things that are better than I thought part 1

Man, does life suck a lot less when your chipped molar isn't in the death throes of infection and ready to pop like a corn kernel ;) #rootcanals #ada #dentist #conebeamcomputerizedtomography #smh

If the jump in page views and traffic is any indication, covering current stuff is a lot more lucrative (in the pat-on-the-back sense) than being another 24 year old conveying the "Jawbreaker ROOLZ" message to a supersaturated interbutt-browsing populous. I'm not saying that I'm done plugging non-current shit just for the attention, it's just that I've been feeling way more into THE NAO lately, which has never really been the case. Checking out new music has proven to be way more opportunistic and fun in a lot of ways, seeing as they still play and produce new tuneage, and for the moment, I am all about that shit. Moreover, every time I think about the fact that I'll probably never get to see Discount, The Broadways, and Boris The Sprinkler play in my lifetime it makes me very upset.
SO COME, JOIN ME AS WE MARCH INTO THE POP P0NX FUTURE:

I really, really like Joyce Manor. I unashamedly believe the hype, and I would kiss all up on their faces and shit to display the deep bond I've formed with their creative execration. In figgety-fact, their self-titled LP - despite dropping less than 2 years ago - has quickly crawled way up on my Favorite Album Totem Pole, and sits pretty comfortably alongside such lusty entities as The Weakerthans' Fallow, Common Rider's Last Wave Rockers, and American Steel's s/t in terms of pure enjoyability. It's especially satisfying considering I only picked them up on a whim, and while it's not a mInDbLoWiNg reinvention of the pop-punk wheel, it IS a crazy solid, nearly flawless bit of eyewatering angstmagic I could easily spin til' infinity. If songs like "Beach Community" and "Famous Friend" wanna remain anchored to my psyche like cathartic, fist-pumping tumors forever, I think I'll be alright with that.
But this post isn't about the seepia tinted olden days of the self-titled (seeing as I've always thought it was radcakes), although maybe it should be. See, I came into this post thinking you'd be fully aware of my rabid fandom already, but as it turns out, I never even finished that earlier Joyce Manor post or have ever had any readers. Regardless, frowns were frowned and harsh words were exchanged betwixt me and last year's followup LP, Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired. I'm not gonna quote any of it (because it seems sorta dumb and buttmad), but essentially I was like: "shit's underwhelming, brah. it's too short and unlike the s/t". I stood by this after a few dozen listens following this un-posted post, too, but time has a way of making stools of us all. And well, yeah, it is way too short for a "full length" - like, "come on, you assholes" short - and pretty unlike the s/t, but you could generally do a lot worse than not repeating yourself and only writing 11 minutes of new material.

While the self-titled was a fairly straightforward, smoothly flowing set of 9 songs in 18 minutes, OATIWSGT is a pretty big overhaul, and a gutsy one at that. Here, the distortion's been turned down from "BZZZZ" to "bzzz", the hooks are floating on the surface like they're suffering from nutrient malabsorbtion, and the variation from track to track hits me more like a punked-out Guided By Voices than a fresh spin on Bay Area fare. Looking at it critically, it's not really any wonder this put a lot of people (including me) off so hard; there's very little grit here comparatively, but in it's place, some fuzzed out acoustic numbers, a lot of crooning by way of a prevalent Smiths/New Order bend, and a fucking cover of "Video Killed The Radio Star". Yeah. I know it sounds gnarly, but somehow, despite all this, the songwriting here is still impossibly addictive and listenable as it was on Joyce Manor. Seriously. I have no idea if this was a calculated risk or a genuine, collective "I don't give a fuck", but it really doesn't matter when all of it grows on you like athlete's foot in the locker dimension. Pretend that wasn't stupid plox.
To assure yew, this still sounds unmistakably like Joyce Manor. Yeah, Barry Johnson's cut most of the shrieking desperation from his voice to become a less hilarious Morrissey, and there's a song performed with an 80's 2 THE MAX drum machine and little else, but beneath it all is still that creamy Jawbreaker-ish center the lot of us will spank it to ad infinitum. Tracks like "Violent Inside" and "If I Needed You There" simultaneously rekindle olde p0nx magick while pushing the band's boundaries, but the utterly skeletal brevity of "Drainage" and "I'm Always Tired" are what make me really drool over this. Clocking in a little under/over a minute each, the pair remind me of all those moments where I'd find a beautiful, gutwrenching little chunk of music plaguing my subconscious and later (usually much later) find it to be a 30 second, recorded-under-a-snowbank quality Guided By Voices song I'd previously thought nothing of. While "Drainage" brings the somber, bottom lip biting goodness with just a ragged acoustic guitar and a few piano plunks, it's "I'm Always Tired" that really, really gets me. I feel like I've written these lyrics a zillion times:


