Record #738: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress (2015)

Quebecois post rock demigods Godspeed You! Black Emperor are known for making songs that are weird, long, and loud. While this is plainly seen in all of their works, it’s perhaps best demonstrated by their 2015 album, Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress, which for many years was performed at live shows as one single song, unofficially called “Behemoth.”

Caught on tape here for the first time (and their first album of new studio material in thirteen years) Asunder is a tour de force that showcases all of the project’s various indulgences.

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Record #736: Chapterhouse – Whirlpool (1991)

Speaking of nostalgic shoegaze

Most of the conversations about the history of shoegaze are focused around three bands in particular: Ride, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine. This trinity embodies much of the spirit of shoegaze that modern revivalists try to channel with their own work.

But there are hosts of lesser celebrated bands from the same era who, despite lacking the same footprint, are still entirely worthwhile. Case in point: Chapterhouse. Continue reading

Record #735: Dead Horse One – The West Is the Best (2019)

Creating a genre album is a difficult task. Artists much manage a delicate equilibrium between their own voice and standard elements of the genre—it’s a balancing act with originality on one side and nostalgia on the other.

This is especially true for genres that rely heavily on nostalgia, such as shoegaze.

And yet France’s Dead Horse One is up to the task. The West Is the Best manages to color their voice with shades of all of the shoegaze greats without obscuring their originality.

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Record #734: The Casket Lottery – Short Songs for End Times (2020)

Among most circles, emo is often spoken of dismissively. It is the cracking-voiced, limp-wristed realm of cringy, whingey, immature songwriters offering up poor-me missives put to noodly, poorly composted guitar parts and over-exuberant, off-time rhythm sections.

To anyone who buys into such a cartoonish critique of the genre, allow me to offer The Casket Lottery as a counterpoint. Formed as an offshoot of mathy metalcore heroes Coalesce, The Casket Lottery has always showcased emo at its very best, making great use of what made the genre so irresistable without allowing themselves to fall into the clichés that plague many of their contemporaries.

Short Songs for End Times, their second album since reuniting in 2010, is a punch straight to the gut that sets their brand of hard-hitting emotional punk on politics, tackling the division and absurdity of the post-truth era.

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Record #733: Boneflower – A(r)mour (2020)

I have a working theory I’ve been testing the last few years. The premise is essentially that to the average layperson, their entire listening experience is driven by the vocals. Future Islands is essentially a good new wave/synthpop band, but many listeners suggest they defy labelling based on the deep, throaty growl of Samuel Herring. My own band—a heavy shoegaze/post rock outfit—is compared to Kings of Leon because my voice has a gritty, rock timbre. I’ve also heard a spacey garage rock band compared to Aretha Franklin because the singer was a black woman.

By the same token, consider Boneflower: a Spanish band that utilizes effects-heavy guitars, shifting drum rhythms, and grand instrumental compositions. Strip the vocals from it, and it could probably land somewhere near post rock (though admittedly a bit more aggressive than your typical post rock fare). Their own Bandcamp page uses the tags “alternative, post hardcore, post rock.

And yet, due to the techniques utilized by the lead singer, they are dubbed “screamo” but just about everyone who writes about them.

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Record #732: Dashboard Confessional – So Impossible EP (2001)

Dashboard Confessional So Impossible EP vinyl reviewI’ve told the story before of buying The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most at a music store in Florida on my fifteenth birthday. Little did I know that that very same day, Dashboard Confessional released a delightful concept EP that only the most emo of emo bands could pull off.

So Impossible is a four-track story of a first date with the singer’s crush, aided only by his own acoustic guitar and the acoustic noodlings of Sunny Day Real Estate’s Dan Hoerner.

In writing, it sounds like the kind of thing that should be lost to the forgotten custom HTML of LiveJournal pages. But in spite of—or maybe even because of—its simplicity, it remains enduringly charming.

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Record #730: Black Sabbath – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)

After spending much of my life believing Black Sabbath to be wholly evil (as a child in the Evangelical Church) or wholly outdated (as a self-serious hipster), I’ve spent the last couple years slowly working my way through their catalogue—and learning just how wrong I was.

Throughout the early records, the band gets progressively heavier with each release. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath certainly doesn’t stop that trajectory at all, but neither does it rely on heaviness alone as a compositional device. The result is some of the most cathartic and gorgeous music ever written.

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