Album Review: Memorrhage - Memorrhage

It's exceedingly difficult to review albums like Memorrhage's self-titled. Not because it's not good. Not because it wouldn't be fun to describe the music for someone (like, for example, a washing machine filled with vomit, tumbling down a fire escape, and landing on the roof of a convertible full of propane canisters parked next to an open flame... disgusting and explosive!). It's just the opposite. It's sooooooooo good, and I could write about it for hours, but anything I could say about it, you could basically be trimmed down to some variation on, "On god, shit slaps!" Because, holy fuck, it just does! The album is essentially Garry Brents's tribute to the nu-metal and extreme action films he enjoyed in his misspent, miscreant youth... and it's very relatable. Apparently, nu-metal was one of the first genres of metal that the one-man musical pantheon (responsive for such perniciously inspired acts as Cara Neir and Homeskin, two amongst... I couldn't tell you how many other projects, but it's a lot!), and it's a style that still speaks to him to this day. It's an expression of something thoroughly simpatico to my lived experience. The first album I listened to in its entirety was Korn's Follow the Leader, and the first album I purchased with my own money was Cypress Hill's Skull and Bones. I have super vivid, incredibly fond memories of how twisted and aggressive that stuff came across to me as a kid, and in some ways, I feel like I've been chasing the highs that music gave me ever since- which is why the crisp ferocity and faithful rendition of the nu metal's distinguishable penchant for belligerence is so satisfying here. It might not be exactly as I remember this stuff as a testosterone-charged, zit-plagued teen, but it gets the feeling right in some pretty important ways. Sort of like how the Brutal Doom mod updates the violence of the original Doom to make it as visceral and subversive as you remember the game being when you used to play it late at night, in the pitch dark on the family PC after everyone else had gone to bed, Memorrhage is as much a kick in the chest and as infectiously groovy as when you first caught Static-X screaming over the airwaves of your little backwater town's only rock station. It succeeds in making the present experience of these sounds as intense as the emotions that you attach to your memories of their source and inspiration from 20 years ago- which is a really fucking accomplishment. The one thing that I think makes Memorrhage a little jarring is that the rough and metallic quality of the chords tend to veer more towards early metalcore a la Converge, but there are still plenty of record scratches, inky, post-grunge reverb ripples, and big, grim, throwdowns to make it a contender when stacked up against anyone else attempting a similar revival, or even stuff by established genre players back in the day. I feel like I'm belaboring the point if I say any more, so I will just leave you with this: Give Memorrhage a chance, and I promise it will turn your expectations inside out. 

Album Review: Gold Dime - No More Blue Skies

Sometimes it feels like you're screaming your lungs out and no one can hear. You sit in total silence. Abjectly still like an empty vase full of dust and spiders. But there is a sound that is scrapping your insides. It is peeling the paint off the walls like a jet turbine that has just been flipped on inside your chest. It's almost too loud to hear. And if you were to ever let it escape the ventilation of your muzzle, it would surely deafen the neighbors and create a public nuance on the scale of a superfund site. I'm talking as if everyone feels this way. I'm not sure that they do. All I know is that this is the whirlwind that lives inside me most days, and that it's albums like No More Blue Skies that remind me that I'm likely not alone. The third LP from precisionist and vocalist Andrya Ambro under the name Gold Dime, sees the NYC avant-sonourbanist teaming up with bassist Ian Douglas-Moore, guitarist Brendan Winick, and Gideon's lambastist Jeff Tobias to rig together a kind of sonic noir for the damp spark of the soul. No More Blue Skies is cinematic in a sort of impenitent manner- the things that it gives voice to are barely understood and rarely cognized, but through sound, they are given vivid visual delineation, where in sensations become embodied forms, feelings are given limbs, and confessions swirl like crimson blended in a whip of shadow-cast monochrome. I see a naked sprint across the Jornada Del Muerto. A golden eye pensively watching from beneath the ruffled hem of a pulled curtain. A pour of human soup foundering down the maw of concentric triangular hieroglyphs to pool in the belly of a temple's keep. Like all good noir, the album reaps its rewards by reaching into the depths of unknown terror, a nightmare known as humanity, a floundering state of existence, baptized in the garbage spouts of modernity and self-deceit. Cast a deadly spell and see the clouds fill with the absorbing cackle of hungry black fowl who will clean the soft cowardly flesh from the jaundiced bones that lie below. A revelation will come upon you that all-purpose is perverse in the light of all promises fulfilled, no matter how troublesome or capricious. The glint and glimmer of gold that one sees at the end of one's journey, is in truth, the plating on a dagger waiting to turn your spleen into a cock-tail hors d'oeuvre. The mystery it permits one to unravel is as slippery and winding as your own guts, and just as likely to end in a hot heap of shit. It's not an album that rewards your investment as much as it makes you its prisoner as a function of your own morbid curiosity- the same way a cat will bat at a loaded pistol, tempting it to unleash its fury, out of dumb wonder and an unconscious death-wish. No More Blue Skies is the sound of a voice that cannot scream, seen through eyes that wish they could look away.  