I’m always tired.
I’m always at least half asleep.
Blemish and state how I don’t feel great now.
I don’t hang out in her hair.
I don’t wonder if she cares.
I lay awake now, I entertain my plans
To one day miraculously be talkative and likable,
To wake up as someone else, someone I know is inside of me,
Just waiting to be put to use by something much more sharp than us.
They pry out every fucking piece and still they’re coming around again.

To close: Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired turned out to be a hugely satisfying release, especially considering how disappointed I was by it at first. This is a fucking awesome album, and a great addition to their catalog. I don't think it could stand alone as well as their self-titled by any means, but it's at least on par with that album's "compulsive listenability", as some rock critic dude probably said. I know that's not an original thought. I don't know if I could recommend you pay LP prices for 7" length album, but if flipping over the record every five minutes floats your salad, you couldn't do much better than this.
The sole complaint I have still floats around the "waaah it's too short" universe, but lettuce be specific: the "Video Killed The Radio Star" cover is over 2 minutes long. I realize the original is only about 45 seconds longer, but context is important here. While the band completely DID make the song their own (much like their awesome cover of "Midnight Service At The Mutter Museum"), and I totally applaud their unfuckgiveable attitude, maybe it wasn't such a hot idea to waste 1/6th of a 13 minute "album" on a cover of the worst song in the entire universe.

Oh, and while I can't embed this for some reason, totally give this a look.

OWTH being so un-posi :(

Here's me being super relevant and on top of the sceeene pt. 2:

Off With Their Heads are a band I've claimed pop-punk allegiance to (DEFEND REAL POP-PUNK STAY TROO LOL PIZZA) since they released Hospitals in 2008, but I think at this particular junction, my heart's not in the right place to give the greater portion of a shit about their freshly hatched 3rd LP, Home.
If you're unfamiliar with OWTH, they're sad. Alternately, fairly angry. Moreover, they've been floating around since 2002, and after shifting out of their initial phase of keyboard-heavy, power-poppy punk, they toughened up, cranked the distortion, and became the crunchy, beardsy pop-punk misery unit making the rounds at punknews to this day.
I should probably stress the "misery" part. The lyrics this band employs run the gamut from "relatable but like come on dude" to "ha ha ha... holy shit" levels of self-loathing, regret, despair, and general fucked-up'edness. It's certainly a load of cathartic fun, or at least was, but somewhere around the release of the band's 2nd LP, In Desolation, the irony-heavy cornerstone of their sound started to slip out of place a smidgen in favor of "artistic growth". Essentially, where the band would once pair heavy, melodic, poppy songs to comically desperate lyrics in a way that was ironic and fun, was now a tendency towards slightly more po-faced songwriting. Throwing in a more serious tone and some power balladry isn't necessarily a bad thing (and I def like lots of 'deep srs artist' bands) but it sort of IS when your lyrics float around this universe:

I'm confused, i'm confused I know i need help, and that's why i'm turning to you
I'm having trouble dealing with loss and coming to terms with the fact 
that it cost me my whole life by running away 
I am unable to deal with the pain 
trying to find someone else i can blame 
It's obvious the only one to blame is me, is me

I mean, that's some uncomfortably honest self-loathing stuff, there. Like one of those super icky moments where your 'pretty good' but not 'super close' friend who always seems like they totally "have their shit together" pulls a 180 and pukes decades of impenetrable negativity all over you, then gets all embarrassed, wipes their eyes and resumes their usual posturing like they didn't just reveal their personality was mostly a mask for deep pain.
But hey, listen to how fun that song is!

