BREAKING NEWS: young journalist wannabe exudes limp-assed "professionalism" on 3 year old album

This is pretty out of the norm for my lovably zZaAnNyY writing antics, but I've been doing little reviews on rateyourmusic.com, lately, mostly just to dick around and get my head Back In The Game™. I'm preeeetttyyy positive that no one needs a new assessment of an album that came out 3 years ago that was covered by all mainstream alternative music journals, but that's the fun of not giving a shit and doing things for the sake of doing them - SMASHIN THE CAPITALIST AGENDA, imo. Anyway, here's this dull, fairly reserved shit: 

I already did a little backstory thing for the Ivy Tripp review, but basically, I was a ridiculously huge fan of Katie's output from 2008 to 2013. I got the p.s. eliot demo off a blog randomly and never turned back, eating up their whole discography, as well as Bad Banana, the King Everything tapes, Waxahatchee's split w/ Chris Clavin, American Weekend, and even cried like a wimp at p.s. eliot's last show.

Needless to say, I was pretty forthy in the jaw when the announcement for this album came about, and then - subsequently - in denial about how little I liked it for about a year. I've since concluded that some albums are growers and some are just sort of impossible, and this falls somewhere in the middle (though definitely leaning more towards the latter). 

On this album, Katie chose to abandon the ultra lo-fi bedroom sound of her earlier solo works, so the majority of tracks are augmented by a couple musician friends, and presented with crystal clear production. That said, the focus still remains squarely on the bare songwriting itself, so the accompanying musicians never act as much more than stagehands for her performance. What this unfortunately translates into is a handful of otherwise decent songs turning to complete slogs due to to a bunch of clumpy, meandering studio takes. Seriously, Kyle McBride and Keith Spencer sound like fucking automatons fulfilling a programmed function more than members of a band, here. There's just no sense of chemistry or that they're even playing in the same state, let alone the same studio. Just sterile plodding that not only provides no energy, but stymies all existing energy.

If anything, though, it's the songwriting that fails to grab me. I dunno if this is due to Katie obviously reaching into new reference pools for her sound or what, but almost none of these tracks have an emotional core that I connect with. While "Blue Pt. II", "Tangled Envisioning", and "You're Damaged" are all pretty and likable, only the minimal bass-driven "Brother Bryan" and the incredibly poignant "Lively" crush my heart the way her old stuff used to. The rest alternates between sounding like weird, unfinished experiments or... just plain boring 90's grab bag alternative music. 

I get that musicians get sick of doing the same old shit, and change their sound as their tastes shift and they age, but really, the shift out of the familiar twee pop/pop punk/loner acoustica realm just doesn't do it for me. The songwriting - minus the tacked on accompaniments - is pretty scattershot, the production and back up tracks are bleach-tier sterile, and the lyrics just don't hit home in that bookish, broken hearted way that all her old projects used to boast. I think I'll continue to revisit this every 4-6 months for the conceivable future, but this is still one of the biggest letdowns I can think of. 

Like, in a musical sense. My life hasn't been that good.

xBREAKDOWNZx 4 a tender heart

So Portland Round 2 has been going pretty well, to say the least. I mean, plunging my eager fingers into the soil of true Purpose And Fulfillment™ has remained elusive, but still, I feel like I'm growing up at a respectable pace in lieu of getting the fuck out of ~crust_punk_lyf~. Like, hey, I have a job now! It's a dishwashing gig, which is a monstrous step down from being a farm faery, but because this is Portland, it somehow pays more than any job I have ever had. In other words, Portland is far, far too expensive. But in these tumultuous post-long term relationship times, it's the SLAMZ that have provided me the most solace. So today, let's skip down the cobblestone pathway of history for some of the sickest pit riffage there ever was, and hopefully, you'll feel the FKN MOSH like a cool towel on your feverish brow as well.

