Album Review: Sound Light System - HeartBreak City

More dusky sounds to be found from Saphron Squares. 

Album Review: Houseghost - Houseghost

Nearly every time a band incorporates horror or supernatural themes into their music, they tend to overdo it. It's kind of like they don't have enough confidence in their music, the subject matter, or their own imagination, so they just pile on a bunch of tropes and gory cover art and hope people still give them a pass. Houseghost is the rare exception and the polar opposite of this trend. The Ohio pop-punk band takes chilling concepts like raising your dead lover from the grave with dark magic ("Darling"), surprisingly realistic depictions of bedside visitations from looming shades ("Hazel"), and fatal encounters with vampiric houseguests ("Marceline"), and gives them a bright-red, cherry flavored twist with jaunty grooves and memorable harmonies that will become embossed on your brain like a thumbprint in fresh marzipan. It's honestly never clear whether the band is simply singing about summoning a demon via an ouija board, or if there is some other emotional state crying out beneath the ghoulish mask they don in order to sell their act. There are, of course, plenty of straight-up love songs in the repertoire, as well as odes to fair weather rituals like afternoon bike rides and other carefree diversions that always manage to bust the summertime blues, but numbers like the title track leave it to interpretation what the band means when they croon, "I live in the bedroom walls... I haunt this house." Whether they are referring to a literally haunting or simply an aimless sense of ennui that possesses people in their 20s when they feel a lack of attachment is left to the listener. Alkaline Trio was always good at these types of twisted, double-trouble metaphors, but Houseghost sounds nothing like the alcohol-fueled hymes of Chicago's own cursed trio. Instead, they have more of a Razorcake-core style, buzzy guitars and brash grooves wrapped in rough and uneven production, but with enough personality and polished harmonies to glimmer through any technical imperfections that might offend the ears. If I had to pick out one band that Houseghost reminds me of the most sonically, I'd have to say Lemuria, which makes a certain amount of sense as their names essentially reference the same paranormal phenomena. If you're looking for something that's a little spooky but that will still also satisfy your pining for pleasing harmonies and peppy punk performances, there are certainly darker, less present spirits you could summon this Halloween season than Houseghost. In fact, I'd wage a dozen confine nails that they are some of the friendliest geists around!

Get the hook up from Rad Girlfriend Records.

Album Review: Balothizer - Cretan Smash

As a native English speaker, when I see the word "Cretan," I want to read it as a misspelling of the word "cretin." As in, someone who is a jerk or who lacks manners. That's not the meaning London's Balothizer intends, though. At least not entirely. While it is pronounced somewhat the same by English speakers, "Cretan" actually refers to someone from the Greek island of Crete. Now a Cretan can certainly be a cretin if they cut you off in traffic or refuse to hold the elevator door for you, but they're not necessarily synonymous, especially not when it comes to Balothizer. When they use the term, it is to literally tell you the type of music they are playing- a concussive mixture of Greek island folk and heavy metal- making their second LP, Cretan Smash, one of the most literal album titles I have ever encountered. They sound a little like Flotsam and Jetsam if they learned to play their instruments in open-air markets along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. They carry an almost Druidic air to their sense of melodicism which is cut with glistening curves of black-diamond-hued guitar work that prunes while it blinds with a flash of primeval theurgy. It's a powerful combination of inspirations that elevates one's sense of perception as if you have particularly ascended to the heavens- gloating in stasis above mountain tops, witnessing great these peaks crumble to dust, oceans recede and dry, and Kingdoms collapse into the anonymity of the epochs as passively as one might casually watch the passing of shadows throughout the day. Effortlessly transcendent and timeless, Cretan Smash will hit you like a bolder rolling off a cliff side with the force and flexibility of the cataracting crests of the sea. 

Crash the party with more from Louvana Records.

