Album Review: Memorrhage - Memorrhage

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

Album Review: Gold Dime - No More Blue Skies

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

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

Album Review: Basher - Doubles

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

 

Collapse into more grooves with Sinking City.

Album Review: Hooten Hallers - Back In Business Again

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

1. First things first

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

Ingredients

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

10 figures of sultry jazz melodies

10,000 lemons

1 hot cup of ambition

1 gill of delusion de grandeur (for flavor)

Equipment

Guitars (Bass and other)

Drum kit

Sax

Amplifiers

Mics

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

Grain grinder

Hydrometer 
Fermenter

A reliable heat source

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

Spare chicken wire

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

Snake-skin boots with freshly polished spurs 

A live opossum

A pair of denim overall with a missing button 

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

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

3. Crushing doubts

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

4. Heating the listener

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

5. Mashing the mix

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

7. Mash-out and sparge

This is self-explanatory.

 
8. Checking the gravity

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

9. Yeast, everyone needs it

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

10. Fermentation

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

11. Clarifying the wash

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

12. The spirit run

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

13. Making Cuts

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

14. Aging and oaking

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

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

Album Review: Oldsoul - Education on Earth

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

Album Review: Alien Tango - Kinda Happy, Kinda Sad

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

Album Review: Be Kind Cadaver - Postpartum

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

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

Album Review: Charming Disaster - Super Natural History

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

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.