Yes, it's been over two years since my last blog post. With that being said, let's get back to the music.
Thanks to NPR and Spotify I've been able to discover music in a fresh and exciting way. Most importantly, I've been able to encounter new music as it becomes available! Sure, there have always been bands that I would occasionally track to see if their getting ready to release new material or see if I missed the launch by a couple of days (or years...). But now the music comes to me, whether in the form of a podcast hosted by music experts or an artist radio station via music streaming or in relation to other new discoveries. If feels like the old days when television used to air music videos on the regular.
And thanks to this new-fangled technology (new to me, at least), I've been able to listen to A TON of great releases from this year alone. Without further ado, what to listen to from 2015!
Nota bene: To prevent favoritism, all albums are listed in chronological order.
24 Albums I've Listened To So Far
Sleater-Kinney – No Cities to Love 20 January 2015
I'm actually glad this came first on the list because it's my top discovery so far. Coming out of the northwestern riot grrrl scene of the mid-90s, Sleater-Kinney had an active career in the first decade of their band-ship, releasing 7 albums and maintaining a strong underground fanbase. After a long hiatus, they come back strong with No Cities to Love, making punk fun to listen to again and challenging the notion that indie rock is just for soft acoustic background music in car commercials.
“Bury Our Friends” by Sleater-Kinney
Of Montreal – Aureate Gloom 3 March 2015
To me, Of Montreal always seemed like a band too eccentric for me to get into (like the Flaming Lips, but a lot less coherent). It's still hard to listen to Aureate Gloom from beginning to end without scratching your head, but I'm floored not only by the musical complexity of their experimental pop but also by how funky it some of the tracks are. A little bit of trivia: the title for the opener "Bassam Sabry" is a reference to the Egyptian civil rights activist who "accidentally fell from a balcony under unclear circumstances" last year.
“Bassem Sabry” by Of Montreal
Modest Mouse – Strangers to Ourselves 17 March 2015
My only exposure to Modest Mouse before Strangers to Ourselves was their better-known singles and Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and this unfamiliarity with their erratic sound makes it difficult to give an accurate review. I can say that more than once I felt that the album was unevenly paced, with semi-manic vocals being carried by a slow and steady rhythm. If you're not too familiar with the band, I'd suggest listening to one of their other five albums for a more proper introduction.
"The Tortoise and the Tourist" by Modest Mouse
Chastity Belt – Time to Go Home 20 March 2015
I'm not super impressed by Chastity Belt's latest release, Time to Go Home. Having a post-punk atmosphere and a college rock groove, it was a slow burn for most of the record mostly due to a lyricism that doesn't take itself too seriously. However, there are some redeeming moments when the tempo speeds up.
“Joke” by Chastity Belt
Liturgy – The Ark Work 23 March 2015
I never thought I'd be listening to black metal, but here I am... listening to black metal. Granted, the bandmembers of Liturgy (along with their compatriots Deafheaven) would describe their approach as "transcendental black metal" which have the purists up in arms and screaming "Blasphemy!" (how ironic...). Most of the time their sound is an extreme form of shoegazing, but in any case The Ark Work is a totally different kind of animal. The harsh shrieks are replaced by drone chant, synthesizers make frequent appearances and there's even a tinge of hip-hop (see "Vitriol"). It's a decent listen, but I was expecting something more along the lines of "Tragic Laurel". Their longest track, "Reign Array", is an accurate cross-section of all their trying to accomplish in the record. And if for some reason you find the sound unbearable after a minute of listening, at least try to wait out until the bagpipes come in (yes, bagpipes).
If this blog is reaching it's key demographic, then these songs should be the songs that you grew up with. Well, maybe not so much grew up with as grew up around. And no... there's not going to be any "MMMBop," "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" or any other song that has more than two consecutive M's in its title (at least not in the body of the post...).
Hanging on to the last tired thread of 80's New Wave is Depeche Mode with their release of Violator in March of 1990. And it's not like they're posing in any way. They're just doing what they do, and doing it well. Violator has a well-crafted darkwave feel as the band brings the poppy sounds of electronica back to its somber roots (NIN and co. would take it further in the coming years).
Lyrically the album is minimalist and interpretive (which wards away the creepy stalker motif that plagues the genre), but the music can seem to drag on if you're listening to it anywhere but an indie discoteque. It starts to pick up after "Enjoy the Silence" (one of their best-known hits), ending with the tribal-themed "Clean."
"Policy of Truth" by Depeche Mode
1991 - Temple of the Dog - Temple of the Dog
Two of my all-time favorite albums (Wish and Nevermind) came out this year, and I could spend an exhorbinant amount of time discussing both, but I'll spare you the torture... for now...
