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. 

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 practically ascended to the heavens- gloating in stasis above mountain tops, witnessing great 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 from dawn to dusk. Effortlessly transcendent and timeless, Cretan Smash will hit you like a boulder rolling off a cliffside 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.

Album Review: Hand Model - Will Life Reign Supreme Even In Death

I've tried to not see myself in the scratchy black absence occupying the center of Hand Model's Will Life Reign Supreme Even In Death cover art. I've tried but I've failed. In general, I don't have a depressive outlook on life, but I have to admit that sometimes the general ebb and flow can leave me with the impression that I'm a passive observer in my own existence. Like a pebble imbued in the sandy bottom of a river, the days trickle past like a wild, clear shadow. Yet, there I lay. Unmoved, unscathed, and uninvolved. I get the sense that the artist behind this record feels somewhat the same. At the center of Hand Model we find Ignat Frege, one half of the duo Wreck and Reference, and on the whole, a master at replicating the tortured patterns of a certain cursed and destitute variety of ennui. While bright infusions of synth tickle and taunt the senses, and babbling undulations of bass crush and cudgel the mind, Ignat's voice and verse remain flat, detached and distant- a residue in the shape of a man, stained on the fabric of reflection as a regression into regret. Amongst the lush, cold atmosphere of Will Life Reign Supreme Even In Death, Ignat embodies an impoverished state of affairs- wrapped by comforts he feels constricted, sorting through small luxuries they turn to brittle clay shards in his hands, present at a grand banquet he drags his belly across the floor half-starved. His tongue like sandpaper, his fingers wrapped in 4 layers of latex, his eyes plucked out for his own piece of mind. In this assortment of abstract prose and a bleeding spray of nausea-inducing electronics, we find a modern subject who haunts his own home and is a stranger to his own will, to the ability to grasp satisfaction. A futile monument to a Faustian delima- an exchange where absolute opulence is offered at the price of a purgatory of passive indignation. Dying to die for something. The exit is itself a harsh sanction. A Sisyphean exercise in un-undertaking. A long march to push a bolder out from the entrance of one's cradle-tomb. A deliberate claiming of a life that is more than a prolonged phase of paralysis. If only to prove that there is some agency still manifest in the human soul. 

Embrace your fate with The Flenser.  

Album Review: Generifus - Rearrangel

That "Biblically Accurate Angel" meme from a few years back was funny, wasn't it? Macros of arcane-looking figures, or some MC Escher-looking hemorrhoid, or a face with too many eyeballs dropping into your timeline unannounced to create a contrast with the soft, approachable portrayals of angels your grandmother preferred. The joke required you to view spirituality, especially the Abrahamic variety, as fundamentally alien. Thereby causing any alarming depiction of a Biblical character to appear more real to you than whatever comfort the graying matriarch of your family may have drawn from images of holy messengers that fall far short of nourishing your nightmares. But what line are those angels famous for dropping when they barge in on your life with a DM from the big man? Something like, "Be Not Afraid?" Sounds like they want you to have a normal one and not get all hung up on their looks. There is a lesson in there somewhere. Maybe more than one. Such as it's not how someone looks but what they have to say that is important. Even if that someone is a transcendent being, who is unperturbed by the way their body defies the laws of physics. Another important takeaway is that it's ok to take comfort from unusual sources. For instance, I did not expect to enjoy Generifus's album Rearrangel as much as I did, and I think one of the things that made it so enjoyable is how much I felt like I could relax while it was spinning. The Olympia artist has a truly enduring ability to embody the familiar in his original music in a way that makes it feel like it has always kind of been around- watching you, guarding you, making sure you didn't get into the wrong types of mischief, but most of all making you feel at ease. He has a swaying kind of lilt to his vocal delivery that leans heavily into a reedy drawl wetted with a honeyed dew. The whimsy of folk harmonies that are layered throughout Rearrangel balances the scales with pop-psych permutations and indie rock optimism like a feather weighed against a blameless soul. It stirs up vessels of Kurt Vile with a base of refreshing and lightly carbonated K Records drafts to keep you in a flow of evanescence, like you are always breathing in fresh mountain air, even in the depth of a muggy city night. It's uncanny how this record snuck up on me. I wasn't looking for it, and yet it found me. But more importantly, it has reached me like a tiding of joy from a benevolent and kindly source, one located in the warm cockle of another human heart. It's a record written from a perch of positivity that permits one to see the farthest extent of creation and know that it is good. I don't need to be afraid. I just need to move some things around so that I can fit more of Rearrangel into my life. 