Well, this was supposed to be "Seeds Of Suffering" or "Breeding The Spawn", but apparently you can't embed SHIT anymore 'cause of new-ish youtube/google policies. This is still pretty solid, though, so whatever. Suffocation and I go way back to 2003 - right when they reformed and stopped putting out good music. Regardless, I proudly donned one of their embarrassing longsleeve shirts for years - with the Dan Seagrave art above, no less. You know the ones: they're all cottony and plastered with stupid shit on every conceivable surface, including the band's logo like 8 times on one sleeve. Kind of a graphic design quagmire, but hey, you have to admire how well they function on a eugenics level. Anyway, Suffocation are known for being pioneers of "brutal death metal", a genre so stupidly named I feel like I'm getting whiplash from all the times I uncritically spoke that title in front of normal people. I feel like that genre's parameters are sort of varied, but generally function along the same evolutionary lines as punk to hardcore punk - basically the XTREME augmentation of all attributes. Most notably, though, Suffocation threw in breakdowns more derived from bro-mosh hardcore than "Raining Blood". It's pretty funny to listen to the accounts of scene elders, as most of them seem to remember these guys being widely derided in their heyday. Considering how untouchable and groundbreaking they're considered nowadays. I feel like this can be chalked up to metalheads being the same strain of traditionalist luddite that occupy your local Bruderhof village.

Dying Fetus are great, as they're not only a band that elistist Mtn. Dew cicerones loathe for 'ruining metal integrity', but also remind me of being a complete dipshit and trying to defend their ridiculous name to my mother when I was like 16. They're pretty notable for kicking off the "Suffo-clone" trend, which basically amounted to white dudes in baseball caps trying their hardest to mimic Suffocation, but lacking the instrumental prowess necessary. You know what's easier than writing songs with complex time changes and "blazing" guitar interplay? CHROMATIC BREAKDOWNZ. I mean, listen to how fucking dopey this song is: that fucking bouncy-ass breakdown around the 1:15 mark... the attempts to be "technical" by throwing in little wanky harmonic bits amongst all the strutting pit riffs... that DEFINITELY stolen riff near the beginning! I completely non-ironically love this song, and it's helped me 'pick up the change' numerous times in the past week, usually while cooking. And again, because of blogspot, you'll have to deal with this muddy live version instead of the Bathe In Entrails one, but it's kinda sweet anyway. Look at the bouncer in the front row; my personal narrative for him involves daydreaming about a job that doesn't involve socially inept longhairs with low hygienic priorities, nor the bolts of sweat flagellating him from behind.

No Zodiac are kinda special, as they're not only incredibly silly in a deadpan way, but one of the only metallic beatdown bands I can think of that went "full metal" without becoming some nerd pandering bullshit. For clarification, look at Job For A Cowboy, Annotations Of An Autopsy, or The Black Dahlia Murder. All of those bands' 'growing pains' essentially translated to capitulating to people who edit Metal Archives, alienating the entirety of their teenage fanbases as a result. Honestly I can't even tell what the fuck song this is because the quality is so cellphone-y, but no big deal - the TRANSGRESSIVE NIHILISM IS UPON U LOL. I literally experienced several dreams of seeing these guys play when I was in their hometown last summer. I'm not sure if it was rooted in deep seated regret for not snatching up one of their be-logo'd ski masks or what, but in retrospect, I feel the karate mosh would have been substantial. If you want a comprehensible example of this band to go on, check out the video for "Chaos Reigns" on youtube. It's great, they kidnap a bunch of people and set them on fire for vague, "Satanic" reasons.

This could've been a much longer post, but as you can see above, blogspot is not making this a simple endeavor. I wouldn't typically resort to posting a video of some sixteen year old doing a play-along on guitar, but I'm a little too deep into this now to jump ship. To be honest, my interest in the band waned pretty massively in the past few years. Somewhere along the hallowed path of their stylistic evolution - from humble Infest-worship beginnings to heavy-as-shit NYHC standards - they decided to hop the trend barge and put out Blinded, a fairly dull Entombed-via-Nails midrange sanctuary. I spent a decent chunk of my teenage years listening to and burning out on that 'classic swedish death metal sound', so to hear a hardcore band appropriate it from another hardcore band sorta dashed my enthusiasm for HW. I haven't heard their last LP, Rust, admittedly, but Isolation is great
pit "riff clinic" (bleah), and the adorable Jack-O-Lantern shirt I got at their Halloween show in 2010 ('11?) made up for getting elbowed in the throat, even.

