could hang out all day and it would be fun to hang out and play all together at once, but we're all working artists with other agendas as well." So, Thompson writes the lyrics and lays down the basic tracks and then ships them off to his collaborators and waits to hear the results, in what he calls an "additive process," where, as long as he doesn't hear something he "just absolutely cannot stand," he keeps his mouth shut and makes editorial decisions.

Mary Lass Stewart, 1996

Nobody who wanted to exert full control over everything would send tapes around to other people in the band and say, ‘We need some guitar parts. Put stuff down over what's done thus far.' So the work's collaborative in a very thorough sense. Part of the point of Mayo collaborating with so many different people over the years seems to be that he WANTS to be affected by them. It's very brave, I think.

David Grubbs, 2014

The Red Krayola's "Hazel" is coming back into print on LP. It's one of my favorite records I've played on

Reviews

Aiding & Abetting

November 18, 1996

Somewhere, Mayo Thompson is the epitome of cheesy pop. Just not in this universe.

This is the latest installment of Thompson's well off-kilter pop sensibilities, as realized with a plethora of friends. The best known, most likely, is Jim O'Rourke, though the names Tom Watson and Lynn Johnston also jump out (though I doubt the golfer and cartoonist, respectively, are the persons involved).

The thing about the Red Krayola (and Thompson's other work) I like the best is that with a subtle shift, this stuff would be slopped up by the Counting Crowes set. Now, I didn't just compare Hazel to such dreck, but I'm just saying a genius can do wonders with subtlety. And certainly Mayo Thompson qualifies there.

Now, I could compare this easily to Roky Erickson, though Thompson generally sticks to more acoustic and sparse arrangements. The concept of mordant psychedelia, though, is a common thread. Indeed, to fully appreciate this music, you really have to separate yourself from this particular plane and reach out toward the sound. This doesn't require drugs (self-hypnosis works much better), but I suppose they wouldn't necessarily hurt.

Hell, the stuff sounds pretty damned amazing even if you're just passively listening. Of course, this is participatory music and the muse demands no less from you, the listener. Hear and obey, O minions of music.

Billboard

December 7, 1996

Entertainment Weekly

December 13, 1996

Rob Brunner

Thirty years into a career as a professional weirdo, the Red Krayola's Mayo Thompson has settled into a sort of surrealist lite rock that's far stranger than the noise that usually passes for psychedelia. In Hazel, he mixes gentle guitar; flat, Lou Reed-style vocals; and an assortment of unusual instruments into a blend of familiar elements that seem to have been put together all wrong. In Thompson's hands, though, it all sounds oddly right. A-

Austin Chronicle

December 27, 1996

Greg Beets

Unlike too many of his Sixties brethren, Mayo Thompson of the Red Krayola continues to re-invent his already-singular vision at every step. From the heady Parable of Arable Land days in Houston through his work with Pere Ubu in the early Eighties to his elusive-but-formidable presence on today's Chicago avant music scene, Thompson has always strayed far to the left of convention, finding hidden beauty in the seemingly incongruent. This time out, he enlists the help of debtors such as Gastr Del Sol guitarist David Grubbs and Minutemen/fIREHOSE drummer George Hurley to herd the Krayola's traditional free-form freak-out atmosphere into the form of actual songs in some cases. Although a lot of Hazel is presented in a cut-and-paste carnival of strange narratives, short bursts of guitar/synthesizer, and bold U-turns galore, songs like "I'm So Blasé" and "Larking" capture the same infinite pop energy Chris Bell once reigned in. Makes sense, actually, since a primary tenet of free-form is to throw boundaries out with the bathwater. Thompson refuses to let little inconveniences like time and space get in his way. As a result, his music retains the same obscure vitality it had 20 years ago. 3.0 stars

Texas Monthly

January 1997

Jason Cohen

In the sixties, Mayo Thompson's The Red Krayola was a Houston psychedelic band with a writer--Frederick Barthelme--for a drummer. Thirty years later, the amorphous experimental outfit has a new lineup that makes music with the help of such guests as Minutemen alumnus George Hurley, but time has not tarnished Thompson's gift for adventurous mutability: The Krayola's new album, Hazel (Drag City), is an ethereal, skittish affair that runs from strangely beautiful folk rock and twisted cabaret to Beefheartian jazz and, of course, occasionally unlistenable noise.