Ironically, this one's available from No-Gold. 

Album Review: Basher - Doubles

What kind of a group is called "Basher"? To me, it sounds like a hardcore band, probably of the youth crew and/or straight-edge variety, whose music is suitable for diving into the pit like you're entering a '90s WWE cage match. Or, maybe they're more like a Canadian speed metal band, dudes who you could mistake for professional surfers if they weren't entirely clad in spikes and leather, and whose songs all sound like B-Sides from Painkiller. We'll, neither of these are correct, and now you know why I am terrible when it comes to job interviews- I'm shit when it comes to pulling things out of my ass. The truth is that Basher is a NOLA-based jazz ensemble, named after their principal player, Byron Asher. It was perceived as a kind of exuberant, free jazz party music- and that's is what they genuinely deliver on their latest LP, Doubles. Free jazz has a not entirely unearned reputation for being unapproachable by the uninitiated. However, if I had to pick a non-Albert Ayler record to help someone get initiated into the possibilities for the genre, it would have to be Doubles (or maybe its singular equivalent). Many of these tracks have a kind of momentous updraft to them that is reminiscent of big band swing of an impossibly distant era, but with the intimacy and articulation of a solo recital. The group has the fantastic ability to play to a room while capturing the attention of individual constituents and pitching each in turn into a state of rapture. Byron's saxophone melodies have a potent physicality to them that makes them feel present like a dance partner; when the music turns, you turn with it; when it dives, you leap; when it tosses you over its shoulder, you land on your feet like a cat dropped from a balcony onto a big, soft wedge of cheese. Dueling drum kits collide in their percussive prowess as grappling wrestlers spar to lend each other the benefit of honing their strengths by tempering them against the skilled resistance of another, and cosmic synth trails bind the bones of the mix like the oral history of the constellations. It's the soundtrack to a wild jubilation, one that won't leave you with a heady hangover or a quantum of regret. I have no qualms about my recommendation of Doubles to you for some easy, yet exciting experience in contemporary jazz. Heck, I'll as far as to say that I double down on it! 

 

Collapse into more grooves with Sinking City.

Album Review: Hooten Hallers - Back In Business Again

Columbia, Missouri's Hooten Hallers released their 15th anniversary album on September 9th of last year. Now, we all know that the shelf life of music is pathetic in this day and age. Most albums are forgotten within a week after their release. But, despite the inertia of listener's fleeting attention spans, I think this one is worth returning to as it's got posterity on its side. Like a good whisky, they are a band that only improves with age. Hooten Hallers have a classic, even timeless, boogie-down country blues style that captures an eternal spirit of simple living, striving, and scrapping, three key ingredients of the American ethos- a stubborn comingling of compulsions that is as enduring as it is asinine. Back In Business Again is no exception to this proven lineage. In fact, it's a mighty extension of it! So how does a band come out of the cellar time and time again still sounding fresh and with a potable offering in hand? Below is my assessment of what makes a good comeback record like theirs...

