Reviews

Record #439: Grizzly Bear – Painted Ruins (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

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Any time I find myself in a conversation about how modern music is garbage, I always bring up Grizzly Bear. Veckatimest is a flawless record that deserves to be listed next to albums like Pet Sounds and Odyssey and Oracle. It was a breakthrough that netted them an invitation to tour with Radiohead.
Grizzly Bear might have been doomed to live the rest of their career in the shadow of one perfect record, but the records that have followed have been similarly glorious.
Shields saw the group exploring sparser arrangements and a more measured composition. But, the record had a hard time maintaining the bliss of the first few tracks. The last half slowed the tempo down to dangerous levels, and the record ended up being a little forgettable.

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Record #437: Deftones – White Pony (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
It seems fitting that in 2017, a year that saw me obsessively dive into the Deftones’ catalogue to determine if I like them or not (spoiler: I really, really, really, really do), it’s fitting that my last purchase of the year would be White Pony, the record most people regard as their magnum opus.
Listening to the melodic, shoegaze-influenced alternative metal of Koi No Yokan or Gore, there’s very little to suggest that Deftones was ever a rap-metal group. That trajectory is thanks to White Pony, the record that eschewed the nu-metal of their peers and becoming one of the best alt-metal bands in the business.
This change was in large part due to the group’s new emphasis on atmosphere and melody. Songs like “Digital Bath,” “Knife Prty,” and the eternal “Change (In the House of Flies)” made great use out of a quite-loud dynamic that became the blueprint for many of the group’s best songs. “Rx Queen,” “Teenager,” and the first half of “Pink Maggit” saw them using a quieter palette than ever before. “Teenager” even had electronic drums and acoustic guitars!
While there are no raps on this record, the band hadn’t completely shed their nu-metal skin. Some of the riffs are still drenched in hip-hop swagger—”Elite” in particular. But even these songs haven’t aged as poorly as most of their contemporaries. While songs like “Freak on a Leash” and “Nookie” sound like embarrassing time capsules, most of  White Pony sounds practically modern.
Which is good news, because I can’t stand rap rock anymore.

Record #436: The Cure – Disintegration (1989)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
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In a conversation with some fellow music nerds recently, it somehow came up that I had never spent much time with The Cure. I had picked up a copy of their 2004 self-titled album once in high school and listened to it maybe once or twice, but that was hardly an accurate picture of these 80s darlings.
My friend nearly demanded that I listen to Disintegration  that instant. And friends, it changed me.
I already have a deep love for 80s post punk. Joy Division and Cocteau Twins are staples of my collection. Disintegration hits every one of those buttons:  atmospheric synths, moody bass lines, and sparse guitar riffs set the stage for Robert Smith’s tortured croon.
At times, it’s deceptively poppy. You might even think that they’re happy. “Plainsong” opens the album with a major key anthem for the end of the world. “Pictures of You” sounds so triumphant that you’d be forgiven for not noticing how isolated Smith feels. The perennial classic “Lovesong” flips the formula a little bit, juxtaposing joyful lyrics to a minor key ballad.
They can only keep up the facade for so long, though. The second half of the album is all gloom, all the time. And it’s exactly what the Cure does best. “The Same Deep Water as You” is a nine-minute meditation on toxic codependency that sounds as beleaguered as its lyrics. The title track starts with a poppy drum beat, hinting for a moment that the gloom has lifted. But this beat sets the stage for one of the most harrowing tracks of the album. The album doesn’t return to a major key until the closing track, “Untitled,” a gentle major key ballad that feels like two friends holding eachother after a bridge collapse.
Which is apparently exactly what was happening to the Cure during this time. Smith was filled with dread as he looked forward to his thirtieth birthday, and his rejection of his sudden fame and internal tension within the band brought him into an existential crisis. And while these sorts of crises aren’t uncommon, it takes a rare artist to perfectly capture that feeling for others to experience. Robert Smith is that artist, and Disintegration is that feeling—71 minutes of ennui and alienation perfectly captured on tape and pressed to vinyl. A rightly-lauded masterpiece that I will not ignore any longer.
As a sidenote: I think I’ve isolated the reason why I’ve ignored the Cure so long. In middle school, I was a big fan of Adam Sandler’s The Wedding Singer. In the movie, he sings a song that he prefaces with, “when I wrote this, I was listening to the Cure a lot.” The song is a sad punky song with an angry, yelly chorus. Punk kid that I was, I loved it. I wanted more like that. The Cure reference made me think that this is what they sounded like. It was not. I lost interest.

Record #434: King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
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The sixties were a weird time. And it had the music to match.
Every band, from the Beatles to the Byrds to the Beach Boys, dabbled in making some of the weirdest music of their career. Every band had at least one psychedelic album—even perennial rock and roll heroes the Rolling Stones. But by 1969, most of them had moved on from the weirdness of psychedelia.
But nobody told King Crimson that.
Their debut, In the Court of the Crimson King, isn’t just a coattail-riding, trend-following copycat that happens to be late to the game. It is a magnum opus of psychedelia that is still rightly celebrated today. The opening track, “21st Century Schizoid Man” is a balls-to-the-wall freight train of horns and guitar noodling (that Kanye West sampled, strangely enough). It’s seven and a half minutes of frenzy.
But as it fades, the record never revisits that bombast again. Which it doesn’t need to. Most of the record is driven by subdued, exploring guitar lines and Mellotron. At times, it flirts pretty heavily with jazz fusion (high praise). “Epitaph” and “The Court of the Crimson King” are epic ballads that manage to capture a dramatic scope that most psychedelic acts were devoid of. And it does that through extended arrangements and experimental composition.
While many psychedelic bands would eventually evolve into progressive rock, In the Court of the Crimson King manages to ride the line between them. As a result, this record is an absolute gem.

Record #433: Bailey William and the Cherranes – Emerson (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
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Let me tell you a little bit about my friend Bailey Williams.
The first time we met, she was just 16. She was opening for a punk show, armed only with an acoustic guitar. She scraped the strings and wailed with the abandon that for a moment I felt like I took a trip to 1960s Greenwich Village.
She was a force of nature, and it was immediately apparent. It didn’t take long for her to enlist a band behind her. But there was some talk amongst the local scene that perhaps her storm would be tempered by the expansion in her soundscape—that it would tame her rawness to a more “palatable,” and lukewarm sound.
But then, they dropped Emerson.
Any worries that Bailey’s edges would be dulled by introducing more instruments are completely assuaged. This album is a storm of Moogs, electric guitars, and keyboards. And in the eye of the storm is Bailey and her acoustic guitar, playing with just as much grit and fire as she ever did.
Which isn’t to mean that this is an angry album. By no means. This is an album filled with great pop tunes and love songs. But there is a chaos to those songs that creates a consistently engaging and powerful listening experience.

Record #432: Elder – Reflections of a Floating World (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
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Metal is a strange beast. For all of its tropes and archetypes, there is as nearly as much diversity under the metal umbrella as there is in pop music.
And while many metal bands focus narrowly in on their niche, Elder sprawls out in all directions.
Reflections of a Floating World runs the gamut from Sabbath-y doom metal, ISIS-esque post metal, Pink Floydish progressive rock, and some straightforward Krautrock.—often in the same song. With the exception of the singularly focused “Sonntag,” every song here is a massive, shapeshifting epic of cosmic proportions.
But despite the scope of its massive sprawl, the record never seems unfocused. No moment feels out of place. Rather, Elder has created a sonic world that is wholly its own, exploring each unique region throughout the record. It’s a world I want to get lost in, and maybe even my favorite album from 2017.