See? It's like the lyrics aren't a disturbingly colossal overshare from someone hovering around their 30s when that sweet lead comes in at the end. I'm probably being super harsh here, and I don't doubt the authenticity of these words, but jesus christ dude, you think these issues might stem from somewhere other than your apparent inarguable worthlessness? But that's enough of my incredibly perceptive armchair psychology, take a lisssen to the new lead off single from Home and tell me you aren't scared that something has changed for the worst:

On top of the video seeming really unintentionally laughable (which is kind of an anomaly seeing as there's another video from this album featuring a magical snowman transformation), the tragic back-up vocals and the gloomy chord progression in the chorus make me cringe - something I don't ever recall doing when listening to this band in the past, regardless of how tactless their lyrics were. And holy shit are the lyrics in "Nightlife" embarrassingly blunt. In Desolation had dodgy little bits and pieces throughout that hinted at the band's desire to mature and expand upon their basin of acceptable sounds, but Home is pretty rife with them, and not always in a particularly good way.
To clarify, I'm not saying "omg wtf u guys stick wit what teh fans want" or anything like that (srsly), it's just that I find myself not truly digging their slight shift in a more crooning direction, and honestly, I think my excessive snickering at these songs might be a sign that I've "outgrown" these guys (for lack of a better term). There are some solid songs on here for sure, but after spinning this about a dozen times, I think I might just be a little too self-assured and stable at this point to really get much out of the world's most thematically depressing band toning down their songwriting irony.

If you were a fan of everything they've released to date, I'd definitely recommend checking it out, even though I can't get behind it hxc. If you're new to the band, though, definitely start somewhere around the Hospitals/From The Bottom neighborhood and go from there. I know I didn't make it seem like it, but they're a really sweet band with a ton of great songs, and a sick live unit to boot. Oh, and incongruously, I actually sort of like "Don't Make Me Go". I mean, it's a perfect distillation of every change I just grumped about, but I'm a loose cannon with no allegiances. Also, make sure to check out their family tree if you dig that gritty, bass heavy pop-punk everyone at punknews.org slaps it to like the fading memory of their last meaningful sexual encounter. Ha ha. I'm so irreverent. What does that even mean

sweet music-y delights of the NAO

Hey whoever, I think I might be back for a while since I'm quaking with inspiration (ew) and the bulk of my ridiculous fortress of stress (mortared with insecurity) has been leveled hxc. As such, blogging about sweet pop-punk bands and clownshoes avant-garde whatever will probably ensue on a quasi-regular basis! WHEEEEEE
But first, remember when I wrote those long, unrelatably vitriolic posts on songs I didn't think were so good?
I'm re-reading them now and all I'm struck with is a baton of embarrassment. It's like "omg shut up you're like that totally unfunny dejected "special snowflake" introvert who's sooo cultured and srs and opinionated about everything and sits in the back during parties while everyone else dances unselfconsciously to phat jamz and talks about video games and anime using words like "beautiful" and "fucking amazing" and is like super vocal about how stupid religion is and agh fuckdksn go listen to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and watch "The Amazing Atheist" with your ponytail you wacky narcissistic manchild get a therapist and leave the house or something" and such and such. Sorry if you found those funny BECAUSE I'M CALLING YOU OUT SO HARD RIGHT NOW.
Well, not really. I just find them kind of embarrassing, personally.

BUT HEY, this isn't the start of another eye rolling, self-deprecating pre-music discussion rant. I think I'm actually over that stuff 4 realz and even that last scoff at my expense was more about drawing a line between 2012 edition Steve and the self-assured, literary phenomenon and bastion of wisdom and who now speaks before you. You sheee, 5 months can be a long time when you're on the road (especially in your early 20s, I presume) and the last 5 months were nothing if not a particularly long time. Now I feel like a totez different person - one who might write these blogs in hopes of slowly improving instead of delicately posturing and mercilessly editing my ramblings to appear as a more experienced writer. That makes some sense, no? For someone who constantly referenced the abysmal readership here (no biggie), I certainly put a lot of self-conscious scrutiny to work in tackling such topics as "Banner Pilot is sorta boring" and "Matchbox 20 is corny".