Album Review: Davis - Plum Whisky

Chicago rapper Davis has the right vibe. It's the kind of vibe that portends the future while existing in the moment. He keeps his face covered and blacked out in photos. He could be anyone, even if few could claim his talent. His choice of samples sincerely plums the depths of rap and soul history while their sequencing allows him to thrive at a level of irony that would make most 4 Chan users uneasy. He has a measured flow and a calm resolve with a decisive delivery and cadence that spurs you for reading into any one line too deeply, while rebuking you for not heeding their underlying meaning directly as he speaks. He reminds me a little of another Chicago rapper, Serengeti. Another local wordsmith who likes to play fast and loose with context and sincerity but whose rhymes never fail to land dead-ass on-point. As you might expect, Davis's second album of 2023 is Plum Whisky really cooks. Hilariously, if you actually want to brew up some tipsy tub of prune juice, there is a pressure cooker recipe spliced into skits and garnished around the album. You can pick out the details while you're swooning to the soul samples and choking on the cutthroat jabs and marinate in a rain of molten blacktop and the often desperate, abstract imagery that his screeds invoke. The samples coo and Davis spits. The background singer's teeth gleam, while his gums bleed from chewing on bitter barbs. A conscious disaster, pregnant with nightmares. A history of bloody headlines imprinted on the interior of a hamster wheel that is always turning in his mind and which we encounter as a phantasmagoria through the light flickering in his eyes. 13 flavors of pungent gut-bombing bangers, each as intoxicating as the last. 

Album Review: Living Weapon - Paradise

Hypothetically, let's say you meet two ladies out at a bar, or some other place you'd expect to hook up (possibly a library). Let's say you hit it off with both of them and everything is copacetic. Then one of them suggests that they go back to your place. Even if you're not really into women, you're having a good enough time with them that you're willing to see where things go. And if you are into women... well, let's say this is going your way. So you get back to your place and one of them asks if you keep any drinks around. You tell her where to find what she's looking for in the fridge and she comes back with enough for the three of you. Now, imagine after your first sip, something feels immediately off. There is suddenly a cannonball running down the length of your intestines and the room is spinning. Then you realize that these chicks are packing heat. You're about to get mugged, my dude. Say sooooooo long to your PS5. Hopefully, they don't leave the door open when they make their getaway and let your cat out because that furry little dude is about all you're going to have to your name once these felonious females are through with you. You might think this is just a weird little spectacle, the product of some fever raging in my brain, but there is a point behind it. And that point that Living Weapon's first (and so far only EP) Paradise is like having your ass beat and all your stuff boosted... unexpectedly, I might add. I figured I was in for a ride purely on the basis that the band comprises members of Vein. and Vomit Forth, but this foreknowledge did not prepare me for the hurricane of shit I was stepping into. From the first note to the final salvo, it feels like you've been stuffed in a dryer with the knob cranked all the way to maximum rotational speed. It's a spin cycle with a vengeance. It will liquify you and keep your skull as a bowl to prevent your personal slurry from staining the carpet. Harm's Way would be wanton to beg a bit of mercy out of these cyclonic psychos the churning, burning breakdowns and beats that are propelled by their anger. Paradise is a blender of pugnacious punishment, a clock-cleaning clobber fest that concludes with an homage to one of the angriest men to ever hock a hi-fi stereo system. It will leave you green, gashed and tender, and wishing that the aforementioned mad merchant was still around to help you replace all the loot that got lifted from your casa. 

I lied. There is no Netflix. Sit down. We're listening to Closed Casket Activities. 

Album Review: Cupid & Psyche - Romantic Music

 A poem. *Ahem*

In the realm where Cupid's arrows fly, where Psyche's love unfolds beneath the sky, I found a feeling that's deeper than mere sound, a sense so fierce, it's the heart's serenade, lifelong.

Beneath the neon lights, does swell a Romantic Music dream, in the hallowed space where devotions come clean, I met two men with eyes like a starless night, whose drift, like poetry, set my soul alight.

One had a voice, a spectrum of desires untold, reeling stories of confession and hearts uncontrolled, like a haunting lullaby in the moon's embrace, his words, like whispers, unveiled a secret place.

One, the other, moved with grace, in a dance did he conspire, in the shadows, his gestures ignited like funeral pyres, like a dream in the night, so deep and intense, hot-wired hearts entwined, our bond immense.