Grab it from Anything Bagel or Bud Tapes (I don't have a preference). 

Album Review: birds fear death - livestream death compilation

Electronic punk/emo project birds fear death does not seem to fear annihilation. It's not something the project's creative lead Kelly Wilhite appears keen on avoiding... At least not aesthetically. Kelly's latest release under this nomdeplume is livestream death compilation, a provocatively, Live Leak-inspired title whose opening track "pretty girl snuff film" articulates acts of self-mutilation before ending with several repetitions of the blunt coda, "kill yourself." It's edgy. No question. It might even hew too closely to the confessions of a mall goth for some, but it's consistent enough quality-wise to be taken seriously, in my opinion. Most of the project's songs deal in some manner or another with self-inflicted harm, death, feelings of desperation, longing for negation, and general petitions to a waiting void. This subject matter is a common, binding thread that winds across all three of birds fear death's releases, and livestream death compilation is no exception. This isn't unusual stuff for young people to write about. Especially not since the internet became a widely available amenity of American family life. Lots of kids post through their pain late at night after their parents have gone to bed. Flying tear-soaked paper airplanes, brimming with the marrow of their angst, into the black, starving sun of the information super-hell portal. If anyone granted half the things my younger self wrote in my LiveJournal with any level of validity I'd probably still be under observation in a mental health facility somewhere. birds fear death are particularly adept at capturing this sense of inescapable anguish that people tend to experience in the springtime of their lives, as well as the moods and measures that it might drive them towards. While suicide isn't a new or unusual topic in punk and emo music, I have yet to encounter a project that approaches the matter in the way that this one does. An undaunted flirtation with the actual act and its consequences which still retains enough of a sense of humor and even irony about itself to ease the imminent horror of its implications. A dare to grasp the absurdist detachment and guffaw at what a thin white envelope addressed to friends and family and left on the mantelpiece might imply. A penchant for DSBM production crossed with Myspace-era gothic Romanticism that integrates crusty acoustic punk, Alkaline Trio traipsing melodicism, and a cracked approach to electronic music sequencing that sounds like it's oozed from an abscess in Alice Glass's cranial cavity. It all wafts through the senses like the smell of burning plastic exuded by a decades-old laptop whose exhaust fan has given up the ghost. It's dark but not without a sense of self-awareness. And while I don't doubt that some of the bereaved notions expressed here are genuine, they're never presented without a sense of aspiration for renewal. It anticipates that daisies will sprout from our graves and is warmed by the knowledge that the sun will continue to shine even after we as individuals have passed under the shrowd of an eternal night. It appears to me that birds fear death doesn't aim to alienate themselves or others with their music, but rather to throw open the shutters and let light shine in on uncomfortable, taboo, and pain-riddled subjects in order to show that none of us suffer in as much isolation as we might think. Either that or their brain has been totally melted by exposure to simulated snuff videos and shock content posted anonymously to deep web forums. You'll have to judge for yourself, but I think there is real merit in what they are doing here. 

