a realm of fanciful unicorns

A Whole Passel of Albums That Matter

13 Jan 2012 by tom

Let’s cut to the chase—2011 was a terrific year for music. Many were its highlights; few were its disappointments. I can ask for no more than that. In the grand tradition, allow me to present, in dramatically-ordered fashion, my favorite albums of the year.

10. Tombs – Path of Totality

Any album that kicks off with a beast like “Black Hole of Summer” is aces in my book. It’s to Tombs’ considerable credit that the album scarcely lets up over the course of its twelve tracks, yet doesn’t wear out its welcome. The riffs are consistently huge, and the feel of the album as dour as any in recent memory. In other words, perfect for me.

9. Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

At this stage of their career, it would be boring to note that Mogwai have given unto us yet another quietly brilliant album if that album weren’t so goddamn good. Despite the ominous title, Hardcore feels more upbeat than 2008’s The Hawk is Howling. It’s relaxed, but not relaxing. I would have more to say about it, but I’ve only just gotten it.

8. Boris – Attention Please

Boris and I have come a long way since I bailed out of one of their concerts after four songs—due as much to the moshing assholes as to the somewhat soporific performance. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate the willfully obtuse delights Boris provides as they careen from genre to genre, sound to sound on their stupidly prolific musical journey. Attention Please is, to me, by far the better of the two albums Boris dropped on the same day early in 2011. It ranges from atmospheric weirdness (on the eponymous opener) to ambient soundscapes (“You”) and gorgeous, raw, energetic rock (“Spoon”). None of the songs sounds particularly similar, yet every one sounds natural for Boris. Well done.

7. And So I Watch You From Afar – Gangs

A confident sophomore album that retains all of the passion of their self-titled debut and adds a considerable degree of execution. The track-to-track flow is masterful; witness the anthemic opener “Beautifuluniversemasterchampion,” moving to the riotous “Gangs (Starting Never Stopping),” and on into the menacing “Search:Party:Animal.” Centerpiece “7 Billion People All Alive at Once” is alternatingly lush and playful, two feelings one doesn’t expect to get from a band that supposedly plays “math rock.” Album closer “Lifeproof” is worth the price of admission by itself. Can’t wait to see what they do next.

6. Asobi Seksu – Fluorescence

I’m very happy to see Asobi Seksu return to form after 2009’s disappointing Hush. While Fluorescence doesn’t quite see the band attain the lofty heights of 2006’s Citrus, it’s nevertheless a damn fine album. Yuki Chikudate turns in her best vocals to date, although I’m not wild about the production on them. James Hanna’s guitar work boldly recalls My Bloody Valentine, and similarly manages to hold up quite well. Asobi Seksu can be maddening—Fluorescence contains some terrible missteps (“My Baby” is throwaway pop fluff; “Leave the Drummer Out There” takes a bizarre turn through lounge music; and “Deep Weird Sleep” is a pointless instrumental interlude that frankly sounds like it belongs in a Zelda game and leads into the similarly pointless “Counterglow”), but they can hit such amazing highs. As a sucker for shoegaze, masterpieces like “Ocean” and “Pink Light” were guaranteed to slay me, but the album also features a couple of perfect dreampop pieces in “Perfectly Crystal” and “Trance Out.” The ability to swing so easily between those two types of songs has always been Asobi Seksu’s strong point; if they could just drop the filler, I have no doubt they could put together another album for the ages.

5. Sloan – The Double Cross

Sloan shouldn’t be this good anymore. The Double Cross is the tenth album in their twenty-year run. Chris Murphy’s lyrics are somehow getting worse, and Patrick Pentland’s songs aren’t getting better. Yet they continue to hit it out of the park with tightly constructed songs that manage to sound comfortably familiar, yet more nuanced than what they’ve done before. In the Sloan democracy, my vote has always been with Andrew Scott, and here he’s responsible for the album’s brilliant penultimate track, “Traces.” That said, the real standout on The Double Cross is Jay Ferguson’s “Green Gardens, Cold Montreal.” Sorry, Andy.

4. Cave In – White Silence

A triumph. Their first album since 2005’s Perfect Pitch Black, the opening of White Silence literally screams with confidence as Cave In shed the major-label-induced alternative rock of their middle period for a return to the brash, aggressive sound of their youth. The alternative influence isn’t lost, however; for all the dissonance and screaming (of which there is plenty on highlights “White Silence” and “Serpents”), the album is packed with tuneful, melodic brilliance amidst all the cacophony—“Sing My Loves” is probably the best example, and “Summit Fever” packs a slew of monster riffs that skew more Chavez than Converge. And I can’t say enough about closer “Reanimation,” a plaintive, beautiful capstone on a most excellent return.

