bandcamp – Page 29 – Plainly & Painfully

TRACK | Goon – Fruiting Body

With Goon’s Fruiting Body, I haven’t heard such a fine widening gyre of a track in a fortnight or forty.

There is something to the incantations, the “blood red” mantra metering our absorption into the grand stream, a kind of cozy induction, in league with the frothing pool.

Gentle and elegant under the melted mix of lo-fi fixtures, it’s in the vein of Andy Shauf and Hovvdy. But also ends up stretching a bit more with the undercurrents into the psychedelic/experimental sort.

found some pink glass / buried under the deep end /
…say something untrue and kind

It is difficult to imagine fans of the genre not getting hooked on that guitar-lead harmony accompanied with this level of smoggy and vibrant utterance. Looking forward to the remainder of the release from the EP appearing February 25.

TRACK | moodlighting – Ahead of myself

There is room on this ledger for indie-pop and twee-type rock, particularly when it’s this well arranged and strikes such a balance of buoyancy and dread.

It is difficult to form this combination of melody and malaise, at least so far as I’ve seen in my searching. And the group seems uniquely thoughtful in a timely way that updates the genre into the demonstrably forsaken but sometimes pretty pleasant common era.

Lyrically the track is uncertain yet defiant (come change my mind for me), eager within the context of melancholy, and creates a lovely space in which to brood.

For fans possibly of the Pants Yell!’s instrumentation variety and storytelling, a Pastels gleaming murmur, and in the vocal range and register of Broadway Hush/Page France, if these are things you’re eager to explore the neighborhoods of.

TRACK | Bad Deals – Paint

Recalling the careening melodies and cutting guitar riffs of Women at their best, “Paint” is a stunning track from Boston’s Bad Deals.

The vocal layers agreeably proffer through and alongside the rampant lead guitar, hectic and harboring great detail. In the unfolding events it is clear that there was great care put into the balance of the soundscape.

That I am the incalculable dullard writing about this good work, presently more fixated on personal creation than curation, seems undeniably cruel.

“Paint” is one of those bandcamp gems that is another in the series of deeply concerning by it’s so-far limited fanfare. That something this well realized and refined lacks an audience is very frightening. It seems a logical step from greatly loved traditions. The algorithm at play hasn’t figured out yet how to read these things properly and deliver them to those who would immediately appreciate them.

TRACK | Jeanines – Where We Go

Jeanines’ 2019 self-titled album is full of killer hooks and excellent melodic structuring. A couple months prior to the pandemic I was fortunate enough to see them rip through a set at one of Brooklyn’s premier indie venues, Wonderville.

Golden, bright and jangly guitar tones consistently drift over some highly refined ruminations. The well crafted bass and drums are immensely complimentary, enrich the melodies and keep everything moving at pace. The songs are in fact refined to the point that no track on the record stretches beyond the 2:34 mark.

It is the output of aficionados, the zealots, the genre purists, and it is I think even more than most records meant to be consumed as part of the whole set or album foremost.

With the deceptive brevity, one track, any really, acts as an entry point that demands the others be likewise appreciated. There isn’t a weak point in the chain.

In its episodic and relative conciseness there is a mechanic here that plays with perception through a more manageable and enforced segmentation (Like happily binging a 12 hour limited series and it appearing less daunting than a single 4 hour film). These are 16 excellent tracks in just over 25 minutes and well worth a visit.

TRACK | The Rebel – I Found You Amongst the Roses

I Found You Amongst The Roses is, wonderfully, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The traditional folk form, bounding, plodding forward, with the simple electronic drum pattern, and the calming melody: it is all cover for what is coming.

The usual line and truism about a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down is applicable. There is here a valuable expanding of what is agreeable within the window of initial expectations.

When the Prince lyrics enter, the subtle warping becomes stark. The track deconstructs itself, the tempo distends, ultimately ending in field recordings and samples that bring further context to the unease.

But it all works so well that those drawn in through tradition leave with a greater appreciation for experimentation, their conceptions of ‘good’ ever so slightly extended. And that is a valuable endeavor.

TRACK | Protomartyr – How He Lived After He Died

With “How He Lived After He Died” we have another finely tuned and balanced appreciation for content and form. Protomartyr have done it enough that at this point it does not appear to be a mistake. There’s clearly premeditation.