Phoenix

January 16, 1997

Roni Sarig

Formed out of the late-'60s Texas psychedelic scene that spawned other cult obscurities like the 13th Floor Elevators, the Red Krayola made a bunch of increasingly abstract records in 1966 and '67. Then they all but disappeared until the late '70s, when sole remaining member Mayo Thompson resurfaced in England with a new generation of dada skronkers, including members of Pere Ubu, Swell Maps, and X-Ray Spex. For Hazel, as for other recent recordings in the current RK resurgence (two albums, an EP, and a couple of singles since 1994), Thompson hooks up with Chicago avant-rock scenesters John McEntire (Tortoise) and Jim O'Rourke and David Grubbs (both of Gastr del Sol), among others. The entire cast (15 in all) produce what could be Thompson's most successful amalgamation of melody, rhythm, and experimentation yet. Where past RK outings have been jagged and opaque, Hazel emphasizes accessible ("I'm So Blasé") over impenetrable ("Boogie"). Angular and dissonant are still well represented, but so are pastoral, rocking, and even funky. Tracks like "Another Song, Another Satan" shift easily between free-form abstraction and well-crafted tunefulness; they're thoroughly listenable without sacrificing complexity.

Eye

February 20, 1997

B.F. "Mole" Mowat

The sponsors of this, the 13th entry in the Mayo Thompson/Red Krayola catalog, are arguing that said catalog should be recognized right up there with the Velvet Underground. And while that's a really noble intention n'all, it won't happen (at least in this century), despite the debt the growing ranks of moderne outré-types owe to father Mayo. Think of Pere Ubu, Swell Maps, Essential Logic and The Raincoats -- all of which had the opportunity to work with Mayo -- and then think of what they in turn inspired. The phrase "small but mighty" comes to mind. "Small," as in the relative physical size of their combined audience. "Mighty," as in terms of mental capacity.

Having said that, this is a really nice album, chock-full of those low-key song gems played with those trademark gravity-defying techniques (derived from but not dictated by jazz, rock, blues and folk forms) that you'd expect from RK & Co. (who, on this album, consist of Chicago's finest "ooters"). That in itself would make it "worthwhile," but there's a wonderful sense of non-affected humanism tempering the proceedings in a fuzzy-warm way. As a result, I can slip into this repeatedly and comfortably .

Thing is, Lou Reed -- while not being the brightest of individuals these days -- was right when he said that "anybody could play the songs" on the first VU & Nico LP. You couldn't say the same about the material here -- any attempts at linear reproduction or interpretation by most musicians would be sorely confounded by the non-rote dynamic/forms used. It's music played with a universe-sized scope, rather than universal music per se. That's not meant as a criticism, either. Like the best of Mayo/RK's work, repeated listenings lead to repeated listenings as the 5,000 layers of the onion unravel in all directions. It takes highly trained individuals to do that and not sound like post-grad bores.

Addict

1997

Gil Kaufman

[...] The latest collection of Thompson's exploding plastic inevitable, entitled Hazel (Drag City), again teams him with younger peers like Gastr Del Sol members David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke, as well as Tortoise's John McEntire, in addition to former Minutemen drummer George Hurley, Slovenly members Tom Watson and Lynn Johnston, violinist Elisa Randazzo and old friends like German painters Werner Büttner and Albert Oehlen, photographer Hei Han Khiang, visual artists/composers Stephen Prina and Christopher Williams and English teacher Mary Lass Stewart. If the list seems terribly eclectic and skewed more towards the visual arts, that's the way Thompson likes it. [...]

[...] The collection starts off with the fairly innocuous cut, "I'm So Blasé," a mellow funk tune that's almost perversely straightforward and catchy, only to downshift into "Duck & Cover," a disjointed acoustic frizzle on which Stewart and Johnston recite frantic poetry-like streams of consciousness over zigzagging acoustic guitars.

"I've never strained to make specific visions in my songs, but there is a certain picture aspect to song space," says Thompson, explaining why a song like the scattered-jazz of "Jimmy Two Bad" sounds like an image you can just make out in your head. [...]

Thompson says he's learned well a lesson from avant garde composer John Cage, who, when asked once why he didn't close a window to minimize the interference from some pigeons on the ledge, took pains to explain that they were part of the sound picture he was creating. That kitchen sink philosophy comes to life on songs like "GAO," a maddening cauldron of cash register sounds, dueling guitar feedback and electronic pings that sounds like a one-man band tuning up, yet still retains enough of a semblance of unity that you can hear each instrument breaking through the clouds at some point and hogging the spotlight, if only for a few seconds.

"I haven't set out to assault the audience," Thompson replies to a charge that songs like the noise collage "Boogie" and the creepy teen sex and drugs tale "Larking" are purposely obtuse and off-putting. "There's a certain amount of consideration taken into account of what reactions people might have when listening to our albums. The aim is always to make popular music. Sometimes accessibility is honored in the breach and sometimes it's straight out honored. The inaccessibility or accessibility is based on me wanting to hear a certain tone." Thompson admits to not knowing how those people with their "finger on the public pulse" do it, how they know what collection of sounds and words will trip the public's wire. "I exist in that same time and space, but I'm somehow out of it also. What we present is not a homogeneous set of tunes, but a variety. We're not trying to put rough and ready messages into packages," he says. [...]

