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.

Rented World: Eh.

I guess I'm writing on here again. How about some worthlessly late appraisals of 2014 releases I started writing about, then abandoned to work on a farm/hop trains poorly?

This one was a hhhHHHWHALE of a bummer. As evidenced in that mindnumbing bible of a post I shat out on The Menzingers an eon back, I followed these guys from the start, but never really dug them much 'til On The Impossible Past "dropped" in 2012. To me, the shift into a more "alternative" direction (which entailed a slowed roll, less dated scream-singing, and a generally more mersh luster) granted the songs a license to DOWN THA PUNX and focus on realizing their melodic potential, which, tbh lol, was the only thing that kept me paying attention after the first two.
When "In Remission" was released as a lead-off for Rented World, I noted a new buttrock-y thuggish-ness to the proceedings, but the successful gamble they take on the song's structure and the multiple, soaring choruses had me stoked as fuck. I puked out Punknews-y sentiments like 'FUTURE AOTY FER SURE, BRO' to the (very) few friends who showed interest, but then "I Don't Wanna Be An Asshole Anymore" hit the net. To be fair, it is a solid track, one which we can enjoy with our well-oiled beards, U.S. microbrews, and sense of entitlement in the pit, but certainly confirmed my lead on their descent into dumber territory. The cauldron of influences the band are ladling from this time around is much more 90's MTV rock heavy, and hooolllyyy shit am I not nostalgic for that bullshit. I know I'm the poster-boy anomaly for my entire now-grown-up generation, but I fucking loathed construction-site boombox rock like Weezer, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and all that "tortured artist" grunge shit back in the day, and surprisingly, dislike it even more now.

But y'know, NONA was a total Frankenstein of dorky 90's nostalgia, and I fucking loved them before their untimely demise last year. My central issue is more... everything else, really. The production is massive and corny, especially evidenced in the layered vocal moments, and I doubt any stripe of perfectionist savant could sequence these tracks into something cohesive. I'm not demanding a conceptual meisterwerk where each track is a puzzle piece, or hell, even an overarching mood like OTIP - this literally sounds like a bunch of random songs mushed together, though. A chorus here, a bridge there - there's a decommissioned minefield of goodies ("Bad Things" and "Nothing Feels Good Anymore" have a couple great riffs between them despite otherwise being messy/dull), but very few of the tracks throw you into your own angsty, jump-cut apocalypse of a music video as you're walking down the street of the town you claim to hate, reflecting on "tight" friends and "zany" misadventures and whatever.
"In Remission" is fucking fantastic, however, and "Rodent", "I Don't Wanna Be An Asshole Anymore", and "Hearts Unknown" come pretty close, but even Greg's tracks are mostly flaccid ballads too drippy and flat-out depressing to really raise a lighter to. This isn't to say that's Tom's contributions win by any means ("The Talk" is like Green Day "returning to their roots" circa 2010's), but hey, this is the first album I can say the two are neck and neck. One just needed to stop writing good songs, I guess.
Overall, it's not "awful" by any means, just a major step down and into territory I'm generally uninterested in. Having seen them play last year with Lemuria, Cayetana, and PUP was killer, though, and even the most skippable songs here are a lot of fun in a live setting, I just can't see myself listening to this the whole way through much more after this review is over.

some newer plop plunk goods

Cayetana's a three piece from Philly that apparently Tom May did a lot of salivating and interpretive dance propaganda for. I dunno. He gave them positive press, anyway, and of course, as the significantly less interesting songwriter for The Menzingers, you can bet your bottom dollar the people listened.

