Tag: Rock

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 | Deaf Chonky – Shirley

5/5 golden merles

Let us please have more songs that address explicitly unjust hierarchies… and, if possible, ideally, remain compelling with regard to instrumentation and lyrical craft.

“there’s burning to be done / so I’ll sleep when I’m dead”

The track is more than a little seething. And with great energy and righteousness there is a palpable sense of alienation and disgust.

It reminds me of a quote of Camus writing about the poet René Char:

Camus felt that Char…

“was quite alone, without having a taste for solitude. And he cannot conceive of a life without friendship, and he cannot love most of the men around today. Therefore he is very demanding to the few men he esteems, sometimes violently so… He deserves to be encouraged and accepted wholly because he himself is whole and of a quality so rare that without him it would take the world far too long to be reborn.”


TRACK | Los Tones – What Happened

5/5 golden merles

In Los Tones’ What Happened we have some quintessential fun pop-garage rock. There is an undeniably solid lead riff set atop driving drums and a compelling vocal delivery.

The verses don’t undercut the chorus, they’re stabilizing, though they are ballast for balance. There are no gratuitous asides, fills or solos.

Every aspect combines to serve the core purpose of contributing to the single.

The track pushes slightly past the three minute mark then gracefully exits after one final build in which the band manages to more than muster sufficient intensity required to justify this trek which tacks another minute onto the runtime.


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 | La Secte Du Futur – Future is Better

5/5 golden merles

From the bass synth and bass guitar out the gate intermingling, to the vocals metallic net of echo, every tone in this is great.

There are a couple buried synths in the mix, something I am deeply sympathetic to, offering up their own variant melodies to the alter of noise. They are just apparent enough to flesh things out and keep things interesting.

This gentle revisionism speaks to the chaos at the heart of the track. Whether The Future is Better or Never is better, something must change.

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.


TRACK | GEE TEE – Z-ZERO

5/5 golden merles

Z-ZERO is 90 seconds of blown-out synth pop punk.

The bifurcated melody lets for once the bridge also be the chorus, and it is no small wonder that this works out fine. Yet again, Australia has shown us the way.

It’s all very good. There’s enough style that it lapses back into substance at some point in the general mire, the rhythm guitar bounding back and forth across the soundscape throughout.