(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Nice Strong Arm formed in Austin (Texas), but moved to New York, where they came into contact with the alternative scene and were influenced by the experiments being conducted by complex bands like Sonic Youth. Guitarist Kevin Thomson and singer Jason Asnes proposed an original diagnosis of moral and material decay in the metropolis, filtered through the tones of Southern Gothic. The album Reality Bath (Homestead, 1987) is gripped by an urban neurosis that expresses itself in walls of feedback and in the murky chants of Date Of Birth and Minds Lie.
The follow-up Mind Furnace (Homestead, 1988), equally divided between psychotic dirges (Swingset), tortured melodies (Windowsill), and Swans-like nightmares (Faucet Head), and wrapped in darkly sinister atmospheres, begins their exploration of the existential malaise of the new "fin de siecle," traced back to a scenario of delinquency, drugs, prostitution, and squalor.
Focusing on that theme, Stress City (Homestead, 1990) is almost a concept album: from Desert Beauty Bloom to Neighborhood Voyeur, it is fear in the metropolis that propels their convulsive compositions.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
In 1991 Kevin Thomson moved to San Francisco and started a new career under the
aegis of Mark Eitzel.
Thompson is a phenomenal guitarist and can rescue the mellow and melancholy
elegies recorded live for Friction Tape (Basura, 1994).
The best songs were reprised on the studio album
Gentleman Jim (Basura, 1996).
The sound is noisier
(My Dead Friends and Bastard match
Sonic Youth's worst nightmares) and gloomier
(Screw You mirrors the
tortured melodrama of Television and
Dream Syndicate), while still centered around
American Music Club's
feeble, elegiac threnody (July, 447, Love Locked).
Kevin Thomson formed Enablers with vocalist Pete Simonelli, drummer Joe Byrnes,
and second guitarist Joe Goldring.
They debuted with End Note (Neurot, 2005).
