Reviews

Record #919: Khamsin – What’s Left of Life? (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In 2018, I was part of the team organizing Bloodline Fest here in South Bend. While we were talking to idle threat about playing, they asked if there was a space for their friends Khamsin, who they were touring with. And boy am I glad there was. They looked to be fresh out of high school, but as soon as they started playing, it brought me back to my own teenage years, playing a brand of introspective post-hardcore reminiscent of As Cities Burn, Brand New, mewithoutYou, and Beggars-era Thrice.

As strong as that initial performance was though, it barely scratched the surface of what they would achieve on their debut full-length, What’s Left of Life? Those same influences are present, but not derivative as much as an accent in their own voice. And they use that voice to tell a story of grief and loss that’s as raw as it is tender.

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Record #918: Crowning – Survival / Sickness (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I have said, often and loudly, that I don’t like screamo. And I don’t mean screamo as a catchall term for any music with screaming in it, like your mom uses it, but as a distinct branch of emo and hardcore heralded by bands like Orchid, pg.99, and Saetia. I’ve proclaimed for years that it’s too abrasive and tuneless for my tastes.

Exceptions were made, of course, for envy. And Boneflower. And Chalk Hands. And Birds in Row. And…actually you know what, maybe I do like screamo. Because recently, I’ve found a few skramz records that I really love. One that was introduced to me recently was Survival / Sickness, the debut record from Crowning out of Chicago, a cathartic fury so explosive that it lasts a mere eighteen minutes before burning out. Still, it packs in more energy in that short runtime than several albums three times its length.

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Record #917: The Abruptors – Love and Other Disasters (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It might surprise folks, since I’m the frontman of a ska band myself, but I don’t listen to a ton of ska. In fact, before I joined that band, my vision of ska was very narrow, informed by my time in youth group in the late 90s and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. That is to say, I was almost exclusively aware of Christian Third Wave ska bands like Five Iron Frenzy and OC Supertones and also Goldfinger.

But as I’ve learned, ska is a far deeper tradition, with roots stretching to Jamaican folk music and permeating British anti-racist movements in the 70s before being co-opted by punk and hardcore in the 80s and then becoming the soundtrack for suburban middle schoolers hopped up on Mountain Dew in the 90s.

I was recently gifted this copy of Love and Other Disasters, the debut record from Buffalo NY outfit The Abruptors. And despite the time and place of its origins—and whatever expectations my brain might still make when I hear something described as ska—it lives much closer to the rocksteady and two-tone sounds of early ska acts like The Specials and Skatellites instead of the hyperactive mania of Third Wave, as well as some tasty flavors of 60s doo wop and R&B. Continue reading →

Record #916: Braids – Euphoric Recall (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “Change is the only constant in life.” He probably wasn’t talking about the artistic trajectory of musicians, but it’s certainly applicable. Every artist’s career is destined to change—whether by the continued growth of experimentation or the stagnation from repeating once-fresh formulas until they decay. And as artists change, their fans also change, and often in different directions. It seems to me that many fans usually follow an artist for three albums before they each move beyond one another.

I say this because I’ve loved Braids since their 2011 full-length Native Speaker, a delightful piece of energetic yet thoughtful art rock. I even emailed the group to get a digital copy of their debut EP which has since been scrubbed from the internet. While I eagerly anticipated the more ambient Flourish // Perish, devouring the singles and preordering the disc (it remains my favorite of theirs), I somehow missed Deep In the Iris until months after their release. So when a promo for Euphoric Recall came across my inbox, I was surprised to find that it was actually their fifth record, having released Shadow Offering in 2020.

But listening to Euphoric Recall, I was instantly reminded why I fell for the band in the first place. And not because they’re still putting out carbon copies of Native Speaker (they aren’t), but because the careful balance of experimental sonic craft and hooky songwriting is still a fertile field for the harvest.