1. First things first

Before a band can truly start the process of making a record, they need to make sure that they have all the proper ingredients and equipment. Here’s a list of what the Hooten Hallers assembled to perfect their most recent batch of new 'merican standards:

Ingredients

10 pounds (4.5kg) of choice blues riffs
4 (1.8kg) pounds of sweet country shine
5 gallons (19 liters) of whisky

10 figures of sultry jazz melodies

10,000 lemons

1 hot cup of ambition

1 gill of delusion de grandeur (for flavor)

Equipment

Guitars (Bass and other)

Drum kit

Sax

Amplifiers

Mics

A laptop used exclusively to receive spam and vague, unappealing job postings 

Grain grinder

Hydrometer 
Fermenter

A reliable heat source

IPad that a sibling signed in on last Thanksgiving and which you can access their HMO+ account from
Fully loaded S&W Classic 6 1/2" Blue

Spare chicken wire

A picture of a beloved family dog that is the right size to fit in a standard leather wallet

Snake-skin boots with freshly polished spurs 

A live opossum

A pair of denim overall with a missing button 

2. Choice of subject matter, ie "What's in da mash?" 

Choosing what to write about is crucial for relating to one's audience. If you can't write about something they can draw a parallel to within their own lives, you might as well fold your message up into a little square, stick it under your pillow, and hope you get a nickel for it in the morning. Back In Business Again succeeds because it speaks to the values that live in each of our hearts- time-honored traditions we all hold dear, like fighting, fucking, and fried chicken. But that's just a starting point! What a really great record should do is uplift people's spirits and make them feel like their lives are just about to turn a corner. The winning streak described on the title track is perfect in this regard. That track will make everyone feel like their next scratch-off ticket is going to set them up to be rolling in dough like a Pentecostal baker. It's also good to have a track that causes the listener's passions to flare and gets their blood piping hot! It can come in the form of either indignity, or pride, or somewhere in between. In any case, this gambit is covered by the depictions of the down bad and dirty of this land of ours on the singular slushy-stomp of "The Cobbler's Children." And then you need the love songs. No country record can roll off the presses without a number that sounds like it was written on the author's knees, begging like a dog to have their feelings reciprocated tucked into its grooves. A soppy exigency, constitutionally required of any and all country records, and one in which the staggering sway of "Show Me" and the ripped-up rag-time of "Heal it" fit the bill. It's also important to consider a balance of sweet and spicy as well, which is why it's essential for a record to contain tracks like the boogie-by-the-bushel-full of "Now That I Know" and the surly, scratch and scuffle fever of "Cat Scrap." With all materials accounted for and dumped into the mix, it's now time to move on to step three. 

3. Crushing doubts

When you've been gone for a while, it's natural that people might wonder if you still have what it takes to put out a half-decent record. This is where the grain grinder comes in... crush all doubts into a coarse gris– not enough to break, mind you, but enough to get the job done. Those fuckers need to be shown whose boss! Leave no survivors! 

4. Heating the listener

When there is a record coming out, it's important to prime people's expectations. This can be done via the internet- telling people about the record, how the recording process is going, and when they can hear the finished product are all good information. Information is like an open flame. You expose people to it enough and they will literally boil with anticipation. A couple of updates to the web here and there and scheduled out in advance should get the job done. You'll want to get folk's attention up to a steady temperature of engagement, around 65C to 68C, which is best for enzymatic conversion, by which I mean, reminding people the record is coming out and that they should be excited about it. I'm guessing Hooten Hallers did all this. I know about their record because I got an email about it. Emails are delivered via the internet. Therefore, I am vindicated. 

5. Mashing the mix

When you've got the right ingredients, and equipment, have pulverized all doubts and heated up people's expectations, the next important step is to get a professional involved. For Back in Business Again the team... well, they leaned on their bassist Dominic Davis who has also done work with Jack White. He added the right amount of flourish to these tracks, converting any residual starchiness to delectable sugary notes, and in the process, strained out any impurities. They really have this mixing, mastering, producing thing down. The record really tastes... erh... sounds great! 

7. Mash-out and sparge

This is self-explanatory.

 
8. Checking the gravity

With records, it's vital to make sure that everything is flowing in the right direction. Good vibes in, bad vibes out. If a band ever has an issue with this step, they might want to invest in a hydrometer. 

