Category: United States

TRACK | Coma Cinema – Satan Made a Mansion

5/5 golden merles

I don’t think anybody can in good faith argue with how good a line, “Satan made a mansion for love to live when it dies,” especially in the way it is casually uttered here, and considering its fine abbreviated state existing as both precursor and title.

Few and far between are such killer refrains.

And that is not yet to mention some of the best lo-ish-er-fi production this side of the infinite lapse.

You don’t need me to tell you whose fingerprints are on this one. I only wish I could do my influences this kind of fearless and forthright justice.


TRACK | Big Thief – Certainty

5/5 golden merles

Similar to the stylistical influences of The Mystery Lights, Big Thief always appear to draw from something deeper &/or richer.

Adrianne Lenker is one of the most imaginative and compelling American songwriters working today. And this timeless track is not any exception to the very fine records she’s been rapidly producing the last few years.

I was lucky enough to see them around Brooklyn/manhattan several times in the Masterpiece era and a little thereafter, the first time with Alvvays and Ducktails at Prospect Park/Bandshell. For free! And I walked over to it! You suckers.

That’s well worth the thousands of dollars in monthly rent that all of us alternate suckers pay to live in this wonderful/hellish city… or, anyway, it’s some kind of compensation. And proof that some of the funds diverted away from the piss-soaked half burnt out subway go to things that aren’t entirely worthless.

Christ knows that Big Thief don’t need any more press. They’re the one band written about on this blog so far that your mom knows. But rightfully so, qualitatively.

The five tracks capable of preview for Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You are all solid and inventive, both in melody, construction and the usage of language. It seems like Masterpiece and Capacity came out 6 months ago and I am surely already dead / time moves quickly.


TRACK | The Mystery Lights – Watching the News Gives Me the Blues

5/5 golden merles

This is the 57th post here, day by day, but the sentiment of this track applies to any given present day or any day in the foreseeable future for that matter. Our deranged, bloodthirsty and perpetually underfunded society will see to that.

We are incapable of wresting funds to properly address systemic fault from the hands of the gluttons that dominate and cripple our infrastructure and damn the general wellbeing.

Stylistically the mystery lights (mercifully) seem to have skipped a few decades of rock tropes and pull from a richer, older, but somehow fresher history, influences better preserved in their tombs than whatever has been recently left rotting in the sun.


TRACK | Golden Daze – Never Comin’ Back

5/5 golden merles

Somewhat recently a friend or at least acquaintance of mine from high school / college passed away. I don’t even know how. But he had a blog that I used to intermittently remember and then voraciously read through every 3-6 months.

We were young and in bands simultaneously, from neighboring towns in the suburbs of Indianapolis. And while he was undeniably cooler/more musically gifted in all respects, we would host shows for one another and play on the same bill at places like The Festivilla and a rented Eaton Hall.

Later, as many good Hoosiers, we ended up at the same college (IU Bloomington).

In any case, we’d say ‘hello’ around town. And after his death I was very glad to see the blog remain accessible. It is full of his lovely poetry, lyrics, and daily testaments. It is valuable to me both for his insightful assessments and selfishly for my own tangential relation to them.

Part of the reason for starting this was 1) return the favor of people writing kindly about my obviously insufficient music, to return a part of that good feeling to others. 2) After death I’ll have some kind of semi-public record that any one could visit, and maybe enjoy if they have similar trash-rock tastes.

Regardless, this is a good song that mirrors that nostalgia.


TRACK | Orchid Mantis – Don’t Wake Me Up

5/5 golden merles

Carrying the torch of Jeans Wilder Sparkler, similar elements are here infused a decade later and with different meaning.

Spectral and with more than a glancing glimmer of the void, the lead guitar melody loops back upon itself, an ouroboros, devouring it’s own tail indefinitely.

This perpetual motion machine can be yours for the low, low price of $3.


TRACK | Obnox – It’s so hard to break a habit

5/5 golden merles

Obnox’s phenomenal cover of The Webs is what I imagine American pop music would presently sound more like if we were better capable of grappling with our shared degraded condition.

Never has such unimaginable wealth been localized within a region and disseminated so unevenly among it’s inhabitants. With every opportunity for alternative, there is an extreme disregard offered the general well being.

Simultaneous with this disparity, no other nation has such a collective misunderstanding of itself, it’s glories and indignities.

Not only are the people defeated, routed, but proudly so. Rabid nationalism is exclusively here an obvious humiliation, frothing and raving, we pledge our devotion to an oligarchy, a plutocracy, and a kleptocracy, which hold dominion under the false label of democracy.

And how do you make pop music within this context, knowing the conditions? It’s hard to break a habit.


TRACK | Jeans Wilder – Sparkler

5/5 golden merles

As mentioned in the prior post, The Mountain Goats’ The Water Song feeds nicely into this track, in tempo, theme and texture.

And it is all a lot of texture, isn’t it. It’s such a lovely, warm, lugubrious track.

The 50s pop influences are here, gently warped through the lo-fi bedroom lens. If it’s not already in some slow motion film sequence or twenty it will be soon enough.

The mood has been captured or crafted and awaits appropriation, to be shuffled sequentially, reformed into a new purpose. It’s too good not to be gathered up and set against new backgrounds, some complimentary, some gaudy and/or heartless.

TRACK | The Mountain Goats – The Water Song

5/5 golden merles

John Darnielle has carved out a place in the world for himself through an exhaustive output of decades worth catchy and insightful pop music.

It is seemingly self-sustaining and I admire him a great deal for this achievement. As the gears about us churn and crush everyone else, John has managed not to be ground into a fine paste.

That is not at all to say that he didn’t have his fair share of hard times, from what I understand, those due all sentient beasts. But that he continued to create throughout them and continues to make interesting media. At some point most people stop.

This song is gleefully dire. There are some field recording elements for texture, subtle but sticky backing vocals in the chorus, and the bareness of John’s grating/glorious voice.

I am most familiar with this song in the context of a mix in which it feeds directly into Jeans Wilder’s Sparkler. And that will be posted next. Due to the way chronology works in archiving posts, it will be in order but now perceived out of order. The trick is that it doesn’t matter.

TRACK | Son of Salami – Baby Mayo

5/5 golden merles

Baby Mayo is a blast from the not so distant past of 2012.

It was a simpler time. Instagram gave a generation of not-yet-middle-aged millennials a reason to live. One neoliberal oligarchy apologist was our symbolic figurehead instead of another. And the domestication of the dog continued unabated.

Looking back over it now it is a real triumph of lo-fi bedroom rock. Both melodically interesting, lyrically playful, strange but also truly pretty.

I am all for representations of abrupt and seemingly arbitrary deterioration, having experienced them personally as a bipedal multicellular biological organism, like when the track hits a disintegration loop or two.

There is a lot of craft and detail going into this track which may be lost on some less familiar with the genre. Mostly because it sounds like an ice cream truck falling apart upon reentry. but it is there.


TRACK | Grass Widow – Disappearing Industries

5/5 golden merles

The mind is pretty easily fooled into seeing miracles wherever someone has put in a small amount of effort. Some well-honed slight of hand or a few rehearsals later, we spectators are ready to see the divine. It is evident.

In Disappearing Industries keenly crafted melodies careen about the finely tuned structure. To me, it seems like a kind of magic.

It is, at least, a minor engineering marvel, like the innerworkings of a clock, gears interlocking, determined to determine. The albums title is appropriate, few songs have as compelling an internal logic.