But enough of the past. Let us partake in some sweet, sweet musical nectar:

ITEM THE FIRSTTH:

I love the bananas out of Katie Crutchfield. Up until "discovering" P.S. Eliot's Introverted Romance In Our Troubled Minds - perhaps my favorite album of the ever next to Broken Star - I really never had a favorite songwriter. Since then, I've trekked through everything with her name on it and have not once been disappointed: from the fuzztone pop-punk adorableness of Bad Banana, the rapidly improving bedroom acoustics of King Everything all the way to Waxahatchee's American Weekend, then way back to the teenaged mediocrity of The Ackleys (I know, but I wasn't "disappointed" - they were, like, 16 okay?). Her wordy, bookwormish, emotionally conscious lyrics of heartbreak and the like always get to me in the best way possible, and I'd be seriously okay with songs like "Bathtub" and "Incoherent Love Songs" chilling in my brain for always. All this said, there is a new Waxahatchee album out now and I'm hankerin' pretty hard to hear it all the way through again. I mean, listen:

I "wait...what?"ed pretty hard when I first heard this, and perhaps you will, too. If you've heard Waxahatchee's split with (ugh) Chris Clavin or the full length LP, American Weekend, you'd know what to expect: a lonely voice lilting out from the fuzz-drenched lone acoustic guitarwork and little else. BUT YOU'D BE WRONG MOTHERFUCKER. That was harsh. But you would be wrong, 'cause the production this time around is totally not 4-track-inside-a-garbage-can quality, and on top of that, additional instrumentation provided by Katie's boyfriend and... I think her sister's boyfriend? fleshes out the sound from 'bedroom rehearsal starkness' to 'restrained session musician fullness'. While this transition might do away with many of the old style's charms, the songwriting is still top notch, the lyrics still painfully honest and sad, and the amount of variation on here makes me really excited to see where the project will head next.
The album was streaming not-so-long ago, but evidently it's been taken down, so pick up a copy here and maybe that awesome haircut t-shirt that you'll feel compelled to ship to me because you're so grateful for my return to Blogland.
(srsly I'm becoming way poor)

ITEM THE SECONDTH: 

Did you ever notice that when you look at a Screaming Females' album cover, you're like "that is the ugliest, most unpleasant thing you could possibly put on there" BUT THEN the next album comes out and somehow it's even uglier? Okay well maybe they never outdid how fucking grotesque Power Move is, but they deserve props for putting in a pretty solid effort every year.
I know that was irrelevant but I didn't realize Waxahatchee and Laura Stevenson were both on Don Giovanni (home of Screaming Females) so I had to see what else there was that I was forgetting. And then tell you about it here on the internet.
Anywaifer, Laura Stevenson and NOT The Cans are putting out a new album real soon and I'm crazy excited. I mean, The Cans are definitely on it but everywhere I look it just says "Laura Stevenson - Wheel", so... I guess it's just implied? But I digress because I'm a terrible writer. The point is, these new tracks sound fantastic and the cover art is gorgeous - almost like something you'd find on an old psych-folk or krautrock LP. "Runner" is an energetic burst of beautiful indie-folk pop with the kind of hooks, instrumentation, and vocal harmonies that make me want to listen to it forever (which I'm working on, actually...) and "L-Dopa" is a Big Black cover. Okay no its not. It is a gorgeous 6-minute piece with a lush string section and lyrics that'll make your eyes water and your bottom lip quiver embarrassingly in public, though. From these two tracks its hard to say whether Wheel will be the same huge leap Sit/Resist was to A Record, but I'm hoping it's at least on the level of it's predecessor, which I think it's nearly flawless.
Check out the new tracks and pre-order wheel heeyar.
Also, does anyone still find it funny that Laura Stevenson was the keyboardist in Bomb The Music Industry? Because I don't know why but I still do.

ITEM THE THIRDST:

Look at me, being all up to date and relevant and stuff. Supporting the scene like it's nobody's business. You may have already heard from literally everyone in the world that RVIVR has a new album and it's radcakes, but they, like... do. "I got into RVIVR back when their first EP dropped back in the day", I said to the ever-so-slightly younger punks I was addressing, "and I've watched them improve hugely from there. This means that my opinion that their new LP is the best thing they've ever done is objectively purer than yours, and if you feel differently, your insecurities will make you question your personal truths. Oog. Scene veteran." But srs. It's really, really good, and I definitely do think it's a huge step up from their self-titled, which is saying a lot about how awesome I think it is. There's less space in the mix, but it gives the album a super full sounding brightness, especially when the extra voices and organ come in and kick you in the tearducts. On top of that, Matt spends a bit less time showing the world how to enunciate loudly and actually SINGS a few times. Not super well, but it's cool that they're trying new stuff. And yeah, it still has that element of corniness in the lyrics and bombast, but if you're unlike the old, overserious Steve of last year, this shouldn't be any barrier to you losing your shit to almost every song on here. Especially the last song, which makes everything feel so epic and heartwrenching.
Oh, and there's a musical trilogy! Like Daydream Nation! Except the first part sucks instead of the third part. Alright, it doesn't really suck. The lyrics make me cringe pretty hard, though. So un-posi. :-(

Listen to it heeeeaaaarrrr and then check back EVERY SECOND because you'll be able to buy a real copy pretty soon.

Well. That wasn't the worst return to writing I've ever made. Unless it was. It's hard to say these days when the self-hatred isn't spewing out of every pore constantly X forever. Fuck yeah, not hating my every move. Either way, one things for certain: it was probably a way weird thing to use that particular picture of Katie Crutchfield instead of, y'know, an actual press photo.

songs that suck tremendously vol. 2

That's pretty topical, right there.

It's time for this again. Y'know what? I'm thinking the songs themselves may not be what teeters me to the edge of sanity, but, in fact, the atmosphere I often experience them. See, I occasionally dabble in the "not eating properly before work" school of thought, and as such, I experience bouts of extreme lethargy, as well as soul-scorching apathy gurgling up through me like magma, all to the toe-tapping bullshit excreted through the PA system. Don't get me wrong - I dislike these stupid fucking songs without pause - it's just the days at work in which I replace literally every word in said tracks with unreproducible tirades of profanity that truly drive me to writing these stupid lists.

Also, I find it funny, I guess. This is no exorcism.

1.) fun. - Some Nights

What the fuck is this. This sounds like something Disney curated Phil Collins to write for The Lion King. I thought the world was finally safe from white people's colonialization and defaming of world musics in 2012, but well, here's this - detached exoticism and all. I can barely remember fun.'s debut from the single time I spun it, but I remember it floating around in the baroque pop revival/neo-pop psychedelia realm, not this horseshit.


2.) fun. - We Are Young

Okay, so this doesn't really deserve to be on here. I mean, I certainly don't like it, but it's not something that cleaves the hemispheres of my brain with an un-lubed penis of rage. What IS notable about it, though, is that I was destined to never like it by some unselfconscious dude working at this anarcho/commie cafe-bookstore in Tucson, AZ. For close to 2 hours, he scrawled over the delicate nuances to the vocal lines with a fat, xylene-reeking black marker of a voice that could've passed for Roscoe Holcomb without talent. I sort of wanted him to die at the time.

3.) Nickelback - This Afternoon

This is the last Nickelback song I'm ever going to post, as there's really no need to further the mind numbing nadir of placing this band at the crux of all things foul in rock music. Sure, Nickelback are vapid balladeers postured as the limpest final incarnate of grunge in the mainstream - the last "movement" offered even a sliver of credential from the hipster cognoscenti. On the other hand, you have an eternity of knowledge, wisdom, and opinion at your fingertips via the information age. The mainstream's bastardization of genre X shouldn't mean squat if you're not a total luddite. Chirality, motherfucker.
That said, this is the first song I've heard by them that treaded from "painfully inoffensive" territory to "aurally gruesome". Y'see, it's Nickelback's "fun" song, free of all the melodrama but none of the cheese. The video is actually even tackier than the song, surprisingly enough, full of eye-rolling sex appeal and cringe-worthy cliches. I remember someone on the 4chan music board describing this as "music for people who re-shingle roofs in the white lower class bracket". I suppose that's kind of offensive, though.

4.) Matchbox 20 - She's So Mean

A while back, I listed some cheesy solo Rob Thomas ballad alongside a bunch of other stool in a facebook post. Since I keep everything totally public, some contrarian a few degrees separate from me responded that I was way off the mark in not recognizing Thomas as the Sinatra of our generation. To this day, this comment stands as the least correct statement ever uttered in my presence.
I'm not sure where this temptation comes from, but there's literally an overwhelming desire to decree this "dorky". I mean, I get it - it's supposed to be kitsch. I still get the notion that if I were forced to dance to this in a public setting the embarrassment-turned-self-loathing would be too great for my being to withstand. Those drum fills proceeding the verses may as well be played with ladles full of velveeta fondue.

