In the record buying community, every once in a while you might get a surprise. In this case, I had ordered a copy of post-hardcore legends Quicksand 2017 album Interiors, and was surprised to find that the seller had also included this ten inch.
Knowing nothing about the group, I popped it on the platter and gave it a spin.
What ensued was 23 minutes of as brutal and chaotic mathcore as I’ve ever heard.
Every so often, someone will suggest a record for me to review. I always tell them the same thing: on this blog, I only review albums that I own on vinyl, so if they want me to review something, the would need to give it to me.
To date, only my friend Jay has taken me up on that offer, with this Beatles-adjacent release.
Mike McGear, born Peter Michael McCartney, is the brother of the one and only Paul McCartney. If he was trying to get out of his older brother’s shadow, this album is a strange way to go about it, as Paul produced the album, wrote (or cowrote) most of the songs, and offered up Wings as a backing band.
It’s no RAM, but save for the fact that his brother is singing lead vocals, this feels all the world like a forgotten Paul McCartney solo record.
Like many a white suburban kid, I’ve had a passing fascination with hip hop. I was a pretty big fan of Kanye West until he went off the rails. I know every word of “Rapper’s Delight.” I have a huge appreciation for old school acts like Public Enemy and Naughty By Nature. I’ve even got my own unfinished Jay-Z mashup album.
But when Kendrick Lamar came on the scene, I completely lost track of what was going on in the world of hip hop.
A lot of that disorientation came from this record, an eighty-minute monster filled with the densest verses around. But a few weeks ago, I decided to dive into it, and I can’t escape its grasp.
Before turning U2 into the biggest rock band in the world, before pulling true greatness out of the Talking Heads, before going with Bowie to Berlin, before collaborating with David Byrne, Roger Fripp, Daniel Lanois, Slowdive, and more, before inventing ambient music, Brian Eno played synthesizer for the art rock/glam rock outfit Roxy Music.
After rising tensions with Roxy bandleader Bryan Ferry proved too much to handle, he struck out to make a solo career for himself.
The resulting debut is a revelation, combining glam theatrics, Beatles-like popcraft, and forward-thinking sonic exploration that would inspire legions of future musicians.
Three years ago, I fell in love with Elder’s Reflections of a Floating World, an interplanetary blend of doom metal, psychedelic rock, Krautrock, and prog.
Their fifth record Omens takes Reflections’ more meandering elements and lets them really breathe. Synths and electric pianos are just as prominent as crushing guitars, creating an album that feels more Rush than Black Sabbath.
And the results are stunning.
There are three words that are almost guaranteed to make me pay attention to a band: “Emma. Ruth. Rundle.”
Outside of her darkly beautiful doom-folk solo material, she also has a number of other projects, such as the post-metal-meets-Pink-Floyd of Red Sparowes, the psychedelic alt-folk of Nocturnes, and this, the dark, grooving, vibey Marriages (featuring Andrew Clinco, a.k.a. Deb Demure of Drab Majesty on drums).
2015’s Salome, to date the only full length from Marriages, combines all of my favorite parts of Rundle’s separate projects into a single work that is as gorgeous as it is crushing.
And so, we move from a record by Explosions in the Sky to a band named after an Explosions in the Sky song.
Over the last several years, there’s been revival of sorts in bands realizing the power of loud guitar amps and dirt pedals. Cloakroom seems to be at the front of the pack of this type of revival, with bands like Lume and Teenage Wrist shortly behind. It’s a reminder of what bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins so popular, mixed with a heaping dose of My Bloody Valentine tossed in, with Black Sabbath for flavor.
Michigan’s Greet Death is another great new act in this crop of fuzz-loving guitar bands, and they are coming for the crown. Continue reading
As far as emotional, instrumental, climactic post rock is concerned, Explosions in the Sky is about as close to the Platonic ideal that you can get. Barring their most recent (and mostly electronic) The Wilderness, their catalog is filled with the kind of gorgeous, evocative, almost storytelling kind of music that Mogwai pioneered and throngs of post rock bands have tried to emulate.
But truth be told, as much as I love the albums on either side of this, I’m not too familiar with The Earth Is Not… In fact, I actually bought this one on accident.
Given their nearly flawless track record though, I’m not mad about it.
Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s no denying that Radiohead is among the most celebrated outfits in musical history. Much of the talk of their work is centered around two of the five members—singer Thom Yorke and multi-instrumentalist and composer Johnny Greenwood.
However, there is a hidden gem in their shadows in Ed O’Brien. For years, he has been relegated to the background, getting even less attention than Phil Selway, often mentioned in conversations of the best drummers in the world, and even Colin Greenwood, whose bass lines are undeniably groovy.
But now, he has emerged with Earth, his first solo record. And it’s pretty quickly apparent that we need to be apologize for ignoring him all this time.
There was once a point in my life where most of my music was discovered through Pitchfork.com’s Best New Music section. Trashy hipster hellscape Pitchfork may be, I made a number of great discoveries there, such as Grizzly Bear, Diiv, St. Vincent, and even Deafheaven.
I mention this only because for the life of me, I don’t understand how I missed this album when it came out, as highly regarded as it was by the publication that I held in such high regard. I know I gave it some listen, but there must have been some sort of denseness to it that demanded a closer inspection that I always intended to give it, but it was always just outside my grasp.
But a few days ago, I decided it was finally time for that deep dive, and what a rewarding dive it’s been.