Cayetana's demo started flying off the big box store shelves late 2012, but I didn't end up hearing them 'til somewhere mid last year, right before I dove into the traveling vortex and forsook the nurturing teat of internet news. The demo, while solid, didn't really sink in much, and I mostly forgot about the band 'til the Hot Dad Calendar 7' was announced back in March. Emphatically throwing my hands up and uttering "oh, what the heck" with a canned asshole laugh, I tracked it down and was actually really impressed. The band's definitely not doing anything flashy here, but much like my favorite band ever, P.S. Eliot (to which the band could be compared), once the thin, flattening production loses it's potency, there are some totally great, endlessly relistenable songs under there. This here single features the title track and a re-recording of the best track from the demo, Ella, and their jangly indie-punk sound really hits home. Points go to the boldly simple-yet-effective songwriting, the emotive, forceful basslines, and the singer's lovely, quivery voice. Give it a go, and then, assuming you don't hate the shit out of it, keep a tongue out for the band's first LP, Nervous Like Me, in August this year.

BONUS ROUND:

Hey, remember when I made that post on how randomly throwing a bunch of female-fronted bands together to make a comparison not only makes you seem like an idiot, but a reductionist/sexist idiot? Because this one takes the cake: 

Gary Sleith ie "some guy on bandcamp": I love indie of this nature, FFO Hop Along, Lemuria, Big Eyes etc I LOVE THIS EP!! They've signed to Tiny Engines, can't wait to near more Favorite track: mountain kids.

Maybe you're not familiar with these three, so let me be direct here: this might be the most ridiculous conglomeration of bands I've ever seen used as a descriptor ever. Ever. Not only do none of these bands play the same style of music, none of them sound even remotely alike at fucking all, nor does Cayetana notably borrow elements from ANY of them. What the fuck is the unifying "nature" here? The vaginas? I mean, seriously, Hop Along sounds so, so unlike Big Eyes it's like - why it's like there was no actual criteria for making this comparison at all!

This is kind of a surprise. I was planning on writing up a positive review of this album, heralding it as "an unfairly ignored blah blah my ass" or something, but then, upon re-listening to it for the first time in a while, it's actually kind of... not my thing. Like, at all, actually. I could tell you why or just move on, but hey, let's be a dick about it for a literary exercise. BASICALLY: are you a man in your mid-20's to early 30's? Do you have a beard and drink fairly often and to excess? Maybe your politics lean more into libertarianism than anything that requires much self-questioning or action? Do you dig later Hot Water Music, Jawbreaker, and Dillinger Four? Then you'll LOVE three thousand bands that synthesize this exact same mixture of elements without adding much of anything to the cannon! With lyrics ranging from quoting Vonnegut to toasting to losing your best gal to vague political commentary to a hamfisted homage to Furi Kuri, you can almost smell the beard oil and Evan Williams through the speakers.
I'm being mean but I can't believe how many bands still sound like this. Some of it's passable, some of it's cringe-worthy or eye-glazingly dull, but holy shit, that complete lack of hooks. And those vocals. Fat Mike levels on unnecessary enunciation on the standard issue Midwest drunk beard guy vocalist makes for not the best time ever. The track "Irish Coffee" is kind of enjoyable, at least. Give it a listen here if I haven't douchebag'd you out of potential interest.

I checked this out because some random guy in the comments section for punknews was like, "Beach Slang is good". SIR ITS A DEAL. Strangely enough, this actually is really, really good, and apparently has an equally good pedigree. I had no idea of this, but apparently the band's made up of members of Ex-Friends, the insanely good NONA, and is helmed by ___ Snyder of Weston. I've physically owned Weston's Got Beat Up for, like, 5 years now, and it just occurred to me I've never even heard it once before, likely because it of the ULTRA POP PUNK cover and song titles. Like "Retarded". Remember the 90's? When that was an okay thing to not only say in public, but title a song as? Looks like I finally have some incentive though, 'cause Snyder's throaty, Paul Westerberg-y vocals and surprisingly heartfelt, yearning, reveling lyrics are the metaphorical shit, and might even be good enough for me to not hate Weston and their (entirely presumed) reliance on "wuh-uh-oh"s and "light-hearted" misogyny.

Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken? is the band's debut, and apparently only dropped a month back, making me topical for once. The 4 tracks here are a fantastic smoothie of 90's power pop a la Gin Blossoms and uh, fairly early Goo Goo Dolls (the whole planet's doing the whole re-sanctification of the shitty 90's bands, so this is now permissible in punkland) poured through a Jawbreaker sieve, replete with Paul Westerberg-Blake Schwarzenbach hybrid vocals. Look, that description kind of makes me do cloying "pfft" noises, too, but trust me - and trust Pitchfork, because me and Pitchfork, we're one in the same on this one. Yes, reliably tight bros 'r' us, all giving Kanye West rave reviews on our respective sites and nodding off as the car continues running in the sealed garage when hyperbole just isn't enough to express our academical snobbery on music that will sound dated in 5 years.
But yeah, this EP is ridiculously good. Check it out here.

Swans keep on truckin'

"blog blog bloggin' up a reader-less storm HAAY HAAAY HAAAY HAY YEARH"

This ^ has been violently assaulting my psyche to the melody of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door". But like, the Guns 'N' Roses version, not the Bob Dylan one, so it's smothered in Axl's "holy shit that can't be serious" vocal cadence. I don't know why I didn't realize that Guns N' Roses' version wasn't the original until recently, but it probably has to do with the fact that the Dylan version was released in the swamp of bullshit betwixt Nashville Skyline and Blood On The Tracks. That, and the fact that the cover version was so omnipotent throughout my teenage years (not with my consent) that "researching" this shitty band has never really been on the menu.

THE POINT, though, is that I'm trying to write like crazy to get myself back on the train to Selfworthland, so won't you join me through external validation? As a stand in for unweatherable internal validation?

Swans have been a beloved band to moi for ages now, and one who's recent reunion near blew my cynical mind. The fluidity and willingness to grow and change the band has always displayed is baffling, especially when one pulls out cross sections from each era. Try stacking up Cop next to The Burning World and wrapping it up with Soundtracks For The Blind, for example. Still, a 15 year hiatus followed by a new album is pretty much never a good thing, and I figured, while the prospect of hearing the band in action again was tantalizing, the new stuff would almost definitely be a pandering retread or a mere extension/re-titling of The Angels Of Light (not necessarily a bad thing). As it turned out, I was just being an annoying music snob, because not only did the band deliver solid material, but they delivered it from a path they'd never really tread before. 2010's My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky was a much different beast than the overly-experimental, post-rock behemoth they broke up with, and delivered 8 slabs of uncharacteristically raucous, cagey, looping complexity that fell somewhere in the influence field of Glenn Branca and Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. The Seer followed it up in 2012 with a monstrous triple LP that pushed the band even further, and here we are two years later with another album clearly stating "NO SRSLY WERE A BAND AGAIN". I mean, I think so. I've only listened to a few tracks on a stream NPR was releasing from it's urethra a few days back.

That said, let's dial back to the album that gave me the official branding of fandom: White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity. If you don't know the story, Swans essentially evolved from a pounding, joyless nightmare of a band cutting right between the industrial and no wave scenes (yet far more singular and artless than either), and found themselves years later filling the unlikely descriptors of "bombastic" and "spiritual". To emphasize the sheer size of this overhaul, you could probably trace back a lot of inspiration in the more deadening, drone-y quadrant of doom/sludge metal to the band's oeuvre from 82-86. Starting with 1985's Greed (and with the enlistment of Jarboe), the band slowly began shifting away from the agonizing, minimalist trudge that characterized earlier discs through a sort of vague, "gothic" augmentation. While not a radical overhaul by any means, it was the first spark that led to 1989, the year the band found themselves signed to a subsidiary of MCA of all places, and went for a full embrace of that aforementioned augmentation, releasing the widely panned The Burning World LP, an unfairly loathed lead weight of a sales figure that lost them a lot of fans. That's where White Light... comes in: the band's "comeback" album they released in 1991 after they were dropped from the label like a potato no one could stand to hold. Likely because it was a registered sexual offender and we are a very Draconian people.