Album Review: The Cowboys - Sultan of Squat

In this house, we believe the '70s were a time when people still had style. In this house, we also believe that the '70s produced some of history's greatest and longest-lasting songs. In this house, we believe a man's merit is inversely measured by the ratio of the length of his mustache and the length of the sleeves on his workshirt. In this house, we believe that Rock 'n Roll will never die. In this house, we believe that Baseball is, in fact, America's greatest pastime (and an excellent excuse to get bombed before 2 in the afternoon on a weekday). You may recall that it was common for Americans, once upon a time, to display their sincerest beliefs in the form of proclamatory placards prominently placed on their lawns. I am never one for following trends, but Indiana's The Cowboys have inspired me to step outside my independence streak and share some of the gems plucked from my own philosophical treasure chest. If you want to know what I think keeps this country great: it's brews, beards, bad-ass guitars, and huge, pendulous (base)balls.  All kidding aside, I am heartened to hear the genuine and pretensless nature of The Cowboy's sixth LP Sultan of Squat, a kind of tribute to a distant era of sound that revels in its trash as well as its triumphs. In songwriting terms as well as style and content, the group performs in the pocket of low-glimmer glam and garage flare, which reflects the blunted twinkle and grounded rumble of post-psychedelic power-pop, a combination of sounds that was endemic to like a three-year period before punk took over as the standard bearer of any ramshackle, rowdy, and left-of-the-dial rock formation. The album presents a digest of portraits, neatly drawn depictions of people living their lives, unassuming of their ends, existing in the moment and largely unaware of the calamity dangling over their heads like a glinting blade. The opener and title track is emblematic of the mix of style and substance, offering a ragtime jaunt and bobbing blunder-hop, where baseball metaphors and cribbed passages from "The Star-Spangled Banner" wrap around each other like the ends of an old rubber hose around a bicep, or the binds of a nose, to depict the downfall of a hometown hero, devoured by the dragon of addiction. Elsewhere, hearts break in-twine on the twanging bend and bane of "She's Not Your Baby Anymore," after which you're invited on a rolling tour of harmonic grandeur that greets you in unassumingly somber tones on "Goetta Fest Calamity Song," a little later the band bears underground and unearths a semblance of the rollicking rockabilly that would inspire some of the Clash's most memorable tunes on "Johnny Drives A Beater," while nearing the finish line, a Walker-esque waltz skips through operatic undertow which gift a splash of splendor to scenes cut from the dating lives of doped up office drones surviving in the digital-trenches and avoiding the death beam of HR's ever-present gaze.  With Sultan of Squat, The Cowboys are able to clip through all the anxious pretext of modern music and hone in on a very specific, foundational, and damb-near-ancient styles of powerpop in such a relaxed and candid manner that it almost feels like they're reinventing (or at least reinvigorating) the genre with every distorted strum of their guitar. A serious feat when most of the originators of these sounds are either dead or in hospice. It's a testament to persistence, perseverance, and passion, as six albums into their career, The Cowboys can take something old and recast it in a new mold, while embuing it with a blazing spark equivalent to that of batter popping a fly into the floodlights above the field and showered the seats below in a rain of golden fire. 

Catch the vibe with Feel It Records.

Album Review: DJ Unknown - Prisoners of Gravity

DJ solo records must be an easy sell. Every beatmaker has a bushel of material just lying around their hard drive. Good work, usually with sturdy bones, and inspired by degree, but languishing derelict in a state of rough repose. Pitching these loops to their friends is a good way of creating the conditions necessary to drag some of them across the finish line. They pitch some beats, their friends like them, those friends drop some bars, they polish the product and ship. Their fans buy it. The MC's friends buy it. DJ wins. MC wins. Fans win. Everyone feels like they get a little something for themselves. However, Canadian spindoctor Dj Unknown's third solo LP feels more intentional than the ram-shackle process I've described. Prisoners of Gravity doesn't give off the impression that it is limited by any mundane considerations of shoveling out a product or giving one's friends something to call up their press agent about. Every track feels crafted in a conscious manner to elevate the character of the MC's flow and approach. I'm fresh to all of these rhyme-misters and yet after hearing the dystopic "Stranger Than Fiction" and the Shaolin stalk of "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars" (just by way of example), I feel like I could hold down a decent conversation with either Noah23 and Raz Fresco if I were to run into them at a bar somewhere. Noah23 with his deep-cut sci-fi references, and Raz with his guarded confessional mantras, offer me insights into their minds and personalities while decisively demonstrating their skills as genuine people as well as warriors school in the cutting quality of a well-turned phrase. The soulful, ruminative and delicately calibrated production provided by Dj Unknown allows each number on this album to become a personal statement by the guest artist while showing off the clear extent of the care with which he prusues in his craft. Neither Dj Unknown nor his collaborators are confined by any of the material they approach on this record short of the outer limits of their own imaginations. 

