Month: April 2022

Record #854: Helms Alee – Keep This Be the Way (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Helms Alee has always been unpredictable. Even besides the triple-vocal attack—which ranges from throaty screams to dreamy cleans to riot grrrl-esque shouts—they have always implemented a number of styles into their brand of heavy, weird music. I first discovered them on a Wikipedia article about sludge metal fusions, describing them as “Sludge/shoegaze,” even though they themselves simply call themselves “grunge” (probably just because they’re from Seattle).

But they have never been as fearlessly inventive and monstrously heavy as they are on Keep This Be the Way. Nonsense title aside, this is a staggering album that showcases the best that Helms Alee has to offer, and pushes them into bold new territory.

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Record #853: Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (1973)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Tubular Bells is an absolutely iconic record. It’s a staple in almost any collection. It is also a hokey, sprawling mess.

However, it’s also one of the first records of its scope to have been recorded largely by a single person using overdubs. This isn’t quite an impressive feat anymore—there are legions of solo artists making ambitious music on their laptops (I’ve even done so myself), and a lot of them are more listenable than this.

But there is a charm in Oldfield’s initial opus, burdened as it is by ambition and lack of focus. After all, he was only nineteen when he released it.

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Record #852: The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath (2008)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Unlike my mysterious ignorance of Amputechture, I know exactly why I ignored The Bedlam In Goliath. 

By the time this record came out, my tastes had shifted significantly. My musical diet was still peppered with similarly experimental acts that I obsessed over at the same time I discovered De-Loused, like Radiohead and Sigur Rós. But for the most part, my tastes were far simpler: I was devouring acts like Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent, and whatever else La Blogotheque and The Black Cab Sessions were featuring.

I had come to desire simplicity. Even as a musician, I had “matured” past the progressive post-hardcore of my high school band and honed my craft as a solo singer-songwriter. I might have still appreciated the first couple Mars Volta records, but I wasn’t returning to them often.

So when Bedlam was released, I had little patience for their maximalist prog, their meandering jam sessions, or the claims of a cursed Ouija board tormenting them—however, I did largely agree with the original engineer who quit the project saying, “You’re trying to do something very bad with this record, you’re trying to make me crazy and you’re trying to make people crazy.”

But now that I’ve gotten older—and made peace with my previous selves—I’ve come to realize just how wrong I was about this record. Is it a bloated, self-indulgent behemoth that is often a taxing listen? Probably, but all of the criticisms leveled against it can be directed towards the albums that I love either, so…

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Record #851: The Mars Volta – Amputechture (2006)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s taken me so long to get into Amputechture. It was released right in the throes of my first obsession with the group: I had heard De-Loused in the Comatorium just a year earlier, and it exploded my mind. A friend had burned me a copy of Frances the Mute over the summer, and I would often leave the albums playing on repeat in my dorm room.

So why would I not immediately devour the follow-up? In my memory, I didn’t hear Amputechture until after I had moved home from Chicago in late 2009. At that time, I had bought into the hipster snob narrative that the Mars Volta was a bloated, overindulgent prog rock outfit that released two great albums. The inflated vinyl prices on the later albums didn’t give me much incentive to challenge that notion.

But the most recent batch of reissues happened to coincide with some extra playing around money, so I figured I might as well fill in the gap in my collection between Frances and Octahedron. 

And boy, am I glad I did.

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Record #850: Cremation Lily – Dreams Drenched in Static (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Album art is a funny thing. As often as the warning is given not to judge a [record] by its cover, sometimes the visual aesthetic of the record perfectly matches the sound contained therein.

Take for example Dreams Drenched in Static, the new album from Cremation Lily, the solo project of Zen Zsigo. Soft images of waves, grasses, and sand dunes are torn apart and combined to form a jagged abstract collage. It’s a stunning visual representation of the sounds on the album: gentle elements like ambient guitars, floating keyboards, clean vocals, and laid back drum machines are chopped and manipulated and pasted together to create something that is harshly overexposed and monstrous. But at the same time, beneath the hiss of white noise and squeals of feedback is a sort of zen-like peace, like the warm embrace of the snow after an avalanche.