In conclusion, I finished this at 1:30 AM, published it, and woke up in horror when I re-read the trainwreck I unleashed upon the zero remaining readers. Also, do you remember when H-Dubz's vocalist didn't have any tattoos? Should I cut part of my face off an eat it for referring to Harms Way as "H-Dubz"? COMMENT BELOW

2015 roundup part #2

Today I feel unlike a diaper that has been worn into the kiddy pool and, subsequently, swelled up to the point of exploding, so let's return to the exciting world of 'WAT I THINK ABOT BAND XD'

5.) Poor Form - Same Excuse

So I'm sort of writing this as I listen to it for the first time, so I hope you're prepared for this groundbreaking journey into music journalism we're about to embark upon IN REAL FUCKING TIME. See, when I was writing this post's header, I started to mention how it was kind of disappointing that Poor Form didn't release anything last year, as I've been wanting to blog about them forever. Apparently, though, this EP came out on December 25th,  so its like a Christmas present that got left under the radiator or something and - oh okay now it's over. 

Poor Form is a gritty pop-punk quartet from Vancouver, BC with members of Needles//Pins and Siren Songs, and this EP is apparently only seven minutes long. I'm putting it on again now, but I'm starting to see why this kind of stupid gimmick writing isn't going to be particularly useful to anyone. It sounds great so far, though - same straightforward mid-high paced gritty pop-punk sound, but with a much fuller, more lustrous production style, and a new equilibrium between Legs' and [the other vocalist]'s tradeoffs.

If you've heard their awesome 2014 demo and let it soundtrack a zillion bike rides, too, I'm sure you'll love this too, especially if you don't approach it in the ridiculously jilting, unfair way I currently am. 

6.) Hop Along - Painted Shut

This is definitely my favorite album of the year, which is fortunate, because it was getting embarrassing to own two different Hop Along shirts without even really liking their old shit. I mean, like, there was no Machiavellian scenester gerrymandering going on or anything, I just slowly concluded that Freshman Year is bizarrely back-loaded, and Get Disowned's 'studio project' style sounds more convoluted than expansive to me nowadays.
What we know: Painted Shut is fucking great and I've been dicking around on the BeerAdvocate forums for about an hour. Hence: you know how Hop Along played as a trio up until sometime in 2013, and they couldn't replicate all the overdubs so their sound got really heavy and "rocking" in a live setting? That's the young, underattenuated base beer. So then you add the adjunct of guitarist Joe Reinhardt for complexity and kidnap and age the whole band in the Saddle Creek barrel warehouse for many years to attain the pop songwriting maturity evident here. Then you tap the cask in 2015 and it's all just stale bodily fluids because you murdered a whole bunch of people through entombment. I was going to somehow throw in a bottle conditioning metaphor but this has been horrifyingly embarrassing as it is. You know what they say about taking chances: don't!
Anyway, the band's sound has become much more accessible and consistent on the whole, with tons of hooks firing on all fronts, less overdub carpet bombing, and a warm, full production style. I was going to further elaborate on the comparatively straightforward songwriting style evidenced here, but actually, I wouldn't say the band's esoteric elements are dialed down much, really - they're just re-purposed for easier listening, and largely come through by Reinhardt's nuanced guitarwork and Francis' most acrobatic-yet-melodic vocals to date. Think "Kids On The Boardwalk" and "Tibetan Pop Stars" more than "No Good Al Joad", I guess.
I'm not usually "Mr. Highlights" on stuff I think rules fairly and consistently from atop it's benign throne, but if you want a few to go on, check out "I Saw My Twin", "Waitress", and "the rest of the album". It's like, >40 minutes.