Distributed by Urbnet.

Album Review: Heta Bilaletdin - Nauhoi

I often wish that I could project the state of my mind in a way that would make the world more intelligible to others. Maybe that's why I write this blog, to provide an abstract layer of metaphor through which to interface with reality. Music does this on its own. I'm just calling attention to the way that it fills in unseen gaps or pulls around incomprehensible crags. It is the dust that reveals the shape and grain of the road underfoot, disclosing the unseen and unforeseeable, like a flashlight whose beam crosses the boarder between timelines. I sense these words leaving me and reaching you as a dashing black line drawn across a map, overlapping and overcoming the palpable real barriers and consternating elements that separate us in order to wind a thread between two distant pinpoints and effect a transference. A thread on which the plastic isometrics of Heta Bilaletdin's Nauhoi can reach you like a mechanized passenger pigeon delivering a message of the rediscovery of the dodo. An improbable initial metamorphotic incantation from the artist, a translation of sensation into sound and back, one which rotates the ballast of one's skull in a counterclockwise manner, releasing jets of green steam in the course of cycling revolutions and forcing its contents to reorient into imperatively unsteady compounds whose forensic potential is in proportion to their combustibility. Daisy-frilled snakes of electric intelligence will circle their barbed coils around the trunk of your spine and act as ribbons of satellite receptors for splendid telekinetic telexes from spiritually inverted terrains. A groan of mystic stone. A fire as cold as night. A bowl of porridge that stares back at you with the kindness of your grandmother's face. A chalice of insight infused with a wisdom as dense as packed sand. A concrete mixer for the mind. All of this has been recorded, because that is what Nauhoi means.

The uncanny dissemination funnel of Fonal Records awaits.  

Album Review: Hoshina Anniversary - Hisyochi

It was hot today. It's summer. What should I expect? It's like I'm complaining about nothing. Still, it got to me. Not in terms of temperature, but in terms of everything else. It's not that it was hot. It was the way it was hot. Every movement caused skin that had adhered to my seat to stretch as if I were stripping off a bandaid. Sweat ran in rivulets under my clothes, streaming over me like I was taking a shower, only instead of washing away the grit that had clung to me I only grew saltier and grimier by the hour. The sun's radiation reflected off the sidewalks as if it was the light escaping from the Ark of the Covenant. I left dark, penetratingly damp thumbprints on everything I touched. My body's reaction was cartoonish and the depths of my displeasure were daunting. I don't mind it when it's hot. It's really all the minor discomforts that add up due to the heat that forms a mountain of misery. Writing this indoors and under an AC vent could not result in a greater appreciation for temperature-controlled environments. It's giving me the peace of mind and relaxed clarity of presence to punch out a few words of admiration for Hoshina Anniversary's Hisyochi. Coincidentally "Hisyochi" means "somewhere cool to relax during a hot summer" which is exactly where I am writing from, and I will go on record as it being superior in nearly every way to the sun seared alternatives I had braved earlier. Unlike many artists I write about, I actually recall where I first encountered Hoshina Anniversary- the Panty and Stocking soundtrack. How important is this fact to the overall arch of this short tome? It's a relatively minor detail; however, coming to this record from his soundtrack work definitely aids in my appreciation of his sense of detail and texture, as well as his versatility as a composer. The saucy and sassy nature of the project where I first encountered his work definitely left me with the impression that I should expect to hear something with a high degree of pep and polish. The polish is here, however, the pep has been pruned to no more than a kernel. But a strict preference for momentum is not the disposition that Hisyochi operates from, instead, we find the artist cracking open the strictures of dance music that pressure and coax us to move, rewiring them to prioritize a passage towards internal quietude- a balm for the fever of the day. Synths and smooth bass lines babble forth like cold water from a grated vent, spilling over your limbs and lifting your weight away from the grip of gravity, pressing you closer to heaven, high enough to lick the clouds, relieving the tension in your muscles that would usually hold it in perpetual exertion. Beats rotate like the blades of fans, surrounding you in a cooling cyclonic current of air, while leafy, shadow-hued atmospherics guard you from the signs of prying heat or perturbing flashes of solar death rays. Early tracks such as "Rakka 落花" and "Irahu いらふ 応ふ" established the perimeters of this aural shelter, while later numbers like "Roman 浪漫" and "Shonyudo 鍾乳洞" elaborate on previously inaugurated features with Caribbean flourishes, jazzy jaunts, and affective intensifications of psyche-rippling pulses and permutations. It kind of feels like eating a bowl of mochi ice cream with your soul- an ingestion of relief that frees your essent from the sticky clump of overheated flesh for which it is attached- allowing it to drift and savor sensation in a newly consummate state of elevated leisure. 

