Album Review: Forests - That's Not Very Mid-Century Modern Of You

Alright, what have we got here? Epic fantasy setting. Hell in space, or maybe an open-air dungeon sunk into the inner rim of a volcano. Antagonistic, voyeuristic extraterrestrials en route. Cal-Art-injected pastel hardcore fonts. ASCII Miffy art. Midwestern emo and gang-vocal pile-on pop punk with a conspicuous familiarity with Melt-Banana. Singapore... Yeah, none of this is very Mid-Century Modern, which was a design philosophy popular in the immediate post-war period in the continental United States, which emphasized bold curvatures and defined contours, emphasizing truth in structure and materials, and intrinsically forbearing superfluous embellishments- That's Not Very Mid-Century Modern Of You is as inverse to these principles as the sun is to the moon's shadow. While earnest in intention, Forests are almost fully defined by their embrace of the extraneous, including text art in the lyrics for every track and utilizing children's mascots, obtuse musical genre litmus tests, ubiquitous trans-Atlantic technological fatigue, and bit-tune techno to elevate sonic texture and textual ballast, and uplift gleaming pop grand jetés to reach a suitable height in order to bathe the atrium between your ears in an acute overflow of stained specular reflection. It's colorful, it's consistent, it's heartfelt, and it's awesome- Forests doesn't bow before a single aesthetic idol; they've built their own atelier, as mysterious and deep as a jungle nestled in the belly of a gorge, one where they hold all the keys, and can unlock a door in the trunk of any tree they choose, bounding up their rings like great concentric staircases, toe-gripping branches in a sprint and hopping off the apex to belly flop onto another buoyant epiphany as it drifts on course toward the canopy- rising above the conceits of critics and dogmatists alike and bridging a gap that feels narrow in retrospect. Midwest corridor, corn country, to the Strait of Malacca- the distance is shorter than you think.

Album Review: Craft - White Noise and Black Metal

Craft was quiet for quite a while before this. Granted, they've been quiet since as well, but at least there is a precedent for it now. After drummer and founding member Daniel Halen quit in 2005, the band briefly considered breaking up, with the ultimate fate of the group remaining unclear even after 2011's Void, where Dirge Rep of Enslaved filled in behind the kit. White Noise & Black Metal was Craft's first album in seven years, heralding their triumphant return to a Darkthrone-devoted cleave of severely sharp and acerbically aggressive black metal, an invigorating blast of arctic misanthropy and cosmic angst that exhumes the genre's simple, bleak, and world-wearing forecast for humanity and serves as bait for the rotten, scale-shedding eels that squirm in writhing heaps below the surface tension of the soul- carving up the frost-fortified ramparts into intricate etches and runic arcs, a tormented intercourse of vesica piscis through which dark auras pulse and old grudges flow to attain a ripe bloody luster. WN&BM is a cleaner-produced album than its predecessor, the platework here acquiring the polish of an unnatural and sickly shade of silver- in spite of this turn towards refined, translucent shades of mayhem, there is a surprising live-recording quality to these tracks, making it possible to imagine yourself in a dungeon-like practice space submerged beneath a barn in the Swedish rurals, petrified and dragging oneself across the floor as these riff revenants raise a sigil-scrawled, phantasmal citadal of white-burning annihilation from the blackening earth of a cellar floor with the adumbral iridescence of their sinister symphony, the gust from their amplifiers coursing cold down your collar like the breath of a sky-swallowing wolf, and the thump of their grooves reverberating through your chest like a hammer striking iron. Honestly, I had a lot of fun with this release when it came out in 2018, not just because it rules in an ontological sorta way, but because at the time I was working with an incredibly annoying washed-up hipster who dropped out of New York to settle in Chicago as a sort of "Plan B" and settlement with his own ambitions. He was the kind of guy who "liked a little bit of everything," so long as "everything" was something approved by that month's flavor of byline-boasting shitshovelers, more commonly known to the public as "tastemakers." We were in a shared workspace, and I knew I could always throw it on to piss him off, especially when he suggested that we listen to something like Deafheaven or the like. It is ingrained in my lobes how this record never failed to carve a grimace across his perpetual five-o'clock shadow, deep enough to threaten to crack his gaunt, frail jawline intwine. I learned then that Craft is capable of casting a dark cloud over all of the right kind of people, and for that, they will always have my respect.

The Season of Spite (Mist) is upon you! 

Album Review: Paul Coleman - The Weather Man

You don't have to dig much to pry up stories about artists getting screwed sideways in the music industry. The frequency and severity of the repercussions reaped from advances taken and recouped in mythic levels of psychic damage, or the prevalence of general business chicanery, became almost a rite of passage for alternative artists in their dealings with the vampiric patronage of major label syndicates in the '90s- souls were reaved and dreams were decimated, scarring a whole generation of rock star wannabes- but you don't have to hunt down the survivors of the first wave of grunge to fill your ears with the horrors that circle the periphery of the lime light like a school of dagger-toothed piranhas- just buy any DIY musician a Pabst or treat them to a Yerba, and they'll unspool a yarn that will leave you hanging by the collar in despair over their dealings with the industry and the backstabbings, cross-stabbings, and bag-nabbings that define even the dive bar, dreg-scraping levels of the industry. One fine fellow who certainly saw his fill of it was Chicago's Paul Coleman. Originally of the (ironically) fatally fleeting funk ensemble Rasputin's Stash, and the pristine but untimely tarnished soul-pop quartet Crystal Winds, the enterprising keyman was presented with the opportunity to create a soundtrack for the newly launched Weather Channel sometime in the early '90s- a potential windfall that came his way because an executive at the channel was dating fellow Crystal Winds bandmate Corky Brown's (aka M.C. (Morris) Brown) sister. Writing the entire repertoire over a sleepless two-week marathon, the final cuts were accepted by the programming director and played on air, offering a refreshingly buoyant complement to the dry business of local forecasts and barometric reports- none of which ended up benefiting Paul though, as his whimsical climate compositions were tossed out with a sudden change in ownership, and he was never paid. It's always painful to witness talented people crash headfirst into the realities of corporate acquisition and power plays, like moths disappearing into a mass of goo as they intersect with a sedan windshield screaming down the Eisenhower, but as the fates preserve, Paul's recordings have been salvaged and repackaged for modern listeners' vindication under the title The Weather Man. The selection offered by this project presents a lighter side of funk, a crisp and invigorating, lean and balanced portrait of elegant simplicity that invites interpretation and absorbing contemplation, just as passing clouds compel the earthbound to divine galloping signs and symbols in the sky and place perspective on our relative position in a large, interconnected globe. Softly textured and accommodating, The Weather Man teems with a mist of optimism and a belief that all things will find a site of affordance to brace against the tempest and find one's fortunes in the fronts of simmering, silver-lined clouds as they swirl and billow about us. Hopefully these tracks bring you more luck than their maestro, or at least remind you to get everything in writing before you commit your heart and soul to it.