3. Jesu – Ascension

I had this album pegged as the year’s best long before it even came out, and it very nearly was. Such is my confidence in Justin K. Broadrick’s genius, and, despite my high expectations, he always delivers. Of all his various projects, Jesu is the one that appeals to me most, with its shoegaze-meets-sludge-metal sound that in Broadrick’s mind constitutes “pop.” The opening trio of songs (“Fools,” “Birth Day,” and “Sedation”) is as good as any Jesu has put together, and the rest of the album is dotted with some perfect tracks (“Brave New World”; “Small Wonder”; “December”; and “Ascension”) and some merely average ones (“Broken Home”; “Black Lies”; “King of Kings”). As you can tell from the track titles, this is a bleak record, and I wouldn’t suggest it as an entry point to the Jesu catalog. That said, Broadrick is doing amazing things under the Jesu moniker; tackle the Silver EP and Conqueror LP first, then come wallow with me in Ascension.

2. True Widow – As High As the Highest Heavens and from the Center to the Circumference of the Earth

The guitar sound that opens this album is the stuff of dreams. No album this year created more with less. I had intended at this point to discuss the standout tracks, but that would be silly. This album is a booming, brooding masterpiece from start to finish. It must be heard.

1. Russian Circles – Empros

Russian Circles are the most exciting band going. It’s that simple. As with my favorite album of 2010 (Torche’s Songs for Singles), the only criticism I can level at Empros is that, at six songs running forty-one minutes, it’s not nearly long enough. Where their previous two albums (Station and Geneva, also masterpieces) saw the band slowly evolving its sound, Empros is a quantum goddamn leap forward. “309” opens the album with a daringly raw, driving riff that’s a far cry from the sheen of Geneva, and the song manages quite a few turns before fading out in first menacing, then gentle fashion.

Indeed, Empros is full of twists and turns that I didn’t know Russian Circles had in them. Mike Sullivan’s opening guitar figure on “Mladek” runs away with the Riff of the Year trophy, and earns it even more when the same figure returns two-thirds of the way through to herald the song’s descent into a shrieking, nearly black-metal conclusion. “Schipol” spends a leisurely three minutes wandering through a folk-apocalypse before erupting. “Atackla” also develops patiently, building around Dave Turncrantz’s peerless drumming. “Batu” is all atmosphere—until the 3:50 mark, when it resets to cramped, muted guitars; military-precise drums; and a strident, declaratory bass line. This, too, begins to build, back into the atmosphere, until collapsing abruptly into four minutes of gentle ambiance.

Ambiance that leads into the much-ballyhooed appearance, for the first time ever in a Russian Circles song, of vocals, on finale “Praise Be Man.” That the song, so quiet, beautiful, and simply-arranged, manages to fit so perfectly at the end of what is unquestionably the band’s heaviest and most complex work to date is remarkable. It’s also fitting that the vocals are delivered by bassist Brian Cook, whose excellent playing is easy to overlook amidst the flashier work of Sullivan and Turncrantz. “Praise Be Man” is emblematic of the band itself—far more than the sum of its parts, regardless of how brilliant those parts are.

Honorable Mentions

More than ten great albums in a year? Madness! Yet it is so. Foremost among the almost-best is the excellent sophomore album from Helms Alee, Weatherhead. It’s a big step forward from their rough-but-enjoyable debut (Night Terror, which I nevertheless recommend) and hopefully portends great things for the future. Also worthy of recommendation is that other Boris album, Heavy Rocks. It’s…well, it’s a Boris album. Heavier than Attention Please and quite good, indeed. Finally, ex-ISIS bassist Jeff Caxide, under the moniker Crone, released a splendid, formless ambient album, the aptly titled Endless Midnight.

Also, Battles would probably have made the list if I had yet gotten around to listening to Gloss Drop. One of these days.

And what of the year’s disappointments? One still manages to rate an honorable mention: Mastodon’s The Hunter. I know, I know, it’s their “pop” album and it’s all “concise” and whatnot. It’s no Blood Mountain or Crack the Skye, and it doesn’t try to be. And, really, it’s quite good. I can understand a band taking a step back from monster concept albums, letting their hair down, and just rocking out. Ultimately, unfortunately, The Hunter is good, but not great.

