The first time anyone sees Narrow/Arrow, their eyes are drawn to the same thing…Cody Nicolas’ second guitar, clamped to a keyboard stand in front of him. Everyone speculates as to its purpose, but no one is prepared when they see him play both guitars in tandem.
Naturally, that visual is completely lost in an audio format—which is why it’s a good thing that Narrow/Arrow relies more on quality songwriting and composition than on live gimmicks.
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.
These days, I generally treat my record budget with a level of judiciousness. Every dollar is precious, so I typically don’t make any purchases without thoroughly vetting each album in my wantlist, listening and relistening until I feel confident enough to pull the trigger.
But every once in a great while, I’ll take a risk, such as the 5-for-$25 random bundle from Topshelf Records that landed me this record and Mock Orange (among others). But if this were the only worthwhile record in the bunch, it still might have been worth it.
The second installment of My Epic’s two-EP project finds the group unleashing the catharsis that they spent Ultraviolet holding back. And once they let go, they don’t stop.
While Ultraviolet found the group restraining themselves, Violent finds them as heavy and unhinged as they’ve ever been.
After hearing My Epic’s name in the periphery of my awareness for years, the project that finally drew my attention was Ultraviolet, one half of a pair of EPs.
While their M.O. has always drawn heavily on experimentation, the Ultraviolet/Violence project finds them restricting themselves to specific elements of their palette.
Ultraviolet, the softer of the two, leans heavy into dream pop, electronica, and ambient post rock, without losing any of their edge.
In 1998, the Appleseed Cast released The End of the Ring Wars. It was a shockingly mature work for a debut, offering a stunning mix of pop punk hooks, post rock compositions, and hardcore energy.
But it’s especially more impressive when you realize that they’ve done so with an unparalleled consistency. Across their catalog, there are no lulls, no dips, no records that their fanbase would rather just ignore. In fact, if you get five Appleseed Cast fans together and ask for their favorite record, you might get five different answers, each with respectable arguments for their choice.
I say all of this to drive home an important statement.
The Fleeting Light of Impermanence might be their best ever.
If nothing else, no one can accuse Moving Mountains of putting out the same record over and over again.
Across their three full-lengths, the Purchase, NY outfit visits many of the same sonic touchstones without ever repeating themselves. Their self-titled draws from the same wells of post rock, emo, and indie, but with a marked maturity.
A lot changed in the four years between Pneuma and Moving Mountains’ second record.
Most notably, what was once a studio-only two-piece was now a proper full band. And it shows. Compositionally, Waves has a heft that its predecessor lacked. But that comes at a little bit of a cost.
For the longest time, I wrote La Dispute off as a mewithoutYou ripoff band. Who else was mixing hardcore poetry with spoken word (shouted word?) poetry?
It was only after hearing the subdued, almost jazzy “Woman (reading)” off of 2014’s Rooms of the House that I gave them any real attention at all.
And while that album had moments that lived in that same sparse space, it spent most of its time in a passionate, throat-ripping hardcore. Panorama on the other hand, stretches their softer side into a full album—and I couldn’t be happier. Continue reading
After emo godfathers Sunny Day Real Estate disbanded (again), three of the four original members started a new band called The Fire Theft.
They said often and loudly that they were a completely different project, inspired more by rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd than the punk bands that inspired SDRE.
But listening to the record, it’s pretty clear that the distinction is almost purely nominal—especially considering that this vinyl reissue uses the exact same typeface as Diary and The Rising Tide (and the same producer as Diary and LP2).