Destination is only excuse for the journey (Athens of the North).

Album Review: Demon Eye - Prophecies and Lies

In about 2017 or somewhere around then, all the little shops by me that are run by like one girl and sell mostly Sears catalog jewelry they picked up at estate sales, a selection of three interchangeable blouses, and tour shirts from the '90s at a 1000% markup also started offering nazar amulets in various guises and trinkets. I don't know why, but other girls who couldn't afford to run stores with a lower daily sales volume than your average yacht broker really seemed to dig it and pushed those purchases per diem up into the double digits. Presumably, the idea was that these concentric blue circles would protect you from the premonitional gaze of a roaming malocchio and help them find a boyfriend who is easily bullied or land a promotion to superintendent at the non-profit orphanage for wayward Victorian dolls they work at, but I actually think there was more to it. Calling yourself a witch became popular around the same time, and rather than warding off evil, I think decorating oneself with these charms was meant to place the world on notice that the forces of evil were at her command, that the maleficence of the world bent to her will. What's a bigger power play than flipping a reverse card on Father Brimstone himself, making life a game of Faustian Uno where the objective is to make the devil your bitch? As a metal fan, I understand this impulse. Metal musicians are adept at adopting the iniquitous and vile to lend power and potency to their sound, whether it be naming themselves after an unholy disease or giving their albums and songs the titles that align with various curses- evil flows through metal like blood through the gasping pumps of the human heart. More to the point of donning a malignant gaze to publicize one's perihic influence is Raleigh, North Carolina's Demon Eye. On their most recent (as of 2017) LP Prophecies and Lies, the group proudly performs a nostalgic and measured homage to Black Sabbath, with flashes of Iron Maiden's guitar heroics and Blue Öyster Cult's playful, psychedelic mysticism. This is very familiar, fuzzy, hooky, and muscular metal that is unavoidably charming in its brash display of unself-conscious depictions of might and wizardly wickedness. Early into this misadventure, the group tiptoes up to the altar of doom-shrouded Hecate before barreling over into Sabbath swagger on "In the Spider's Eye." Their outlandish outlaw nature takes on new dimensions of depravity on the blues bruiser "The Redeemer," and later the mystic, Deep Purple-worshipping "Vagabond" glides on a pungent lilac-tinted cloud as it scrapes the countryside in an endless quest for invigorating brushes with budding chaos. Is the sweep of el mal de ojo the harbinger of great misfortune, or a tiger yet to be tamed? For each of us, the answer is different, a rejoinder whose verdict rests solely in the eye of the beholder.

Souls are like Pokémon cards, the money is in the margins (Soulseller Records).

Album Review: Antibalas - Hourglass

Sometimes, the ripple of an earshot can be heard around the world. The local is the expression of global conditions; global conditions are the percolation of circumstances that well up around one's feet where they stand, like the spreading overflow of a well with too many stones in its gut. There aren't many bands that can capture the feeling and sound of being from anywhere without losing the essential imprint of their place of origin- but I can certainly name a few- although one will do for our purposes here. Led by multidisciplinary musician and activist Martin Perna, Antibalas ("bulletproof," like an idea, like the soul, you can kill the vessel but you can't snuff its will) is a tour-tested and perfected, horn-driven, traditional Afrobeat band modeled after Fela Kuti's Africa 70 band and Eddie Palmieri's Harlem River Drive Orchestra. Like many Afrobeat outfits, Antibalas addresses dire social and political realities through positive, motivating, and cathartic party music. As Perna says, "We take a hard look into the past while forging a future of solutions." Their eighth LP, Hourglass, sees the band following the curve of inspiration back to intimately acquainted patterns of enlightened practice. Twisting back through time to tread fresh turf, the group has eschewed vocalist collaboration for this album, and singing nearly entirely, so as to avoid the demands and determinism that language and its expression place on sound, instead embracing the natural, untamed flow that a groove can take when players can intuitively delineate its coalescing contours, free of the constraining rib and hem of a singer's thread to tether its course. There is no exogenous plane to define itself against, no vista that exceeds its breath, no people who are beyond its borders. Hourglass is the sound of a world opened up from the inside, pried into a pluming dispersal and everted outward in all directions like the fresh, cloying flesh of a ripe orange spread open for the taking- refreshing, sweet, intricately textured, but most of all, free.

Dap's the way I like it! (Daptone Records)

