Independent Record Label born in Albany, NY. Currently operating in Philadelphia, PA. I release music for the artists that are dying to be heard.
Sample: https://barnburnerrecords.bandcamp.com/
Possess: https://barnburnerrecords.limitedrun.com
Learn: https://www.facebook.com/barnburnerrecords
PJ Bond | Where Were You?
Black Numbers | May 4th, 2015
Stream: https://blacknumbers.bandcamp.com/album/where-were-you
Order: https://www.xtramilerecordings.com/ArtistDetails?Aid=XMR_AR_86
“With Communipaw acting as the backing band for this album of vagabond blues, PJ Bond maps out eleven tracks on Where Were You? that cover some tattered landscape and serious social and global issues including domestic abuse, gentrification, the making and breaking of trust and the atonement of sin. “
Back in college I spent a Sunday afternoon at my friend’s apartment who promoted a show with several touring solo musicians by saying “come hang at my apartment and watch some dudes play songs”. I sat on a futon bunk bed and watched a modern cowboy spill his heart out onto a dirty bedroom floor. The following Autumn I had the pleasure of inviting this man into a bigger space in someone else’s home and made a dear friend in himself and his tour-mate Koji. His name is PJ Bond, originally from New Brunswick, New Jersey but as far as I can tell he is what many would consider a nomad. From humble beginnings with a homelessness touring project called “Year Of A Thousand Roommates”, PJ has seen himself around the world several times over playing his folksy-americana style of rock & roll with Austin Lucas, Arliss Nancy and many other punk-meets-country legends to disenchanted loners, losers and anyone who has the time and heart open enough to listen. 2015 brought about Where Were You?, which in the 6 or so years I’ve been following his catalog is without a doubt my favorite release he’s ever laid out.
With Communipaw acting as the backing band for this album of vagabond blues, PJ Bond maps out eleven tracks on Where Were You? that cover some tattered landscape and serious social and global issues including domestic abuse, gentrification, the making and breaking of trust and the atonement of sin. That isn’t to say this record is a bottle of whiskey funneled straight into the listener’s most fragile feels; more often than not the songs themselves have uplifting grooves and intoxicating hooks played on resonating lap-steel slide guitars, subtle synth lines and humble acoustic guitar riffs that showcase a wealth of talent and technique. Solo artists have a difficult time writing songs that don’t all sound like copies of eachother; it relieves me to hear that even with a decade of songwriting under his belt PJ continues to showcase a wide range of influences and puts himself to the task of outdoing everything he’s done before.
PJ and I have a standing date to get coffee somewhere in South Philly, when that will happen is uncertain to say the least. Every text message could go unread for weeks due to a spontaneous trip back to Vienna, a drive down to the Carolinas or simply by being a man too busy to keep up with anything coming into a stupid cell phone. He may very well be chasing the woman he’s singing for on Where Were You?, he may be running from her. Wherever he is, I hope he’s doing well, he’s eating enough, he’s sleeping somewhere warm and that he continues to fill social media with his unique brand of thoughtful positivity whenever he gets around to looking at the internet. I wonder how long it’ll be before he reads this…
Trenchfoot | At The Mercy Of Circumstance
Glory Kid LTD | July 21st 2015
Stream: https://trenchfoot.bandcamp.com/album/at-the-mercy-of-circumstance
http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2015/07/trenchfoot-at-the-mercy-of-circumstance-album-stream/
Order: http://glorykid.com/shop/GKR033/
New York’s Hudson Valley is often admired for the natural scenery (if you gloss over the polluted river aspect) and for the wide variety of art created by the vibrant, chill-as-fuck college culture surrounding the area (SUNY Purchase, Bard, New Paltz, etc). The Hudson Valley also has a darkside (if you direct your attention to the polluted river). The region fosters some cities with higher crime & poverty rates than the rest of the state combined, and anyone who has lived in any part of New York can tell you the cultural environment of New York state as a whole is hostile no matter how nice your neighborhood is. This area is also home to some dear friends of mine that one day decided to let high-end amplifiers feed back while one of them screams frantically into a microphone and another smashes thing with wooden mallets. They decided to name their project something to let the listener know everything they’re about to hear is absolutely disgusting: Trenchfoot.