The ironically named All passion no technique is yet another (and the original) entry in which Protomartyr manages to properly render human expression in a compelling and expert manner.

“How He Lived After He Died” is another rendition that does justice to their own source material, a debt that always seems to perpetually reemerge with each rendering.

Apparently 21 songs were recorded in four hours and this was one of them. A fact that is at least as frustrating as it is impressive.

Being the 10th track of 17 feels buried, but in a good way. That is a confident placement for something this great.

TRACK | Pristine Hyur – Somebody Saves Us

It is fairly difficult for me to be grabbed by the pure instrumental outside of an album stretch in which it acts sometimes as intermediary or accent between more explicit entries. I am suspicious of pure abstraction, of where it might otherwise be welcomed.

But here is a good example of the exception.

Many great tones are featured in their own right, elaborately worked and accented with field recorded pulsations that approximate speech but never fully realize it. Phases and segments seamlessly transition. It has a masterful pacing and craft.

There must be a coming together of such coherence that the style/form is so rich in detail and metering it becomes the substance itself. If that sounds damning with faint praise then I am not properly conveying the rarity of it.

I have a great appreciation for language. For me, a good line goes a long way. To remove this attribute altogether from a piece of music puts the work at a disadvantage. It’s not insurmountable but it is nonetheless appreciated with less frequency.

There is a great quote attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer about “Comforting the troubled and troubling the comfortable,” and, well, this becomes more difficult when dealing in abstraction. But I think that it also may very well apply here and that is no small feat.

TRACK | Lomma – T. Hanks

Tube amp and tremolo powered revenge anthem that it is, “T. Hanks” is a lot of fun. If you’d like some reference points that are fundamentally inaccurate but broadly reasonable in comparison, there is a bit of Ty Segall, The Fresh and Onlys, and Kasabian in there. It is driving, garage-y surf-pop.

It’s a good track for when everything is falling apart and forfeit and no effort adds up. It is a bit of commiseration in a miserable era. And in its buoyant forms and affable uttering, does a good job of making this all seem more or less fine while proclaiming the opposite.

And while we know from… life that the squeaky wheel more likely gets executed at dawn, locked in an Ecuadorian embassy, or exiled to Russia, there remains inherent value in the logging of the complaint.

So what if the world is an unforgiving and hellish place and that every ounce of good is drained out in a vice, cut with chemicals, and then sold back to you at 10x the cost? We can still refine our critiques to be appealing and catchy. There’s some good resilience here in this track and in the lessons it provides.

[Something I didn’t notice until after selecting the track but may have been subconsciously seen: our projects were featured on bandcamp daily on the same entry a week back. That doesn’t need to be disclosed I just wanted to brag a little and am glad to be associated further in this linkage.]

TRACK | Dick Diver – Calendar Days

In Calendar Days, jangly guitars usher the waves of overlapping melodies in the most politely unrelenting pop.

There is here a great raiding with reluctance. Somehow it is all done productively, without mercy, and within the interlocking melodies.

The narration seems almost to take place from an out of body experience, or at least some interval removed from the recollected proceedings.

The tone feels detached and emotionally well processed. The events are still close enough to recount in detail, but there has been a coming to terms.

It is hard to imagine more potent nostalghia outside of Tarkovsky pulling you by the lapels through the mirror. What a fine tribute to an era and stretch of consciousness.

TRACK | Wednesday – Cody’s Only

Twin Plagues is an album I need to spend some more time with but it has already found a way onto the year-end 2021 list. Cody’s Only is a track that has easily & immediately caught me on it’s hooks.

Cody’s Only is indie rock/post-fi at it’s best: emotive in a manner that erupts without unremitting destruction, storytelling that allows for lessons to be learned.

One of the greatest qualities of the creative act is that it has the capacity to redeem all preceding experience and eventualities through the fabrication of something deemed good. I love the Tom Waits quote, “Everything you absorb, you secrete,” and believe it to be true.

I cannot figure out what I meant / by living all those ways I did

For me, when it is done well, in song or whatever medium, all preceding acts or events become an aggregated catalyst, good and bad, but contorted now to good. It is now reimagined into an artifact, or a testament, in an elaborate repurposing of existence.

Maybe we don’t deserve these kindnesses, but they are patiently scripted by Wednesday here. Forged of fragments, lyrically rich in both the processing and recollecting. And it is a very compelling grafting.

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