- me in the review of The Menzingers' Chamberlain Waits you totally read
I've written a [hilariously oblique unit]'s worth of reviews since I entered the "blogosphere" back in 2009, and tbh, I'm pretty impressed that I almost uniformly agree with every summation I've published to date. I mean, sure, the writing itself may curdle milk and cause me to cringe so hard the muscle tension collapses my skull, but hey! that consistency! It might sound fucking bonkers to be proud of myself for continuing to agree with myself, but consistently & publicly opining on new/new-to-me music for the sake of generating fresh content is actually pretty difficult. I don't know about you, but I don't naturally osmose a banquet of acerbic, articulate stances and commentary solely from spinning an LP a few times - that shit gets sorted out on the "compose post" screen, mostly.
Weirdly enough, the only post I completely don't get anymore is that review of The Menzingers' debut, A Lesson In The Abuse Of Information Technology. I mean, if you read it, you don't really get spattered by the strings of saliva launching out of the corners of my frothy, hype-spewing mouth, but I was definitely a little tumescent in the genitals over it. Minor tumescence. But then I'm pretty sure that - for whatever reason - I immediately lost interest in it entirely the exact second I hit "publish". Maybe through some insane improbability tied in with quantum mechanics or something. I mean, it doesn't suck the peen/amount fellatio with something degrading, but it sounds about as emotionally resonant (when not boring) to me as if they were playing unaccompanied scales at this point.
CONCLUSION: It's Clash-y, phlegmy pop-punk/punk rock with a few folk numbers, sterile production and groundbreaking, iconic, plastic brain melting social commentary courtesy of the10th grader-discovering-CrimethInc artwork.
Chamberlain Waits was a pretty big step up from the debut and the stronger follow-up EP, Hold On Dodge, and traded in much of their grating, braying sing-scream vocals, gang choruses, and other orgcore sundries for stronger melodicism, songs that don't lose their zing after 10 listens, and lyrical clarity via less mucilaginous cadences. I was about to say something all smarmy and shit like "remember that quote at the top? LEMME FULFILL THAT PROPHECY LIKE AW YEAH" but then I relistened to the album and realized that, while flawed, it's still pretty solid. The real enemy here, though, is the fact that I (again) never ever feel like giving it a full spin. Sure, trax like "Times Tables", "Male Call", and "I Was Born" are all super solid tunes (mostly "Times Tables", which is fantastic), and even though there are only 3 weak tracks, nothing about this album beckons me back for more than the tri-monthly "I guess I could put that on" spin. Nice stuff, but yeah.
CONCLUSION: It's Clash-y, slightly less congested, alternative rock-influenced pop-punk with warm production and nostalgic artwork that brings a tear to the band members' collective eye.
And all of this boring backstory bullshit brings us here:
'Cause it seems The Menzingers are just too deep for me to qualify (big_dog.jpeg), you might wanna take this with a grain of my ass, but I'm pretty sure I actually love this album. Like, as a whole album, and with a lasting love as deep and real as Steve Albini's annoying, "edgy" opinions on everything. Prior to fully embracing it, though, I'd been on an untouchable, super-posi, LYF IZ WUT U MAKE IT kick from March up to June, all up in this shit like "Latterman isn't very boring" and "I'm going to take steps to improve my life because I'm worth it - L'Oreal". Of course, having spent most of my life in crushing depression, I'm still prone to relapses, and that's both where the last few months of potential posts and this album come in.
This may not make sense to a lot of you well-adjusted, non-damaged types, but when your vitality is near-constantly snuffed by the sheer weight of simply being awake, you tend to get nostalgic whenever you relapse back into sadness after long spells of feeling functional. I had been enjoying the shit out of this album for a few months prior to the moment it finally "clicked", and a heap of existential, stress-cigarette pain proved to be the key.
Over the past few days leading up to our glorious alignment of souls, my being was slowly crushed into a little frowny diamond by trigger after trigger, and the fibers of my whole new Patti Labelle attitude started to fray considerably. Finally, a pot-luck/party featuring an unfortunate meet-up of my recent ex-partner and a farm intern I'd become involved with drove the final nail into my coffin of Good Times, and as I drove home that night alone, reunited with the nostalgic shades of despair I'd been in the throes of my whole life, I put this on at a whim and it draped an army blanket over my throbbing psyche.