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Record #915: Joe Baughman + the Righteous Few – Antichrist Complex (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’ve spent much of my life trying to fight the idea that the “local” in “local bands” is a polite way of saying “bad.” After all, if they were any good, wouldn’t they have graduated from being local bands, right? We all know the universe unilaterally reward talent with notoriety to a proportional degree, right? Obviously, we know that’s absurd, but the idea persists.

One of my most frequent rebuttals to this prejudice is my friend Joe Baughman and his backing band, that is most recently called The Righteous Few. Their performances, whether in a theater or a basement, have been filled with the sort of ambitious, freewheeling quirkiness that brought acts like Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens to prominence. While there’s no real substitute for seeing this costume-clad beastly collective in person, Antichrist Complex is the closest they’ve ever put to tape, complete with horn and string sections, instrument changes, and lyrics just as manic as the unpredictable swirl of folk rock, funk, and gospel bursting out of the band.

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Record #914: Janis Joplin – Pearl (1970)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not sure what foolishness is responsible for my never intentionally listening to Janis Joplin before now. I think probably, her legacy is so firmly entrenched in the annals of music history that I must have subliminally felt like I was familiar with her myself.

In fact, it was only a few weeks ago when my wife returned from a discount store with a $1 sealed copy of this record that I realized that she had escaped my attention. And within seconds of putting it on, I realized just how much I was missing. Pearl, recorded shortly before (and released shortly after) her tragic death, finds Joplin demonstrating every ounce of her skill as an arranger and vocalist, with the Full Tilt Boogie Band offering a fittingly electric accompaniment to That Voice.

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Record #913: Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem (2009)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

May be an image of record playerMount Eerie is one of those bands that I’ve mostly known just by reputation. For years, I’ve heard the name of Phil Elverum’s project thrown around alongside acts like Bon Iver, The Antlers, Sun Kil Moon, and other songwriters offering emotional devastation to hushed instrumentation.

So when I heard Wind’s Poem playing over the speakers at Ignition Music in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Mount Eerie was pretty near the bottom of the list of names I expected to hear attached to the bursts of black metal noise I was hearing.

I bought it on the spot, and find more to love about this record every time I hear it. Continue reading →

Record #912: LLNN – Unmaker (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Sometimes, you just need some music that will crush you. Times like when you’ve been fighting a weird illness and are sitting at home in a fog of post-blood-draw fatigue as you wait to hear the results of your bloodwork. That’s a highly specific mood, and it’s hardly the only feeling that calls for demolitions-grade heavy music.

But whatever causes that mood to strikes, LLNN is just what the doctor ordered. Unmaker, the third album from the Copenhagen quartet, is a gut-wrenching bit of dark, sludgy metal so hefty that it should come with a lift warning.

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Record #911: Fotoform – Horizons (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As a music reviewer, my inbox is constantly bombarded with press packs. The unfortunate truth is that most of this goes ignored, buried amid the insurmountable pile of album streams and press releases.

But every once in a while, something will leap from the murky stream of promos and glisten like an iridescent marlin in the sun, catching my attention and holding it. A couple years ago, one of those records was Horizons, the sophomore record of Seattle’s Fotoform, a shining bit of post-punky shoegaze that’s as emotionally stirring as it is urgent.

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Record #910: The Cure – The Cure (2004)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Here’s the big wrinkle in my personal journey as a Cure fan. I’ve spent several of the last posts talking about how I’d mostly ignored the legendary group until recently, barring a few attempts to familiarize myself with their more celebrated records.

Except that I’ve owned a CD copy of their self-titled record since the mid 2000s. At one point, I even owned the maxi CD single for “alt.end,” which includes the excellent B-side “Why Can’t I Be Me?”

As many people have pointed out, though, this album is maybe the least representative thing they’ve put out, sticking out like a raucous sore thumb in their decidedly less noisy catalog, which makes the decision to christen it with their own name curious. But buried beneath the aggressive performances and in-your-face production is a collection of songs that showcase everything that makes the Cure the Cure.

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