Find a serene balance with more releases from Patience / Impatience.

Album Review: Moreish Idols - Lock Eyes and Collide

It's good to crack into some good old indie rock-styled indie rock now and again. Of course, I don't mean, the indie rock that your Gen X sibling used to stuff wrinkled dollar bills and all their faith in humanity into a postage-stamped envelope in the hopes of being able to hear. The kind they used to make when I was a youngin' (the kind you could grab off the rack at a Best Buy)! The kind that would sort of make your parents happy because it reminded them of the '60s, but would also give them a panic attack because it reminds them of the '60s, plus a mesh of some too-arty, '90s slacker vibes, which all together lead them to worry that your future would be art school followed by a long career as a part-time bus boy at a cafe that boasts at selling vegan rice crispy bars (but only because the owner doesn't realize how much bone is actually in marshmallows). Moreish Idols hits that sweet, nostalgic soft spot for me... and now that I'm an adult with a career, no one is going to give me concerned glares for spending all day listening to their EP, Lock Eyes and Collide. As is suitable to their style, they glean quite a bit of jangle from the electric-folk side of '60s psych-rock, but have this kind of strange, almost competitive elasticity to their performances, where the mix gets all chewed up between the vocals and the drums, almost like two dogs fighting over a strip of rawhide. It's a dynamic that gives the tracks a nice little burst of hungry urgency that contributes a steady column of intrigue to the otherwise peaceful chime of their sound, kind of like James Murphy bursting from a pile of vinyl wax shavings to teach a retirement-age REM how to recapture the weighty haste of their youth. While this interplay pleasantly drives the earlier tracks, it's the later half that the band really finds their stride, wherein "Green Light" stages a surreal conflict between bass-dueting pontifications as they make shapes in a contest with sax-kissed tumble-funk flexs, and the closing track, "Chum" where waves of chaos are unleashed in gratifying contrast with a painlessly preserved power-gaze pantomime that's batched blushingly well with a fuzzy tickle and melodic mascarade, wrapped in a persevering pure-hearted purr. Lock Eyes and Collide? You don't have to tell me twice. 

You heard me, Play It Again Sam. 

Album Review: Moka Only - In and of Itself

I gave In and of Itself a spin because I like Moka Only's name. It's really that simple. It's just a good name for an MC. Makes me think of sweet and smooth flows, with a sense of richness and balance... like a hot cup of mocha! And that's pretty much what it's like listening to the record- slick, stimulating, hot to the touch, but goes down easy. Moka's not just a wordsmith, but also his own beatmaker, filtering jazz clips through a system of hydrating, super-steamed funk and subjecting them to a signature enhancement of finely tuned house rhythms that help condense the motion of the tracks and improve their consistency. Jazz-rap (to borrow an unholy AllMusic genre tag) is a common production style, even in 2023. When an artist wants to come across as suave and together, it's one of the styles they tend to fall back on, and it can sometimes feel like a bit of a crutch as a result. It has an incredibly well-established cultural cache and proven track record for hits... and beat in the style are easy to come by. If you want to buy a Dilla-style beat, you can pretty much cold DM anyone with a SoundCloud. But Moka really is doing something different. His beats feel infused with his personality, with a genuine appreciation for their sources, an understanding of their strengths, and a spiritual-like connection to their real and mythical origins. Frankly, I couldn't imagine anyone else's flow gliding on these creamy, surging curves and sticky, shuffle bumps. In and of Itself is a machine specifically calibrated to serve a special kind of brew, one that Moka Only is distinctly and uniquely qualified to supply. 