Trenchfoot has had a quiet existence as an under-appreciated hardcore band from an undesirable place; making music that doesn’t sound like any of the bands kids sell the merch of on the internet for far too much money (much to my enjoyment). For being a small town band they’ve played with some big contenders in the realm of metal and hardcore ;sharing stages and floors with Meruader, Today Is The Day, 25 Ta Life, Harms Way, Full Of Hell, The Banner, Gatecreeper, Vein & Old Wounds. The band hasn’t even existed for five years, but every release they’ve ever put to tape has had Kurt Ballou of God City Studios at the helm, making sure every last blast beat, bark and barreling dive bomb is heard in the highest quality obtainable. For four releases in four years, their catalog is also impressive in that you could start and finish all of their recorded efforts as a band in less than an hour. That hour would be full of bleak and misanthropic lyricism, incomprehensibly precise percussion and instrumentation perfecting the predictable tropes of punk, hardcore and death metal while, almost with no effort at all, making a sound that very few other bands have attempted and none but them have made with any artistic or aesthetic success. At The Mercy Of Circumstance is a record that truly blows everything else the band done out of the water; so if you don’t have an hour to listen to their entire discography, set aside twenty minutes for this full length of grimy, gutteral, gut retching good hardcore.
The Body & Thou | You, Whom I Have Always Hated
Thrill Jockey Records | January 27th, 2015
Stream: https://thebody.bandcamp.com/album/released-from-love-you-whom-i-have-always-hated
Order: http://www.thrilljockey.com/index
“If you’re even remotely into metal music, the names Thou & The Body aren’t foreign to you. These words are simply a reminder that these names are names you should hold in the highest esteem when regarding the genre as a whole.”
Bands that push the boundaries of the genres they’re confined to tend to collaborate with one another to make the musical landscape an exceedingly difficult area to traverse. The 90’s were ripe with unforgettable collaboration albums with genre-benders like Boris, Sunn O))), Xiu Xiu & Man Is The Bastard. The recent renaissance of heavy music has brought about a new wave of collaboration albums including the double LP from Full of Hell & Merzbow via A389 Recordings. Two hyper prolific bands Thou & The Body, both infamous for playing notes and distorting voices in ways most individuals didn’t believe were obtainable by mere mortals have released two incredible collaboration LPs together; Released From Love in 2014 and You, Whom I Have Always Hated in the Winter of 2015.
Both Thou & The Body have perfected the creation of unforgiving sonic onslaughts of absolute suffering; the audible embodiment of what it means to die slowly as a species aware of its own worthless existence. Thou tends to sludge their sound in the lowest registers their instruments can conjure, having created the gold standard of the modern doom genre. Thou also takes influence from the great aggressive innovators of the past and pays homage to them with singular covers of their material, including acts like Black Sabbath, Nirvana and the Nine Inch Nails cover of “Terrible Lie” found on You, Whom I Have Always Hated . The Body also plays low, often indecipherable chords, yet sometimes they incorporate ambient and ethereal textures and chords often heard within the genre of black metal betwixt pummeling percussion and punishing chord progressions. When the vocalist screeches in a way not dissimilar to the way one would scream having their limbs ripped from their torso all at once, there is no denying that you’re listening to The Body.
You, Whom I Have Always Hated was recorded in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. From the friends I have in Rhode Island who were fortunate enough to bare witness to the live performances of this material as well as that from Released From Love; the live offerings were nothing short of a religious experience. As if two collaboration LPs weren’t enough to satiate the appetites of these monsters, Thou prefaced these releases with the seminal full length Heathen, arguably their most focused and feral release since Summit was made known to the world. The Body released a split LP w/ Sandworm and their most accomplished full length I Shall Die Here in 2014 as well as a second collaboration album with the noise-laden heavy metal band Krieg this calendar year (Krieg was well at work with the release of Transient this year as well). To be sure, both of these bands are in an endless writing process. It’s truly impressive to see bands release more music in a year than many do in half a decade, and every release presented to the listener exceeds the power of the one that came before. If you’re even remotely into metal music, the names Thou & The Body aren’t foreign to you. These words are simply a reminder that these names are names you should hold in the highest esteem when regarding the genre as a whole.