Album Review: Cattle - Sweet Dream,Tender Light and Your Memory

Anytime you dare to pipe up about the hardships in your life, your struggles, the inherently cursed nature of the present state of things in any way, shape, or form online, you will inevitably be flooded with comments justifying your misery. Can't afford a house? Can't afford rent? Groceries? Healthcare? Should have gone to college; then you'd have better job prospects, get paid more, and be able to afford to live a decent life. Oh, you went to college and still can't afford those things? Should have majored in something useful! Oh, you have a degree in engineering and/or computer science, but now you're in triple-figure debt and still can't afford the median standard of living? Should have gone into the trades! Oh, you're in the trades, and you're making squat, working terrible hours, it's wrrrrreeeeeeeccccccccking your body, you have no romantic prospects and have to rent a house in a crime-ridden exurb with a 2 hour commute to your job, living with five guys who are all addicted to sports betting, 85% refined over-the-counter THC supplements, and Wingstop? Should have gone to college! Circular logics like these abound in a tail-chasing charade strung up to obscure the realities of a collapsing society where individual choice and perception matter about as much in altering the trajectory of one's circumstances as a single tear spattering on a granite countertop has at punching through the stony facade like a bullet through a fiberboard disever. The duffers and sycophants who drag people for identifying the obvious impossibility of the current economy functioning in any harmonious manner are just like so many dull beasts- they enjoy being led around by the nose and only kick up a fuss when someone points out the omnipresent state of degradation we, they, everywhichway, live, breathe, and psychically suffocate under the weight of. If they had their way, the whole planet would be nothing but cattle, just like them. In fact, people like the ever-present, casually reductive casuists you encounter online give cattle a bad name. Cattle just want to chew cud and shit. While these cranks aren't much more sentient than their bovine counterparts, no cow will go out of its way to take a shit on your life like they will! And you know who else isn't going to go out of their way to spread sticky, nitrous-rich, chocolate frosting all over your proverbial windshield? Tokyo-based starchildren, Cattle. Now, the preamble to this here review is a specifically American web-based fable of woe, but, as I understand, Japan has its own cost of living crisis and its own economic difficulties, and I'm sure if you asked any averge ただの人 (after a long enough Duolingo streak) what kinds of chud-logic gets dumped on anyone in their country who blithely questions the status quo, you'd likely hear some real horror stories. But enough about the cattle in the comments sections, let's talk about the Cattle who matter- the ones who want to whisk you away on a sojourn of sound, rather than those who wish to drown you in the effluent of their brainrot. Cattle, self-determined and subtly fierce, are a shoegaze band that plays sugary, buzzsaw riffs, reverb-enhanced guitar-pop in the vein of Ringo Deathstarr, only more streamlined and with a better emphasis on hooks than atmosphere. Their 2019 LP Sweet Dream, Tender Light and Your Memory is their one and only full-length so far, and absolutely delivers on the jangly, joyous promise of their early EP, starting with 2015's Somehow Hears Songs through their split with Taiwan's Motorik released earlier the same year. Impressively, most of the lyrics are in English, painting wonderfully ambitious and softly relatable human portraits to accompany the beautifully fluttery texture of their delicately swollen and slightly bruised melodies, a gently persuasive and yet uncompromising direct orientation towards the more eloquent iterations of power-pop potentiality. The journey begins with the limber bow and balance of a My Blood Valentine-inspired slow-motion ricochet insulated in the confectious confessions parlayed by cotton-candy melodies and spiraling out in a gossamer blitz on "Shooting Star"; the fluid high-register guitar purr, cutting-clarion tones, and dreamy vibe of "Happy! Happy! Happy Valley!" plunges into a bath of pleasant recollections and playful enticements to seize the root of future fulfillment and ring it out over a waiting grail of ecstasy; later, the poshly textured, punk-tinted roller-rally "Boy Wanders" takes up restless grooves and coy grabs at spiny inflections in a natural, vigorous venture-lust, an undaunted excitement echoed on the reflective thunderstorm of fantasies that is "Sweet Dream"; finally, the group settles into a well-earned tranquil sendoff in the form of the patient, pining, and pillowey jangle-rock soundscapes of album closer "Wishing You All the Best for Today and the Days to Come." Life is seemingly defined by disappointment, fruitless struggle, and the callous disregard of others, but as long as you have music-music like Cattle's- you have a reason to greet each new day with a smile.

Pass, fail, or a secret third outcome (Testcard Records).

Interview: The Arrivals

If you could find something you love in your formative years and find a way to keep doing it for 30-plus years, wouldn't you? Not many people are so lucky, but Dave Marriman of Chicago punk pillars The Arrivals certainly is. He and his crew have been keeping steady and remaining reliably prescient all these years, and have recently (as of this spring) managed to release their 5th LP, Payload. You may wonder why it's been 16 years since their last album, Volatile Molotov, and the simple answer is that the timing just wasn't right, until it was... In Dave's own words, and summing up the ethos of the band, "If it's not fun, fuck it!" Truly an idiom to ideate on next time you find yourself running behind according to someone else's clock. They don't have any Chicago dates to celebrate the album release on the books yet, but when they do, you can bet I'll be there (and hope you will be too!). In the meantime, enjoy this conversation between Dave and me:

 

You can find Payload out on Recess Records here: 

Album Review: Blood of the Wolf - V:Indomitable

Chicago metal, underappreciated, yet undeterred. Despite receiving little to no love across the rest of this cursed land, the Second City is really second to none when it comes to spawning immensely visceral and bottom-buck-nasty musical marauders. Take blackened death metal project Blood of the Wolf, for instance. Every time they unveil a new record, it rolls off the proverbial press like a half-rendered and thoroughly shredded deer carcass plummeting onto the hood of your car from an overpass on the Dan Ryan- an ominous blast of boiling, flesh-withering blastbeats and peeling staccato riffage that is as outrightly threatening as it is cogently carnal- an externalization of a blood-starved beast's gnawing, insatiable hunger, poured through the siphon of the dialect of aural extremity. If you think you're in the mood for a band that will give you inner ear damage on a scale commensurate with an undersized detachment of lupine louts commandeering your auditory canals for their filthy pillaging and bloody contests of will, then look no further than last year's V: Indomitable- seemingly named as a promise, and executed with enmity. Blood's brand of death metal adheres closely to the playbooks of late '90s black metal practitioners Hate and Spearhead, delivering cruel waves of relentless, unsaturated percussion, with anguished and torturous guitar grooves, and volcanic vocal performances that could make the devil himself wet his tunic in panic. The production on this album is pretty much impeccable, and the mixing is balanced and smart, leaving nothing to be desired in terms of capturing the fire and fury of the band's performance. Inside you are two wolves, and they both cower, paler than sheep's wool in the shadow of this chord-churning, chaos-courting, canis-carnivorous beast. Indomitable, indeed. 

Album Review: Liai - Pastoral Stills From Every Age

A wrinkled evanescence. A chattering gem. Pearling curves which catch the light and curtail them into purple, blue, green, red, and yellow pinions. Frozen in an instant, iterative in plies, cascading in concentric columns, begging to have its rings counted- winnings pooled from serial adaptations and voyages to sunken substrates of voided eons. Echos of decaying echolons and the leer of dimming lights. The pulse of a flower's heartbeat, trapped in living, rippling, dripping resin, splashing outward like a tentative greeting before lapsing with a retreating sigh. Lives lived in the hollow of a windchime, warm breaths whistling between the pores, bodies like flutes, resonating with the vibrations of the atmosphere, finding a rhythm and keeping it a secret in the pocket of their lips. Tears droop and catch clarity, arching upwards towards the clouds, clear streams extending like grape vines, fanning out like peacock feathers, displayed with a humble triumph. A twinkling node collecting on a parched plot of flesh. A calm that blows in like a storm. All in a moment. Enclosed in a space, apeiron.