9. Yeast, everyone needs it

Yeast helps dough rise. Bands need to make dough to survive. Therefore they need to make sure that they have enough yeast. Yeast, in this section, is a metaphor for talent and the ability to deploy it. At the very least (yeast?), Hooten Hallers have this covered. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing about them. 

10. Fermentation

You can't rush it. If it takes a year, or two, or three, or five, that's how long it's going to be. Good shit takes time.

11. Clarifying the wash

Clarifying is the process of removing any spent grains that might threaten to scorch the mix during distillation. As with #7, this step is self-explanatory. 

12. The spirit run

Disambiguated from Chicken Run, staring Mel Gibson. This is a complicated process of making sure that a record is able to raise folk's spirits and call them to do things they never thought they could and accomplish the impossible for themselves and their progeny... Ok, maybe it's not that different from Chicken Run after all.  

13. Making Cuts

At some point in every record-making process, a band's got to decide what ideas make the cut and which land on the editing room's floor. I'm convinced that only the best, most cogent ideas remained when Back In Business Again was shipped for pressing. These are professionals, who would never do something so full hearty as to attempt to transform a whisky recipe they stumbled upon into an album review. They've got more brains than that. I recommend others follow their example over mine. 

14. Aging and oaking

Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to the aging and oaking of a record, but to me, Hooten Hallers' choices in this regard are beyond reproach. Back In Business Again is a paragon of artistry that defines itself through an unparalleled dedication to the timelessness of hometown Americana and the simple act of letting shit take as long as it needs. Aged for at least 4 years in select ranges of American backcountry and in the dens of the mythical Mizzou Tiger, its spirit has evolved into a masterpiece combining the textures of denim overalls, twisted checked-wire mesh, and bar stools that have absorbed decades of spilled draft beer, the smoke from multiple three-pack a day habits, and countless satisfied BBQ farts. The result is a rich, gravely elixir with a perfectly balanced interplay of bad attitude and good intentions. Back In Business Again exemplifies the pinnacle of American pragmatism in many ways, delivering a sensory experience that showcases the gut-deep wisdom of getting something done when it needs to get done, but not rushing it out the door until you know it can be done right.

.. and that's it! That's everything that I think gives a record like Back in Business Again staying power. You can sample it below for yourselves and let me know if you agree. I also encourage you to take what you've read here and make your own record to compare results. If I'm still writing this blog in 15+ years, drop me a line and let me know how it went- no need to cut me in on the residuals. 

Album Review: Oldsoul - Education on Earth

What does it mean to call someone an old soul? I'm asking honestly. People used to refer to me in this way on a regular basis when I was young and now that I'm old, people are constantly remarking on how youthful I appear. I'll take the latter compliment, but it's a superficial observation, and it makes its predecessor all the more frustrating in comparison (and not only because it's not nearly as flattering). I have the impression that the phrase is something you say to someone when you don't know what else to say to them. Not unironically, noting that feelings towards others sometimes overrun our capacity to articulate them is as good of an entry point as I could ask for when it comes to a discussion of the Massachusetts alternative and indie rock band, Oldsoul. A collective with vocalist Jess Hall and guitarist Tom Stevens at its center, the group is adept at giving those awkward, ambiguous, and often irreconcilable feelings that plague the soul a sonic body and a palpable quality. Their most recent record, Education on Earth, begins with the waxy, burnt-at-both-end drip and fume of "Anyways," where meals for two become folding metaphors for expectations that sorrow and offend one's delicate sense of assurance in themselves. This is followed by the off-kilter swivel and inverted slide of "Leave Them Standing," a perfect delineation of doxophobia that entwines a declaration of integrity with a discernable dodge into diffidence. It's very satisfying to dwell on the poetics and mental ministrations offered by the album, especially when it comes to the knock-out, drag-down lovelorn languishment of "Lavender Cane" and new-wavy-wind up and easy confession of cascading companionship "High on Yourself." However, the band can really wail when they want to, and it's those moments when they allow themselves to let loose, Jess with the searing sincerity and vigor of her vocals, and Tom's inspired streaks of grunge and rust-belt powerpop interpolations, that really sell the hell out of the record, particularly when it comes to the band's more unorthodox structural and aesthetic choices, such as the gold-tinted reverb that plates the luxuriously claustrophobic "No Reassurance," or the sparky, flint-strike grooves that ignite the anthemic turns of "Nerves." Chewing on these riffs is a pure joy in most cases, and you very rarely hear the same part repeated more than once on the album, making each encounter that much more fleeting and precious. Earth, full of humans, with complex and strained emotions, is a challenging environment to learn your way around. Thankfully we have artists like Oldsoul who are able and willing to bear the light of their spirits to try and illuminate a walkable path for others. 

