Reviews

Record #743: Entropy – Liminal (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Last summer, in the midst of global pandemic, some friends and I started a remote band called Bares His Teeth. As often happens when you write music together, we started sharing a lot of music with one another. We shared music that inspired us, songs that we wanted to emulate, and just songs we loved that bore no educational value to our own songwriting but we wanted to share anyway.

But towards the end of the year, the band chat became obsessed with one release in particular: the album Liminal by the small German outfit Entropy. It was hard to find, but that didn’t stop three-fifths of us from ordering it.

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Record #742: Beck – Hyperspace (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Since scoring the megahit “Loser” nearly thirty years ago, Beck Hansen has established himself as one of the most inventive—and inconsistent—musicians in the mainstream.

His prolific career has run the gamut from Technicolor hip hop to cartoon funk to sparse singer-songwriter ballads to trippy electronica to psychedelic ring leader to fuzzy alt-rock (he wrote all of the Sex Bob-Omb songs in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), grabbing elements from dub reggae, punk rock, jazz, and country music. The term “chameleon” is thrown around to a lot of artists, but Beck truly embodies that.

While he usually hits more than he misses, his extensive catalogue is not necessarily perfect. Identities are shed and revisited with varying success. But when he does it well, he really does it well. 

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Record #741: Alcest – Le Secret EP (2005/2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Even legends have to start somewhere. Through years of bouncing around the European black metal scene, Neige was dissatisfied with the ability of the kvlt to properly express what he had to say. Between other projects, he spent his time crafting otherworldly overtures that transcended the narrow confines of traditional black metal. In 2005, he released a pair of tracks under the name Alcest, a name he had used for another project as a teenager.

But Le Secret, that first EP, sounded nothing like the scorched-earth, burnt-church trad-black of his previous band. In fact, it didn’t sound much like anything else that had been released up to that point. The 2011 rerelease, reissued upon the success of the incredible Écailles de Lune, features rerecorded versions of each track with more resources to fulfill his original vision. But even in the face of the clearer versions, this EP demonstrates that Neige’s idea of what he meant Alcest to be has been unchanged from the beginning.

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Record #740: Gorillaz – Gorillaz (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It was supposed to be a joke, right?

No one would start a band fronted by cartoon characters who fight robots and ghosts and expect to be taken seriously, right? Especially not when that person already has an incredibly successful band that blurs the lines between Britrock and punk?

They were just supposed to bring in a couple underground rappers for some fun features, write some jokey tracks, and call it a day. They certainly weren’t supposed to eventually bring together legendary artists like Lou Reed, The Clash, Bobby Womack, Grace Jones, and Snoop Dogg to create multiple masterpieces. 

That seemed to be the plan when Gorillaz released their debut record on the world. Have some laughs, release a couple novelty singles, and call it a day. No one expected them to become one of the most impressive projects in the landscape of modern pop music.

But looking back at Gorillaz from the other side of their now legendary catalogue, it’s clear that this understated LP was hiding a bit more than they let on.

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Record #739: Fugazi – Instrument Soundtrack (1999)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few bands are as monolithic as Washington DC post-hardcore demigods Fugazi. For decades, they have been celebrated for their ethical convictions as well as the severity of their output. So it comes as “No Surprise” that the documentary about one of the best bands in the world would be one of the greatest music films ever made.

The documentary Instrument is a massive work, following Fugazi from their early days in the DC hardcore scene to the recording of End Hits, and it captures a side of Fugazi that runs counter to their reputation as self-serious punk monks—most notably that they lived in a house together with no heat, surviving on a Steady Diet of Nothing but rice. The film instead shows a group of guys who love making music and have a lot of fun doing it.

Likewise, the soundtrack to that film captures the same playful attitude—which isn’t a word typically used to describe Fugazi.

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

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

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 #737: Emma Ruth Rundle – Marked For Death (2016)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the last few months, my awareness of Emma Ruth Rundle has absolutely exploded. I was introduced to her most recent solo record On Dark Horses when I was assigned it while writing for a Belgium-based review site, and even then she was only introduced to me as the guitarist from Red Sparowes.

After almost a year and a half of knowing and loving just that album, I started to dig deeper, falling in love with her alternative/post-rock/psychedelic outfit Marriages, psych-folk outfit Nocturnes (someone sell me their vinyl copy plz), and her recent collaboration with doom metallurgists Thou.

But it’s taken me until a few weeks ago to listen to any of her other solo work, and once I did, the obsession continued. Marked For Death, her second song-based solo album—and regarded by many to be her best—is a crushing work of dark, brooding Southern gothic that showcases her stunning talent as both a songwriter and an ambient architect.

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Record #736: Chapterhouse – Whirlpool (1991)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

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)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

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)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

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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