Album Review: Emma Aibara - u:phobia

Generally, escapism is viewed dimly in society- at least it was for our parents and older siblings. Now they do it too and just avoid conversations that tend to unearth the guilt they harbor while mired in a zombifying pool of blue light ever-present due to a screen addiction, or their mental absence while they cling to the tail of some projected fantasy of success or belonging, or emotional inaccessibility due to overcommitment to a hobby that might as well be a second career (but which doesn't pay the bills), or maybe they just have a good old-fashioned substance abuse conundrum, often, but not always, revolving around the compulsive consumption of some formerly sanctioned narcotic which now can be bought over the counter in exaggerated concentrations evidently cultivated to induce immediate psychological break in those who gulp them down. Everyone is running from something these days- bad economy, bad relationships, worsening prospects- but most of all, they're fleeing themselves, because in every bad situation, there is necessarily an observing subject whose conscious experience of it, and recognition of it, qualifies it as bad. And most people, being one of said people, like nearly everyone around them, can do shit all to make a difference on their own- where there is a fire that you can't put out, the most logical next step is to look for an exit, the nearest escape hatch, pry it open and drop out of sight. I don't know what Japanese, now ported to America, digital-sound artist Emma Aibara is ducking, cutting, and cantering to avoid, but I feel the angst and instinct to evade one's fate on her LP u:phobia like it was a knife pointed at my own throat. The synthesized heroine framed by the album, a projection of Aibara herself, is much like a partially formed butterfly struggling to free itself from the chamber of a cocoon that seems to be getting tighter, and more anaerobic the longer she gestates in its interior, and who runs the risk of being digested by the thieving stagnant ambiance of her crystalline cell- where it should be fortifying her future, it has become a straitjacket, repressing the exigency of her transformation. Flight is the only option, even on stunted and malformed wings, even where the key to one's salvation is tied to a kite of delusion; when the dilemma is survival or suffocation, escape is sine qua non. To that effect, sound serves as saving-grace: digital-hardcore grooves and loops collide in glancing scrapes off of cracked and shard-yielding percussion; long corridors of syncing effects suddenly shorten and invert their referential dimensions, leaving the listener uncertain as to the nadir and the direction in which gravity is compelling them; fae-formulated harmonizations narrowly evade being clipped by flourishes of shrapnel from caustically kaleidoscopic busts of acerbic beats; and overheated sequences scald and liquefy supple human hardware like a flash flow of magma carbonizing and dissolving the superfluous padding of the architecture of the soul's prison and allowing flitting pearls of internal light to squeeze through the open cracks and ascend heavenward. What shadows Emma Aibara is staying a heel and a jump ahead of is not clear from my vantage point, but I can see the crest of dawn illuminating the path before her. I know not where she is absconding, only that wherever she is headed, I want to be there too. I don't know what Japanese, now ported to America, digital-sound artist Emma Aibara is ducking, cutting, and cantering to avoid, but I feel the angst and instinct to evade one's fate on her LP u:phobia like it was a knife pointed at my own throat. The synthesized herione framed by the album, a projection of Aibara herself, is much like a partially formed butterfly struggling to free itself from the chamber of a cocoon that seems to be getting tighter, and more anaerobic the longer she gestates in its interior, and who runs the risk of being digested by the thieving stagnant ambiance of her crystalline cell- where it should be fortifying her future, it has become a straitjacket, repressing the exigency of her transformation. Flight is the only option, even on stunted and malformed wings, even where the key to one's salvation is tied to a kite of delusion; when the dilemma is survival or suffocation, escape is sine qua non. To that effect sound serves as savior, digital-hardcore riffs and loops collide in glancing scrapes off of cracked and shard-yielding percussion; long corridors of syncing effects suddenly shorten and invert their referencial dimentions, leaving the listener uncertain as to the nadir and the direction in which gravity is compelling them; fae-formulated harmonizations narrowly evade being clipped by flourishes of shrapnel from caustically kaleidoscopic busts of acerbic beats; and overheated sequences scald and liquefy supple human hardware like a flash flow of magma carbonizing and dissolving the soft superfluous junk of the architecture of the soul's prison and allowing flitting pearls of internal light to squeeze through the open cracks and ascend heavenward. What shadows Emma Aibara is staying a heel and a jump ahead of is not clear from my vantage point, but I can see the crest of dawn illuminating the path before her. I know not where she is absconding, only that wherever she is headed, I want to be there too.

Album Review: Flesh World - Into The Shroud

Named for the infamous illicit-content periodical from Lynch's primetime soap Twin Peaks, Flesh World are a bit like a spinning strip of a Kenneth Anger reel, projected on an abandoned nightclub's wall, and emerging into phantasmagoric flesh and sonic dimensionality like a cursed, sensual inversion of that one A-ha video- put more concisely, they play a foggy, tense, and dry strain of pop-punk, inspired in equal parts by the Velvet Underground, The Associates, Section 25, and The Smiths. The band revolves around the songwriting collaboration of Jess Scott, who also sings for summery shoegazers Brilliant Colors, and Scott Moore of confrontational and queer-forward hardcore punk outfit Limp Wrist. The resulting sound is more reminiscent of the cool and acerbic Negative Scanner (throwback! catch!) or Sextile than either of the principals' respective branching projects. Into the Shroud is Flesh World's third LP, and probably last, as the band hasn't updated their Tumblr since 2017 (the year this album was released)... and yes, they had a Tumblr (double throwback! I'm getting whiplash here!). Good points of entry for this LP are "Into the Shroud" with its urgent, weaving chords, dreamy harmonized vocals, and jittery vibrating hooks that lay the foundation for the chorus, "Problem in the Youth Bulge," which rides stiff and jutting Gang of Four-esque riffs through its gang-vocal chorus and slips into leaning, reverb-laden chords for the verses, and "This Great Cheap Face," with its desperate, dark, and spiny riffs, bobbing sarcastic chorus hooks, and knotted chords that tie together the bridge. With the obvious (obligatory for some) Lynch references, Velvets obsession, and Vice co-signs (among others), it's all very 2014, culture-bumming, precious-depressoid, Millennial le-sigh-wave, which is completely washed as an aesthetic at this point, but hey, I run a Blogspot, so who am I to throw stones from a glass menagerie? Uncs like this one with fuzzy feels for the late '10s are an easy pickup-and-roll for Flesh World's shtick, and that's fine- I don't mind not curving toward the mean here for once, folks. Also, if Gens Alpha and Beta don't come to resent Millennials too much for being their parents and/or landlords (possibly simultaneously), they might even pick up the vibe for stuff like this, and we could see a queer-coast-cold-wave-bleak-psyche-dark-punk revival in about 15 years, and just like that, Into the Shroud (and this review) will become relevant again. Hey, I never said I wasn't playing the long game (non-game) for cultural significance here, although it's been mostly implied up to this point- under the shroud, so to speak.