On The Impossible Past is essentially where the transitional leanings of Chamberlain Waits were heading: the sound is less raucous, with greater reliance on space and melody to make an impact rather than the aforementioned orgcore cliches, and while a largely a lyric-focused release, the melodies have never been stronger. On top of that, the fairly consistent mid-tempo approach makes this one far more appealing for a wider variety of moods, but the anthemic power per square inch is still prevalent as ever. As the title suggests, this album is beautifully caught up in a nostalgic sense of sadness and reverence for the past, and I for three (ha HA! DEFYING EXPECTATIONS) am pretty weak kneed over trite shit like that. Maybe you could tell, though.
Like all prior Menzingers albums, this one has a few weak links, but for whatever reason, it sticks with me far more as a whole than anything they've ever done. I'm uncertain whether the songwriting is split Alkaline Trio/Tegan & Sara-style, but I'm going to assume as much considering nearly every great song on here is fronted by Greg and every underwhelming one is Tom. Either Tom's simply a lesser songwriter, or he drew the short straw consistently, because while "Sculptors And Vandals" is a great track - a highlight, even - "Ava House" and "Freedom Bridge" are both pretty clumsy and lack the hooks necessary to justify their weird anti-climax and non-building repetitiveness, respectively.
Greg's tracks, on the other hand, are uniformly fantastic, from the simple, addictively sparse opener, "Good Things", to the fist-clenching balladry of "Gates", the mid-song reinvention of "I Can't Seem To Tell"'s central riff, and the best song the band's ever written, "Mexican Guitars". Also particularly interesting is the quasi-cover of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" from New Skin For The Old Ceremony, entitled "Sun Hotel". If you track down (or youtube) the demo version released on the acoustic cassette, On The Possible Past, you can hear the track evolve from what was essentially a tributary, fairly straight cover with altered lyrics to an entirely separate, full band-performed entity. Unfortunately it's not about Greg ouija board-ing Janis Joplin's ghost into existence for fellatio purposes, though.
I suppose I need to mention the lyrics, though, considering I spent a whole paragraph rambling about the way they affected me in my time of deep, young, important-looking anguish. While there's no cohesive storyline overarching this album, the theme is prevalently backwards-in-time-looking, and recalls minute, but ever-important details of (relatively) hard living and great, fleeting beauty. I know that sounds like every navel gazing pop-punk unit's M.O. in today's climate, but The Menzingers have that something that separates the unpretentious, relatable prose of Dear Landlord and American Steel from the regurgitated nothingness of your Elways and Arms Alofts. For the most part, these are all colorfully illustrated snapshots of grief, significant faces, old friends and the like, and while, admittedly, I could see this sort of sentimentality causing some of you more jaded fucks to cringe, I love lines like this:
It's not hard to fall for a waitressand
When you both smoke
Smoke the same cigarettes
You'll get seated as diners or lovers
You'll get the check as friends for the better
You'll carve your names into the Paupack Cliffs
Just read them when you get old enough to know
that happiness is just a moment
Well I sat and thought about youThis is the kind of stuff that simultaneously inspires me and makes me wonder if I'm doing myself a disservice by idealizing nostalgia and sadness so heartily. I can't say I'm feeling much remorse though, considering how fist pumpingly anthemic this kind of sentimentality is. Sweet anguish riffage, too.
On the long ride back to Philly
From the way that you'd wear your hair
To the way that you'd laugh when you drank too much
Before the plug was pulled, the fires burned out
And all the parties grew bored
You waited tables
I waited for your shift breaks
And Gin and Casey
Used to dance inside of me
And I bet I sound like a broken record
Every time I open my mouth
I want to wander around the city with you again
Like when you waited tables
And I waited for your shift breaks
CONCLUSION: It's still Clash-y, but also a nostalgic, beautifully emoted (albeit Greg's warble can seem a bit overstated sometimes), pop-punk/punk rock/alt-rock hybrid with tons of memorable moments and strong enough songwriting and overall flair to keep me hooked. There are weaker moments, but even those are worth listening to, for once. No "Alpha Kappa Falls Off A Toilet"s or whatever. For once, I really doubt I'll be retracting any praise I've heaped on this band. But MAN! WoUlDn'T iT bE wAcKy If ThE nExT tImE, I ngsjdhssd3r3r
So yeah, check this out.
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