I embraced their glamour like a kiss of starlight, in this empty world, we found our groove, with them, my heart blossomed, like roses in June, thriving in the depths of fate's soft monsoon.

Through the ethereal sounds of distant lands, in the world of hushed melodies and shifting sands, our bond, like a dreamy reverie, it did unfold, a lark of spirit, a recital so bold.

We danced in a daydream, where echoes hide, wrapped in a shimmering veil, a radiant tide, like a gentle lullaby, it held me secure, a summit serene, a tender allure.

They wore their grief like a velvet sea, like Beach House, they cast a dreamy reverie, our link, like Blue Nile's gentle flow, defied convention, and it made me glow.

An inferno in a disco embrace, melody as completion, time without space, a vivid HTRK case, in a secret suite, forge a bitter cry, soft and complete.

So here's to this Romantic Music, exhumed, with you, I've found a joy that's beyond review, a sound that's as enduring as the silent night's grace, a cracked oracle, a wish fixed in place.

In the end, their's is like an eternal refrain, a post-punk grudge, condensed dream pop plane, like a vintage record, its grooves are cold to the touch, but even the cynics admit, this shit is pretty clutch.

Felte Records, Forever.

Album Review: Darkest Hour - Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora

Living up to their name since the dawn of the scourage which mankind saw fit to crown metalcore, Darkest Hour are a hardcore band who have show no fear in dwelling in the cleft of the horizon that divides humanity's most dismal epoch. If there is one thing they may have done wrong in their entire career, it's having released their ninth album, Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora a little early. Turns out, the apocalypse wasn't quite ripe in 2017. As we have bore witness to since, the nadir of sanity, civility, and culture needed a few more years to rot on the vine before obtaining their present state of irreversible decay. Although, even when jumping the gun, Darkest Hour still manages to hit the mark. On this prognostic tome of putrescence, Darkest Hour plays a searing hybrid of metalcore and death metal, combining the hellfire leads and pummeling groves of all manner of Scandinavian soul scavengers with a godless howl reminiscent of the gall that rends the spirit of the desiccated and depleted inter-hinterlands of this nation to manifest an even leveling of catastrophic catharsis that transcends our very varying notions of ruthless conduct. Opening with a cut above the rest, "Knife in the Safe Room" is merciless in its rushing display of vengeance, catching you like gouda in a cheese grader and stripping you in ribbons to the marrow to the salivating delight of John Henry's saliva-spraying vocals. The group follows this display of savagery with the righteous salvo, "This is the Truth," which will oppress your carnal caprice with its pensive and foreboding guitar work and lashing waves of guttural howls before liberating your purified essence with an In Flames indebted bridge that will raise your tired bones to the gilded halls of the hereafter. But be forewarned! Whatever salvation you might find in the many tranquility interstitial moments scattered throughout Godless Prophets..., there will always be a vicious corrective turn, redirecting your passage away from the light and back towards a valorization of the group's cupidity for chaos, most notably taking the form of "The Flesh & the Flowers of Death" with it perfectly blackened thrash riffs, and the apocalyptic war cry of "Another Headless Ruler of the Used."  At a distance stands a figure, a bleak pillar of judgment wielding a flaming sword. The blade is raised at two minutes to midnight. The final blow shall cleave the sky and let pour out a darkness that even the gods deem blinding- we cower in this vain moment of contemplation before the devouring enclosure of an endless night. No eye can see farther than ours. And none have prayed so uselessly to be plucked out.  

Let Southern Lord take you all the way under.

Interview: Blurry the Explorer

Jeremy Gustin is the real wizard behind the curtain of the experimental music project Blurry the Explorer- although he's hard-pressed to admit it. Thoughtful and humble, Jeremy let me chat him up earlier this year (June, I believe) about his band's latest album Angel Ecology, the group's dynamics, making music in Brazil, and why he never feels like he needs a vacation. But that's not all! Not to spoil things for you, but this one concludes on a cliffhanger... Do you I have you on the edge of your seat? You don't have to live with the suspense forever. Smash that play button already! 