Up from the shadows (Dark Entries Records)!

Album Review: Cross Record - Crush Me

Loss is inevitable and superfluous. Everyone will lose someone, and everyone's loss will be felt by another. Dismal as this unavoidable destiny is for ourselves and those we love and leave behind, it is only one phase of a cycle, one that brought us into this world, and one that will indubitably lead us out. As it is so certain, is it to be feared? Or is death to be celebrated?* The Irish seem to think so. Their wakes are as festive as New Year's Day (it's apparently their weddings that they observe with undemonstrative regard), while slightly further south, Ghanaians see the dearly departed off in elaborate, hand-carved coffins, shaped to signify the dreams, achievements, and soul of those they bear like a flashy jewelry box for their freshly discarded wares, and across the ocean, Mexicans welcome their ancestors back each year, as shadows grow longer and the air chills, guided back by candlelight to receive the renewed blessings of their still-breathing kin. Emily Cross knows a little something about the gaps, gauges, and gestalt of life and death's gamut, working as a death doula when she is not memorializing her moods and observations of the obscure through her recording project Cross Record- a shifting ambient variety of warm chamber pop that is both subtly haunting and pleasing to the ear, similar to Low's Double Negative or Broadcast's The Noise Made by People. Crush Me is her sixth LP, first since relocating to Cornwall in the UK, and proceeds with a quiet ache of susurrus florescence pervading the spellbinding itch and prickle existential reflection and calm, a hushed and grassy weave of fertile insight and lucidly tenebrous quotations that run from Emily's tongue to your ear like an excess of ink streaming down loose parchment to pool in a basin, smelling of dusky perfumes and ground, exotic flowers as it flows. Conversations with the departed over late-night coffee and cigarettes, notations on the living as if arranging an anthology collection, jarred emotions set free like a cloud of fireflies swarming to mingle in the camouflage of twilight and the shadows of the Milky Way. Crushed, packed, steeped, and sipped as if it were warm liquid-light and the dew of dissipating fog, Crush Me is cast in living observance of all those things that are too vast to hold, undeterred by the enormity of being and unbeing alike, it is a jubilee that sways the human nidus as it persists in naive ecstasy, suspended in a strange dignity above the gracious depths of the infinite.

Incoherent Italian Babble (Ba Da Bing) Records.

*Well it is in some cases. Smell ya later Stinkball! Hope you're having a gay old time in hell! 

Album Review: Coilguns - Odd Love

The raw angst and measured execution of 2018's Millennials easily made a thousand-strong fan out of a single man like such as myself, meaning I had elevated expectations heading into 2024's Odd Love. After only a few riffs met my ears, I immediately knew I wanted to say something about it to my audience, and so I pulled up the band's biography to sift out the facts, and lo, there it was: FFO Mars Volta, Converge... which *checks notes* was exactly what I was going to say (in so many words) as my opening hook. It's almost a relief as a music writer when a band is like "Hol' up! I got you fam," and you can skip the foreplay and plunge straight into the 4/4 (or whatever time signature these songs are in [what do I look like, a mathematician*?])! Written primarily by guitarist Jona Nido, and later arranged by compatriots vocalist Louis Jucker, guitarist Kevin Galland, and drummer Luc Hess, Odd Love embraces the strangeness of existence and the mystery of the interpersonal connections that form despite its inherently alienating premises. Leading off the procession, "We Missed the Parade" explodes like a balloon full of black confetti and thumbtacks, erupting in a recursive pattern of null-navigating grooves that burn to an angry cinder on contact with the ears like gunpowder ghosts. After the smoke clears, "Placeholders" stamps its imprint on your senses with a chilling backswing and a clean, mincing chopper groove that gins up the tension like a webby clump of flesh-colored cotton candy before dispersing its energy in a fine pink mist that frosts the walls with a fixed luminance of spectral carnage. The smoldering "Caravel" descends with a patient observance, like the captain of a ship hobbling down from his quarters to meet the icy bath of the sea, as his ship, ablaze, takes a groaning bow in submission to the wrathful chasm of Poseidon's kingdom. With "The Wind to Wash the Pain" sweeping the slate with a shivering breath of callous comfort and devout disconsolation, which waits for the heart it kited up to the sky to be returned in cherished condition, knowing full well that it was pierced by an apoxed arrow and devoured by vultures many moons ago. Curious condolences for treacherous times ahead.

* Someone who can count. 