The Future!

I dare not hope that 2012 will deliver so strongly, but there are promising things on the horizon. Pelican have announced a new EP. Jakob, too, have announced a new LP. The oft-rumored new Mars Volta album should finally arrive. Caspian are planning a new release. Most promising of all, Baroness have been working on a new album for quite some time, and with any luck it will drop before the world ends.

More speculatively, ex-ISIS drummer Aaron Harris keeps tweeting about how he’s working on new material with fellow ISIS alums Bryant Clifford Meyer and Jeff Caxide. Be still my beating heart.

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ATM: The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium

07 Sep 2011 by tom

Music is powerfully linked to memory. Listening to favorite albums, I often recall the periods when they came into my life. It is fitting, I think, that De-Loused in the Comatorium, the debut album from The Mars Volta, is forever associated in my mind with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker; a properly nonsensical relationship given the bizarre pastiche of an album. Many were the hours I spent in the summer of aught-three sailing the seas of Not Hyrule and listening to TMV’s first masterwork.

De-Loused is frenetic. No better way to put it. This was to be expected, given the band’s lineage1 and their earlier EP, Tremulant. Girded though I was for sonic assault, De-Loused floored me right out of the gate with ominous ambience and word-salad lyrics on “Son et Lumiere.”2 This gives way to thunderous passages that flow straight into the raucous “Inertiatic E.S.P.,” a song matched in ferocity by some of At the Drive-In’s work,3 but not in craft.

The Mars Volta’s craft is perhaps the most unfairly maligned aspect of their work. Some decry the band’s “wankery.”4 To be sure, the musicians on De-Loused have technique in spades. Rodriguez-Lopez’s guitar work is often as technical as it is demented, Bixler-Zavala’s vocals compare nicely with Robert Plant, and Jon Theodore’s drumming veers effortlessly between flair, function, and grace. The guest stars, too, bring plenty of technical firepower: John Frusciante, wasted in Red Hot Chili Peppers,5 contributes his customary splendid guitar work, and Flea, similarly overqualified for his day job, handles bass duties with aplomb.6 None of this, however, is “virtuosity to a fault.”

By way of example, let us turn to closer “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt,” my favorite track on the album. Theodore’s drumming on the verse is certainly intricate, but that intricacy sets the stage for the entire song. The verses are cramped, driven passages punctuated by shifting play on the hi-hat and quick hits on the kick. The verses are then interspersed7 with more open but equally driven breakdowns, all paying off with a monster chorus. The drumming establishes the rhythm, yet keeps the listener off balance—until we hit the chorus, where the instrumentals fall into line behind Bixler-Zavala’s powerful vocal. Would the song still be great with Meg White behind the kit? Probably. But the presence of superior musicianship, a delicate blend of chops and composition, elevates the song nearly to godhood.

At the outset, I termed the album frenetic, and while I stand by that characterization, allow me to add another: unhinged. It is primarily the work of a visionary, Rodriguez-Lopez, set loose for the first time from the need to appease. Thanks to At the Drive-In’s breakthrough at the turn of the 21st century, TMV would have a built-in audience, allowing Rodriguez-Lopez to concoct whatever he wanted. He also had the luxury of a stable of capable players behind him,8 able to execute on his vision.

At this point, I mostly want to heap further praise. I want to tell you, dear reader, about how brilliant songs like “Roulette Dares” and “Eriatarka” are, and about how they are brilliant. At length. But I haven’t the words. De-Loused in the Comatorium holds the distinction of being the first album that I ever felt particularly challenged by. Even At the Drive-In’s brash, aggressive post-hardcore bore sufficient resemblance to ‘90s alternative rock, long the only genre to which I paid attention, for me to dig it. Not even TMV’s own Tremulant EP hinted at what was to come on De-Loused.

Before this album, I thought the notion that one might have to work to understand or appreciate anything was ludicrous. Everything I had ever liked—music, sports, food, anything—I had liked immediately. Anything I hadn’t liked immediately, I discarded. The first time through De-Loused, I didn’t know what to do. It was not anything like what I expected, and I didn’t much like it. This felt wrong, given how much I loved At the Drive-In and Tremulant. For the first time, I, egomaniac that I was, concluded that I must be wrong. So I sailed the seas of Not Hyrule and I listened to De-Loused, and I listened and I listened and I listened, and eventually “Roulette Dares” got me. I have not looked back.

