Reviews

Record #929: MØL – Diorama (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not sure exactly who it was that drew such rigid lines around metal. While pioneers like Sabbath and Maiden were wide open to other influences, somewhere along the lines, metal shored itself up and went to war with other music. It’s not just softer styles either—metal fans and hardcore fans often come to blows with one another. Even subgenres within metal itself have split into warring factions.

But there is a growing movement in heavy music in the last decade or so to lay down the purity tests and elitism and infuse a wider range of influences into their work. One of the most exciting acts in this realm that I’ve discovered is the Danish quintet MØL. While they might lazily be tossed under the blackgaze umbrella for lack of better categorization, there’s a lot more going on here than Alcest worship.

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Record #928: Amulets – Blooming (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Ambient music isn’t typically noted for being accessible. The sheer textures and static atmospheres often eschew the most basic elements of melody and rhythm in favor of defiant non-movement. Notes are stretched to infinity, filling a room with sound like a beam of light shining through a window. It is often, by very nature, devoid of emotional resonance or what the common man might consider musicality.

And by reading the descriptions of Amulets’ 2021 record Blooming, you might expect the same thing. There’s a lot of talk about manipulated art installations and endless sound scapes, tape loops manipulated and  magnifying the imperfections of the technology.

But while Blooming is certainly a patient and cerebral bit of ambient music, there is a deep emotional core that gives these eight tracks more weight than your typical ambient fair.

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Record #927: The Get Up Kids – Eudora (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve previously said that I wasn’t a huge Get Up Kids fan as a teenager. There was a single reason for that: nothing could top my entry to the band, which was this, the Eudora compilation, which I bought specifically the track “Central Standard Time,” which is a top ten emo song, and spun on repeat for months at a time. As great as their studio albums were, nothing else grabbed my attention like this compilation.

As for why I hadn’t purchased this record until this week though, I can’t tell you that.

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Record #926: The Anniversary – Designing A Nervous Breakdown (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

They say hindsight is 20/20, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The lens of nostalgia often glazes over details with a broad brush, homogenizing the intricate diversity of moments in time into a monotone.

Take, for instance, the second wave of emo. While revisionist history might paint a scene of twinkly guitars and angular drumming (thanks, American Football), the view from the ground was far different. Emo was not nearly as much a matter of a sound as it was an ethos.

One of the best examples of emo’s diversity is The Anniversary. While emo was undoubtedly rooted in punk and hardcore, their debut record Designing A Nervous Breakdown borrows much of its palette from decidedly non-punk sources, offering up a heaping helping of hooks, harmonies, and synthesizers. While it doesn’t sound like what anyone might think of when they imagine emo, it remains one of the most well-loved emo records of the era.

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Record #925: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags & Codes (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the summer of 2005, my high school band played a show in a dude’s parents’ garage (that dude is now a member of the excellent band JAGALCHI). In between bands, a song was playing that gave the same sort of frantic post-hardcore as At the Drive-In. I was transfixed and asked what it was. The answer was a band called …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. A couple years later, I stumbled upon their album Source Tages & Codes in the used CD section of my local record store. I bought it without hesitation.

But as I listened to it, I found it a bit too scattered to get my head around it. There were moments of the chaotic bliss that grabbed my attention, but they were brief and rare among a bevy of anthemic emo songs, theatrical prog, and, to my dismay (then) power pop songs.

With the space of two decades between my first impression and finding it for free on The Sound of Vinyl’s Father’s Day sale, I’ve realized that what I initially saw as scatterbrained is actually sprawling, offering a snapshot of the early 2000s alt scene that includes bits of every subgenre’s tendencies.

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Record #924: Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There is perhaps no more unlikely group to change the course of music than Black Sabbath. Originally called the Pulka Tulk Blues Band, and later Earth, the working class quartet from Birmingham cut their teeth playing in blues clubs with a sound not unlike the blues rock of Cream.

But somewhere between forming and recording their first album, a series of events caused them to morph into one of the most ferocious and influential bands of all time. And while Black Sabbath still retains a lot of their blues jam tendencies, the nucleus of their legendary career—and heavy metal as a whole—is impossible to miss.

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Record #923: Blanket – Modern Escapism (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Kids today don’t appreciate how good they’ve got it. Back in my day (groans), it would take hours to download a single song, so you would have to carefully weigh what you were interested in hearing so you could make the most of your download time. If you just discovered a new emo band, you would typically spend your precious time downloading other emo bands, only rarely straying beyond that.

Now, thanks to streaming platforms and high speed internet speeds, you can jump from Sunny Day Real Estate to My Bloody Valentine to Slayer to Body Count to 100 Gecs instantly. The floodgates are open.

One of the most interesting byproducts of this unfettered access to the whole of recorded music is the widespread cross-pollination of scenes and genres. I’ve been around long enough to see how shoegaze, metal, and hardcore have interbred to create heavier shoegaze (or gazier metal?).

I listen to a lot of that sort of stuff, so it takes a bit for me to be impressed anymore. And “impressed” is a weak word for my reaction to Blanket, whose second LP Modern Escapism recently grabbed me by the lapels and demanded my attention.

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Record #922: Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill (1995)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In which a Canadian teenybopper pop star turns into an eldritch demigod.

It’s always funny to me when the Rock and Roll Boys’ Club reacts to the rise of some young female rocker with upturned noses (see: Avril Lavigne, Olivia Rodrigo, Michelle Branch, Billie Eilish, etc) when one of the greatest rock albums of all time was released by the quintessential rock ingénue.  For as much as rock music postures itself as a man’s world, in 1995 Alanis Morissette (then twenty-one) laced up her Doc Martins and went toe-to-toe with the entire alt-rock landscape.

Nearly thirty years later, Jagged Little Pill remains as fierce and apocalyptic as ever. It’s a breakup album in the form of a military strike, offering proof to the old proverb that Hell hath no fury quite like this.

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Record #921: Frightened Rabbit – Pedestrian Verse (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For all my seemingly-encyclopedic knowledge of the musical landscape, I have a few glaring blind spots. There are musicians who have left indelible marks on the world that have left me unscathed. Bands with massive cult followings that I have ignored. Albums that have changed lives while I have moved on oblivious.

These omissions are numerous. But I get the notion that few are more glaring, foolish, and maybe even offensive than my ignorance of Frightened Rabbit, who for years has floated amorphously in a nebulous blob with the Mountain Goats, Mount Eerie, Lord Huron, and any other songwriter-heavy project with a full band name that my brain categorizes together because of their similar names.

But recently, a friend who is a fan learned of the Frightened-Rabbit-shaped hole in my heart and sought to fill it himself, ordering me a copy of their fourth record, Pedestrian Verse, which I gather is a dark horse fan favorite. And while it’s going to take time for me to absorb this record the way it’s meant to, it’s immediately apparent why the band is so beloved. Continue reading →

Record #920: The Kinks – Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There’s maybe no band that captures the imagination of speculative music historians than the Kinks. In the early days of the British Invasion, they had a raw energy that propelled their songwriting beyond their peers. Many have made the claim that had they not been blacklisted by the American Federation of Musicians on their first US tour for the exact sort of destruction people loved the Who for a year later, they would have surpassed even the Beatles (I have made this before).

This could have destroyed a lesser band. Instead, The Kinks, led by brother duo Ray and Dave Davies, put their heads down and made several of the best pop rock albums in their native UK, not finding much success across the pond until “Lola” in 1970, when the ban had run its course.

It’s a personal policy of mine that if I find any of their records from this period in a record store, it’s an instant buy. It’s never steered me wrong before, and in the case of Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), it paid off exceptionally well.

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