Yautja | Songs Of Lament
Forcefield Records | October 13th, 2015
Stream: https://yautja.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-lament
http://noisey.vice.com/blog/yautja-album-stream-2015
Order: http://shop.forcefieldrecords.org/
“If I had to imagine the Wildings north of the great ice wall in Game Of Thrones listening to any kind of music in between raids of murdering smallfolk and fighting the living dead, they’d probably be sharpening their steal with Yautja playing by the cookfires.”
It seems to me that the farther an individual strays from areas with tolerable weather conditions like those found in the north-east region of America, the more volatile their creative works become. That theory holds some truth when listening to Nashville’s Yautja as they take limbs from every style of distorted woeful music with their new EP Songs Of Lament and construct a modern day Frankenstein of aggressive material; wholeheartedly hell-bent on destroying the senses of anyone foolish enough to stand against it. Sporting a couple short trips away from home, a brand new split 7” with Forn that sincerely dropped days ago, an EP from a year past Songs Of Descent and a couple of older EPs from their early years; the band has time on their hands, and idle hands are the Devil’s playthings.
Sonically this group is completely off the charts. Taking the tasiest morsels from the likes of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Gaza, Baroness, Cursed, Converge and Full Of Hell they create a sound that’s simultaneously spastic, sludgy, searing, salacious and simply maddening to comprehend. The guitar tones more than match the quality expected of the bands listed above (and that’s saying something), the vocals are daunting, deliberate and dutiful and the drummer Tyler Coburn may soon be seen in a fictitious wrestling ring fighting for “best drummer of a young punk band” with the likes of Nick Yacyshyn of Baptists. If I had to imagine the Wildings north of the great ice wall in Game Of Thrones listening to any kind of music in between raids of murdering smallfolk and fighting the living dead, they’d probably be sharpening their steal with Yautja playing by the cookfires.
Yautja isn’t the first southern grind-laden crusterfuck band to grace the landscape of aggressive output. They are joined in good company by groups like Torch Runner and Bleed The Pigs and if I had the ability to do so I’d make that dream tour happen every single day in every last city in 2016. Alas, bands like Yautja do whatever the fuck they want; simple mortals like us just have to hope that their future desires involve playing a stacked show near their town in the uncertain future. Songs of Lament was one of the last records from 2015 to truly knock me off my ass; I simply hope I’m not punished for sleeping on this band too heavily in the event their future travels inexplicably skip over the fair city of Philadelphia.
Axis | Show Your Greed
Good Fight Music | September 4th, 2015
Stream: https://goodfightent.bandcamp.com/album/show-your-greed
http://www.metalinjection.net/av/stream-axis-crusty-violent-new-album-show-your-greed-right-now
Order: http://goodfightmusic.merchnow.com/catalogs/Axis
Simply put, Axis isn’t a band you have to think about; either they set your guts ablaze in the first minute of “Graze The Fire” or you simply don’t have blood left to burn.
Axis are a quintet of enraged Americans living low and inland around Tampa, Florida. The band made their presence undeniably heard & known nationwide this year with the release of Show Your Greed last month through Good Fight Music. Their unquenchably furious history in metalcore spans back to 2010 including two EP’s Rites Of Passage and Weight Of The World as well as a split 7” with the punk collective super-group Self Defense Family of Deathwish Inc. and a multitude of other labels. 2015 saw them on the road with their label mates Old Wounds, Exalt and Of Feather & Bone and the success of their sweltering debut LP has earned them a place on the stage for some ungodly-good Southern hardcore events including the last Foundation show in Tampa alongside Blistered and Seraphim. Simply put, Axis isn’t a band you have to think about; either they set your guts ablaze in the first minute of “Graze The Fire” or you simply don’t have blood left to burn.