De-Loused in the Comatorium, therefore, was more to me than Another Great Fucking Album. It was the catalyst for me taking more than a cursory listen/glance/what have you at whatever came across my path. Without taking that step, I surely would have missed out on, at least for some time, nearly all of the albums I now count among my favorites.9 The album’s pseudo-narrative concludes, in fabulously dramatic fashion, with one simple question: “who brought me here?” Were that question posed to me, The Mars Volta would be a big part of the answer.

  1. Mars Volta founders Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala previously played in the brilliant At the Drive-In [↩]
  2. “Clipside of the pinkeye sight/I’m not the percent you think survives/I need sanctuary in the pages of this book/Gestating with all the other rats/Nurse said that my skin will need a graft/I am of pockmarked shapes/The vermin you need to loathe.” Yeah, Cedric. That. [↩]
  3. “Arcarsenal” and “Cosmonaut” come to mind [↩]
  4. The Pitchfork reviewer, when not slamming the lyrics, wails that “[v]irtuosity-to-a-fault was the death of prog in the 70s, but the Mars Volta’s aimless hammer-and-wail tactics—whether performed with deep-seeded passion or not—is [sic] just as regrettable.” [↩]
  5. Zing! [↩]
  6. I am not qualified to evaluate Isaiah Owens’ keyboard playing. Suffice it to say I have no criticism on this front. [↩]
  7. Open that hi-hat [↩]
  8. ATDI’s Tony Hajjar, Paul Hinojos, and Jim Ward were hardly amateurs, but, with the exception of Hajjar, neither were they particularly noteworthy players. [↩]
  9. Ironically, though, I nearly gave up on TMV’s 2008 masterpiece The Bedlam in Goliath, on which more another day, because I didn’t get it the first couple times through. [↩]

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A new song approaches

12 Jun 2011 by tom

Hit up the Sounds link, find it under “Unfinished.” Because it is.

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ATM: Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

12 Jun 2011 by tom

I suppose anything released when I was eleven years old has an unfair advantage. However, it is with more than nostalgic fondness that I look back on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. This is, undoubtedly, a monumental album, a triumph even for a band whose sound dominated ’90s rock.1

Everything about Mellon Collie is staggering. A 28-song double album from a mainstream rock band.2 Jimmy Chamberlin’s unbelievable drumming. The sonic breadth, hitting silly pop ditties (“We Only Come Out at Night”), vicious heavy metal (“Fuck You”), prog epics (“Porcelina of the Vast Oceans”) and everything in between. A slew of hit singles that even I haven’t managed to tire of yet (“Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” “1979,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “Zero,” “Muzzle,” and “Thirty-Three”). And “X.Y.U.” Oh my dear god in heaven, “X.Y.U.”

It’s embarrassing how much this album meant to me growing up. I listened to it constantly. It’s one of the very few albums for which I learned all the lyrics, although, in retrospect, the lyrics are far and away its weakest aspect. Once I developed the barest hint of skill on the guitar, I set about learning to play every song on it. I did. I still probably can. And it still evokes distinct memories from my youth, including the memory of when I found out that my dad had bought it.3

What’s not embarrassing is how goddamn good it still is. Until I started writing this up, it had been a while since I gave it a spin. Now I’m up to “Porcelina,” now as ever my favorite track on the album. It is, in many ways, a microcosm of everything great about the Smashing Pumpkins. It builds patiently, revels in soft-loud-soft dynamic shifts, layers on guitar after guitar after guitar. Chamberlin’s drumming is powerful but unorthodox, laden with flourishes that hint at his ridiculous chops without taking over the song. Much the same can be said about the guitar work, with subtle, gentle lead figures drifting in and around Billy Corgan’s vocals. And, just as it built patiently, it fades serenely, on swirling feedback and laid-back rhythm. The Pumpkins had a knack for marrying hard rock instrumentation and technique with beautiful songs; that knack set them apart from the rest of their alt-rock contemporaries.

The album’s only failings are in its perfection. Its finest moments are when the production is less slick: when Corgan’s voice takes on a snarling edge; the opening riff to “Where Boys Fear to Tread”; the simple acoustic figure that closes “Thru the Eyes of Ruby”; the unadorned “Stumbleine”; the tempo-building eruption at the heart of “X.Y.U.” The sound is, at times, too glossy. It can be impenetrable. This is a problem that runs through nearly the band’s entire catalog. Would that they had let their guard down just a little bit more often.

Still, on listening to something as immaculate as “Galapogos,” it’s hard to fault them. Their aim was always high; that they hit the mark so often is remarkable.