Rolling Stone

February 27, 1997

Elisabeth Vincentelli

It's been more than 30 years since the Red Krayola's first release, The Parable of Arable Land. Two things have stayed constant for the group since then: the presence of maverick leader Mayo Thompson and an acute sense of the intricate link between leftist politics and art. Along the way, the band has managed to remain a blip on the fringes of the mainstream's radar while influencing generations of adventurous musicians -- first with abrasive, free-form psychedelia, then with cerebral post-punk.

Thompson's strength is that he has never surrounded himself with yes men. Instead of picking anonymous musicians to serve his vision, he has always enlisted people with thriving careers in the avant-garde community. During the last three decades, Thompson's collaborators have included writer Frederick Barthelme, agitprop cultural group Art and Language, members of Pere Ubu, indie-rock luminaries such as Epic Soundtracks and the Raincoats' Gina Birch, and German artist Albert Ohlen. Now lining up for the privilege of playing with their spiritual godfather are the crème de la crème of the instrumental post-rock scene: Jim O'Rourke and David Grubbs (both of Gastr del Sol), and John McEntyre (Tortoise, the Sea and Cake), not to mention veteran drummer George Hurley (the Minutemen, fIREHOSE), all contributed to Hazel.

Considering the band's past, the '97 Krayola vintage is deceptively subdued. A few tracks, such as "Duke of Newcastle," with its lilting reggae beat, or "Another Song, Another Satan," crooned by David Grubbs, are even borderline pop. Of course, the band built its reputation on rejecting the very idea of traditional song structure, so its version of pop involves snubbing the verse-and-chorus foundation ("Jimmy Two Bad"), turning grammatical rules into poetry ("Dad") and Kurt Weill-ian singsonging about the oppressed ("Larking"). By remaining elusive and elliptical, both lyrically and musically, Mayo Thompson involves the audience, which must pay close attention to the record's intricacies, thus setting up yet another collaboration. And you thought listening to music was a one-way experience.

Monitor

July 1997

VD

Por incrível que pareça, os Red Krayola existem desde os longínquos anos 60, quando emergiram no seio do psicadelismo americano do Texas. Entre 1966 e 1967 embrenharam-se no abstraccionismo. Num constante ambiente de estranheza, desapareceram até ao fim dos anos 70, quando Mayo Thompson, líder da banda, ressurgiu em Inglaterra ao lado de uma nova geração louca que íncluia membros dos Pere Ubu, dos Swell Maps e dos X-Ray Spex. Desafiando sempre as classificações musicais, Thompson vai e vem a seu bel prazer. Regressa em 1994 e desde então, até «Hazel», o professor do Centro de Arte de Pasadena, na Califórnia, rodeou-se de velhos companheiros californianos, tal como o baterista George Hurley (Minutemen e Firehose) e o guitarrista Tom Watson (Slovenly e Overpass), de alguns ilustres de Chicago, como John McEntire (Tortoise), Jim O'Rourke e David Grubbs (ambos dos Gastr Del Sol), entre muitos outros, num total de 15 elementos. Os nomes prometem e cumprem no conjunto. O resultado é uma música ecléctica que cruza a simplicidade com o impenetrável, o kitsch, o rock e o funky. Comparem «l'm So Blazé» com «Boogie» e com «Another Song, Another Satan» e logo verão. Fica-se por vezes com a sensação de que os valores individuais desaparecem na constelação de estrelas, sejam as improvisações de O'Rourke ou os drumbeats de McEntire. Fica um som agradável que não sacrifica a complexidade. Um compromisso que Mayo Thompson resolveu bem, comcerteza fruto da sua longa experiência musical. E agora? Novo desaparecimento?

Melody Maker

Ben Myers

Alternative Press

March 1997

Rocktober

Winter 1997

Alphabetically, Mayo Thompson may be the 13th contributor listed, but he's #1 in our book! Much richer and diverse than the last Crayon-Rock release with a couple of real barnburners in the mix! Sounds like an updated Hatfield and The North.