(And if it sounds like I’m just parroting the promo email from The Flenser, that’s because they quoted me in it).

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Record #849: Harry Chapin – Greatest Stories Live (1976)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For most people, the career of Harry Chapin begins and ends with “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Some die-hards might also bring up “Six String Orchestra,” which was immortalized in a Muppet Show sketch, but Chapin’s place in the cultural consciousness doesn’t extend much past that.

But superfan that my father was, many of my earliest musical memories are centered around the folk singer. This album in particular would often stream out of the family stereo in our old house, my sister and I running and dancing and singing along. And while “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” carries the most specific memories (alongside “The Rock” from Portrait Gallery, which I remembered being on this disc), coming to Greatest Stories Live as an adult brings an appreciation for Chapin’s effortless storytelling that makes me realize my dad might have known what he was talking about.

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Record #848: Glassing – Twin Dream (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine famously adheres to the theory that when a person is subjected to high volume noise for a long enough time, they enter a zen-like state. The harsh tones and oppressive volumes transform into an almost comforting embrace, like being covered in a blanket of snow after an avalanche.

Experimental Austin metallurgists Glassing are masters of this sort of alchemy, manipulating abrasive tones to create songs that are somehow staggeringly gorgeous. While I recoiled at my early, brief brushes with the band, I was encouraged to give Twin Dream a more earnest listen.

It became one of my favorite records.

Read more at ayearofvinyl.com #glassing #postmetal #doomgaze #blackmetal #blackgaze #sludgemetal #vinyl

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Record #847: Foals – Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost—Part 1 (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

A trip to the record store used to be spontaneous. I would usually walk out with a small stack from bands I had never heard of before, or at least albums I had never listened to. These days, I’m far more intentional with my budget. I have a to-buy list that is constantly revisited and revised with repeated listens, organized by some careful calculus of how much I enjoy it and how inexpensively I can get the record.

Sometimes though, the old tinge of spontaneity will spark again, and I’ll take a calculated risk. In this case, I had been familiar with Foals for many years—Holy Fires still gets a decent amount of play time, but I’ve never ventured into the rest of their catalog. At least, until I found a sealed copy of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost—Part 1 (a title borrowed from the warning screen from the original Legend of Zelda) at a local shop for a price I couldn’t ignore. And as gambles sometimes do, this one paid off.

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Record #846: Eli Kahn – How Are You? No Really…How Are You? (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you’ve gone anywhere in South Bend over the last ten years, there’s a non-zero chance that you’ve happened upon a performance by Eli Kahn. You might find him providing mood music at a winery or playing with his jazz duo After Hours at a party or headlining a music festival with the hip hop project The B.E.A.T. or providing a soundtrack for an experimental dance show or creating ambience for an art opening.

He’s practically a local cryptid at this point, playing anywhere and everywhere live music can be found with an impressive array of effects pedals and a custom fanned-fret seven-string (with two bass strings on the bottom).

His first solo record, How Are You? No Really…How Are You? is as comprehensive and delightful CV anyone could ask for from Kahn, tying together diverse influences like lo-fi hip hop, jazz, and post rock.

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Record #845: E-L-R – Vexier (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The German word “Vexier” is an odd term. It’s likely derived from the Latin “vexare” which means to plague or irritate, but it’s used in some dialects to describe a puzzle. For instance, “Vexierbild” is the term used for a double image: an innocent illustration that hides a more sinister image (the best example being “All Is Vanity” by C. Allen Gilbert).

With that in mind, it’s a more than apt title for the sophomore release of Swiss doomgazers E-L-R. The band itself is so mysterious that I can’t find any information about the members besides their initials (there are plenty of photos of the band, but they aren’t labeled). It is a deceptive album that has the initial impression of being rather subdued, but closer inspection reveals a far darker album lurking beneath the surface—not unlike a Vexierbild.

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