alternative rock

Record #953: Lift to Experience – The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It seems no matter how deep I dig (and boy, do I dig deep sometimes), there’s always some seminal release I’ve missed—even in the exact scenes I’ve been trudging through. Take for example Lift to Experience, whom I had never heard of before a review referred to my own band as “We have Lift to Experience at home” (a favorable comparison, I hope).

I’m constantly fascinated by the points of reference other people have when they hear us, so I checked out this band that we were purportedly ripping off. Truth be told, it seems like the only immediate comparison is our shared devotion to overdriven guitars and reverb pedals. But when I divorced them from the comparison, I found a wonderfully idiosyncratic record that lands directly in that sweet spot between shoegaze and post rock that I love so much—bad hip hop parody artwork aside.

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Record #827: Gypsum – Gypsum (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Working for a music site, I’m constantly inundated with press releases and review submissions. After a while, it all starts to bleed together, like a never-ending Pandora station with messed up seeds that plays in the background.

But every once in a while, something grabs my attention, like a nugget of gold in the muddy silt of a riverbed. As a mineral, Gypsum may not be very valuable, but the band that bears its name was enough to make me feel like an old timey prospector.

Their debut record came across my inbox and, after ignoring it until the week it was out, I was instantly enraptured by the genre-bending songwriting, rich atmospheres, kinetic grooves, and engrossing harmonies.

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Record #797: Black Swift – See Me Human (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When you release a record produced by a legend like Sylvia Massy, you run the risk of undermining your previous releases. When the core of your musical essence is uncovered and enhanced by such a skilled architect, it might make the releases before that feel cluttered and unfocused.

Might is the keyword there, especially in the case of Black Swift’s See Me Human, which I’m coming to backwards from their fantastic Desert Rain EP. While it doesn’t have the sonic clarity that Massy brought to that disc, See Me Human has the same passionate songwriting and raw rock and roll, giving it more than enough clout to stand on its own.

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Record #793: Deafheaven – Infinite Granite (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The backlash from “A Great Mass of Color” came so quickly, they might as well have been included in the press release. Black metal purists were quick to point to the undistorted guitars, lack of blast beats, and (gasp) clean vocals as proof that Deafheaven weren’t kvlt.

Subsequent singles rebutted the idea that it might be a one-off. And now that the album is out, we can see for ourselves that this softer palette weaves itself through the entire album. Even longtime fans have turned on them, saying this record sounds like an entirely different band. They’ve lost the plot. They’ve sold out.

And the whole time, I’ve said the same thing to them: besides the vocals, this is what Deafheaven has sounded like the whole time. 

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Record #790: Manchester Orchestra – The Million Masks of God (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As I have mentioned many times before, I somehow went a decade and a half without hearing Manchester Orchestra, despite hearing their name constantly. I decided to change this last year and instantly became a fan.

And just in time too, because shortly after that point, they released The Million Masks of God, a dazzling technicolor spectacular that is as catchy, aggressive, lush, heavy, and emotive as anything they’ve ever released.

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Record #651: Jet Black – L’Ère du Vide (2018)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As broad as I like to think my musical tastes are, there are times that I might actually be pretty predictable.

Take for example my love of dark, guitar heavy, shoegaze inspired indie rock. So infamous am I for my love of this aesthetic that around Christmas, a friend messaged me this album on Spotify saying I would probably like it.

Later that same day, another friend sent me a vinyl copy as a present.

They were both very correct.

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Record #631: The Ataris – Welcome the Night (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For an artist, growth is a funny thing.

On the one hand, no one wants to hear the same record released year after year. On the other, what happens when an artist grows into something unrecognizable?

Such is the plague of pop-punk demigods The Ataris’ fifth full-length, which was such a sharp left turn that the Wikipedia page says that “the group abandoned the pop-punk label.”

And while this record might seem like a huge curveball to anyone looking for So Long Astoria, Pt. 2, the sonic legacy of this record can be traced all the way back to their earliest records.

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