Category: United States

ALBUM | The Lentils – Brattleboro is Flooding

5/5 golden merles

Brattleboro is flooding is one of my favorite albums of the last decade.

Sweet Disease is one of the finest tracks of that admirable set. Although it feels like the dawn rising, it is the 2nd to last song on the album. Not a bad way to end: a beginning factored in, locked and loaded. Something to remember and maybe clumsily burglarize.

Csehak has written many rich and originative lines in his time occupying space on this earth and more than a few of them found their way into this album.

“You gotta hand it to the other side / at least they’re forgiven.”

Other standout tracks are I lost my favorite enemy, a theory of drowning, and brattleboro is flooding.

These fine young thugs have found their way onto most mixes I have made over the last few years. The Heart is a lonely Mangler (Botanical Castings) and The Loaves of Oblivion (11 new flavors of oblivion and why the shining ones don’t want you to know about them) will feature on this archive at some point soon, if I am to continue having these things appear daily.

TRACK | Vacation – Captain Unsensible

5/5 golden merles

Vacation’s Zen Quality Seed Crystal opens with two very strong tracks for the genus rock-type.

Both Hole that Once Held a Screw and Captain Unsensible have the spark of lo-fi magic and that can be found similarly glinting about in golden-era Brian Jonestown Massacre/Guided by Voices layering.

If the goal is to access the feeling, the production is expert. Just on the right side of coherence, it’s good and it’s probably a kind of mastery.

TRACK | Daydream – Duality of Love

5/5 golden merles

Daydream provide high energy and experimentation around traditional structures.

The borderline incoherent vocals are still great as instrument and texture. But the lyrics are also there on the bandcamp if you want to read the fine print:

“Can it smirk? Can I take any power from it?”

Coming out in December 2020, Mystic Operative still made the year-end list last time around the sun. Maybe because it has a strange and wonderful density to the performances. Every 2-3 minute long song feels twice that, and in a good way.

And in this way the song/album feels like the raw material of a type of rock music, some kind of natural resource, almost unfiltered but for the mix. Elemental and admirable.

TRACK | Lean Year – Come and See

5/5 golden merles

It is within our capacity to build better worlds.

This is a song that encourages this practice, implores a reassessment of unjust hierarchies, and seems to reference one of the greatest films ever made, Elem Klimov’s Come and See.

“Fuck off, the old world.”

With a rich and subtle arrangement, Lean Year provide a good base for reinvention. Like Adam Curtis in Can’t get you out of my head: This entry is not the vision but a request for one.

The song is a precursor to the vision, but nonetheless a necessity, a rebuff, and a necessary bridge to what is coming. A good prompt and great entreaty.

TRACK | Mope Grooves – Here Comes Another One

5/5 golden merles

Listening to new music you find that most songs are speaking in vague and grand generalities. Their subjects are love and death, to the extent they have them. By and large, the melody is the message.

Most songs are used as a platform to display the singer’s performative talents. And depending on your cultural conditioning you can grant them credulity or not.

“I was only calling / to talk to my brother”

This isn’t that. Mope Grooves’ Here comes another one appears to be a song about a relationship. And within that an interaction. And within that an instance.

Music is a tool. Whatever conditioning I have been subjected to and/or later sought out values lyricism including storytelling and texture.

And in minimalistic instances like this one, the gravity of limited phrasing amplifies its significance. All of this creates a small but highly detailed world, one possible to escape into, if you want, and is some real nice storytelling.

TRACK | Shannon and the Clams – King of the Sea

5/5 golden merles

Pretty sure King of the Sea is rock and/or roll, though it’s seen in the wild so rarely that sometimes it is hard to recognize.

There are plenty of bands in possession of guitars and drums, and they even play them, if pressed. But not quite like this.

All the pretense is stripped, and under the guts of the track are exposed a bit. And still it staggers forward with a rawness and intensity, the energy (probably eternal, huh?) is unleashed.

Captivatingly and kindly, they’re playing to the pit.

Sleep Talk is not on bandcamp, unfortunately, and spotify only lets you embed a 20-second clip (?) but here’s their other stuff.

TRACK | Dirty Beaches – Lord Knows Best

5/5 golden merles

Lord Knows Best is a well calibrated machine of a song. Like clockwork, spiraling gears gracefully align the complimentary melodies while brackets of tones reinforce them.

Full of purpose and with great density, it must be lowered by crane carefully into the heart.

Check out Alex Zhang Hungtai’s more experimental, clamber and field rec’d new stuff as well, Young Gods Run Free.

TRACK | The Baptist Generals – Going Back Song

5/5 golden merles

There are two excellent renditions of this song on No Silver / No Gold. The other is a better single, but the version included below from the end of the album is preferred.

“Has anybody seen my bag / it’s the one I put together for the leaving”

This is what folk/americana could be and should be known as: all the layers of grit, complexity, simplicity, and directness. A unique and passionate delivery, playful and apocalyptic.

And just the one long note on the organ, putting Iggy to shame; making him out to be an overachieving opportunist for all those additional percussive hammerings.

TRACK | Eola – Chaosos

5/5 golden merles

A simple handful of elements combine in this 72 second track to mimic the creation of the universe, and in a pretty flattering way.

Deceptively simple and full of wonder, there are only limited number of components: The 1-2-3-4 scale on the piano, the organ’s repeated quiver, and the various dreamy octave orations.

“Over your shoulder, chaos is growing”

This was the 5th track on a mix I made to drive to NY in 2010. The song was released a few weeks prior. My good friend Larry had moved to Hell’s Kitchen and needed a roommate.

I had my degree. I’d worked on a few failed campaigns. The grandfather I was assisting had died in hospice. It was a good time to move.

Listening to it now I am filled with both great nostalgia and anxiety. I feel like I’m driving a rented minivan in the dark, one long shot from Indiana, a folding bed and a box of clothes rattling around in the cab. stupid, hopeful.

Deliriously tired, when I dropped off the van I forgot the CDs in the cup holder. I know that the first worker who found them rightfully threw them out. But I was also hoping that maybe they didn’t notice them. And maybe the next inhabitant had found them and used them on their trek to LA, or Chicago, or back home, or wherever.

TRACK | The Coromandelles – The Project

5/5 golden merles

The Project is a golden and somewhat bloody haze of chamber surf. The tune is outfitted with much to admire: bells, whistles, but structurally it is also sound underneath.

Proudly pop, lest the textures fool you, the build into the chorus will convey and confirm your suspicions: all of this is meant to go together, and is precise with intention.

Artisans have built it and now it is to be admired. It’s a great structure of a beast.