Three years ago, I fell in love with Elder’s Reflections of a Floating World, an interplanetary blend of doom metal, psychedelic rock, Krautrock, and prog.
Their fifth record Omens takes Reflections’ more meandering elements and lets them really breathe. Synths and electric pianos are just as prominent as crushing guitars, creating an album that feels more Rush than Black Sabbath.
And the results are stunning.
There are three words that are almost guaranteed to make me pay attention to a band: “Emma. Ruth. Rundle.”
Outside of her darkly beautiful doom-folk solo material, she also has a number of other projects, such as the post-metal-meets-Pink-Floyd of Red Sparowes, the psychedelic alt-folk of Nocturnes, and this, the dark, grooving, vibey Marriages (featuring Andrew Clinco, a.k.a. Deb Demure of Drab Majesty on drums).
2015’s Salome, to date the only full length from Marriages, combines all of my favorite parts of Rundle’s separate projects into a single work that is as gorgeous as it is crushing.
And so, we move from a record by Explosions in the Sky to a band named after an Explosions in the Sky song.
Over the last several years, there’s been revival of sorts in bands realizing the power of loud guitar amps and dirt pedals. Cloakroom seems to be at the front of the pack of this type of revival, with bands like Lume and Teenage Wrist shortly behind. It’s a reminder of what bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins so popular, mixed with a heaping dose of My Bloody Valentine tossed in, with Black Sabbath for flavor.
Michigan’s Greet Death is another great new act in this crop of fuzz-loving guitar bands, and they are coming for the crown. Continue reading
As far as emotional, instrumental, climactic post rock is concerned, Explosions in the Sky is about as close to the Platonic ideal that you can get. Barring their most recent (and mostly electronic) The Wilderness, their catalog is filled with the kind of gorgeous, evocative, almost storytelling kind of music that Mogwai pioneered and throngs of post rock bands have tried to emulate.
But truth be told, as much as I love the albums on either side of this, I’m not too familiar with The Earth Is Not… In fact, I actually bought this one on accident.
Given their nearly flawless track record though, I’m not mad about it.
Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s no denying that Radiohead is among the most celebrated outfits in musical history. Much of the talk of their work is centered around two of the five members—singer Thom Yorke and multi-instrumentalist and composer Johnny Greenwood.
However, there is a hidden gem in their shadows in Ed O’Brien. For years, he has been relegated to the background, getting even less attention than Phil Selway, often mentioned in conversations of the best drummers in the world, and even Colin Greenwood, whose bass lines are undeniably groovy.
But now, he has emerged with Earth, his first solo record. And it’s pretty quickly apparent that we need to be apologize for ignoring him all this time.
There was once a point in my life where most of my music was discovered through Pitchfork.com’s Best New Music section. Trashy hipster hellscape Pitchfork may be, I made a number of great discoveries there, such as Grizzly Bear, Diiv, St. Vincent, and even Deafheaven.
I mention this only because for the life of me, I don’t understand how I missed this album when it came out, as highly regarded as it was by the publication that I held in such high regard. I know I gave it some listen, but there must have been some sort of denseness to it that demanded a closer inspection that I always intended to give it, but it was always just outside my grasp.
But a few days ago, I decided it was finally time for that deep dive, and what a rewarding dive it’s been.
A few weeks ago, my love of Emma Ruth Rundle’s masterpiece On Dark Horses and her post metal outfit Red Sparowes finally bade me to listen to her psych-metal/dark-indie project Marriages (review coming in a few days).
And as I was digging in, I discovered that the drummer of Marriages has his own project—the moody, atmospheric new wave/dark wave/cold wave outfit Drab Majesty. And at my first listen to the project’s sophomore record Demonstration, it grabbed me in its painted-nailed, ruffle-shirted, androgynous arms and wrapped me up in a hold that was half hug, half Anaconda Vise.
My fifteenth birthday was a formative one. While on vacation with my family, I made the conscious decision to stop spiking my hair and instead push it forward. I decided to put away my past-the-knee shorts and skate shoes in favor of slim fit jeans and Chuck Taylors. And when given free reign at a CD shop, I bought Dashboard Confessional’s The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most (and the first two Juliana Theory EPs) instead of the earlier Blink-182 albums that I had been eyeing for a while.
I had weighed the options, and decided: I was going to be an emo kid.
And over the next year, Dashboard Confessional would be central to that process. I absolutely devoured the first two albums, detuning my guitar to Chris Carabba’s open chords and training my voice to yelp similarly. I was even reminded recently of a short-lived solo project called Just My Luck that aped every part of his own solo work.
But unfortunately, those two records are nearly impossible to find on vinyl. Copies of Swiss Army Romance go for over $250. The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most has never been pressed (though his next two Vagrant releases were reissued a couple years ago?) And so, I found myself with no choice than to swallow my pride and buy this uneven and, at times, bizarre compilation.
Few songwriters are as prolific and profound as Conor Oberst. In fact, it was his album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning that first convinced me of the power of a songwriter and an acoustic guitar (and turned me from a punk rocker to a folk singer for a few years in college).
Outside of his work with Bright Eyes, though, nothing has grabbed me. Desaparecidos was a great punk band, but that’s never what I listen to him for. The one-off supergroup Monsters of Folk was a supreme disappointment (apart from “Dear God”). The Mystic Valley Band was pleasant enough, but failed to make much of an impression.
But then there’s Better Oblivion Community Center, his songwriting duo with the equally profound and prolific Phoebe Bridgers, which is his best work in almost a decade.
When you’re exploring new music, occasionally you come across love-at-first-site records—albums that immediately latch themselves to your psyche when you first hear them. Then, there are slow burns—records that take a little more exploration, but fully envelop you in their sonic arms.
Then, there are great, unknowable beasts: eldritch albums with a hundred eyes and a thousand tentacles that never stop swirling long enough for you to get a good look at them. You are left only with a roaring, gaping impression of the unearthly monstrosity. Every glance uncovers additional layers, peeling themselves away endlessly to unrecognizable shapes until it isn’t the album you thought you listened to the last time.
Mirrored has been one of these albums for me: an ancient, Lovecraftian record that changes color and shape with every repeated listen. But after a decade of trying to wrap my head around it, I’ve finally embraced the madness.