If you're a fan of grunge and get giddy at just the idea of Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell harmonizing for an hour, then definitely go grab a copy of Temple of the Dog. Otherwise, be aware that it doesn't seem like the band was striving for fame with this release (I suggest listening to "Hunger Strike" to gage how much early 90's you can handle).
"Times of Trouble" by Temple of the Dog
1992 - L7 - Bricks Are Heavy
The Seattle sound continues with the all-female L7. Their breakthrough Bricks Are Heavy is heavy, sounding as if Joan Jett had replaced James Hetfield and began fronting Metallica. The album is straightforward and doesn't drag on, but it doesn't offers much variety besides alternating between fast and mid-tempo tracks.
Back in the day the single "Pretend We're Dead" allowed impressionable young women to join in the grunge craze, and today L7's back catalog presents a more down-to-earth female approach to hard rock than the typical Evanescene or Lacuna Coil song.
"Mr. Integrity" by L7
1993 - Bikini Kill - Pussy Whipped
Whoever said that only guys could do punk? Have you forgotten about Sheena? Well, if L7 brings the grunge then Bikini Kill brings the grit. As can be inferred from its title, Pussy Whipped replaces any traces of femininity with an over-abundance of feminist-ity. Being forerunners of the riot grrrl revolution, Bikini Kill's music is in of itself a statement, saying that girls can use the same exact tools as boys and be just as independent, empowered and sexist.
However, if you don't feel like listening too intently to the message, then you don't have to worry since you can hardly understand what's being screamed anyways (try your hand at decifering "Lil' Red," although if you do figure it out try not to be offended). Not for the faint of heart, PW is very noisy up through "Hamster Baby," whereafter the album makes a surprising transition to a mellower post-hardcore for the last three songs and finishes with the sentimental "For Tammy Rae." At the very least, the album serves as an honest observation of a polarized counterculture.
The 90's begot a slew of post-adolescent bands trying their hand at this "new" art of writing songs about failed romances and emerging from broken homes. Due to an early oversaturation of the genre, not only were these bands forced back into suburban obscurity save a one-hit-wonder but it also seemed like alternative rock would go the way of disco. For all intents and purposes, alt rock did have the stylings of a cultural phase (like this year's peculiar facination with house) and at the surface Weezer looked like any other all-male foursome trying to make it on the radio. However, a short listen to one of their songs reveals an appreciable talent that keeps you tuned in almost 20 years later.
In their debut Weezer, the band was able to deliver something that was both honest and entertaining. Most musicians at the time were only able to perform under one flag and compromise the other, whether they be too idealist or too traditional. The opener "My Name Is Jonas" tells you that, "Sure, life is hard and our loud guitars will reflect our insatiable angst with the world, but we're willing to make lemonade and insert a Cheap Trick-inspired solo wherever the heck we want!" And the whole album is filled with this notion of wanting to be somebody simultaneously important and uninportant ("In the Garage"), which is interesting to observe and easy to identify with.
Aside from this convoluted and wholly amateur characterization, The Blue Album is simply a fun CD as Weezer unites the best of two decades with the thread of their quirky creativity. Although you may notice some repeated riffs by the time you get to "Only In Dreams," you have to admit that it was an awesome first try. So awesome indeed that time has produced covers and mash-ups and tributes galore ("Buddy Holly," "Surf Wax Off Your Shoulder" and "Undone (The Sweater Song)" to name a few). I guess you could say that the album was so good that the band reused the title two more times (with another instance of this projected for 2015).
In the midst of their post-Dookie fame, Green Day knew that they had to deliver with their next release. The reputation of their northern California punk origins and the sustainability of the culture becoming increasingly accepting to such scenes hinged on it. But that didn't phase the power trio one bit. For their own sake did they need to rock hard, and Insomniac is a testament to that.
Although not as blockbuster as Dookie, Insomniac gives its fans what they're looking for. You've got the almost-metal-turned-punk "Brain Stew/Jaded" and the drum fills of Cool and bass stylings of Dirnt in songs like "Panic Song" and "Stuck with Me."And judging by all the rants and cursing provided throughout by Armstrong, you know you've got the right band. Their following albums Nimrod and Warning would embarrassingly fall short of these expectations (though not not worth listening to), and band wouldn't be recognizable again until they became idiots.
Insomniac is fast, but still far from thrash... rushed in the sense that once a song appears to fully constructed and appreciated, it's on to the next one. With this mindset, it feels like "Walking Contradition" ends the album abruptly, leaving even the most sadistic anti-Green Day musical fundamentalist (which is basically anyone who demands more from a song than just power chords... myself included in this regard) strangely wanting more, even if it's just restarting the CD for a couple of seconds.