7.) Divers - Hello Hello

Here's a band from Portland with what appears to be a penis on the cover. That's the place I'm catching a plane back to tomorrow at 5 in the fucking morning. To think - I wouldn't be afforded this sort of awesome, fundamental experience if reality wasn't increasingly slipping from my fingers with such velveteen luxury. Some days you get the plane, and other days you don't get the plane because you are apparently losing your grasp on reality and would've sworn you booked your flight two days later than you missed it. Anyway, my ass.
Divers are a band I know nothing about and sound like something I'd hate. They've got that now notorious blend of heartland rock and Midwest pop-punk/alt rock down pat, have dramatic, furrowed brow, bobbing-adam's-apple-passionate vocals, some 'whoa ohs', and lyrics that come from the Springsteen school of Americana. I think. They're kinda hard to understand, tbh, and they're one of those bands that doesn't put their lyrics on their bandcamp.
Weirdly, I actually really fucking like this, and could maybe only pick out one track I don't really care for out of the ten present. If that description puts you off as xhardcorex as it did me, know that this isn't some radio tailored Gaslight Anthem cheesecockery, where you can play bingo with the words "drive", "Maria", "radio" and a slew of allusions that'd practically get you called out on tumblr for 'working class cultural appropriation'. Like, you totally get the lingering odor of dipstick-wiped-on-Levi's and unfiltered Camels, but there's no cherry-picked period stereotypes resting on a pop-rock framework here. These songs all sound organic, loose, and flowing as they bounce around between sweaty anthemic shit to quiet, slinking numbers without really repeating themselves. I've rarely put much of an emphasis on musical talent in my life, but sometimes something like this gets to you and you realize how limited most of the stuff you like is in terms of creative songwriting. I honestly don't know who to recommend this stuff to, but I've been playing this regularly for the past 3 months and I notice new bits everytime I put it on. If you want a few tracks to go on, check out "Listen Teller", "Breathless", and "Stateline". Maybe I'll actually leave my house to go see these guys when they play a zillion times directly in my neighborhood.

2015 roundup part #1

2015 was a fucking toilet. I lived in New Orleans, founded a sweet punk house with some good friends, discovered that living in a shotgun is like operant conditioning for paralyzing anxiety, rekindled a love of suicidal ideation, and learned how to create an ouroboros of sadness by drinking to feel anything which leads to feeling less the next day which leads to drinking etc. Eventually I went back to NY, regained some level of sanity, immediately dashed it on the windshield of traincore life, crossed over to the opposite side of the country, got hella sick, had two friends die within a two month span, and lost a partner of 5 years due to horrifying depression. Also, there's unlisted bonus tracks you can hear irl, but first you have to help shatter my exoskeleton of numbness so the tears can finally escape their cimmerian prison.

In summation: aw shit yeah brah 10/10 would entertain cutting my own head off again

You know what I hate? The internet.
'Kinkshaming is LITERALLY a thing I can't even I'M DONE Y'ALL Y'ALL Y'ALL [bevy of slang terms and phrases lifted shamelessly from black culture by white kids who only derive joy out of criticizing others for cultural appropriation] smh cuckcuckcuckcuckcuck problematic AF Y'ALL'

And so it is 2016. Admittedly, I haven't really kept up on current music like I used to. I pretty much spent the entire first half of the year just endlessly replaying old Guided By Voices and Jason Molina stuff (apropos of my sad, drunk aesthetic at the time), and then the second half being a hobo in my cleanest glad rags and a bindle full of dreams. To make up for this, I've combed through a ton of personal and collective 'best of '15' lists and exposed myself to everything I could, meaning dozens of albums in the past 6 weeks. THE VERDICT: FUCK YOU, I guess

