Reviews

Record #989: Do Make Say Think – You, You’re a History In Rust (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I have spoken at length about the opposing camps within the history of post rock: Team Mogwai and Team Tortoise. It seems that by and large, Team Mogwai has been the victors. These days, the term generally refers to the dramatic, climax-chasing narratives of bands like Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, and MONO.

But across the pond from the Glaswegians, you have Tortoise, whose compositions are more groove oriented, taking nods from jazz, Krautrock, and dub. Bands like Collections of Colonies of Bees, Bark Psychosis, and Do Make Say Think.

As much as I love the emotionality and bombast of the climaxcore side of post rock, I often find myself being drawn to the more cerebral side. So when I found this copy of DMST’s celebrated You, You’re a History In Rust in a used bin, I snagged it without a thought.

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Record #988: blink-182 – Cheshire Cat (1995)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not sure how it’s taken me this long to add this record to my collection. Back when Enema of the State shockingly wound up on the Top 40, I was a blossoming punk who was a firm adherent that any band’s earlier stuff was always better.

While I’ve since learned I was wrong about that, you can probably understand why Cheshire Cat would have solidified that idea for me. While its decidedly less mature than their pop breakthrough and lacks the technical drumming prowess of Travis Barker, this record nails blink’s juvenile humor, teenage angst, and raw energy in a way that they never quite topped.

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Record #987: 84 Tigers – Time in the Lighthouse (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not reviewing records for other sites quite as much these days, but when I did, it was often a huge exercise in self control to not buy ever record I listened to. It’s still a mystery to me how I would decide to buy some records but not others, but it was not a foolproof system, and sometimes I erred.

One of the more grievous errors was to not buy Time in the Lighthouse, the debut of Michigan post-hardcore 84 Tigers, an act whose members’ resumes include Small Brown Bike and Swellers. In fact, I bought this record only after re-reading my own glowing review.

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Record #986: DVNE – Voidkind (2024)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

One of the biggest misconceptions is that metalheads aren’t completely huge nerds. Take for instance the UK outfit DVNE, who offer up a powerful blend of progressive metal, sludge, and psychedelia that is largely based on the writings of Frank Herbert. Their Bandcamp URL is even Songs From Arrakis.

But however nerdy they may be, there’s nothing wimpy or asthmatic about them. Voidkind, their third full-length, is a display of power worthy of Shai Hulud himself.

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Record #985: Benton Falls – Guilt Beats Hate (2003)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Very few releases had as profound an impact on my teenaged music tastes than Deep Elm Records’ Emo Is Awesome, Emo is Evil, Vol 1. And few tracks on that compilation had the impact of Benton Falls “Angel on Hiatus,” a shapeshifting track that traverses the full spectrum of emo’s moods and dynamics with a powerful climax.

But like many of the bands discovered through that comp (see also: The Appleseed Cast), I didn’t dive too deeply into the records that provided those tracks. While many of the songs from Guilt Beats Hate ended up on various emo mix CD-Rs, it’s taken me until just now to buy a proper copy. The record has lost none of its potency though.

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Record #984: As We Draw – Lines Breaking Circles (2010)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I usually try to be pretty discerning with my record purchases. My wantlist always exceeds my budget, so I try to make sure that I’m completely sold on what I’m buying.

But every once in a while, I’ll come upon something like a $10 vinyl sale and just become a madman. I’ll spend an hour or more frantically scrolling, streaming the first few minutes of a record for a sample before making a gut decision.

And thus is how I ended up with Lines Breaking Circles, the debut record from As We Draw, a killer blend of screamo, black metal, hardcore, and sludge.

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Record #983: Narrow/Arrow – Asbestos Weak Hood (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Gimmicks are a tricky thing to do right. Most of the time, when a band has A Thing™, eventually their music starts serving the gimmick rather than the other way around (ex., Billy Joel, whose late-80s output was a pursuit for what would make the best music video). And honestly, it would be really easy to categorize Narrow/Arrow as a gimmick band and move on. Guitarist/vocalist Cody Nicolas usually plays two guitars simultaneously and every single one of their song titles is a pun.

And yet, they manage to escape all the trappings of their own gimmicks by offering earnestly moving songs and musicianship that’s impressive without ever being flashy. While Narrow/Arrow has been offering up a satisfying mixture of math rock and Midwest emo since their inception, they’ve never sounded more impressive—or more at ease—than on Asbestos Weak Hood.

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Record #982: Blushing – Sugarcoat (2024)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The last two times I’ve reviewed a Blushing record, I talked a lot about the tightrope that shoegaze acts have to walk between capturing the archetypal early 90s sounds of the genre and finding their own voice. By their third full length, Blushing walks this balance so deftly that mentioning it would be a moot point.

Sugarcoat offers up the same sweet, dreamy songcraft that the group has made their career on, but there’s a palpable confidence here. They’re even more fluent, and the vocabulary sounds more comfortable in their mouths.

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Record #981: ††† – Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

One of my favorite subgenres is Chino Moreno side project.

For all the praise he gets as a metal vocalist, the Deftones frontman has made a considerable amount of noise across the years about how his musical center is actually pretty far from metal, preferring acts like The Cure, Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, and the like.

This push and pull of Chino’s more melodic sensibilities to the band’s heaviness is a big part of what makes Deftones so compelling, but there’s something special that happens when he leaves his bandmates to experiment with other sounds. In fact, my own path to the Deftones started with Palms, his project with former Isis members.

But usually, these side projects are one offs. Until last year when his project Crosses released a completely delicious follow up.

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Record #980: Moodring – Stargazer (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

We all knew the nu-metal revival was inevitable. As soon as I started seeing Gen Z wearing wide-legged pants with fishnet tops, I knew it was dangerously close.

But I didn’t expect that it would come out of the shoegaze scene—or that I would be so into it.

Not that it got its hooks in me right away. When I first listened to this record—recommended to me after I got into Blanket—I got to the second or third track before turning it off. But after Loathe, vein.fm, and Fleshwater softened my initial resistance, I gave Stargazer another listen. And this time, it got me, and it got me good.

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