Month: October 2021

ALBUM | Cathedrale – Houses are Built the Same

5/5 golden merles

Toulouse-based Cathedrale have made one hell of an album in Houses are Built the Same.

The selected track here, Hidden Museum, begins with the tube amp warmed tones of some lackadaisical dueling guitars, just a bit of bass lurking underneath. The direct payoff of the well-controlled and appropriately contorted vocals arrive shortly thereafter, agreeably raving about secrets and understanding.

There is a controlled chaos that is admirably achieved here, and the vision is clear and well realized throughout. Consistently catchy and permeating vitality, this is a kind of treasure.

The instrumentation and hooks are given space to breath, the attention-trap detailing is superb, and the metered and mastering is an assemblage of worthy influences. For some larger touchstones, it is the spiritual cousins of Ought, Metric, and Protomartyr; warped but well wrapped.

TRACK | Amy Annelle – Miss it more than you know how

5/5 golden merles

Amy Annelle is a national treasure, albeit a Texas-based one so it’s a bit of a gray area.

In the alternate timeline in which Bernard Sanders has become the president, I imagine she is universally well regarded and heaped+drowning in praise.

But here we are in this rendition. The good still draws to it the good, but with slightly less gravity.

Regardless, The Cimarron Banks is a great album. The opening title track, the hellhound’s address, wounded man, forever in-between, and Miss it more than you know how, here featured, are all noteworthy achievements in songwriting and performance.

Annelle offers first-rate lyrical content interwoven with enduring melodies and an extremely technically accomplished delivery that is not stripped of character and nuance but rather plastered in them. It is difficult to ask for more than this.

TRACK | Black Bug – Well Well

Black Bug - S/T
5/5 golden merles

Well, well is a stunning track and, good news, the whole album is built like this. Maybe a full, proper review to come when things settle down a bit.

But Black Bug’s s/t is a well contained rampage of burning saw patterns, choral uproar and properly clobbered digi drums.

15 tracks and no song is longer than 2:08.

Female/Male tradeoff the purging, vocal utterances and I don’t know if any album is as much fun as this is fun.

Name your price.

TRACK | Teenage Burritos – Kamikaze

5/5 golden merles

San Diego’s Teenage Burritos 2016 s/t has much good within it.

The standout tracks for me are Prom Song and the one rated here/posted below, Kamikaze. But the whole thing is so fluent in building convincing garage rock fragments that it appears effortless.

A real compelling alchemy of elements, dodging and compiling. I prefer this version featuring Andreas from Holograms to the other two listed on their bandcamp:

TRACK | Windowsill – Blue Sky

5/5 golden merles

Even given the perpetual deluge of quality bandcamp content that no one of us will ever be able to sort through, it is borderline criminal that Windowsill’s “Twolip” has 9 sales to date.

Recommended to me initially by my internet-pal Paolo Yumol (who makes fine music in his own right), this track is sheer wonder and sweetly confides in its listener in the most appealingly warped and ravaged manner.

The strings and refracted melodic variations and repetitions build to great effect. The detailing and textures are comprehensively plotted. Its greatness is readily apparent. ok?

TRACK | Katie Von Schleicher – Strangest Thing

5/5 golden merles

Katie Von Schleicher has released not one but two essential rock albums of our common era, 2020’s Consummation and 2017’s Shitty Hits.

This track is off the former, which is the latter, chronologically. I don’t have a copyeditor. This is a blog that only people who are getting ping-backs to their bandcamp pages are reading.

The point is that very few people are writing songs on the level of The Image and Strangest Thing. They’re full of majesty and momentum and calibrated to kill. In a kind way.

She’s also doing engineering/recording with Nate Mendelsohn for Shitty Hits Recording Co. If you’re in the NY area and need such services.

TRACK | Karl Neudert – yamevoyadormir (unfinished)

5/5 golden merles

To my taste, Karl Neudert’s extremely prolific demos are better produced than anything I’ve ever mastered.

When the chorus/backing vocals kick in around the one minute mark something very good becomes revelatory and mercilessly catchy.

Seek out his hyper-active youtube channel for more radiant lo-fi hooks.

TRACK | Dig Nitty – Screen

5/5 golden merles

Dig Nitty, “Reverse of Mastery” was one of the best albums of 2020.

Screen is a bit more up-tempo than the majority of the album, but it all includes these inventive, careening vocal melodies drenched in the appropriate level of reverb. The drumming pattern in the chorus is expert and perfectly arranged.

Other standout tracks are the harpoon to the heart that is “Angel Calling,” and the highway hypnosis of “Palm Springs.” But it’s all very good.

Erin McGrath et al are writing excellent songs.

Please buy them.

TRACK | Daniel Johnston – Funeral Home (live)

5/5 golden merles

“One more time with feeling… billions and billions of people have already died. You too will die. Sing along with us, won’t you?”

I love everything about this performance: The participating audience, their nervous laughter, Daniel’s death monologue.

Before the plague at a new year’s gathering I tried to toast the recently dead: David Berman, Daniel Johnston, and Denis Johnson… but ended up drunkenly saying Daniel twice instead of Denis, to mild amusement.

Here is a third, small tribute. We love you, Daniel.

TRACK | Sarah Mary Chadwick – Please Daddy

5/5 golden merles

“And Anne, and Elliott, and Sylvia / Do the work and then it kills ya / right, mama?”

Hard to pick one track off this excellent album to celebrate, so more will likely follow later. But damn. Full of grace and dread, end to end. A great work I am deeply envious of. And, whether I am worthy or not, I feel a deep kinship with it.