Sparky No. 2

1997

Robbie Wilson

Clever music. Hmmm...'clever' music, not the most tempting genre in my books. It would strike me (if it existed) as being painstakingly crafted, excessively esoteric and generally lacking warmth/soul/feeling. Are The Red Krayola guilty of making 'clever' music? Well yes and no. Mayo Thompson's knowledge of music populist, underground and avant-garde could be assumed to be huge especially judging from the sounds present on this record. Whether he's pissing about with ancient, instantly recognisable blues riffs and making them sound like they're from another planet (like Stereolab exploring their oft overlooked blues influences) or singing 60s/70s type ballads with such detachment that they take on a whole new meaning - there's a knowingness behind everything that's really quite frightening. That's not to say that this album is sterile and emotionless, far from it. By drafting in a troupe of musicians (members of Gastr del Sol / Tortoise amongst others) appreciative of past and present Red Krayola, Thompson seems to be able to fairly spontaneous in writing these songs, confident that his ideas can be made real with little difficulty. The range of styles and structures make the the record even more endearing, ranging from POP songs, 21st century spy movie instrumentals and the usual dosage of wordy, angular avant garde compositions which make more sense the more you listen to them. (hey, don't all wordy, angularly avant garde compositions?) Yet this doesn't really matter as most importantly it sounds MODERN and somehow defies the multitude of categories around today, including the one I invented above.

Bennett Simpson

Bennett Simpson

Some of the things that have made recent pop music abstract include distortion (cultural and formal, not instrumental), repetition, static, sampling, references to things other than music, drum-machines, digital sequencing, dissonant tunings, obsessive production, genre confusion, an evolving musical intelligence, strategic cynicism, break-beats, non-western influences, drones, bells and whistles, jet lag, and the conscious abuse or misuse of theoretical jargon. Increasingly, abstraction is entering pop and pop-derived music (loosely, that which isn't connected to commercial «classical» or «jazz» markets) in ways that wouldnt have been conceivable or desirable fifteen years ago. Where abstraction was once thought of as a purification or rarifying of form, a honing down to the essentials, much recent music has pushed the abstract in the opposite direction toward ambiance, saturation, pliability. Where there was once virtuosity (always closely tied to abstraction), there is now information management and dexterity. The current state of musical abstraction is no longer one of «shock» or of the «unknown» or of «formal limitation.» Shock is now diffusion. The unknown has succumbed to intimacy and historicism (which doesn't always tell you where things are). Formal limitations give way to the absorptive folds of buffers and loops. And strangely enough, as dependent on technological elasticity as much of this recent music may be, abstraction now approaches a bio-morphic and emotional nuance that earlier heroic abstraction never could.

Groups such as **Oval, Sea and Cake, and Red Krayola** «over-load» their music in ways that take abstraction into more «human» regions of sound. Much has been made of the cold syncopations and machine sensibilities of «post-rock» and «electronica» -vacuum genres with which these groups have been lazily associated. but the assumption that studio smarts and digital pre-occupations correspond to our otherwise full-tilt cyborgian fantasies is a mistake. These groups are not dry and lifeless experiments, they are humid and saturated probabilities. Part of what they have in common is an ability to juggle and mutate a range of musical and cultural information without sounding muddy or over-wrought. They allow themselves more options. -and why not? The infinite microcosms exist, we might as well raise our expectations.

Since the late-sixties, band leader Mayo Thompson and his band *Red Krayola* have blended garage rock anthems, punk, and elements of torch-song crooning into a mix that is funny, poignant, and archly conceptual. Thompson has frequently worked with the British collective Art + Language and some of their analytical cum idealist tendencies are also his. Red Krayola's new album _Hazel_ (Drag City Records, 1996) typically has a lot to say. While songs like «Decaf the Planet» and «Duck and Cover» may sound at first like over-produced bric-a-brac (which isn't such a bad thing when compared to the pedantic expressionism of much alternative music), their sly lyrics («the asshole regrets what the sphincter admits») and juxtaposed guitar and synth farts begin to make sense if considered as installation art or improv penny opera. «Another Song, Another Satan» is more of a rocker and justifies a lot of the album's meandering experimentation. «Falls» is a beautiful, purling loop of banjo, temp changes, and melodrama that sounds like stage music for a very private theater. The German painter Albert Oehlen plays with keyboards. Dave Grubbs, Jim O'Rourke (both from *Gastr del Sol*) and John McEntire (drummer for the *Sea and Cake* and *Tortoise*), as well, lend to this groups amazing range. [...]

AllMusic

Richie Unterberger

Mayo Thompson has expressed bemusement at the constant categorization of his work as "quirky." Hazel, however, will do nothing to stem the tide of that adjective showing up in reviews such as this one. The Red Krayola do not seem interested nearly as much in connecting disparate styles as jumbling them. So you'll hear a languid, Lou Reedish drone segue into a John Faheyish guitar pattern backed by weird female vocals, and then a light reggaeish thing about Christian soldiers marching onward. The lyrics are not constructed to make a point, but to reflect the rhythm and fragmented patterns of everyday thought and conversation. It's interesting, but too nonchalantly strange to evoke a passionate response.