With the mid-90's, we reach that awkward period of trying to keep the alternative momentum going. Sure, the last couple of years since In Utero have been exciting, but even a week needs a Sunday. Enter post-grunge, where the heart hasn't left the songs but the energy has. I'm not down-talking this progression in any way. On the contrary, this opened doors for bands like the Wallflowers. The roots rock sound of songs like "One Headlight" revitalized a mainstream tired of being bombarded with punk-derivative single after single.
(Note: I was considering writing about the 1996 album Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy instead, but that story has already been posted here.)
"The Difference" by The Wallflowers
1997 - Harvey Danger - Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?
If you chanced upon American Pie you may have heard "Flagpole Sitta" somewhere in the film. Commonly and erroneously attribitued to blink-182 (possibly due to their cameo in the film), the song is actually by Harvey Danger, a band that takes self-depreciation to the level that blink takes toilet humor. Usually this approach to music should be avoided because it may prove to be dangerous and/or unoriginal, but something about the band's unapologetic and poetry slam-esque sound dissuades these preconceived notions and invites one to just hear them out.
Don't be fooled: Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? is still written by dissatisfied young adults who hold grudges against their ex-girlfriends (see "Private Helicopter"). However, this isn't like other collection of whiny teenage torch songs in that there's a solid attempt at conveying the disposition of the disgruntled. With diary I mean journal in hand, Harvey Danger takes us to the heart... the charred and scarred heart not yet healed from wounds of isolation ("Terminal Annex"), abortion ("Problems & Bigger Ones") and lost loved ones ("Jack the Lion").
It'd would have been arguably more productive if they tried harder to see how their partners were affected by their failed romanticism. Nevertheless, WHATMG? serves as a superior cathartic substitute to any Fall Out Boy release (with Infinity on High being a great album in it's own respect).
"Old Hat" by Harvey Danger
1998 - Garbage - Version 2.0
When Butch Vig isn't busy producing breakthrough records, he gets the band together and kindly takes the backseat (or, more specifically, the drumseat) to Shirley Manson, the frontwoman of Garbage. Manson provides a voice for the other half of the Harvey Danger relationship: the modern 90's female filled with apathy and impatience towards the all-too-common shell-of-a-man man whose moody indecisiveness and calculated courtship render him incapable of Eastwood charge or Bond confidence, causing him to suffer emasculation when contrasted with the mere image of so effiminate an actor as Leonardo DiCaprio. In short, Manson is no man's woman (although she kinda wants to be...).
Version 2.0 maintains the decade's alternative edge mixed with a bit of 70's pop sensibility, melded together via danceable electronica melodies. With uncompromising creativity, the band authors singles like "When I Grow Up" which haven't been this fun since the Pretenders or this explicit since Alanis Morissette. There's a sincere blend of emotions throughout the album, where tracks asserting an independence distinct from the feminism of Bikini Kill ("I Think I'm Paranoid") could easily be followed by a song portraying the vocalist's search for a vulnerable love, albeit wayward in approach ("You Look So Fine"). Pop nonetheless, it's worth picking up if you're feeling 90's but not feeling Christina Aguilera.
"Special" by Garbage
1999 - Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
A while back I had the thought of writing a post about emo music which would deny the authenticity of the genre and characterize it as nothing more than a phrase conjured up by recent fads that just happened to make its way into musical lexicon. But after taking some time to cool my suprisingly defensive idealism, I began to discover the diversity within post-hardcore and became exposed to albums like End on End, Diary and Pinkerton. There was no way of avoiding the unique and communal qualities of this brand of music, which was enough to endow this approach to songwriting with the special name of "emotional hardcore."
Jimmy Eat World has experienced several stages of maturity since its initial formation in 1993. Starting off with a heavy punk sound, they toned it down for 1996's Static Prevails. Three years later, the band released Clarity which would not only prove to be their softest album but also become a staple of emo. True, Jimmy Eat World has always been an emotional band. But unlike any other album which can be written off as having that "typical JEW sound," the presentation of Clarity is such that the band is writing not for themselves but for the genre.
A good chunk of Clarity is slow, quiet and sentimental like "A Sunday." And like any good alternative album you've got your loud crys like "Blister." But it's in gems like "For Me This Is Heaven" that you'll appreciate the marraige of the soft and abrasive... the charged and the drawn out. Couple this with ambiguously personal lyrics and you're in for a pensive ride.
If you can stomach the extened instrumentals and the pinings of Jim Adkins, then you won't be disappointed. I personally perfer their later stuff, but the 16-minute long album closer "Goodbye Sky Harbor" poses as an appropriate farewell to a year, a decade, a century and a millennium possessing both an uncertainty for and a hope in a better future.
Happy New Year! There's been a surge of 80's revivalism in the mainstream in recent years, but I bet that even the know-it-all hipsters don't know what makes their scene so unoriginal. But this post isn't about that or Sixteen Candles or the Human League. It's about the albums that make you realize that the 80's was like no other decade before or after.