Album Review: Alien Tango - Kinda Happy, Kinda Sad

The title of Alien Tango's Kinda Happy, Kinda Sad makes it seem like the album is on the fence as to its intent and impact. This is misdirection. It's kind of the crust you might find around a diamond. All you have to do to get around this deflection is crack it open to be rewarded with the treasures it contains. The album was made with a very clear sense as to its own emotional aspirations and the breadth of its aesthetic bounty. You really don't even have to look past the first track "uwu" to glean this, either. It's enthusiastic about its very existence, almost to the point of being a little embarrassed by the flood of passion it contains, emotions which manifest as bubbling globular synths that pop and spatter the track in pink-florescent tones while a rounded, effervescent vocal cadence churns the melody-like cake batter- if anything "uwu" is an understatement, "OwO" is closer to the tone of unstrained excitement for music making that the track exhibits. While the superabundance of electronic vocal layers and stylistic turns on this initial offering may seem like it's setting you up for some super-sugar-saturated hyper-pop, the following track levels things off a bit and sets the stage for the remainder of the album. Retaining the electro-kineticism of its predecessor, "Lemme Go" nonetheless shifts priorities to a more traditional form of indie melodicism with a distinctly baroque approach to psychedelic artisanship and an abstract scrutiny of the god-forsaken and granted nature of love and longing. The entire album has a, "What if Holger Czukay got his hands on some early Ariel Pink home recordings" kind of feel- country lines are simply yard markers in a race towards an accelerated pop-cantata denouement with the dynamical fury of a Bob Eggleton landscape set ablaze. Alien Tango is really pushing his vocals and cultivated psychedelic pop sensibilities to the point where they sound like they're the final transmissions of a the horny crew of crashing UFO. You can absolutely sense the orgone aura radiating off of the euphorically deviant and divergent carousel "Song for FIFA" and the interstellar interlude "Hubble," while tracks like "Día Gris" and "1000 Years" demonstrate a purposefully more terrestrial balance while remaining knee-deep in a surrealist stream of observations, with a rugged lo-fi strum setting a gritted pace by which to juxtapose the laid-back lilt of the vocal's drifting monochromatic tide in the former, while swiggly visions of Beatles-esque utopias taking shape within the sonic geography of the latter. Kinda Happy, Kinda Sad is about as wary of its own inspiration and internal sense of direction as the planets are phobic of their own orbit, as in, neither could achieve forward momentum without their respective embrace of their respective motivations and cosmic compulsions. In short, the album has its own sense of gratuitous, confounding gravity, a whirr of force that will drag you to its bosom while making you feel like you've been catapulted to the skyline with a bungee cord jerry-rigged around your ankles. 