This record isn’t perfect, and no record is. I sincerely appreciate when the lyricist of hyper-aggressive bands can write words that say something earnest while also capturing the emotional impact of the instrumentation they’re being bellowed over. Axis doesn’t necessarily get my brain buzzing with the lyrical content; but the way they get my blood boiling and muscles straining within seconds with the way they write music has me seeing red in all the best possible ways. If I had to summarize their style in one sentence, Axis is the sonic equivalent of ripping your wisdom teeth out with a ribbon of razor wire and cleaning the wounds out with moonshine. It’s as if they took We Are The Romans by Botch, No Heroes by Converge and Poison The Well’s The Opposite Of December and cut them open like cadavers to see their deepest afflictions and captured all that painful refuse in twenty six minutes of this year’s most unforgiving release in aggressive music.
It’s tough to say what this band’s future holds. Metalcore may be the next genre to truly experience a honest-to-god revival and they may very well be the opening act on some insane reunion tour package in the not so distant future. They could do what many bands in the genre do and break up right as they’re finding their creative stride, on the peak of some truly next level material that never sees the light of day. I don’t know the specifics of the correlation between bands releasing a record through Good Fight Music and good things happening to that band, but some aspect of the pairing is proving favorable for both parties involved, so I’m hopeful for the former scenario. I can’t wait to see them in Philadelphia so I can sprain my ankle when I forget how quickly mosh pits tend to open in the parts of rooms I like standing in most. It’ll be worth it.
It’s safe to assume those who don’t like music that exists on the fringes of music’s core definitive parameters will find little pleasure in listening to Zs; and that’s totally okay. For those of you with more tolerance for “annoying shit”, or to anyone curious to hear something that truly doesn’t sound a god damned thing like any other recording artist they’ve listened to this year; I’d implore you to give Xe a compassionate listen with an open mind and a full stomach. And if you like this, you can chill their sound out a little by listening to 2007’s Arms or get even more visceral with The Hard EP. Zs sound, style and prowess as composers are truly incomparable to the overwhelming majority of music being released in this day and age (despite the comparisons I’ve made of them to other recording artists). The whole point of reading album reviews is to expose yourself to art you may not be familiar with, so why not start here?
All Dogs | Kicking Every Day
Salinas Records | August 28th, 2015
Stream: https://alldogs.bandcamp.com/album/kicking-every-day-2
http://www.stereogum.com/1825492/stream-all-dogs-kicking-every-day/mp3s/
Purchase: http://www.salinasrecords.com/products/13323489-all-dogs-kicking-every-day-lp
“As a listener it’s sometimes difficult to discern when Maryn is signing to others and what is meant to be sung to herself as a kind of solace, but every song on Kicking Every Day rings sentimental, meaningful and strong as the needle moves inward from edge to center.”
All Dogs is a group of musicians from Columbus, Ohio who write loud pop songs fronted by the prolific Maryn Jones (also of Saintseneca & Yowler). Even with all of her other musical outputs traveling heavily this year, All Dogs had a very full calendar on the road and at home; touring with the likes of Frankie Cosmos, The Sidekicks and Cayetana as well as organizing a few long solo roadtrips and a handful of regional support slots with some well known names like The Menzingers, Colleen Green, Eskimeaux, Chumped & Roger Harvey. With the unyielding, cult-like support of their rust-belt fans and a handful of smaller yet well respected releases to lean on, All Dogs were more than ready to grace the punk community with a proper and poignant full length with their efforts on Kicking Every Day released last summer via Salinas Records.
The title of this album is open to some interpretation. As the mouthpiece and primary lyricist of the group, perhaps Maryn is kicking every day to find a more concrete sense of self and purpose; or perhaps she’s kicking every day she tours to be validated and respected as an artist with the same praise and adoration many of the acts she tours with (comprised mostly of white males) are rewarded with, seemingly without effort. Whatever she is swinging her legs at, she surely knocked its metaphorical head off with songs that would fit comfortably on someone’s shelf of vinyl alongside the outputs of Frances Quinlan (Hop Along) or either of the Crutchfield Queens in Swearin’, P.S Eliot or Waxahatchee’s expansive catalogues. The feeling of longing is present throughout the entire record from words and soundscapes; a desire to be bigger and more substantive than four people could hope to make music sound. That gnawing sense of betterment is a quality found in the world’s most successful and admired leaders; it’s understandable a woman with so many musical musings would strive to be more than she already is (which is whole hell of a lot).