Angel Ecology is out on Island House Recordings.

Album Review: Topiary Creatures - You Can Only Mourn Surprises

 
When one thinks of great, epic bands, the image of packed stadiums and balconies overflowing with teaming throngs of fanatics comes to mind. We're reminded that people drive halfway across the country, or even charter flights between continents to see groups perform. People pull up to the venue in cars with the band's logo airbrushed on the hood and sometimes propose to each other in the parking lot while the opening bands fill the air with song. Sure, each one of these people is literally one in 10s of thousands, or even millions, who make a band a phenomenon, and in economic terms, each may be reducible to these figures. But the reality is that none of these people would go to all this trouble for a band if the group's music didn't speak to them personally. What makes a band truly epic is that they can touch everyone who hears them in a different way and still produce a passionate response. I'm not sure exactly what your reaction will be to hearing Nashville's Topiary Creatures, but if you're reading this blog, I have to assume that you'll likely receive them with at least mild enthusiasm. Their latest LP You Can Only Mourn Surprises sees the band continue to manage the the extraordinary feat of quiet-maximalism, layering their production intricately with an ambiance of care and a halo of tender angst that can be the curse of the thoughtful. This attention to the details of the album's production gives it an incredible sense of gravity; the longer you listen, the more inevitably you'll feel yourself pulled to its center. As always, Bryson Schmidt's vocals are hopeful in his ministration of emotion, catching you with a breathy whisper before slinging for the rafters with a boisterous belt that lifts you like a kite on the wind of his whimsey. Sparkling guitars and glistening electronics wash around your ears like champagne fizzing in a crystal flute. The patterned crunch of the percussion welling like a cup overflowing, driving the adrenaline in your heart, chemicals and emotions mixing in your blood until passion blinds the senses like condensation on car windows fogged by the communion of bodies in their interior. Topiary Creatures, with their ranging, big-little sound, feels like they are about to take off on some fantastic journey and would like nothing better than for you to join them in their quest. It is this personalized sense of invitation that I think lends them a particular kind of approachable majesty that is tough to quantify, but even more difficult to deny. I started this review talking about the effect that epic bands can have on people, and I think my experience of their record definitely qualifies them for whatever the next level of 5th-wave emo stardom that is, whether it be opening for Say Anything, or playing a headlining set at an iHop. Maybe you're not ready to get their logo tattooed on your bicep, or to work their lyrics into your wedding vows, but if their music has inspired you even a little, I hope you'll join me in striking up a candle and a chorus to light their way to bigger, better, and more bad-ass things. 

Album Review: Bedroom Eyes - Turned Away

Emerging as one of the survivors of the early '10s shoegaze scrum, Bedroom Eyes is now ten years into their career and still churning out mature and quite accessible noise rock. And I do need to emphasize the descriptors"noise" and "rock" when discussing their latest album, Turned Away, by the way. Bedroom Eyes, like most bands in the Infinity Girl-Young Prims-No Joy stratum, are particularly preoccupied with tightly threading stray strands of psychedelic guitar sounds into poppy jangles that groove well with excessive levels of feedback. That's all par for the course, but what makes the group's output easy to return to, again and again, is their ability to keep their focus through all that heady noise. For all the bust and bluster, Turned Away does not, in fact, divert from the well-worn path to rock euphoria despite its many other refinements. Even on songs like "Portraits" or the vaunted and vespertine "Through Nights," Bedroom Eyes never loses track of the pulsing heartbeat and passion for propulsive grooves that gives them such a vital edge. From the healing static burn of "Around" through to the final lovelorn, grunge gestalt of "Iris,"Turned Away shows itself ultimately to be an advanced balance of humors- swaying in the toss of its internal consonances and conflicts between bleeding edge guitars and downy, hums and harmonics, crossing-examining each without cracking it mirror opposite under pressure- swiveling in a stead display of balance on its nose without a quiver or questioning glance. On a self-constructed island of constant command, Bedroom Eyes can soak up the reverie of the moment despite the commotion around them, supping like a hummingbird drinking from a flower that's been tucked behind a girl's ear as she spins in elation on a carnival ride. Turned Away is nothing if not a substantially sweet turn to remember. 