1.) Beach Slang - The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us

This band has magically turned into the Wesley Willis of 'meaningful', young adult-oriented 90's rock revival. I'm not even trying to be a condescending dick here - this seriously bums me out - but how does a band run out of ideas this fast? Almost every single one of these ten tracks sounds like a barely tweaked rewrite of an older song, and this is coming from a band that only had 8 recorded numbers under their belt, prior. In fact, if you cut out "Bad Art And Weirdo Ideas", "Too Late To Die Young", "Porno Love", and "Young And Alive" (to a lesser extent), you're basically getting 6 inferior versions of "Filthy Luck" or "All Fuzzed Out" from their first couple EPs. I'm not sure what happened here, but I'm kinda guessing all the hype pushed these guys to crank out tunes faster than they could recharge their creative juices, because this is sort of a slog to get through, and it's only like 27 minutes long. Maybe I'm being too harsh, because I know a lot of people really love this, but it's just hard to get behind since I'm apparently one of those "I only like the demo" guys now. oh god how do i stop it

2.) Year Of Glad - s/t

When NONA announced they were calling it quits in late 2014, you can bet your bottom dollar that I made sure to inexplicably avoid their final show, especially since it was taking place less than an hour away from where I lived. Luckily, every member instantaneously formed new bands or joined old ones, and thus the roaring emptiness inside is temporarily quelled once more.
Year Of Glad is guitarist/sinus cavity projectionist Mimi's new project, featuring one of the 1994! guys (Chris), plus Mike from Good Luck and another Mike from some basically eponymous band. I never really dug 1994!, so fortunately this sounds more like an even tighter, better version of NONA over anything in the math-y, twinkly whatever subgenre that band occupied. That sentence was poorly structured to deliver the impact intended. An even better NONA is just what this post-9/11 world needs, though. The songwriting here is, like, rotavirus-level infectious with lots of clever arrangements, instantly memorable melodies and leads, and sweet vocal tradeoffs from Mimi, Chris, and one of the Mikes. I don't know why I've been assuming you know what NONA sounded like, but as an extension, this is more of that pop punk/90's alt rock Frankenstein stuff, but luckily, without any of the dull, Veruca Salt-ish trudging that occasionally smushed the fun out of Through The Head. Did you ever try to listen to an entire Veruca Salt album? I did, and now my life is in ruin, as evidenced above.
I'm tired and my partially-skunked-IPA buzz is in decline, so this review is probably as substandard as usual, but also I feel bad about it. Regardless, this EP is fucking great, and I seriously can't wait to hear what these guys do next.

3.) Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp

I love the shit out of American Weekend. The lo-fi fuzz settles all over my psyche like a warm blanket in a northeast winter, and it's something I've played on a zillion sad days. My love of Katie Crutchfield's songwriting dials back to 2008, when the p.s. eliot demo hit, but 2013's Cerulean Salt was effectively the flighty "I need to find myself" college phase that kills high school relationships. For me, CS was way too cold and bitter sounding to love, the new back up band sounded sterile and rigid, and the scattershot, '90's grab bag' experimentalism made it seem more directionless than expansive.
Ivy Tripp has the same mess of styles going on, but fortunately, A) the songs no longer sound like hastily filled in sketches by a studio band and B) the songs have more energy and warmth. Well, except "Air", which sounds like a CS leftover, but surprisingly, a really good one. There are a few complete throwaways like "Stale By Noon" and "Blue", but "Under A Rock", "Poison", and "The Dirt" are excellent indie rockers, and the rest alternates between slow blocks of synth fuzz and pretty acoustic numbers. "La Loose" is just awful, though. It sounds like a trust fund at a beach party with a bunch of asymmetrical hairstyles or something. And what sucks is that underneath all the cloying "ooh ooh"s and tacky synth shit is a really pretty, sad song. If you see Waxahatchee live (which I totally reccomend), she plays it alone on an acoustic, and it magically turns from 'track I'll never listen to intentionally again' to 'heartwrenching'.
I know this sounds unenthusiastic for being "such a bigh fannn", it's just that little of it has grabbed me anywhere near as hard as any of her pre-2013 material. I can actually understand why people would like this, unlike SOME ALBUMS I KNOW, and I'm sure I'll be listening to this intermittently for a long while to come, it's just not going to be another 'tea and a journal on the front porch in the rain' album for me. I'm super happy she's finally getting the praise she deserves, but I'm just not a fan of this Pitchfork-y musical direction.