White Light..., to be sure, is one cheesy beast. The production on here is not only immaculate, but so ridiculously expansive, multi-layered and fucking magisterial it could be mistaken for a Phil Spector parody. Beyond that, though, the songs themselves are bombastic, po-faced slabs of REDEMPTION and PAIN - to such an extent you have to wonder whether the band were snickering behind the scenes or actually as deadpan as the music might entail. I know I'm not really selling this for you, but one might benefit from awareness of these attributes before they dive in, especially if you're making any great leaps in the catalog (me, I went from Cop to this, so there were definitely some tilted eyebrow grimaces involved). 

If you can embrace these aspects, however, you're left with some of the greatest Swans material out there. 12 tracks spread over 2 LPs, and I wouldn't say there's a dud among them, and it's every aspect stated above that really pushes this album up the ladder for me. Bright, ethereal keyboards and heavy guitars merge into a dense Wall Of Sound ™/Sheet Of Sound ®, with Gira's big, ridiculous basso profundo voice and Jarboe's near-incomprehensible warbles narrating to the tune of failure, why are we alive, and being better than you, the assaulted listener.

See what I did there? Those are song titles I repurposed as descriptors because I'm always one step ahead of the game of hilarious. Anyway, listen to this triumphant wall of bombast:

Also, does any band have more double-triple LPs than Swans? Seriously, there are, like, ten. This is one of the best, though, so if you happen to like shelling out tremendous amounts of cash, even the CD version of this will likely run you 50 bucks.

American Steel

I was thinking of covering some current shit, but fuck that reasonable noise, who needs a higher likelihood of reader potential when you've got regressive, stab-in-the-dark chance encounters on your side? I mean, I could cover the new Menzingers, or new-ish/unsung stuff like Beach Slang, Worriers, Sourpatch, Cayetana and Arms Aloft (and probably will), but I just pulled out the first 2 American Steel albums for a reappraisal and gawd damm they are excellent. I covered their self-titled debut way back at the start of my last blog, but I am also marginally better at what I do now, and thus, we're going from Ang Lee's mediocre Hulk to Louis Leterrier's mediocre The Incredible Hulk.

American Steel formed in the East Bay back in 1995, which is a great place to form if you're into being magically imbued with excellence. They pretty much dropped an EP, toured like psychos, and then bedded up with New Disorder to record their s/t in 1997 NOT 1998. I don't know why I keep seeing that all over the internewt. While I'd throw American Steel's entire initial run in the "what the fuck why" basket of underratedness, even with the critical and fan-based aplomb their 2007 comeback received, "the kids" still seem to throw the self-titled out with the bathwater the self-titled was soaking in for some reason. (I don't know if that was the proper cliche to even fux wit.) The consensus seems to be thus: American Steel really only got good on their Sophomore LP, Rogue's March.
This. Is false.
Unless you find a descriptor like "a mash up of Crimpshrine, Operation Ivy, and Grimple" really unappealing, I guess, which a lot of people might considering the same could roughly be applied to early Rancid (like, real early. 1993 Rancid). Also, the ska element - while diminutive - is a thing that exists here in the form of a few scattered tracks with upstrokes. Look, I'm as over ska as everyone who isn't a hopeless manchild born in 1987, performing at small venues alongside washed up hair- and nu- metal bands and refusing to accept the cruel reality that the 2000's dawned on, but this shit is great. Y'know how you presumably don't think Operation Ivy sounds super dated despite birthing a wave of ska literally no one will ever like again? This is in the same ballpark of miraculously unembarrassing ska-adjacent music.

To reiterate, this sounds very unlike the rest of the band's catalog (which you're most likely more familiar with). The levels of grit are pushed way da fuk ^, the speed is high, and the tempo changes are powerviolence spontaneous (sorta). That level of punk-ness claimed, the sheer mass of hooks here is astounding, and a huge hunk of the appeal is how the dirty, ugly rawness entwines with the lipchewing beauty. Kind of like Unfun, to use a current, grody pop-punk example: on one hand, the crunchy, gravelly guitar tone and the gruesome post-nasal nightmare vocals; on the other, cathartic leads and breakdowns with heartfelt lyrics that make you bunch up your chin and stare unflinchingly ahead, eyes watering so stoically, so chained to male socialization BUT STILL ALIVE IN THERE SOMEWHERE.

