Record #789: Manchester Orchestra – Simple Math (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I am a relative newcomer to Manchester Orchestra. Despite hearing their name for the greater part of a decade—often while they were touring with some of my favorite bands—I had never listened to them until last year. However, that proved fortuitous in a way, because my discovery happened just before the repress of Simple Math. My initial inquiries suggested that this album was the fan favorite, but high prices on the resale market caused me to ignore it for a bit…which explains my backward path through their discography.

Based on that trajectory, both A Black Mile to the Surface and Cope were far poppier and folkier than I was expecting based on their reputation. Simple Math, however, starts to bring the picture into focus a bit more, marking a turning point from the band’s scrappy origins to their big-budget sheen of newer albums.

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Record #788: Magnog – Magnog (1996)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

No matter how you feel about Mogwai, there’s no denying that their 1997 debut album Young Team totally changed the trajectory of post rock. That album practically wrote the blueprint for the cinematic, guitar heavy, climax-chasing music that has become synonymous with the genre.

But before Young Team? Post rock still existed, but it was far more abstract. Acts like Bark Psychosis, Talk Talk, Flying Saucer Attack, Tortoise, and even Stereolab were all described under the post rock umbrella without sounding very much like modern post rock (or each other).

Add to that diverse and amorphous list of bands the Washington outfit Magnog, whose brilliant 1996 self-titled was introduced to me earlier this year.

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Record #787: Drive Like Jehu – Yank Crime (1994)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I realized recently that despite hearing the name Drive Like Jehu dropped alongside many of my favorite post-hardcore, emo, and punk bands for decades, I had never knowingly listened to them. I had confided this to a group of friends, who encouraged me to buy this record immediately.

And though I hadn’t listened to this record before receiving this record yesterday, I’ve heard its impact for years. This is the kind of record with such an unmistakable influence on the scene that I have heard every scraping-guitared, ragged-voiced, overdriven-bass, angular-drummed second of this album filtered through other bands.

But even after nearly thirty years, this album sounds fresh and inventive, no matter how many other acts have tried to follow the same formula.

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Record #786: Black Swift – Desert Rain (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The bigger the world gets, the smaller it seems. Take for instance, German alt-rockers Black Swift. I was first introduced to them when my band opened for them on a show of one of their American tours, only to find that the lead singer, Sally Grayson, grew up a short drive away from my hometown.

Then, last week, she embarked on a solo tour that stopped in my living room (alongside ex-Sixpence None the Richer/Velour 100 alum Tess Wiley). It was there, stripped away from the fuzzy guitars and leather jacket drums, that the power of her voice and songwriting became inescapable.

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Record #785: Lantlôs – Wildhund (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Lantlôs is German for “homeless,” or “without homeland,” and that name is certainly apt. Throughout their career, chameleonic German metal band has been stretching the borders of heavy music, unconcerned with citizenship in any genre. Their earlier albums, such as .neon and Agape were indelible entries in the blackgaze canon, featuring Alcest’s Neige on vocals. 2014’s Melting Sun was a transcendent work that shed itself of any of heavy music’s trope to create an album that was blissful while still being entirely heavy.

Seven years later, Lantlôs returns with Wildhund (German for “Wild Dog”), an album that uses all the same sonic textures to create what is almost a pop record. And even with all the band names they’ve dropped in the press materials, Wildhund sounds as without peer or homeland as they ever have.

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Record #783: M83 – DeadCities, RedSeas&LostGhosts (2003)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Before the double-album pop masterpiece that was Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming brought them widespread acclaim, M83 was an obscure, mostly instrumental act that blurred the line between shoegaze, post rock, and electronica.

On paper, the transition from experimental instrumental band to Billboard Charting Pop Group seems like it would yield albums that sound like completely different bands. However, the group’s sense of composition gives Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts the same sort of emotional storytelling and cinematic soundscapes that made Hurry Up such a huge hit.

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Record #782: Lush – Spooky (1992)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For all the affection that early 90s shoegaze gets across the blogosphere, most of that attention is given to a very small number of bands. Namely, this attention is given to My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive (I’ve recently noticed that Ride, the third member of the longstanding Shoegaze Trinity, has been ignored or maligned by modern listeners).

And while these two powerhouses may be the most indelible members of the Scene that Celebrates Itself, there’s a lot of gold to glean in the history of the genre. Loveless aside, there are plenty of bands who offered the lush atmospheres and, otherworldly, dare I say spooky, melodies that are synonymous with shoegaze.

Take for instance, London fourpiece Lush and their debut album Spooky, which is both of those things.

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Record #781: Lungfish – Love Is Love (2003)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For much of my life as a fan of punk, hardcore, and emo music, I have come to trust Dischord Records almost implicitly. The Ian MacKaye-founded DC label has released many of my favorite bands of the 80s and 90s, including Rites of Spring, Jawbox, Minor Threat, and of course, Fugazi. Their roster is filled with bands that practically defined post-hardcore and emo without ever falling into cliche.

And so it’s strange to me that it took me until this year to hear of Lungfish. Even among the Dischord catalog, the Baltimore art rock band sounds alien and a little unsettling—yet strangely beautiful at the same time, like a moment of spiritual transcendence.

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Record #780: Low – C’Mon (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

On paper, slowcore giants Low don’t seem like the most obvious candidates for an Americana album. This is especially true for those of us who came to the band through the glitchy, atmospheric noise project Double Negative and worked their way backwards through their sparse soundscapes.

And while this album and Double Negative are as dissimilar to one another as anything else in the Low catalog, C’Mon delivers the same sort of minimalist compositions, just augmented by lap steels, fiddles, banjos instead of effects pedals and synthesizers.

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