Reviews

Record #717: Deftones – Ohms (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

It took me a while to get into the Deftones. The ebbs and flow of my opinion of them are well-documented on my social media: a few years ago, I took it upon myself to figure out how I felt about them once and for all, and dove headlong into their discography, taking detailed track by track notes of each album, which shift between aggressive alternative metal and dreamy shoegaze. Their discography sometimes feels like a fight between these extremes, heavy riffs sitting uneasily against the more billowing songs on the tracklist.

But here, Deftones frontman and admitted The Cure fanboy Chino Moreno opens the record singing, “I’ve finally achieved balance.” And then the band spends an entire album proving that they’ve one just that. Over thirty years into their career, Ohms might be the most cohesive and consistent record in their catalog.

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Record #716: An Autumn For Crippled Children – Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

By now, long time readers will understand that I have an incredible weakness for heavy music that plays with more delicate elements. My collection is filled with these sorts of experiments, from Alcest to Zeal & Ardor—projects that hold tight to the crushing catharsis of heavy metal, but don’t shy away from adopting a sense of gentleness.

An Autumn For Crippled Children’s breakthrough album, Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love is an absolutely staggering example of this kind of music that is equal parts ear splittingly vicious and heart throbbingly sentimental.

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Record #714: James Taylor – Greatest Hits (1976)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the summer of 2006, I was between my freshman and sophomore years of college. With no job and few friends left in my home town, I spent most of the summer driving across Michigan, crashing in friends’ living rooms (or kitchen floor, in one instance), occasionally happening on open mic nights or jam sessions or campfires where the acoustic guitar in my backseat would be of use.

My vehicle in those days was a late 90s Chrysler Town & Country that I inherited from my mom when she upgraded. The once mighty stock sound system was now neutered, its CD player rendered useless. Driving between cities, finding strong (and listenable) radio stations proved impractical.

All I had was a tape deck, and a garage sale copy of James Taylor’s Greatest Hits on cassette. Such was my soundtrack for that summer, and many months in between (it may have stayed in the deck as long as two years).

And while I usually pass on Greatest Hits compilations, when I found this the other day, I had to take it—and not just for the memories.

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Record #713: Citizen – Everybody Is Going to Heaven (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As closely as young me followed emo, post hardcore, and the various other splinter groups in the broad punk umbrella, I lost touch somewhere for a while. Personally, I blame the Third Wave of emo, with its ranks of guylinered front men who were more concerned with fashion and deals with Hot Topic than they were with the music.

So aloof was I that I almost  completely missed several great bands—the Emo Revival, “the Wave,” and other scenes that resurrected the best parts of the music I grew up with with sincerity and skill.

I’ve seen Citizen’s name (and albums) for almost a decade now. But it took finding this album in my local used shop to spur my curiosity to finally pull them up on Spotify.

And boy, am I ever glad I did.

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Record #712: CATERPILLARS – Where Shadows Go To Speak (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

A couple years ago, a friend invited me to join a Facebook group he had started called “Midwest Emoposting.” It has since grown to many thousand members, but in its humble beginnings, there were precious few of us.

As expected, the group didn’t just attract music fans alone, but also a number of musicians. Every so often, there would be a post by a member promoting their own band. Admittedly, I often ignored these posts, as the songs felt like lackluster American Football copies. But one day, a man named Stephen O’Sicky posted about his band, CATERPILLARS, and my first reaction was, “wait…this is actually good.”

Since then, a lot has changed. CATERPILLARS and my own band SPACESHIPS are now label mates on Friend Club Records, and we both released new full lengths a couple weeks apart (another friend from that group did the cover art).

Said full length is Where Shadows Go to Speak, a super solid collection of songs that are at once ethereal, emotive, and powerful.

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Record #711: American Arson – A Line in the Sand (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Last year at Audiofeed, I accidentally found myself spending an awful lot of time near the American Arson merch table. They were situated in the shade right between the main stage and the impromptu stage where many of my friends (and my own projects) had claimed slots, and so as I killed time between sets, I talked a fair amount with Jesse and Evan, the only two members of American Arson.

When the time came for their set, they had already described  their sound to me, but descriptions alone could not have prepared me for the blistering onslaught of hardcore energy, lush walls of sound, intricate compositions, and singalong choruses—pulled off by two people using a combination of live loops and samples.

But as their recent full length proves, their appeal goes far beyond the spectacle of watching them build these songs live. A Line in the Sand captures every single element that drew my ear to them in the first place—both musically and personally.

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Record #710: June of 44 – Four Great Points (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the mid 1960s, a bunch of rock and roll bands discovered free jazz, and their minds were blown. The resulting explosion would lead to psychedelic and progressive rock, as seen in bands like The Byrds, King Crimson, and The Beatles, among others.

In the 90s, a similar movement happened with hardcore and punk bands experiencing similar mind-blowing revelations. Themselves inspired by jazz, Krautrock, and proto-post rock like Talk Talk or Bark Psychosis, they twisted the crashing catharsis of their native genres into what would be known as math rock (which is very different from the twinkly finger tapping that is called math rock today).

The most noted example of this shift is post-hardcore outfit Slint’s 1991 album Spiderland. But that album (or the mixture of influences that created it) was the forerunner of a much larger scene. And after Slint’s dissolution, June of 44 may have been one of the most respectable standard bearers for the movement.

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Record #710: Circus Trees – Sakura (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Among music snob circles, teenage girls are a common punching bag.

Musicians with largely young, female audiences are relentlessly mocked. The tween fangirl is a common caricature of vapid music listeners. Overly sentimental love songs are often dismissed as trying to hit the 13-19 female demo.

But if teenage girls are so lame, how can the teen sisters in Circus Trees rock so hard?

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Record #709: Dashboard Confessional – The Swiss Army Romance (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

While The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most was one of the albums that kickstarted my emo phase, The Swiss Army Romance is the one that cemented it. While I probably gave each of them equal play time in my Discman, Swiss Army was my clear favorite.

True, the two albums have nearly identical aesthetics, and the songwriting is of the same quality across both discs. But there’s something about the completely stripped down sonic palette of Swiss Army that makes these songs more effective than the full band treatments that would fill the track lists of later albums.

Dashboard’s main appeal was its rawness. These songs are almost too intimate to invite anyone else into, begging to be sung (or screamed) entirely on one’s own. And apart from a couple background voices, this album offers that rawness in a purer form than the project would ever attain again.

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