Choose wisely with à La Carte Records.

Album Review: Prairiewolf - Prairiewolf

The night is cool and pure. The wind drifts under your chin and over your shoulders like a lover's breath. The dark shrowd of the sky covers you like the wing of a mother bird. Sight knows no obstacles here. You can see in telescopic leaps- over hills, down gulls, and over ranges of perilous peaks. The lack of light focuses your senses. You perceive beyond perception. You sense of smell is impeccable, a coyote could not better challenge your organ's receptiveness to the slightest source of fragrance. You are nourished by the mere thought of a hearty meal. You can trace underground rivers through vibrations that rise like smoke through the sand, billowing between your toes like a sudden germination of daffodils. The stones you lean against and press into the dirt with your heel are your kin. You have a prosperous family. A generous family. The lizards that dwell beneath the stones are your wards, charges, and students- scaly scholars awaiting in supplication the mercy of bread and honey which come rolling from your fingertips. Your hands are raw from giving. The heart of a dead man, buried in a mining accident still beats, perceptible by the ears at a distance- a tattletale letter postmarked between the envelope of today and yesterday. Time is endless. Each grain of sand is a mountain. Every mountain is a sentry awaiting retirement. You have always been here. You are welcome to leave, but a morsel of this moment will stay with you until there is no more you to memorialize the beauty of that which can not be either fully grasped or denied. Only the night knows what you have taken with you, and what you leave behind. 

Keep it moving with Centripetal Force.

Album Review: Bailefunk Kakeko - 歓鬼 -dem​ô​nio prazer- / CHO CLIMAX

When I first encountered the name Bailiefunk Kakeo, I figured it was selected for its ironic effect. Nothing about them matched up in a way that properly set my expectations. Their cover art and whole presentation seemed pretty extreme and dissident. Also, they're from Japan, and releasing music on a State-side, experimental music label. So there was no way that they'd have anything to do with a popular genre of dance music that fills countless clubs in Brazil each weekend and racks up millions of views on YouTube each day. Right? Right! Wrong! Incredibly wrong. So wrong, it should be illegal. Upon, actually listening to BK's latest double release, a kind of double EP, 歓鬼 -dem​ô​nio prazer- / CHO CLIMAX, I'm now convinced that I need to commission a CT Scan of whatever part of my brain is meant to detect and process incongruity and discuss with a licensed professional my options for surgical intervention. Frankly, this release has convinced me that there is something in my head that needs to be recalibrated.  Bailiefunk Kakeo is in fact, all about bailie funk, or funk carioca, or any of the other half-dozen names it's known as around the world. Point is, that despite the project's spiny exterior, it is very much characterized by sincerity. There is a true love for the genre of its namesake, resulting in BK's scores becoming flush with a fervent intent not only to do justice to the source material, but to add to it in a way that would be novel and appreciable, even by the standards of a Brazillian listener who is familiar with all the tools, tricks, and tutelage of the trade. BK goes about accomplishing this cultural exchange in an entirely appropriate manner in my opinion, hybridizing trends in Japanese hip-hop and techno with favela flavor in a way that is both genuine and congruent with the trim and spirit of all of these formerly estranged threads. Despite the unity and sense of international comradery that BK's work represents, it's also the musical equivalent of chaos magic, digital sorcery, and good old-fashioned anarchistic ambition. It can be like having a herd of cats running around your skull-cave with lit Roman candles strapped to their backs. BK's style of dance assails the listener's mind and hips like a live grenade tamped down into you right-butt pocket- it will get you to move while easily separating you from any logically cohesive structure that you, your body, and your surroundings might attempt to lean on for support. So am I implying that Bailiefunk Kakeo is going to blast your ass off with some of the most absurd yet relatable, deconstructive yet danceable sounds you've encountered on this side of sanity? You better believe your sorry, half-carcoal cheeks that I am! 

Live your best (night) life with more from Deathbomb Arc.