I seriously could go into describing every track on here I love this album so much, but to sum it up, there literally isn't a single throwaway or half-baked idea. This shit is awesome, just like how you'd use the word to describe the pyramids of Giza and Marcel Proust's body of work, and easily one of my favorite punk - or music, in general - albums of all. This is worth noting because my taste is outwardly objective reality.

TRACKS TO CHECK OUT: "Cheer Up", "Landmine Lullaby", "Latchkey Kid"
CONS: you need to do shameful record collector stuff to find a copy, probs

ENTER EXODUS. They had a few good songs, I think. But enough unprecedented heights of hilarity. Rogue's March is the band's second LP, released on Lookout! back in '99 while guitar/voice guy Ryan did the whole "leukemia" thing with his chest guts and shit. It's often that one might apply the "pack a day" descriptor to pretty much any band in whatever constitutes the whole "beardcore" scene, but Ryan LIVED IT. That's not the most sensitive appraisal.
Anyway, around this point you can shove off most of the previous comparatives, as it's a pretty huge leap stylistically. Toning down a lot of the 'turned to 11' ultra-grit, frantic pace and dual-Strep throat vocal stylings, this is when American Steel started reinventing the SoCal sound, synthesizing The Clash, Leatherface, and early Samiam through a folky Americana lens years before Brian Fallon began firehose-puking Velveeta cheese all over creation. Considering the pure 'East Bay decoction' of the last LP, this really only finds clear precedent in one track - "Beatdown" (which I probably should've mentioned in the last assessment) - with it's less immediate hooks, deeper melodicism, and longer running time. Otherwise, this is the kind of magical between-albums evolution that signifies that a band contains actual musicians with vision and stuff.

I'm gonna go ahead and do the lazy hyperbole thing again: this album is pretty much as flawless as the first, but with stronger individual identities in each of the tracks. If you've heard scattered tracks before and aren't totally sold, give "The Parting Glass" a listen. Those closing harmonies in the third chorus cycle are the harmonies dreams are made of.

TRACKS TO CHECK OUT: "Every New Morning", "Got A Backbeat", "Parting Glass"
CONS: that album art. I mean, if you're not a critical asshole it's nice and moody and probably thematically relevant somehow, but man, look at the size of that cigarette held by nothing. Look at that ambiguous grasp on anatomical proportions.

After this, the band released one more LP I've never been too hot on, broke up sorta (if you can call dropping one member and renaming 'breaking up'), and reunited in 2007 to receive oral pleasures from everyone in the entire world. I'm not sure, though, I haven't heard any of that shit in a long while. Probably when Dear Friends And Gentle Hearts dropped in 2009. That was, as my friend put it, the moment American Steel "finally shit the bed". As for the above two, I couldn't really give a higher recommendation. These are total fucking classics, up there in the pantheon of decreasingly modern melodic/pop punk greats like Discount, The Broadways, Leatherface, and Dillinger 4. Just incredibly great, prescient stuff.

Also, look how cool I am with my identity affirming objects:

Ramshackle Glory and some folk punk rambling

Folk punk's one of those niches that I figure'll end up filed in the forever-out-of-vogue bin, right next to third wave ska and that vaguely metallic brand of skate punk that was really big in Southern California. Y'know, the kind of music there's likely too little irony left on Earth to resuscitate once the decade closes on it. That said, folk punk was really my gateway into the world as a late teen. For most of my sheltered, white adolescence, I had all the necessary tools at my disposal to form obnoxiously strong opinions on things that didn't affect me perceptibly (crust punk, grindcore, powerviolence, hardcore, etc.), but something about the whole affair just struck me as inaccessible. A bunch of loud slogans on police brutality, western imperialism, and totalitarian rule don't have a lot to do with growing up sad in a tiny middle-class commuter town, no matter how worldly I may have wanted to seem.
Also, the incomprehensible vocals. I will never have the dedication to learn whatever the lyrics are to those gurgling and screeching noises.