Surely like most artists, her sense of longing is directed towards personal relationships (via That Kind of Girl) “If you’re wanting something else, then I hope you find it. Clean water, love and health, I hope you find it. I don’t wanna be the weight upon your shoulders when you wake. I don’t want to drag you under, kicking every day.”. Her desire to be more is also directed inward (via How Long) “I’ll be ready when the great flood comes, when all of this unrest becomes part of marrow in my bones, but where to put it?”. The most heart-wrenching examples of her striving for some form of peace is best shown in her critique of an ideological battle (via Flowers) ”But all your thoughts are over-wrought, with a holy violence and your want for kindness. You’re not gonna find it if all that you grow are Gardens of longing for things you don’t know.”. As a listener it’s sometimes difficult to discern when Maryn is signing to others and what is meant to be sung to herself as a kind of solace, but every song on Kicking Every Day rings sentimental, meaningful and strong as the needle moves inward from edge to center.
2015 In Hindsight: Honorable Mentions of Artistic Merit
Starting tomorrow at 6pm, I will be posting write-ups of 31 albums released this year that spoke to me in some way, shape or form. I suspect the words will go mostly unread, yet I write them all the same for I feel they all deserve expansive praise outside of what the albums say on their own as creative works. For those 31 that will be fleshed out, there are scores of other releases I truly enjoyed but will not dedicate extra time to express written feelings towards. All the same, here’s a list of albums that may be worth listening to in my humble opinion.
After The Fall - Dedication
Annabel - Having It All
Antarctigo Vespucci - Leavin’ La Vida Loca
Aye Nako - The Blackest Eye
Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle
Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit & Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit
Black Breath - Slaves Beyond Death
Blacklisted - When People Grow, People Go
Bleed The Pigs - Split w/ Thetan
Leon Bridges - Coming Home
Casual - S/T
Chain Of Flowers - S/T
Cloakroom - Further Out
Cloud Rat - Qliphoth
Colesium - Anxiety’s Kiss
Creepoid - Cemetary Highrise Slum
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Des Ark - Everything Dies
Destruction Unit - Negative Feedback Resistor
Disappears - Irreal
Discourse - Sanity Decays
Dogs On Acid - S/T
Earl Sweatshirt - I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside
Evans The Death - Expect Delays
Fell To Low - Low In The Dust
Fight Amp - Constantly Off
Frank Turner - Positive Songs For Negative People
Freddie Gibbs - Shadow Of A Doubt
A Grave With No Name - Feathers Wet, Under The Moon
Hollow Sunshine - Bring Gold
JANK - Awkward Pop Songs
Joanna Gruesome - Peanut Butter
Ken Mode - Success
Kind Of Like Spitting/Warren Franklin & The Founding Fathers - It’s Always Nice To See You
King Dude - Songs Of Flesh & Blood: In The Key Of Light
Klozapin - S/T
Krill - A Distant Fist Unclenching
Koji - Fury EP
Locrain - Infinite Dissolution
Magic Circle - Journey Blind
Maritime - Magnetic Bodies/Maps of Bones
Mew - +/-
The Mountain Goats - Beat The Champ
Nosaj Thing - Fated
Nouns - Still Bummed
Ought - Sun Coming Down
Pat The Bunny - Probably Nothing, Possibly Everything
Pentimento - I, No Longer
Pet Symmetry - Pets Hounds
Petal - Shame
Pile - You’re Better Than This
A Place To Bury Strangers - Transfixation
Podacter - Plays The Millennial Blues
Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Adult Summers EP
Reverse The Curse - Hither And Yon
Runaway Brother - Mother
Saintseneca - Such Things
Shlohmo - Dark Red
Sick Feeling - Suburban Myth
Speedy Ortiz - Foil Deer
Spraynard - Mable
Swervedriver - I Wasn’t Born To Lose You
Toe - Hear You
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - The Night Creeper
Vacation - The Do Shit Wax
War On Women - S/T
Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp
Wet Nurse - So It Goes
Wild Moth - Inhibitor
Wildhoney - Sleep Through It
Xibalba - Tierra Y Libertad
Yowler - The Offer
There’s a little something for everyone in this list. What’s more, those of you who don’t wish to seek out these releases through personal bandcamp pages or exclusive album streams can find almost all of them through my 2015 Spotify Playlist. I hope if nothing else comes from my words you give a listen to anyone I’ve mentioned because they all deserve your attention.
