Category: Rock

TRACK | Julia Shapiro – Wrong Time

5/5 golden merles

Some are buoyed by commiseration, while others feel expressions of despondency, however melodic and articulate, an anchor on their otherwise relatively elevated existence. Down to the ‘biggest lie’ tribute, you probably already know which way you feel by now.

I am in the former camp described above and appreciate the well-crafted confessional. There are what seem like eons in which my own attempts at articulation can only occupy the space of “musings and broodings on why it is I can’t create.”

And that contradiction at least keeps things moving or maintains “the act of telling”/creating in some semblance of practiced form.

And this is a superb track that seems to fall into that field of vision. It’s a very good track and I’ll give the album more time when there is more time.


TRACK | Wombo – Dreamsickle

5/5 golden merles

It is unusual to see musicians take from their own influences internal mechanics and pull from them with purpose, to see them take components retooled into new structures as though they are transmittable. Wombo does this.

Whereas, outside of general stylings and instruments, most bands attempt to replicate the feeling, a solipsistic slant drilling at a common reservoir. And I am one of them. I have misunderstood my influences, from an engineering perspective.

It is hard to remember, but you must play the game as it is, not as it appears to be.

Here are bands I love that Wombo reminds me of: The Strokes, Ought, Broadcast, Lower Dens, The Mallard, Television, and so on… That should be enough good things.

Here is a quote from Annie Dillard, promising alternate cores or reservoirs and the mechanisms to get there:

“We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on this planet’s crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add — until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use.”

TRACK | Wombo – Sad World

5/5 golden merles

Wombo’s Blossomlooksdownuponus is end-to-end the best full length I’ve heard in awhile. No doubt some variation of the recent singles, EPs and LPs will find their way onto the next few mixes I spam unsolicited at my friends and family. And, again, I owe it to the folks at various small flames. Go there, it’s better than this place.

There are extreme levels of grace on this thing. What a talented team of folks, threading the needle of perception, of content and form, of what is tolerable and what is memorable.

As the old saying goes, a camel has a greater chance of passing through the eye of a needle than an art rock band has of creating a convincing hook.

There is here a form of post-punk that aspires for much more than novelty or style, that backs aesthetic with songcraft and substance, using the energy in either to propel the other forward. Sometimes one or the other is sufficient, but it needn’t be.

I can’t help feeling like my merely mentioning it degrades it’s quality slightly, which is maybe why I haven’t heard of the thing to this point. But there is too much to admire within.

I have blundered slightly in purchasing the WOMBO COMBO, denying me unlimited streaming rights to the LP. However, it may genuinely be worth purchasing twice.


TRACK | cupid and the stupids – Love and Liquor

5/5 golden merles

The controlled chaos on display in Love and Liquor is a great gift. Both the lead and backing vocals are tremendously good. I am desperately indebted to the crescendo of “Breaking my Heart,” the primary melody and it’s various subsystems; it’s carried me through a couple days at least.

A recurring theme here in my myriad appreciations are the pulling together of lo-fi pieces into a coherent and anthemic whole, unabashedly taking the stripped down, dollar-bin components of quasi-functional home recording devices and software and elevating them to an effect most major studios can’t accomplish.

That’s a fundamental part of the glory of the ineffable.

It is more likely found in the efforts of those determined to uncover it through the dedicated pursuit of creative problem solving, passionately preoccupied with honoring truth and the capture of a feeling.

And every time it succeeds another gear-head reinvests in a piece of technology that is the solution to almost certainly nothing, certain that this time it will be different. Alas… that is not what is lacking.

If you’re turned off by the production, I’d beg you to listen to it 3-4 times and push through it. The greatness is there. It’s not even particularly obscured.

TRACK | Surface to Air Missive – Time Being

5/5 golden merles

Surface to Air Missive is another excellent band that I am about 3-4 releases behind on. There is an overwhelming amount of potential sitting there, waiting for me to sift through its promises… and to then provide more relevant text to the common era, and more relevant promotion for people who exist in the here and now.