Album Review: Patrick Cowley - Afternooners

The soundtrack to a film is rarely its defining feature. We can all think of exceptions to this rule, but generally, what captures the focus of your attention while watching a film is the action and dialogue, not the music- a deliberately subordinate facet of the production that drips away from your conscious register and into the background to aid in establishing ambiance and other supporting aspects of the viewing experience. More marginal even than your average film score are the arrangments that end up setting the scene in porno flicks, where the substance on the screen is ALL action and not much else. Again, there are exceptions, of which Patrick Cowley's body of work certainly qualifies. The composer was responsible for many sublimely simple ditties in his day, some of them ending as mood setters for bold and brassy homoerotic encounters set to celluloid in the '80s, many of which have now been collected and released as compilations by Dark Entries Records. My current favorite of these collections is Afternooners (named for a skin flick of the same title), not just because I always thought the aphorism for a mid-day hookup was incredibly amusing in a nonchalant and disarmingly innocuous kind of way, but more importantly, because the soundtrack is back to back jams. All of the arrangments have this steady, drifting, interstellar momentum to them, that seems almost more accommodating to a light show at a planetarium than the man-on-man action they were composed for. I would not go so far as to say that you could never guess that this music was meant for a porno if no one told you as much, but it's not the first thing that springs to mind, either. Their bopping, synth drags and radar-sweeping-like intervals are ranging with a satisfying dose of pep, a bubbly overload that saturates the senses like you've been dunked in a vat of fruit-flavor fused seltzer. The tracks often leave the impression that you are being transported to a new reality where you find yourself reinvigorated and rejuvenated by the intoxicating quality of the alien climate and the fantastic visuals of your surroundings. The scores have an air of exploration imbued within them as well as a keen sense of adventure, as if they were meant to accompany a voyage into the unknown, electrified with a zest for pleasure and anomalous sensation that forges a path of rapturous possibilities, venturing forth where no man has gone before... At least, that's the story you might tell yourself and others. There is a first time for everything after all, and if you've never found a porno soundtrack that you could see yourself playing while relaxing for a night of stargazing as easily as you could use it to put the moves on some hard-bodied, heart-throb, then maybe its time that you let go of your inhibitions and see where Afternooners will take you. 

Explore deeper with Dark Entries Records.

Interview: Superdestroyer

I've been a huge fan of Superdestroyer's work since he pitched his first LP to me back in 2021, completely out of the blue. I really had no idea what to expect from his Such Joy album, but it ended up thoroughly blowing me out of the water (you can read my review here). Fast forward to last year and I'm comparing his album Goon to Husker Du's Zen Arcade! A bit of effusive? Sure. But hell, he's earned it! I am entirely indiscreet about how much I enjoy his work and the output of his label Lonely Ghost, and when I heard that he had a new album coming out this year, I lept on the chance to have him on my podcast to discuss it. Superdestroyer's next release SoakedInSynth.zip drops later this week (the 30th to be exact) and sees the enigmatic electro-emo wunderkind confronting one of his oldest and most dastardly foes, the Cartoondemon! A fiend that has lurched in the background of many of Superdestoryer's past releases, but has never dared to show his face... until now! Will Superdestroyer prevail over his adversary, or is his ship destined to sink in a sea of woe?!? You'll have to check out the record to find out. Of course, if you're curious about spoilers (and why wouldn't you be?) you can check out our convo below: 

More info about Superdestroyer and the rest of the Lonely Ghost roster can be found here. 