Folk-punk, however, came into my life at just the right time. It's perfect blend of existential angst, cries from the queer gutter, and radical politics hooked me hard, and labored under a much more relatable, sensitive guise than the stone faced relatives in my regular agitprop-auditory diet. Bands like Defiance, Ohio, Mischief Brew, early Against Me!, This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb, and Andrew Jackson Jihad won me over to varying degrees of obsession, and even, uh, Ghost Mice was involved at one point. They may trigger my gag reflex, but Europe is still a pretty cool storytelling album, and it definitely inspired me to travel when I finally gave up on normal shit.

Nowadays, I have little to no interest in the scene nor the music, but there's still a few bands out there that catch me off guard every once in a while, namely Days N' Daze, Songs For Moms, Wildebeest (yeah I know, [genre argument]) and Ramshackle Glory, with the latter crowning the whole heap. Or well, their debut does, at least. Let's get going before further analysis unravels the whole thing:

Remember Pat The Bunny? And that awful, nihilistic shit he released under the Johnny Hobo And The Freight Trains moniker? And how dumbass train kids still talk shit over the fact that he never really hopped trains at the time? Because that's a form of thriving currency to anyone with actual concerns? Because Ramshackle Glory is his most recent project following a few year absence for personal reasons, mostly involving rehab, I'm pretty sure. I've never really cared for the aforementioned band or almost any of the Wingnut Dishwashers stuff, so I was really surprised when Live The Dream dropped in 2012. Standing in for the cringeworthy REAL TALK bullshit and shrill, preachy politics (with a dash of Plan-It-X cutesiness, of course) was a far more relaxed, optimistic, yet bitter approach, and where the earlier material was either entirely solo or sounded like the it was written solo, then later embellished upon by studio musicians, Live The Dream has the tr00 full band feel. While Pat's immediate approach is still the core of each song, the addition of regular percussion, horns, accordion, piano, violin and singing saw feel completely natural and up the emotional impact significantly without ever getting soggy or smirk inducing. I mean, for folk-punk standards.

It's hitting me again just how difficult it is to critically assess albums that hold such emotional weight for me (which is why I've spent three blogs talking up The Broadways yet have never reviewed Broken Star), but I suppose there's nothing to do but harp on that angle. What strikes me again and again, despite having flogged this for the past three years, is just how emotionally affecting these songs are. "We Are All Compost In Training" hits me like a train every time. It's a much fuller (and superior, imo) re-recording of the last song Pat wrote under the Wingnut Dishwashers Union name before he entered rehab, and it sounds painfully caught in the moment. The themes here fit distinctly into the timeline, with lyrical concerns revolving around recovery, sobriety, reflection, looking for meaning, and of course, the standard anarcho-critiquing we all know and make love to, all passionate and deeply consensual. While I feel a creeping desire to hail this as a 'perfect album', it's really just testament to the strength of the best material on here. Otherwise, there's "Of Ballots And Barricades" and "Bitter Old Man" to contend with. The former of which is just kind of unmemorable but the latter is a lethargic Voltron of No Hooks, Changing Into A Totally Different Song At The End For No Reason, and Too Great Of A Running Time For So Few Ideas.

It... it doesn't have legs because I ran out of things to fit into the metaphor.

CONCLUSION: 8 fantastic, endlessly re-playable sing-a-longs of surprisingly posi ex-junkie/nihilist songwriting goodness and two clicks of the fast forward button. I realize it's kind of an obvious choice for an example, but this has to be the most immediately catchy song on here, so check it out:

This is where things get a little sour for me.

Pat in the beginning of Intro: "We think it's important to mention that this album contains stories about people's experiences, including suicide, racism, sexual assault, addiction, and violence."