Album Review: Sweat FM - Every Day Is Valentine's Day

I wish I had known about Sweet FM's mix for "Death to America" off of Every Day Is Valentine's Day this past Fourth. Bumping it would have been the apogee of an unceremonious commemoration of a culture and country in decline, which has remarkably endured 250 years only to capsize as an indecorous kleptocracy- Adieu, salaud. However, I stumbled over it on the 5th while checking out some local line-ups at the Bottle, so I'll have to cue it up for next year's barbecue—provided we all don't get baked to radioactive baklava on account of a global nuclear conflict in the interim. Assuming you're not going to spend the next year hoarding beans and fuel in a fallout shelter (and even if you are, why wouldn't you hook up a Wi-Fi router and/or wireless speaker down there?), you can bask in the discernibly hunky, raw-sync romance of Sweat FM's LP, which crossfades (or rather, gracefully camel-clutches maybe) pop-hit-perfection with deep cuts of nuanced new wave and sleaze-greased indie into a collar-elbow tie-up that affixes these disparate genres to rare, neon euro-splash electronica, finding inspired intersecting reciprocation between the Soft Boys, Rilo Kiley, and Rod Stewart on "Emptied" in one instance, while interjecting new shades of blue into Eiffel 65 with a dose of the Cure and binding them in the slimming anaconda-patterned grip of a Mix-a-Lot-anointed beat on "I Can Only Go Too Far," and using Backstreet-born harmonizations and a smear of swampy Sanford sneer to light up ol' glory on "Death to America." It seems certain that Sweat FM's producer provides some original vocals to these mixes, splicing in SoundCloud-rap-quality chants and croons (non-derogatory, merely descriptive) for emphasis where needed, making this electro-consortium of unlikely bedfellows a spiritual extension of the presently reposing-in-power electro-punk project, Real Dominic. Some of the transitions in these mixes are a little on the clunky side and could use some smoothing out, but as is, the compartmentalized flow gives breathing room for the listener to attempt to retrace the process of inspiration and unravel the meaning and intention behind the interspersed layers, while the blockier nature of these syncs is aesthetically invariant with the visage of the DJ himself, a bronzed human canvass of chiseled contemplation. Whether you're out cruising for a rail to ride or pressing for a clutch of confectious currents to crunch in the curve of your sonic sweet tooth, Every Day Is Valentine's Day will hop you up on what feels like a sugar high with no requisite crash until the needle runs out of groove to tickle.

Album Review: Crucifyre - Post Vulcanic Black

Crucifyre is a Swedish death metal band comprised of frontman Erik "Tormentor" Sahlström and members of Shelter, Afflicted, Nasum, and Goddess. Surprisingly, they're not an Entombed rip-off or a grindfest, preferring mid-tempo doom-beats that only occasionally turn up the heat to approach a blast-beat roil. Lash these mean beats to some thrashy chain-link grooves, ashy black metal production, and throaty madmen vocals à la Possessed, and you have a rock 'n' roll rager to light up a party at the end of days. Post Vulcanic Black is Crucifyre's third LP and picks up where their second LP, Black Magic Fire, left off. This is one of those cases where if it ain't broke, don't mess with it too much. Tormentor and crew know how to write a savage death metal serenade, and that's all you need in your life sometimes. Additional possible selling points? They're aggressively, and amusingly, anti-Christian, in the "we're Satanists and declare war on Christ" sorta way that American heshers should be fairly accustomed to after two-plus decades of Deicide, but which comes across as more of a Venom-esque, "we're the villains of this story, and damn does it feel good to be bad" kinda camp in practice (it's less annoying the Ghost's schtick, trust me). You know the type. Lots of big blasphemous, tongue-in-cheek proclamations of mendacious intent, little to no actual church burning (thankfully!).

Practice what you Pulverize (Records). 

Interview: Footballhead

Footballhead started out as something of a hail mary on founder and vocalist Ryan's part, but has since steamrolled into one of the more dynamic, unique, and fun acts of the present huddle of DIY doers and shakers to snap, sack, and blitz their way out of the Midwest. Earlier this year, they crossed the end zone for the third time, releasing Weight of Truth, possibly the best-realized pitch for reviving the post-grunge sound of the early and mid '00s that I think I've heard since I lost sight of Breaking Benjamin sometime in 2009 (still around, by the way, as you'll learn below). Fresh off a tour with erudite and effortlessly-poppy emo-nerds Ben Quad, and currently scrimmaging their way across Europe, Footballhead is a band to watch, and more so to listen to, and you can hear Ryan describe much of the journey of the band as well as answer my many inane inquiries in the interview below:

 

Listen to Weight of Truth, out on Tiny Engines: 

Album Review: Coffins - Sinister Oath

The only legitimate criticism I will accept of this blog is that I don't cover enough East Asian metal. That's it. Otherwise, everything I do is perfect (especially my grammatical faculties, which are orthodox and thoroughly and completely standard for an English speaker). So, to placate the small yet valid contingent of haters (who I may or may not have fabricated out of mid-air), here is a little something about a death metal band that I have some affinity towards: Coffins. Coffins formed in 1996 and were one of the first (or at least better known) Japanese death metal bands to make it off the island and find a semblance of a fan base abroad. Their style adheres closely to the old-school blend of rangy, thrashy, grizzly, and gruesome crust-rimmed broth originally ladled out by Tampa area bands like Death and Morbid Angel, and paired with a side order of cavernous, atmospheric menace, reminiscent of the more gothic side of doom metal (but which, let's be clear, never slips into full-on death-doom or the transcendental horror of Hooded Menace). Coffins have over thirty releases to their odorous name, but very few LPs, considering their thirty-year track record of cross-oceanic mayhem. They're better known for their splits and EPs, releasing records in collaboration with acts as diverse as Noothgrush and the aforementioned Hooded Menace. Their latest LP, 2024's Sinister Oath, is only their sixth full-length release and the second LP to feature current vocalist Jun Tokita, offering his distinctive lower-register gurgle here to deliciously heinous effect. If I had to choose between this record and their last one, 2019's Beyond the Circular Demise, I might have to go with Beyond, simply because it's significantly crustier and I'm always game for contracting a staph infection from the music I'm listening to, but the (relatively) cleaner, and far more cavernous quality of Sinister Oath has a distinct and transcendentally ugly character that is unflappably vile and cogently evil in its portrayal of the violation of the senses and essence of the human subject, and I might therefore recommend it as a starting place for the uninitiated, even if I (on an idiosyncratic, personal level) prefer other records in their catalog- it's that putridly powerful!

Relapse, don't do it, when you want to go through it, Relapse, don't do it, when you want to...