5.) Culture Club - Do You Really Want To Hurt Me

I'd make a lazy comment along the lines "yes, I do", but it seems likely the human race issued a moratorium on those sort of comments after the noxious fumes of a trillion stale jokes subsumed the planet 20 years ago. This is just synthy, bloopy nothingness. I don't know if I hate it as much as I'm baffled that it attained any sort of profile. Where are the hooks? Are they just in the wAcKy antics of Boy George that illuminated the band? 'Cause fuck this.

I think I'm gonna keep these posts down to 5 songs from now on. Doing 10 would probably reduce the quantity of bitching unsatisfactorily.

Came Out Swinging

First of all, give this song here a listen:

I literally knew nothing about this band prior to stumbling upon this song, excepting one lurid notion that they were spearheaders of that depressingly lousy "easycore" subgenre kicked off by mainstream luminaries New Found Glory circa 2000-something. If you're not "in the know", easycore is essentially a hi-fi, spotlighted pastiche of the gnarliest, most consumer-friendly bastardizations of pop-punk, melodic hardcore, and to varying degrees of misfortune, metalcore (for the pinnacle of this misfortune, see Chunk! No Captain Chunk). While I can't yet speak to the quality of The Wonder Years as a band, I have to admit, this is an incredibly solid track I've found stuck in my head for a week. While the sound is as full-bodied, high end and claustrophobically compressed as any given easycore staple, aside the brief flirtation with hardcore's gang chants, I see no real parallels to the Four Year Strong/Set Your Goals book of songcraft. In fact, this strikes me more as convergence point in which the stylistic progenitor's have finally clashed with the mainstream plunderers of said style, and honestly, it works really well.
That said, what most surprised me here was the relative depth of the lyrics. I realize the following sentiments are a redux of another recently disclosed sentiment of this blog, but I've observed the parameters for what I truly relish in pop-punk restrict notably over the past couple years. Much of the "guilty pleasure" shit I indulged in has been shaved down to sweet nothing, and almost every early classic has been all but phased out from the annual album rotation. Why the latter? Mostly the nauseating archaism of the lyrics. I don't need to hear boring sub-Ramones profundities about wanting to take a girl on a date, being a "lame-o" in the high school hierarchy and other caricature-esque encapsulations of youth culture. Who the fuck relates to this shit? I generally seek out pop-punk that can deliver an emotionally coddling, cathartic experience, so pretty much everything dancing about the universe of The Queers, Smoking Popes, Beatnik Termites, Ramones, Green Day, The Exploding Hearts, and The Mr. T Experience fall out outside my reach presently. This isn't to say these bands are entirely devoid of merits, but here's the deal: if music doesn't reverberate within me on a viscerally emotional level*, I likely frequent it's wares due to its fascinating anthropological/historical posturing, psychic usefulness, and out-of-time sound. Pop-Punk just generally doesn't interest me on that level, so I better curl my toes, throw up my fists and bite my bottom lip to it. It might be an embarrassing admission, but lines like this do me in:

I spent this year as a ghost and I'm not sure what I'm looking for
I'm a voice on a phone that you rarely answer anymore
I came in here alone
Came in here alone
But that doesn't scare me like it did seven months ago
I spent this year as a ghost and I'm not sure where home is anymore

I came out swinging from a South Philly basement
Caked in stale beer and sweat under half-lit fluorescents
I spent the winter writing songs about getting better
And if I'm being honest, I'm getting there

(*if you're getting hung up on the term "emotional" here i.e. "all music is emotional" then try to focus on the context - a cultural niche where "emo" is a subgenre of music)

On an unrelated note, have you heard the new Gaslight Anthem single, "45"? I've strayed pretty far from the band since 2008's The '59 Sound put me in a coma (yes, how controversial), but I ended up hearing this a number of times whilst slaying minutes digging for unlikely gems in the local FYE, of all places. While the song is certainly solid and devoid of that shitty, reverb-on-fucking-everything Springsteen/Replacements production style, the greatest gift it gave was reminding me how great Tilt was. How? Listen to the chorus. Wouldn't it sound way better with an upward lift in the vocals?