But, nevertheless, one track I am already deeply familiarized with is Time Being.

And I can confidently say, without reservation or hesitation, that here the arrow of time has been captured, honed and crafted into a hook.

I suggest you go in expecting something too good to be true. I doubt that it will matter much. I think you’ll probably come out satisfied despite these impossible aims. I am confident that you’ll be privately impressed enough and happy losing track of these arbitrary designations in the hazy field of positive experience.

TRACK | Peter Johnston RVA – Chaste Heart, Pagan Land

5/5 golden merles

Let us end the year here upon this arbitrary list with an entry that features a mite less dread and, instead, a bit of optimism and indeed rejoicing.

Despite the marching, somewhat ominous build on the drummed intro, there is soon unveiled within a great compulsion to do and be well.

Rarely do songs capture this drive. It is a rarity to maintain the dramatic sense of the sweeping within this sort of explicitly declarative phrasing. And it is genuinely endearing to contain a chorus of “Underneath it all, I’m having so much fun.”

A great dichotomy there. You can see a semblance stylistically – but also in regard to content – with the kindred spirits of Stuart Murdoch and Jens Lekman. And it seems to me as though Peter is a more religious cousin of these indie rock luminaries, nevertheless politely kicking ass.

TRACK | viridian – Vichy Waters

5/5 golden merles

Whereas my favorite track on the album might be dwd001 (Because it did what it was supposed to. Because the introduction introduced. Because I heard it and knew that there would be others worthy of inspection within…), I think that Vichy Waters is the strongest display of what is on offer here.

And that is an excellent sense of melodic craft and structure within the texture of noise-lo-fi rock production.

Immediately, the guitar-lead and the vocal melody are built around the well laid drums and you are granted the soundtrack to your youth. That is, maybe, if you hear it at the right times, in the right places, at the right impressionable moment.

Or maybe also if the plaque of nostalgia hasn’t built a wall around your heart so hard only the finest hooks can pierce it. And, still, maybe even then. It’s as good as any of it’s influences, referenced by name (The Jesus and Mary Chain, Les Rallizes Dénudés) or otherwise embedded.

Give them your krona at an exchange rate paypal finds agreeable.

TRACK | Casey Wells – Archive

5/5 golden merles

Songs can suffer from overworking and mismanagement of resources. This is the opposite of that. There’s so much subtle detailing throughout outfitted to the 63 second run time that it probably punches at least 64lbs above its weight. Welterweights beware.

The cultural conditioning around genres (that I also am awash and dissolving within) here is present but the attention to the construction is orchestral and there is a rich/great breadth to the soundscape.

I am am a sucker for a bit of texture and field recording phasing in to the pop-core, and after revolving about the track, which helps to ground it in a place and time, and provides a context to err out of or embrace. but either way a nice stage to move on.

TRACK | Sweeping Promises – Hunger for a Way Out

5/5 golden merles

Ear worms are good for you, they eat out the wax on the way to your brain. What happens after is lost to us, all records vanish mysteriously after this phase. But I think it is likely good.

This thing is so well crafted it appears genetically modified by big pharma for the purposes of profit, no regard given to the side effects we’ve come to expect from any form of progress.

But also it is just extremely good pop-rock music: guitars tuned and struck properly, synths decoratively detailing the expanse. There’s not much slack in it. And that which is present is properly and quickly used to reel you back in.

TRACK | Smirk – Mind Temp

5/5 golden merles

I’m 5 or so EPs behind on Smirk’s oeuvre and it’s unfortunate. Mind Temp was on the prior mix and Cassette II is on the year-end list for 2020.

All the fundamentals of tone, texture, melody and structure are in place. And it’s a great relief to me having listened to much that has no sense of itself, much that has no regard for arrangement and harmony, much that does not capture a feeling, much that contains neither compelling doom-saying nor derring-do. Whereas this does.

It’s some Lo-Fi guitar pop, good and good for you. Do as I say, not as I do and go listen to the rest of the assembled tunes as well.