Interview: Swiss Army Wife

Photo courtesy of We're Trying Records

Get a wife. I'm a wife advocate, and my advocacy is aimed at everyone getting a wife. ✅ house wife, ✅ work wife, ✅ goth wife, ✅ crane wife, ✅ mid wife- fuck it, why not, sister wife... alright, pump the brakes. They're handy and nice, and you can count on them to spot you at the bar and bear and raise your children; they're better than a best friend, and hopefully just as loyal (one would hope... but maybe you're into that sort of thing). A wife is good, a wife is gracious, a wife is steadfast and wise, and depending on your proclivities and preferences, you can even pick up a special variety called a hubbo- a type of domestic companion who tends to have a high skill base for opening jars and reaching objects on high shelves, and can often even be counted on to do dishes and laundry- although these talents are far less likely to be attributed to them, and are often treated as occulted, like the mythic secret menu at Taco Bell. If you want to access the options on his chore tree, you have to ask first. There is also a very confidential variety of wife known as the waifu- this is a wife you never meet but whom you adore in private (sometimes a person, but more often just like, Reze, or something), but if you ever deign to reveal the full extent of your adoration for this sort of wife, or make her picture your avi on social media, you will immediately be excommunicated from the human race and cast into a lake of fire- it is a cruel world we inhabit, but a just one nonetheless. Of course, one of my favorite varieties of wife, and the one that has inspired my present flurry of determined activism, is the Swiss Army Wife- a rare, one-of-a-kind model out of Portland. This particular instantiation of wifehood is particularly musically inclined, writing and producing phenomenally authentic and captivating contemporary emo-core and pop-punk, while reflecting on the travails of being reared in a remote part of the country, blending nostalgia with a pyrrhic wish to see it all burn, and embracing the emancipation of forming one's own identity within the wilderness of hostile convention and countervailing headwinds, driving long into the night to greet an uncertain, yet seemingly brighter future. I was able to take inventory of Swiss Army Wife's long journey and hopeful horizons following the release of their second LP, I Love You, But I Hate It Here (out on We're Trying Records [the current reigning champ of everything emo and underground!]), a compelling sequel to their 2023 debut, Medium Gnarly. You can enjoy my exchange with Ellie and Kade below:

 

Who do you love, and why does it hurt to love them?

Ellie: Jesus, buy me a drink first. I think there is a degree to which love is inextricable from pain. There’s pain in the fear of losing loved ones, of not being who you want to be for them. Exposing that fear is a huge part of what the album is about.*

* Interesting and thoughtful answer. Thank you. But the correct answer is Pete Wentz b/c Pete Wentz. 

What are the standard features and applications for a Swiss Army Wife? Follow-up: how does a Swiss Army Wife differ from a Swiss Army Man (other than a general lack of Daniel Radcliffes)?

Kade: The only one that I am aware of is Swiss Army Wife (the band TM) from Portland, Oregon featuring: 

• 3 guitars

• Impassioned yelling

• Sadness

• Big riffs 

• Lyrics referencing dead philosophers

• Medium, sometimes small riffs

• Impressive average member height

I think the second one is a movie about a dead guy so that’s pretty different. 

What was your favorite part about making this record ie I Love You, But I Hate It Here?

Ellie: The moments when things came together easily and spontaneously in the room. "It Used To Snow" and "Emergency Contact" both were written this way. Obviously we tweaked parts and agonized over things, but there are few things as exciting as being in a room with that kind of collective energy.

Kade: Getting to spend so much time working on something I truly care about with people I care about even more. (and Ellie making me cry in the studio performing the bridge of "Elliot.") 

When did you know this record was done and ready for our eager ears?

Ellie: When Jack Shirley finished mastering it. As soon as I heard the masters, I knew that we’d made something special. Unfortunately, I can never fully let go of anything I make, so I’ll forever be thinking about all the little things we could have done differently. That feeling was pretty overwhelming up until Jack did his thing, but afterwards I felt as ready as I ever could be to let these songs out into the world

Kade: I could keep working on this record forever, but this has been the most satisfied I have been with a project at the point of stasis. 

What city is featured in the background of your cover? Also, please unpack the imagery of two horses traveling towards a spotlight in the far distance. How does this imagery overlap with the themes of the album?

Ellie: The city in the photo is Asbury Park, New Jersey. I was on tour last fall playing in Home Is Where for their Hunting Season tour. Before leaving, I decided to pick up a little point-and-shoot film camera and took a ton of photos all over the country. When I was putting together the artwork, this felt like the obvious photo to use. There isn’t any thematic significance to Asbury Park in particular, but the photo had a kind of loneliness that felt like it evoked the album’s themes really well. I’ll leave the question about the horses to our resident horse girl.

Kade: Resident horse girl here. I grew up in a little farm town with a pair of horses that have become emblematic of my time there as well as the best of what remains of it in my memory. I think they represent the longing I have for a version of a place that never really existed.

So 3D vampires sound pretty frightening. How do you defend yourself from such a creature? In all seriousness, though, "3D Vampire" sounds like a hell of a breakup song. Can you share the story behind it?

Ellie: Well, it isn’t a breakup song. You can’t really defend yourself from a 3D Vampire, because you are the 3D Vampire. The song is about feeling trapped and helpless, stuck in the patterns of everyday life while horrific things unfold around and within you.

Kade: If it was a breakup song it would maybe be about breaking up with the idea that you can continue to live a normal existence while the world is tearing itself apart and instead grappling with the desire to slowly shut yourself off from it and everyone around you. 

Who is your "Emergency Contact," and who are you singing to on the song with that title?

Ellie: My emergency contact is my mom :)

Kade: My partner Rachel 

You seem to be blazing a lonesome path on "Cowboy." Give us some insight into the thoughts and emotions running through that track.

Kade: Anger, fear, and resignation all feel pretty central. Inherited violence is something that never leaves your body even after the abuser is gone, and watching someone experience it from the outside creates a unique form of helplessness. 

How much time do you spend in Idaho? Do you have any good/harrowing stories from there?

Ellie: I am transgender. Every time I’ve had to pass through Idaho has been harrowing. Idaho is at the forefront of the states who are determined to erase people like me from the world. They will not succeed, but it’s impossible not to feel afraid there.

Kade: Spent my first 18 years there. It is mountainous and beautiful and took two of my closest friends from me and is slowly killing my mom who still lives there. It’s not a place that is hospitable to me anymore. Going back is hard but I make the trip once a year to see her. 

Who is "Elliot," and why did you name a song after them?

Kade: Elliot gets its namesake from Elliot Page the actor. Gender is a difficult messy thing to navigate as I think is portrayed by how messy and painful that song is for me to listen to even still. He was the first person whose experience had a profound impact on me when it came to self-discovery. 