You hear the similarity there, right? No? Then I guess that was drawing a long bow, but it is where my brain guided me. Somehow I imagine re-igniting interest in Tilt wasn't the band's intention here, but I'm glad it did. I should cover this troupe here; they wrote a ton of amazing, bass-heavy pop-punk anthems that go relatively unheard nowadays, perhaps due to their lackluster 3rd and 4th LPs.

Yeah, actually, listening to them back-to-back sort of invalidates this entire section of the post.

Dammit, I never know how to end posts.

songs that suck tremendously vol. 1

The rewards I've reaped from servicing you at the local grocery store for the past 7 years have been great, but there is one thing I've earned that trumps them all: a refined, ever-developing loathing for popular music. But see, I'm not that guy who argues the vapidness of radio pop, taking a mere distaste for it into the territory of socio/psychoanalytical critique. I mainly just dislike being spattered with rank, wet feces whenever I step into my own dojos, let alone the dojos of others. To combat the interminable aggravation whenever Enya's "Sail Away" or Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful Of Sunshine" decided to catch a ride on my mental Möbius strip, I started collecting these fuckawful songs for quarantine list. 

HERE IS MY STORY:

1.) Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know

I just discovered this one today and already my hatred for it could sink continents. I don't know what this shit is supposed to be, but it has all the art & atmosphere of New Age FM pop radio. 
2.) Adele - Rumor Has It

Holy shit, fuck this earsmegma. Worst chorus I can currently think of.

3.) Bruno Mars - Grenade

Whenever I'm blessed enough to have this flaccid penis brigade marching through my head, I like to extend the severity of the sacrifices he describes to vile heights. "I'd skullfuck an infant to death" and "I'd pull off my face and eat it until I died" are my favorite additions, thus far, but we'll see where the road takes us.

4.) Train - Drive-By

I guess "Hey Soul Sister" wasn't just a fluke in a canon of otherwise listenable songs.

5.) Train - Hey Soul Sister

Which reminds me...

6.) Daniel Powter - You Had A Bad Day

No one on earth needs to hear this song again, even if they liked it at some point.

7.) LeAnn Rimes - How Do I Live

FUCK YOU LEANN RIMES PT 2

("Fuck You LeAnn Rimes Pt 1" was "Can't Fight The Moonlight")

8.) Sheryl Crow - Soak Up The Sun

I don't even know why I hate this song so much, but fuck, man. Also, I can only run it through my head as "Iiiiii'm gonna soak up the cuuuuummmmm". People generally don't exchange currency for semen, either, so the lyric still suits the song's theme. I'm pretty awesome.

9.) Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe

This is probably the most hatefuckingly effective hook I've ever heard. That keyboard line is like psychic assault. I want to take a dump on her face and not in a fetishistic way. No one should hit 26 years of age and still find it in them to write something this tween-y unless they're relegating their career focus to making money off of children.
Actually, that's not an unrealistic assumption.

10.) La Bouche - Be My Lover

The sound of erect penises being struck by lightning.

TUNE IN WHENEVER I POST MORE FOR MORE.