  1. And don’t you dare insinuate otherwise. I know where you live. I will break you. [↩]
  2. And, reportedly, these 28 were chosen from among 57 completed songs. Most bands probably don’t complete 57 songs ever. [↩]
  3. I learned this on the way to basketball practice. It was winter. I was totally fucking psyched. Not for the basketball practice; Allen Iverson and I share certain opinions on that subject. [↩]

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Albums That Matter

04 Jan 2011 by tom

I’ve been a terrible blogger all these years. I would blame myself, but that is not my style. Instead, I’ll attribute it to the fact that I’ve had a difficult time coming up with anything that I thought was worth writing about, in large measure because I have no expertise of any kind and thus don’t have much to contribute on any particular subject.

Lately, though, I’ve had a hankering to write about, well, something. As always with me and the internet, it’s going to be music. All the hoopla over “best albums of 2010″ and such caused me, as it does every year, to think about what I’ve been listening to. When I do this, I like to think about how I came across to what I’m listening to now. There are a lot of albums that I consider milestones; not for the art form, necessarily, but for my own listening habits. If I work hard enough, I can probably trace it all back to listening to U2 on cassettes on my way to preschool.

Therefore, I’m starting in on “Albums That Matter,” or ATM. It won’t be in any way chronological, because that is too boring. My plan is to write about, on a [redacted] basis, whichever of these albums strikes my fancy. Think part review and bigger part context: how did Album X come into my life, and why did it matter to me so much? Even if you don’t care about that stuff, I pledge to include links to badass live performances in every post, so you might at least read the words in blue.

The first post in the series is already up, directly below this one. Since it is early in the new year, I can’t help but tell you about my 2010 album of the year.

And go easy on me. It’s been at least five years since I wrote anything substantial that wasn’t for school.

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ATM: Torche – Songs for Singles

04 Jan 2011 by tom

Over the last several years, I’ve been getting into music that is heavy. This is not new for me; like any good 16-year-old, I once owned every Metallica album, and my love of Tool has been with me more than half my life. But, until recently, heavy music had never been so dominant in my listening habits.

Two things I should clear up: what I mean by heavy music, and how much I love it (this is all relevant, I swear). Heavy music doesn’t have to be loud, fast, heavily distorted, or anything else that one might immediately associate with Metallica or Tool. It’s about mood, about feel. Pelican, obviously, are heavy. Boris are heavy as fuck. At the less obvious end of the spectrum, you’ve got bands like Red Sparowes. A lot of Mogwai: it’s not as loud or metal as Boris, but I’d call it just as heavy. I love this music because it is the sublime. I know of no more concentrated form of the sublime than heavy music: three minutes of the right song can carry me away.

But I can’t always be staring at the mountains, you know?

Enter Torche. I first heard them last summer, and may or may not have gushed about them to everybody I know. Heavy music led me to them: Hydra Head, a label with strong connections to some of my favorite heavy bands, hyped them extensively via Twitter. It was an excellent time for me to come across the band, as they launched Songs for Singles just a few weeks later.

Torche are sometimes heavy, but are mostly just metal. And where the other bands mentioned above tend toward the sublime, I can only say that Torche tend toward the awesome. They have energy enough for any three punk bands, and that energy is infectious. I can’t listen to “UFO” or “Cast Into Unknown” without wanting to sit down at my drums and play along. There’s a dose of the heavy on “Face the Wall” to bring some balance to the album that’s just as accomplished as their usual, more up-tempo work.

Just as “Face the Wall” is an island of heavy in a sea of energy, Torche were the first band in quite a while to snare me with power instead of awe. When I listen to Pelican, I want to close my eyes and just listen. When I listen to Torche, I want to bang my head and pump my fist. I want to pick up my guitar and play power chords. That’s not a knock on Pelican, on whom more later. It’s something that very few bands make me feel, and usually only at a live show. I feel a bit stupid admitting that I had to be turned onto more energetic metal, but I’ve had my head down in post-metal for so long that it took a powerful album to push me toward something new.

Songs for Singles is short. I wish it were longer, not because it feels lacking, but because there can’t be enough Torche. Even at a scant twenty-four minutes, though, it’s far and away my favorite album released in 2010. Closer “Out Again,” which accounts for over a quarter of the album’s length, by itself bests most of what I heard last year. Give it a listen, won’t you?

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Incoming

03 Jan 2011 by tom

Incoming

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