Interview: NaturoSynth

Image Credit: Zain Siddiqui

Got to talk with the cool cats of NaturoSynth for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview series this week. They make a very slick-sounding, '80s-inspired style of future funk and psyche that sounds like a cross between Tame Impala and Daft Punk and I'm all about it. They are super polished, confident, and great to talk to, as well. I was shocked to learn this was only their second interview ever. You can check our convo on CHIRP's site here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · NaturoSynth Interview

Check out their latest EP In Control here: 

Album: Starman Jr. - Temple

What do you think Starman Jr.'s power level is? Don't look up a player's guide, I want you to give your best, educated guess. Would you rate it high or moderate? Do you think he's a fair, early encounter, or should his fight be put off until you've maxed out some stats? I'm of course talking about the NOLA-based indie rocker and not the Earthbound adversary of the same name, but I can see how you might get too confused. Unlike his namesake sibling, running into Starman Jr. (the musician) is not inevitable (as it is [sort of] in the game... you know, Earthbound). He's been a prolific recording artist since at least 2015, but I only encountered him for the first time this morning while looking for something to put on while replying to emails (I guess you could call it a random encounter). I was initially intrigued by his 2022 LP Hardcore (a consequence of my long recovery from a prior era when I unironically referred to myself as a "punk kid"), but I ended up really falling for his most recent release Temple instead. Temple overall has a softer focus to its production than some of his other work, personifying a gentle balance of balmy restfulness and understated splendor, a contagious kategori of bare folk kindness and lopsided pop bliss that blisters achingly like a tar bubble crying for relief and release. Here SJr. plays a kind of fleecy, proto-catatonic country in the class of Coma Cinema, which if it gets you under its spell, will cause all your ideal aspirations to float through the exhaust vents of your ears and into the world like clouds of concrete, falling into place until they convene a chapel of faultless attainment where intentions become stirringly factual and real, and any tongue is intelligible as long as it is spoken with honesty and care. Mello liquid mushroom melodies cascade from cracks in chamber-conscious compositions like sunrays dancing through the gaps in a rainbow. Songs come together like a mirror shattering in reverse to capture the moment a stone was cast into it, permitting you a moment to contemplate the regret in your own eyes and grant yourself a premonition of pardon for future transgressions with a promise to do better next time around. As it turns out, Starman Jr.'s (emotional and aesthetical) power level is pretty high. Thankfully, he's not a boss encounter, more like a new addition to your party- one who can raise your HP with a simple strum of his guitar and chase off baddies with the disarming sincerity of his aura.    

Album Review: No Momentum - Triple Threat

Triple Threat is a completion of three of No Momentum's EP; Mach Punch, Seismic Toss, and Parting Shot. The New York-based emo quartet like to play around with amateur wrestling imagery and sound clips, but as far as I can tell, the past time of hitting friends and acquaintances in the head with folding chairs or placing them in choreographed chokeholds doesn't permeate the content of the material any deeper than the superficial cuts a performer might razor into his forward head during a boiler-room brawl. That's alright. The lyrics and rock riffage they coast on are pretty hardcore even without the added wrestling innuendo. You can hear from the outset, on the opener "I Quit," how recklessly the group throws themselves into the material. Their main vocalist Kelly belts out every lyric like it might be her last, like she's imminently aware that there is an errant sawblade, sprung loose from a shop bench, and careening towards her neck like its the one thing in the world standing between it and the exit. A heightened level of intent and urgency charges the entire comp like a fork in an electrical outlet, filling it with nearly enough wattage to stop your heart, stone-cold. Especially on later tracks like "Boss Battle," which has this combustible rope-a-dope groove that makes you feel like you've been cornered by the band and their batting you around like a jobber squaring off against a heel whose finisher is a choke slam, or "Dance, Dance: Revolution" a circuit frying torrent and fuzz fricasseed free-fall that narrowly avoids succumbing to full skull-splitting skramz by a virtue of a groovy bassline and the inclusion of  Sega soundcard sojourn in the bridge. That's the other thing about No Momentum; they really have a knack for chiptunes. It's not something that they mix with guitar riffs all that often, but they do include short, whimsical, vignettes of lo-fi, internal expansion card-enabled melodica at the end of each EP, which helps to earmark the different sections of the record as it is ordered chronologically by release date (earliest to latest). This sequencing actually works really well for the album on the whole, as the band's performances have become tighter and more intense over time, providing the record with a terminal sense of momentum (*cough cough*), building towards the final tightrope drop of the American Fugazi-ball, Terror-Drive-In, KO-cry of "Parting Shot." The kind of impassioned sincerity exhibited on Triple Threat kind of menace I wish I had more of in my life. Don't be a jabroni; put this record at the top of your card.