"Heartland" doesn't necessarily paint the most welcoming picture of small-town life. How did experiences of life in a one-horse town inform your art and perspective on life?

Ellie: I grew up in a very isolated town in rural Alaska. Literally an island in the middle of the wilderness. You had to get there on a boat or a plane to leave. Less of a one-horse town and more of a no-horse town. Growing up in a place like that as a queer person trying to figure herself out was pretty isolating. I think because of that, I sought out art made by people experiencing their own kinds of isolation. I gained an appreciation for environment as an active subject rather than just scenery. I think on a musical level, that translates to a fixation on harmony. On a purely aural level, that’s the environment that melody, rhythm, lyrics, timbre, and whatever else exist within. That definitely came out in my contribution to these songs. I was always trying to fiddle with chord progressions figuring out what kind of substitutions we could use to create the environment of these songs.

As for my perspective on life, I think it made me appreciate communities that are accepting. The place I grew up rewarded conformity to a certain lifestyle that I knew from a very young age I could never be happy with. Long before I figured out that I’m transgender, my first experiences with that kind of euphoria were in meeting people who I could just be a weird fucking kid with and not feel judged for it. Often, those interactions were happening in musical spaces. It all just kind of fed back into itself.

"God's Favorite Country" sounds like the retelling of a road trip/tour that has really gone off the rails, or is careening towards utter failure. What is the inspiration behind this track, and what are some of your best/worst road trip/tour memories?

Ellie: Umm. Interesting interpretation, but no, not quite. That’s ok though, we do have a pretty good tour story. Our first ever tour was an amazing time right up until, while driving from Phoenix to Boise for the last show of the run, the van’s transmission very suddenly gave out just outside the Great Basin in Eastern Nevada at 4pm on a Friday. We ended up getting a tow about an hour north to the nearest town with any services, Ely. Mind you, it was February, which is not a fun time to be in Eastern Nevada. 

We found a room to stay in at a Ramada Inn hotel casino while we tried to figure out what our next step would be. After calling around, it became apparent that we would not be able to get the van into a mechanic until Monday, so we started trying to figure out other options. We quickly learned that there are no rental car agencies in Ely. Nor are there any bus routes that pass through. No trains. No airport. If you drive in, you better be able to drive out. We could not do so. 

The closest thing we could find was a UHaul location that had exactly 2 trucks, one of which was rented out for the next 2 weeks, the other of which was currently being rented but was expected back on Sunday. Until the reservation ended up being repeatedly extended. So we were still out of luck. We spent our time drinking expired beer (turns out, even the orange flavored beer is NOT supposed to have pulp in it), watching whatever was on small town Nevada TV, making trips to Safeway and the dollar store for food and swimsuits so we could kill time in the hotel pool. I also went undefeated at Pokemon singles against Kade. Important that the world knows that part. During this phase we overheard a woman at the Safeway checkout telling the cashier how her car’s transmission had died here in town a year ago and she ended up just never leaving. Later, one of the women working at the Safeway deli warned us that the town’s sewer was backing up into their water system. Bleak stuff.

In the end, we did get the van into a mechanic. After spending a couple of days working on it and updating us with increasingly astronomical quotes for fixing it, they offered us a cleared mechanic bill and $80 to scrap it. We had been in Ely for nearly a week at this point. Eventually, Tim’s roommate, Adam, ended up renting a van in Salem, and driving 15 hours overnight through a snowstorm to come rescue us. I was convinced until the moment we pulled into my driveway back in Portland that the spirit of Ely was trying to make us stay. To be honest, I’m still not convinced it wasn’t, and for this reason I will try my absolute best to never step foot in Ely, Nevada ever again.*

*Okay, definitely not a road trip/tour from hell type situation, but in a weird way, this extended curfuffle almost sounds fun. Phew! Glad they got away, though.

Photo courtesy of We're Trying Records

What do you get up to when you have time to horse around, ie what are your hobbies other than music?

Ellie: I have a completely normal degree of interest in Pokemon. I am extremely normal about Pokemon. If anyone says I’m not normal about Pokemon, don’t listen to them. I’m normal about Pokemon.

Kade: Building computers, magic the gathering, and losing to Ellie at Pokémon :/

Have you ever ridden a horse? Assuming the answer is yes, was it a terrifying experience, or did you find yourself bonding with your equine pal?

Kade: I had two horses growing up, Blue and Stormy. I rode them in 4-H and FFA and every week as a kid and miss them both dearly. Blue would always sprint across the pasture to come and greet me in the morning even when I didn’t have carrots for him and I think that was a rare and special kind of love. 

Ellie: On a spiritual level, I’ve accepted that horses and I are opposing forces.

What are your connections/coincidental overlaps with the band Joyce Manor?

Ellie: We started working with our longtime mixing engineer Alex Estrada because of his work on Joyce Manor’s self-titled album, which was a huge influence on our first record. If I remember correctly, Alex recommended Jack Shirley, who produced Joyce Manor’s Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired, for mastering. We’ve worked with Alex on pretty much everything we’ve released since then, and came back to Jack for mastering on the new album. Also, by pure coincidence, I just moved into an apartment that’s only a few blocks away from The Alibi, which is a karaoke tiki bar here in Portland that is the setting for (in my opinion) the best Joyce Manor song, "Last You Heard Of Me."

Did you ever finish Oregon Trail as a kid, or did your entire party end up dying of dysentery and snakebites?

Kade: Attempted many times without success. I usually starved because hunting the buffalo made me too sad. Also crashed trying to ford a river a few times. Perhaps dysentery will be the thing that takes me from this life. 

If you owned a farm, what kind would it be and where would you want it to be located? 

Kade: I do not think I am cut out for farm life but if I were to return to it probably some kind of twee organic berry farm in the Oregon wilderness. 

Somewhat surprised by the lack of Pretty Derby references on your social media, in the lyrics of your songs, visible tattoos, etc. Do you believe this will change in the future?

Kade: I was originally just a humble Haru Urara fan but since the Quarter Horse EP release have since been inundated with requests to watch it as I am told she makes an appearance. I will be mandating a band watching experience on our upcoming tour. 

Gold Ship Uma Musume GIFfrom Gold Ship GIFs

Alright, that's it! Check you on the flipity!

PS Be good to your wife!