Author: Nathaniel FitzGerald

Record #891: Dream Unending – Song of Salvation (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It’s often said that music is a transcendent art—that it exceeds the sum of its parts, reaching beyond the mundane circumstances of our day to day. But if we’re being honest, an awful lot of music falls short of that promise. If I’m skimming the radio, there’s very little that might inspire even a shift in my mood, let alone an altered state of consciousness.

But every once in a while I’ll find a record that reminds me just how much power music has. A record that stretches my imagination beyond its usual limits and peels back the corners of the fabric of reality, even for just a moment. And if are once again being honest, a lot of musicians think this is what they’re doing, only to mire themselves in woo-woo pastiche and tired cliches.

In the case of Dream Unending’s sophomore record Song of Salvation though, those traps are avoided, in favor of long-form progressive death-doom metal that transcends not only its genre but its ambitions.

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Record #890: Esben and the Witch – Wash the Sins Not Only the Face (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

At this point, I should just ignore my Spotify Daily Mixes. They’re becoming financially ruinous. Almost every time I skim through one, I find something that immediately grabs my attention (see also: Life on Venus, Grivo, Locrian…).

A few weeks ago, I was looking through one of these playlists and was fascinated by the delay-heavy guitar and ethereal alto vocals of “Slow Wave,” so I dug further. What I found was an album that felt like Warpaint had been listening to a lot more goth, post rock, and black metal. Which hit my sensibilities right on the button—which in turn saw me pressing the “order now” button on a copy on Discogs.

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Record #889: Calm Collapse – Mirrored Nature (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I say a lot of words about music. I have this blog, I write reviews for Tuned Up and the occasional other publication, I have a music podcast…at any given moment I might have two or three group chats prattling on about new releases, hidden gems, or reminders that certain records are as good as I remember.

But sometimes, all of that does a poorer job of communicating the pure essence of my reaction to a piece of music than a simple two-word reaction. In this case, “holy shit,” which escaped my dropping jaw about thirty seconds into album opener “Positive Greed.” And as the record continued on, I didn’t find much reason to refine my reaction.

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Record #888: Blankenberge – Everything (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Everyone talks about how the internet has made the world smaller, but less attention has been given to how it has expanded microcosms into galaxies. Microgenres have become scenes unto themselves, with legions of bands offering sonic homage to a handful of albums.

Where the term “shoegaze” originally referred to a dozen or so bands around London, the sonic explorations they pioneered have created hosts of acolytes making their own pilgrimages through reverb-and-fuzz-drenched guitars. This scene has further bifurcated itself, with further microscenes forming within the context of an already niche genre (see: dreamgaze, heavy shoegaze, blackgaze, doomgaze, dreamo and more).

One of the more fascinating microscenes I’ve discovered is the Russian shoegaze scene, which is comprised of bands like Life on Venus, Pinkshinyultrablast, and Blankenberge, whose album Everything is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.

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Record #887: Brian Eno & Kevin Shields – The Weight of History / Only Once Away My Son (2018)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Very few musicians have chased the sonic concept of pure texture with as much steadfastness and fearlessness as Brian Eno. Both as a musician and producer, he is responsible for some of the most gorgeous soundscapes put to tape, practically inventing the idea of ambient music and bringing those lessons into both art punk and more mainstream pop.

But very near the top of list who might give him a run for his money is Kevin Shields, the mastermind behind My Bloody Valentine and an aural savant so consumed by his pursuit of sonic bliss that it borders on pathological (let’s be honest, it’s probably a few steps past that line).

So the mere thought of them joining forces was enough for me to purchase this without hearing a second of it—and of course, it paid off.

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Record #886: Astronoid – Radiant Bloom (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I have a working theory that in any piece of music, most lay listeners primarily hear the vocals. The strongest case for this idea was at Furnace Fest ’21, where the “dream-thrash” band Astronoid, a band known for their blistering riffs, fiery solos, and blastbeats galore were booked on the stage reserved for the quieter bands.

But even so, Radiant Bloom might stand to challenge even those listeners, as Astronoid offers up the most brutal instrumental performance of their career.

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Record #885: Jack M. Senff – Good to Know You (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Allow me to introduce you to my friend Jack.

Around thirteen years ago, I met Jack as part of a group of local artists, musicians, and poets trying to build a more substantial creative community here in South Bend. I’m not sure how old he was at the time—in my mind, he couldn’t have been older than fifteen, always dressed like someone’s dad in ragged sweaters and giant glasses. At that point, his band Merchant Ships had already broken up, so when I found out a few years later that they had a pretty decent following online, it messed with my brain a bit.

In the years since, he’s helmed a number of projects, from William Bonney to Knola to Midwest Pen Pals, all offering various shades of intense emo. That is, until he took on the moniker of Boy Rex which offered a more intimate brand of folk rock. So intimate in fact that after a few releases, he felt it was more genuine to go by his given name instead.

And while this, his first record billed as Jack M. Senff, is a for all practical purposes a continuation of the Boy Rex project, there’s another level of introspection that can’t be explained entirely by the name change.

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Record #884: He Is Legend – I Am Hollywood (2004)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

2004 was a different time, man. Asymmetrical haircuts were flatironed in the front and hairsprayed in the back for maximum volume. Lopsided liprings and bandanas (or, briefly, surgical masks) were must-have accessories for off-center t-shirts and jeans that couldn’t be tighter if they were painted on. It all looked ridiculous in public, of course, but it didn’t matter: it was all constructed to look best from the MySpace Angle™, which was the ultimate arbiter of clout.

I Am Hollywood probably isn’t the Most Scene record of that era, but its chaotic genre-hopping and anything-goes grab bag of pop culture references is perhaps the most emblematic record for the hyperactive attention deficit of the early 2000s scene.

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Record #883: Holy Fawn – Dimensional Bleed (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It’s hard to tell whether social media and streaming have been a net positive or negative for music in general. On the one hand, anyone with an internet connection and the most basic recording setup can distribute their music onto the internet within minutes. But on the other hand, it’s relegated musicians to the roles of Content Creators, requiring them to keep releasing a constant stream of new music to keep their audience’s attention.

But somehow, Holy Fawn has more or less managed to escape that trap. Their 2018 full-length Death Spells still feels as fresh and hype-worthy as it did when it first exploded across the internet. There were some other releases in their catalog—a 2015 EP that no one really paid attention to (myself until recently), a three-track EP in early 2020, and a couple remixes and covers, but Death Spells has remained the standard bearer for the band—and the entire heavy, moody shoegaze scene since, it seems .

I say all of this to point out that we didn’t need another Holy Fawn record. But damn, am I glad we got it, because Dimensional Bleed is proof that the Arizona quartet can conjure lightning to strike at least twice.

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Record #882: Curtail – When the Sway Sets (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Sometimes, a record doesn’t need to have high aspirations to be great. It doesn’t need to redefine the boundaries of genre or have some intricate narrative thread. It doesn’t need to offer up some transcendent experience to the listeners.

Sometimes, it just needs to be really, really catchy.

And that’s about the best way I can think to describe this record from Curtail, an Akron quartet made up of emo veterans that delivers effortlessly infectious tunes that isn’t quite emo, but isn’t quite not emo either.

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