One Sunday evening in early December 2010, I was driving home with the radio tuned to Wind-FM. It was broadcasting a weekly special called Off the Record, where influential artists are interviewed by Joe Benson about their lives and recordings. That week's featured rock group: The Who. I listened for about 5-10 minutes and caught Pete Townshend discussing his solo debut, Empty Glass, and specifically the song "A Little is Enough":
Townshend [Paraphrase]: "When I left The Who, there were a lot of trials occuring in my life. Aside from bouts of musician's writer's block, I was sieving through financial burdens and a rift in my marraige. One day, I asked my wife if she loved me. She took a moment to think about it... and when she responded she said, 'I guess I love you a little.'
"I was significantly distraught at this answer, and went to my personal Sufi master for guidance. When I told him of the trouble I had with my wife, he said, 'So what's the problem? She said she loves you a little. Shouldn't that be enough? Don't you know that all love comes from God, and that His love is infinite? Whether one person loves another a lot or a little is relative, because any love we are capable of expressing is simply a drop in the vast ocean that is God's love. And given its origin, that drop of love is infinite in of itself.' From this conversation, I would eventually write 'A Little is Enough.'"
I thought it'd be fun to continue the theme of era-specific posts and do one on the groovy times that were the 70's. Little did I know how little of 70's music I actually know. It's a poorly represented section of my music library, but I'd still like to share some of my favorite albums from the decade (... a number of which I was introduced to in the past month).
Ah, the 60's... a time when psychedelic drugs, flower power and The Beatles ruled the world. So how do you usher in a new decade in music? Well, you back-track a bit to when blues was the genre of choice, then you read some books and watch the news. Follow up with forming a four-piece band and voila! You have "War Pigs." British rockers Black Sabbath released Paranoid in November 1970 in the U.K. (January 1971 in the U.S.), founding heavy metal in the process. Despite their name, most of the band's songs deal with themes of the psychological and social nature, as their staples "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" make evident. And although the only thing Ozzy Osbourne has learned since the 70's is how become more of a pansy, deep down he's still that pivotal frontman whose name we can't escape.
So, I got into the music scene a little later than most folks. I remember one day in my high school freshman Engineering period a fellow classmate asked me what type of music I was into. At that point, I wasn't into anything except the adult contemporary my parents played on the car radio (and that was passive listening). So I just blurted out something random: techno. Needless to say, said fellow classmate never spoke to me again...
In any case, that summer (2005), I visited Nicaragua with my aunt and cousin for two weeks. Around the second day, I met my cousin's cousins (my second cousins?) whom were teens like us. When I entered their room, I saw "Be Yourself" playing on the TV. I ended up spending the majority of the trip making up for lost time alongside MTV Latin America.
Not too long afterwards, I saved up the earnings of my 15th birthday and went to Best Buy to purchase a cheap Durabrand CD player, From Under the Cork Tree, American Idiot and Demon Days. And now, almost 6 years later, I'm here updating a blog about my not-so-secret passion.
Because it's so close to when I first began engrossing myself in music, I have to say that my favorite year in music is 2006. When I started out, I watched music videos like it was nobody's business. But after a few months of that, I got tired of just singles and delved into the albums of my favorite artists, discovering the gems no one cared to search for. Below are a few of my top picks...
A young, lonely, pop-punk listening Hispanic teenage boy was eventually going to come across this CD. It was one random day at my other cousin's house that I saw the video for "Narcisita Por Excelencia" on MTV Tr3s. I was instantly hooked by the sound and energy, and I also had an ear catered to "emotional" music. When I picked up Amantes Sunt Amantes, I became a fan overnight. What I liked most about the album (and still do) was the unconventionality of the composition, characteristic of post-hardcore. I wouldn't know it until later, but their previous release, Para Ti Con Desprecio, was the product of heavy plagerism. Panda writes some pretty catchy tunes, but sadly these are songs to slit your wrists to (and unfortunately the band doesn't make that a subtle point =///).
When I started this blog, I didn't expect that so many posts would be about covers. But given that the first featured song was itself a cover, I guess it was only a matter of time...
In any case, this entry is about the Punk Goes... series. In 2000, Fearless Records started this series of compilation albums wherein present-day punk (or punk-derivative) rock bands cover artists of a certain featured genre (like metal, 90's, etc.). Now almost 11 years old, Fearless has racked up an exceptional discography through Punk Goes....
In my opinion, Punk Goes Metal is the most "punk" album of the set. Composed by the lesser-known names of punk rock (like Bigwig, Guttermouth and Ten Foot Pole), the CD delivers a heavy sound. True, there's one or two pop-punk renditions ("I Remember You"), but the majority of the album is punk metal showing their metal side ("Bark at the Moon"). And it also shows that metal sometimes has a punk side, too; Swindle does this for Skid Row.