revisiting Sunny Day Real Estate in 2012

Sunny Day Real Estate were a 4-piece from Seattle, Washington who were "the first emo band, along with Weezer", you state, embarrassingly. Actually, though, if you're looking for the source of ahistorical claims like the preceding, this is probably where you'd start. Prior to this troupe's arrival on the mainstream landing pad circa '94, music termed "emo" (endearingly or not) was pretty much exclusively relegated to dingy basement shows and channeled through bands burnt out on the pogo-thrash of the early 80's. I probably don't need to give you a history lesson (since you're on the internet), but essentially, Ian Mackaye and co. decided the genre they helped establish was becoming too much of a warzone for dumb, chipped-shoulder pit warriors and went on a mission to become the cool, damp rag patting the forehead of worked-up suburbanite white dudes everywhere. The hardcore scene, not knowing what to make of bands like Embrace, Rites Of Spring, and Dag Nasty, split them off from the catalyst with the mocking term "emocore" - a signifier that these bands often employed emotions, unlike hardcore punk, which was like listening to a home appliance user's manual.
Okay, and I guess they were also prone to utilizing more rock-oriented tempos and guitarwork, as well.
 Around the dawn of the 90's the post-hardcore sound began to evolve frenetically and diverge into several disparate styles, embracing and expounding upon different facets of the style while drawing from surrounding scenes. From here, alongside the chaotic, shredding violence of bands like Honeywell and Heroin, and the epic, dynamics-laden approach of Moss Icon, Native Nod, and Hoover, came a smoother, much more accessible brand of emo that straddled the line between post-hardcore and indie rock. The most influential (ie mercilessly looted) example being Sunny Day Real Estate.
...like, Hot Water Music levels of imitation. Fugazi tier mimicry. It's probably grammatically incorrect to expand an aside hidden between parentheses like this, but the world is a crazy place.
After a couple EPs firmly footed in the underground sounds of the day, the band enlisted their friend Jeremy Enigk for guitar/frontman position, effectively clubbing the band's rawness into submission with a mace of distinctive mellow weenie vocals. Such is written in the Book Of Speculations. They went on to release two excellent LPs on Sub-Pop, the second of which sounds surprisingly refined for a snapshot of the band disintegrating in the immolating light of God's love. Unfortunately, they then released two more following Jeremy's conversion, replete with singing lessons, a faux-British accent, and a glaze of putrid alt-rock shellac.

That was what they call in "the biz" "an introduction that's too long to bother reading". This exists beyond my usual snooze-inducing self-depreciating tirades, as I literally only began writing this to point to share my current opinion of the band after some much needed time off. Like Rites Of Spring's s/t LP, I flogged their Diary album next to constantly for close to 6 months before it finally passed on due to a shattered will to live. That was a joke because I used the term "flogged" as a hyperbole for "listened to". Oh, ritualistic, prolonged torture jokes and their hilarity. Anyway, I just recently gave their debut and self-titled follow-up a re-review and I couldn't help but notice that despite how solid and effective they remain, Diary has a completely bizarre quirk to it that I totally overlooked back in the day.
Okay listen to this song:

This was probably my favorite song back in 11th grade. I still love it a lot. But hey, did you ever notice that at almost exactly halfway through the song, THE SONG STARTS AGAIN ALMOST EXACTLY AS IT BEGAN? I was going to italicize that last bit, but comedically timed caps lock seemed more appropriate. As you can tell, I'm entering a "painfully ironic" phase for everyone to revel in. But seriously, it's almost perfectly split into two near identical halves. What's even more bewildering is the fact that almost every song on here does the exact same thing. Go listen to "Seven" next. After that intro, the same EXACT verse is repeated, note for note, word for word, 3 times. Why? The structure is this:
1.) Intro
2.) Verse 1
3.) Bridge 1
4.) Verse 1
5.) Bridge1
6.) Chorus
7.) Verse 1 (really)
8.) Bridge (also identical)
9.) Chorus (and such and such)
I don't even mean this as a dig on the band, necessarily... I just don't know what to make of it. The more I listened with this principle in mind, the more I began to see it - near savant-esque rigidity and repetition. "Round" is exactly like this. "47" is exactly like this. Actually, from what I can recall (I don't have the album in front of me right now), nearly every song is structured like the band wrote a bunch of different song components and piled them up in the most logical progression. There's no room for improvisation, looseness, or ad libbing whatsoever. "But Steve", you might be saying, "aren't most pop song structures like this?". Well, yeah, but most of those songs aren't 5 minutes long and have no crescendos. In essence, Sunny Day Real Estate were pretty curious/awful editors at this point, but the chunks of music they comprised their songs from were all pretty spectacular.

LP2 (aka Sunny Day Real Estate aka "The Pink Album") is generally better but doesn't quite crush my heart/tear ducts with the nostalgia/tension-release vice its predecessor employs. It doesn't sound like a new, emotionally terse galaxy being born, but the songwriting is a lot less "what the fuck" and the dynamics aren't as obvious. I think I need to give this a few more spins before filing it back away, but I can say this: for what is essentially an odds 'n' flgqwads collection-gone-proper-album, it's an amazingly consistent and understated album.

I just realized why I don't update here as much as my old blog.

No amphetamines.

(frowny emoticon)