4.) Jeff Rosenstock - We Cool?

This album is great, but I seriously can't stomach this shit right now. Admittedly it's been a long while since I listened to anything Rosenstock related, but I really don't remember his lyrics ever being this bleak or hopeless before. I mean, look at some of this:

"I got so tired of discussing my future
I’ve started avoiding the people I love
Evenings of silence and mornings of nausea
Shake and sweat and I can’t throw up.
I got so tired of discussing my future
That I walk through my life like I’m the only one" 

"Were you supposed to not go to college?
Stay in your mom’s house on the computer
googling grief cures, talking to no one
Waiting for life to start feeling better?
Waiting for pain to not be a constant?
Waiting to feel like anyone’s honest?
Waiting for me to stop being sarcastic
Because I can’t accept all the bad things that happen."  

"Getting drunk all alone in a quiet hotel room.
You repeat all the most shameful things that you’ve been through.
It dawns on you, that it’s true, fucking nobody loves you.
They’re waiting for you to fall, and take your place."  

"When your friends are buying starter homes with their accomplishments
Drinking at a house show can feel childish and embarrassing
With people glaring because despite what the advertisements said:
Malt liquor doesn’t make you young."

The thing is, these lyrics don't really resolve themselves through ironic posturing or pep-talk choruses like they might have in the Bomb The Music Industry! halcyon days. They're just... deadening, and if the music wasn't the kind of bombastic carnival shit Jeff's practically trademarked (NOW SKA-FREE), this would probably be unlistenable. I guess it might be me, but all the stuff on here about feeling like a failure, struggling with personal loss, and sinking into numbness through vices isn't cathartic as it is horrifying right now.

But hey! Those hooks!

Okay fuck this I'll make a second installment later.

BREAKING NEWS on The Front Bottoms

So I guess I live in Portland now. If you haven't been, it's actually a lot less noxious and bordering on tactless self-parody than all the shit I grew up adjacent to (Williamsburg, Bushwick, Koreatown, NYC in general now etc.), but that might be like saying the equator isn't that hot if you grew up in the core of the earth. I don't know, but I like being here slightly more so than endlessly milling around the country like a low-charge magnet for federal trespassing warrants.

Speaking of which, this one time me and my friend were trying to get to the Pacific Northwest so we burned through the better part of month trying to hop a train going to Richmond, Virginia. I know! I thought 3000 miles NW was directly south, too! After abandoning the Selkirk, NY yard for essentially being the Excommunicate layer of social purgatory, we scammed a bus out of Albany to Bergen County in New Jersey. Multiple-pints-of-blood-lost-to-insect-life and execrations at the McDonald's later, we were finally burning to death on a gondola heading to Richmond in the middle of Summer.
Hence, The Front Bottoms.

(they're from Bergen)

To be upfront, this band's not for everyone. Actually, they're barely for me, even. Like, I've heard them described as sounding kind of like a combination of Andrew Jackson Jihad and Say Anything. That sounds pretty close to a mash up between abscessed gums and a disparaging letter from a collection agency to me, but it's actually a pretty enjoyable, original sound. While this is their third LP, the band has seemingly disowned the previous self-released full lengths, so the self-titled/untitled factor marks this as more of a "true" debut and not a pandering, "returnin to our rootz" sort of album (ie Korn, like, twice).
I guess for all INTENSIVE PURPOSES, The Butts That Are In The Front are a two piece with some detachable, touring/recording parts, but this album's filled out with lots of cheap, lo-fi keyboard/synth shit, a real, live trumpet, and a bunch of clever secondary vocal arrangements. That said, I figure the core members, Brian Sella and Mat Uychich, could mostly stick it out on their own, since the unembellished framework they provide is pretty strange and distinct. You get the tight, super dancey backbeat from Mat, and the repetitive acoustic riffs and bizarrely specific-yet-vague storytelling from Brian, and somehow their combined powers can make a song with this fucking chorus emotionally resonate:

And I will remember that summer
as the summer I was taking steroids
because you like a man with muscles
and I like you.