Album Review: Be Kind Cadaver - Postpartum

It's unbelievable how some of the numbers off of Postpartum strike me as soaring straight out of a wacky '70s dystopian space-opera. Like, if you can imagine a version of Star Crash, but directed by Brian De Palma, where the incomparable auteur twists the battle beyond the stars into a metaphor about the record industry, but actually, it's about society as a whole, a la Phantom of the Paradise, and the villainous Count Zarth Arn is a metaphor for the spectacle of the commodity fetish of something- that level of wacky dark satire- that's the vibe I get off of Be Kind Cadaver's EP. High camp with a dire message and an impeccable sensibility for adapting the anxieties of modernity into a visage of a tarnished and aesthetically (ab)used future. "A Gentle Stroll Through Modern Britain" opens with strained and tiny cabaret melodies, initially echoing a cursed revisitation to Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars where the promises of youth and redemption have spoiled into a rotten feast of ultra-violence, a harrowing summons of despair heard through the strained hiss of a warped cassette whirling in the deck of a 1958 Plymouth Fury as it cuts through the fog of the night, then narely a warning, and as abruptly as perpendicular traffic careening around a blind corner, the track transitions into a bloody boiling plee to a reversion to sanity, spinning and howling at the peak of abandon with a vaporized Marc Bolan at the helm. The foreboding nightclub act continues as the album rolls into the title track, gripping grooves entreat your frightful obedience as cadaverous sounds are knit and knotted through a mesh of industrial clatter and sparking chord progressions, cutting a ghastly procession through a post-human rave of the digital dead, adorn in raven's down and with a kiss of death upon its lips, lined in black-iron oxide-based-lipstick. "The Centre Won't Hold" rattles the bones of suburbia with frighteningly frank depictions of consumerism recounted in the cadence of a mad deacon's maunder, in harmony with an eruptive trickle and an ominous electronic babble, that spills out over the mix like the overflow from a baptismal font, purifying as it burns with castigating spiritual acid, slowly eating away at the clay feet of the idols we raise to ourselves. The final track, "Pressure to Exist" is appropriately cleansing, easing you in with the verisimilitude of a car radio whose dial is being carelessly flipped before graciously transitioning into an organ lead fête of French-house-styled gothic-disco that eulogizes the persistence of life's contiguousness. I get the sense from the grandly pessimistic, techno-despotic tone of Be Kind Cadaver's post-punk oeuvre that they don't envision a bright future for the human race, but through the portal of Postpartum they reveal in their misery, deadmen can learn to dance when they grow tired of merely shuffling towards judgment day. 

 You could have it worse than you could have it with Difficult Art And Music.

Album Review: Charming Disaster - Super Natural History

I encountered NYC's Charming Disaster at possibly the best of all times and locations. The first song that hooked me was a charming, rhythmically irresistible flight of fancy about a floating head and the shock of its owner, who had awoken Gregor-style with the realization that something had gone terribly wrong in the attic so to speak... only instead of having become an enormous insect, the song depicts the sense of detachment that tails one's literal separation from their shoulders. It's pretty hard to find folk that is as spellbinding as it is humorous, but Charming Disaster executes such a feat while barely breaking as much as a cold sweat. The performance I caught of theirs was in a cigar bar in Milwaukee with a reputation for being haunted by some of Capon's former associates, as well as a disgruntled sailor and something villainous that keeps trying to break out of their basement storage room (I paid for a supernatural tour of the place and I'm still not what the deal is with this last pushy poltergeist, but I did get the sense that the fewer questions I asked, the better). It was two weeks before Halloween when I caught the show and the entire bar was decorated like a scene from What We Do In the Shadows was about to be filmed there. Cobbwebs and mutilated limbs made of molded plastic covered the interior like a blizzard sent by Baphomet. I probably would have enjoyed any band in this setting, but Charming Disaster's lighthearted macabre felt particularly fitting as it met my ears through the interceding fog of cigar smoke. It feels somewhat fateful that I would pursue their latest album Super Natural History in the aftermath of that evening. It served as a constant companion the subsequent week and All Hallows Eve itself, and will likely stay in rotation through the rest of fall. The album is dedicated to the permeable barrier between the natural and paranatural worlds- blurring and smudging the finely drawn partition between the ordinary and the extraordinary- mixing lists of ingredients for baneful incantations, and recollections of the timeless legacy of deathless hags, with not-so-subtle odes to tangible, if insoluble, creatures, such as that sage of the sea, the great manta ray. The mythic becomes cordially accessible, while the previously attainable becomes eerily paradoxical. Part of the album's success in these endeavors is its beguiling nature. A sense of wonder and true innocence permeates these jaunty tunes, while never entirely losing sight of the proximity to danger that they solicit with the wittershine weft of their peaky purple prose. It's kind of like Coven meets the Carpenters, or Captain & Tennille if they had barely escaped the collapse of the Process Church with their lives and immortal souls intact. A playful invitation to safely frolic in the fringe of the unknown, that ultimately respects its borders with the precipious of genuine peril. Super Natural History has taught me many lessons these last few weeks, most notably, to forget my cares and learn to thrive in the mystic of the mundane and the lurid alike.