Jank is a trio of young-ish musicians based out of Philadelphia, PA. Matt Diamond, also responsible for the music of Little Tyrant and a never ending stream of marijuana related posts on various forms of social media, is the figurehead of this self-knighted “weed pop” band. They (respect the pronouns, yo) are accompanied by local DIY kingpin Ruben Polo (Soul Glo, Loud House, Kat Kat Records) and Sam Becht. Just last week they released a full length LP after compiling a handful of rougher sounding demos and EPs in a relatively short time frame. In spite of a straight-forward and simplistic album title, Awkward Pop Songs is without a doubt the group’s most focused and ripened work as a band.
Jank is a band with a wide selection of influences to choose from. The most obvious set of influences can be heard in Matt’s hyper-technical “math-rock” style of guitar playing often heard in the emo legends that Philly is (in)famous for with acts like Algernon Cadwallader (RIP – long live Dogs On Acid), Modern Baseball, Marietta and Hightide Hotel (almost RIP) calling this place home. A closer look at a long list of irreverent song titles coupled with similarly silly, yet succinct and somber lyrics might suggest at least Matt was once a Hot Topic Swoopy-Hair Sadboy or Fall Of Troy worshiper later evolved in a Topshelf Records/Count Your Lucky Stars sob-story (but I don’t wanna put homie in a box). However, my first experience seeing Jank included an unplugged cover of “I’m Not Okay, I Promise” at a basement show, so my assessment may not be that far off. Not even a minute into the opening track “Ouran Highschool Toast Club”, the only assumption anyone ought to make as a listener is that these individuals are near impossible to dissect or clearly define as musicians, lyricists or human beings (and that’s prolly how they want it).
There are a couple of tracks on this record that are downright goofy (looking at you “Hat Store”, “Weed Is Tight” & “Loading Screen”) but they don’t do anything to hurt the general vibe of this album (if anything, they help it). There’s something endearing, youthful and unbridled in the way Jank lays down truly depressing concepts like isolation, dying pets, psychological detachment & existential crises to tape and how effortlessly they weave those sad themes and narratives with something completely absurd (from Spilt To Bill) “Wakin’ in a sea of pills/waitin’ for the mother krill to eat me up alive/and if you don’t like Built To Spill/then I don’t fuck with you or anyone you know.”. Not unlike the struggles of medicating mental illness, maybe this reckless and spastic style of math tinged emo driven pop music is the best outlet these folks have for coping with life as it is currently unfolding for them. To me, listening to Awkward Pop Songs is like riding your bike to work with a broken leg with a huge blunt between your teeth: they know shit’s fucked, but they also know it could get way fucking worse so chill where you’re at for a minute and appreciate what’s working right.
Songs We Love: The Max Levine Ensemble, “My Valerian”
Lars Gotrich: “On a record full of fast-paced, catchy shout-alongs, ‘My Valerian’ is the chunky, mid-tempo rock anthem with the perverse melodic sweetness of Pixies and the clean-cut backbone of The Rentals. David Combs plays with words, twirling herbal sedatives (’Kava kava, chamomeleon / Boswellia geranium’) around in his mouth as a sort-of love song to escaping anxiety and chasing bliss, ‘My valerian.’”