See, if I had done any research on this band before downloading their first proper album, I definitely wouldn't have ended up downloading it. Their approach on paper reads like something I've grown out of viciously since the olden days of attending Plan It X fest and 'guessing I'd give ska a try', but fortunately, for all their obliqueness and college-y lyricism, there's a lot to like here.
The Front Bottoms, to me, sound exactly like one of those hype bands that ruthlessly gentrify Tumblr with 'meaningful lyrics macros' for a few months or so. They're one of those bands like Beach Slang or The Gaslight Anthem where - regardless of your initial aversion - you eventually fold and check them out 'cause you can't stand wondering anymore - 'would joining the omniscient drum circle of pubic mound pounding over this shit also bring ME joy?'. Just like those two bands, though, these guys are almost exclusively prompted by their strong 'x factor' - so much so that their other traits kinda pale in comparison. TGA had the out-of-nowhere Springsteen/Replacements/Petty-filtered-through-a-pop-punk-lens thing going on, Beach Slang revived that Goo Goo Dolls-y 90's sound with super prosaic lyrics about rock 'n' roll and youthfulness, and The Front Bottoms are the weird pastiche of elements I described above.

On that note, I wouldn't say the songwriting here is anything mindblowing, and the cluttering of overdubs sometimes lends it a slightly amateurish vibe to my ears, but it's more about the aesthetics here than reinventing the songstructure wheel. There's just something so likable and infinitely re-playable about these songs. While the tracks "Flashlight", "Swimming Pool", "Rhode Island", and "Father" are definitely the stand outs for me, everything but the final two tracks are pretty close to great (#11 is just lacking in hooks, and #12 has a chorus that feels completely inappropriate to the dark, somber quality of the verses and bridge). This was one of those albums much like Common Rider's Last Wave Rockers where the first, unsuspecting listen drew me in immediately and was quickly canonized into Watchtower pamphlet territory, passing out recommendations wildly to whoever didn't respond with "Steve where have you been this band has been popular as fuck for like 5 years now don't you use tumblr". And yeah, I do, but not to look at a bunch of 16-21 year olds transposing 'meaningful' lyric fragments over Microsoft desktop backgrounds, so I guess I missed this phenomenon. I mean, look at this Louvre-tier renaissance of macros in the Graeco-Roman tradition.
Depending on how taut and sensitive your anus is, the lyrics may be the primary barrier to your enjoyment of this album. There are definitely times where they threaten to intrude on a good time (the chorus to "Bathtub", for instance), but then there are lines like this:

But you were broken bad yourself. You were mad as hell you felt if you had done anything with anyone else it would have worked out so well. But you are an artist and your mind don't work the way you want it to. One day you'll be washing yourself with hand soap in a public bathroom. And you'll be thinking how did I get here? Where the hell am I? If the roles were reversed you could have seen me sneaking up, sneaking up from behind.

"Flashlight" is another good example, and while the lyrics sound like they were written without concern for the listener's desire to instill order in a lawless world, that's what really strikes me as appealing: there's something so nebulous and collage-like about them, yet somehow they all seem interwoven, like a collection of brief glimpses into an intensely personal network of memories. Saying this may go down as the most publicly embarrassing thing I've ever done, but I guess the Tumbleez haranguing their 14 year old peers about complex sexual politics and embroidering The Story So Far lyrics on kitchen towels are right this time.

I don't expect to change anyone's mind on a band everyone's embraced or reviled for half a decade already, but sometimes you just need to get excited about stupid shit on your hopelessly out of date blogging operation.