Me: Alright. *takes headphones off*

Is it possible for something with no thinkable comparative to become the ultimate cliche in one stroke? Because while I've never heard an album begin with a spoken trigger warning before, it's undeniably the most folk punk-y thing I've ever heard. Who Are Your Friends Gonna Be? kicks things off with a nearly formless, 4-and-a-half minute instrumental introduction over which a quasi-comprehensible woman's voice speaks of personal reflections on rape and peer suicide in the radical and traveler communities. Why wasn't this relegated to the album's insert or a .pdf on their bandcamp page? I have no fucking clue, but hopefully you like the merger of these two things because this album is littered with them. There is over 11 minutes on here entirely comprised of that one shitty instrumental and various people telling muffled stories over it. This album isn't even 30 minutes long. Hmm.

The thing that sucks even worse is the fact that the actual *songs* on here are pretty good. They might even be great, but it's sort of hard to tell since the production here is literally the least sympathetic I've ever heard. I spent a big chunk of my life listening to shit with the auditory finesse of a 4-track held up to megaphone, but at least with all those goregrind demos from the 90's, the sound quality actually suited the griminess of the music. Here, though, it sounds like the band may as well have recorded their parts on different continents for how little this sounds like a convincing full set. For instance, the drums sound like they were recorded on an early 2000's cell phone, encrypted several times, and then played through another cellphone sitting in a metal bowl so to amplify the sound a little while you wash dishes alone in your dive-y apartment. Have you ever heard the first Suicide album? Pat totally sounds like Alan Vega on here. Which is to say: a ghostly, echo-y voice significantly cleaner and louder than the rest of the instrumentation. No weird breath shit and "HOO" noises. If you need an example, try this:

Skip to the 1:20 mark. This is a pretty good song, but it's also keen how the acoustic guitar sound practically unaccompanied despite the crashing symbols. I realize I've only really focused on the production and filler tracks here, but this has to be one of the most challenging albums to enjoy I've heard in a long time.

CONCLUSION: some pretty solid songs on here, but they're almost all ruined by the samples and worst production ever. Give it a go if you love Live The Dream, but don't be afraid to hit skip, either. I don't want to diminish the weight of the experiences spoken here, but I kind of listen to this band to hear Pat articulate these issues with lyrics and melodies, not randoms reciting Tumblr posts over one drone-y, recurrent instrumental for a third of the record.

Here's a kyewt little somewhat relevant story you can skip if you want:

Back in real early 2011, I'd started to pick up the socially crippled, directionless shards of my life and began confronting all my insecurities head on. I'd been socializing with strangers for the first time in my life, and ended up in a collective of likeminded kids who did the whole weekend social justice thing I was warming up to. Sometime in March, they'd organized a benefit show for the local Anti-Fracking (hydraulic fracturing, if you're not from the NE) committee, and I attended to great affect with my typical wingmen (ur, adderall and booze. I was really anxious and awkward otherwise. Enough to italicize "really"). Somewhere in the night I met up and chatted with this cute, sad-eyed tomboy who sidled on the sidelines, but exuded a lot of confidence when we spoke.

When I went home that night, the encounter made me pull out my journal for the first time in months, and I wrote something along the lines of "Dear diary, I'm a lightly reverbed, disembodied voice narrating this entry for the viewers and tonight I met someone for the first time in three years who I felt anything for in my cold, rotting cabbage-like heart. I can't imagine anything coming of this, but it's good to know I'm still alive in there".

A few meetings later, and I ended up at my first house party with the denizens of our collective and some random free radicals (fnar fnar). One 40 oz in, I found her sitting alone, sipping a little too lightly to socialize with the teeming mass of ineligible drivers. I sat down next to her and the ragged old Ghost Mice patch on her hood sparked a long, rambling conversation where we swapped our favorite folk-punk bands and talked until the party cleared out. A few days later she invited me to hang out and blah blah blah we traveled and lived together and helped each other turn our lives around.

I still don't know if I'd recommend hitting the folk punk trails in 2014, but hey, sometimes you get a long term partner and a series of life altering events out of it. Good luck.