Steve Lost His Job / Let's Have Another Vinyl Sale
Until I can pay my bills again with an actual job, I'm putting the purple variant of my debut LP Hope Is All We Have on sale so it can be shipped to your doorstep for under ten dollars. Share this post so people can stream/download the album via https://barnburnerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hope-is-all-we-have or place an order via https://barnburnerrecords.limitedrun.com
Anything you can do to help us spread the word is deeply appreciated. Thanks for your support.
Top 5 Records of Punk Rock
1) The Smith Street Band - Throw Me In The River
2) Against Me - Transgender Dysphoria Blues
3) Banquets & Nightmares For A Week - Split LP
4) The Menzingers - Rented World
5) PUP - PUP
Top 5 Records of Hardcore
1) Baptists - Bloodmines
2) Single Mothers - Negative Qualities
3) Code Orange - I Am King
4) lovechild - Migraine Music
5) Young & In The Way - When Life Comes To Death
Top 5 Records of Metal
1) Bloodpheasant - Traum
2) Thou & The Body - Released From Love
3) Pharaoh - Negative Everything
4) Full Of Hell & Merzbow - Collaboration LP
5) Vallenfyre - Splinters
Top 5 Records of Emo
1) The Hotelier - Home, Like No Place Is There
2) Muscle & Bone - Peace & Light
3) Somos - Temple Of Plenty
4) You Blew It - Keep Doing What You're Doing
5) La Dispute - Rooms Of The House
Top 5 Records of Indie
1) Saintseneca - Dark Arc
2) Weatherbox - Flies In All Directions
3) Meridian - The Cathedral
4) Walter Mitty & His Makeshift Orchestra - Well Soon
5) Sun Kil Moon - Benji
Other Incredible Records Worth Your Attention
Andrew Jackson Jihad - Christmas Island
Angel Olson - Burn Your Fire For No Witness
Antarctigo Vespucci - Soulmate Stuff + I'm So Tethered
Aviator - Head In The Clouds, Hands In The Dirt
Bane - Don't Wait Up
Behemoth - The Satanist
Born Low - Refuse To Beg
Braid - No Coast
Chumped - Teenage Retirement
Danny Brown - Old
Del Paxton - Worst Summer Ever
Dikembe - Mediumship
Earth - Primitive & Deadly
Fireworks - Oh, Common Life
Frankie Cosmos - Zentropy
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Pinata
Give - Electric Flower Circus
Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire
Hark - Crystalline
Homewrecker - Circle Of Death
I Am The Avalanche - Wolvertines
John Galm - Sky Of No Stars
Joyce Manor - Never Hungover Again
King Tuff - Black Moon Spell
The Men - Tomorrow's Hits
Old Wounds - Death Projection
Prawn - Kingfisher
Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Skip Cutscenes, Blow Loud
Punch - They Don't Have To Believe
Restorations - LP3
Rozwell Kid - Too Shabby
Self Defense Family - Everything they did in 2014
Soul Glo - S/T LP
St. Paul & The Broken Bones - Half The City
Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds In Country Music
Torch Runner - Endless Nothing
Violent Sons - Nothing As It Seems
Wovenhand - The Refractory Obdurate
Young Widows - Easy Pain
GIVE | Electric Flower Circus
Moonflower Records | October 28th, 2014
Stream: http://noisey.vice.com/blog/give-electric-flower-circus-stream
Order: http://www.moonflowerrecords.bigcartel.com/
In any genre of music, there are musicians that stick to genre tropes in songwriting and conventional ways of “being a band” and have successful careers creating art for money. Then there are the band that do exactly what they want to do, despite whether or not that’s what they ought to do to be conventionally successful as performers. More often than not, these are the bands that set the standard for creative output that conventional bands try to meet (but regrettably never will). These are the bands that prove all the business savvy in the world can’t outweigh the strength of simply being good at making music. The sonically androgynous fellas in GIVE from Washington, DC are a glowing example of strong artistic output generating industry success, whether or not the band was actively seeking success. Their first ever self-released full length Electric Flower Circus brings the cult of flower-children together and spinning endlessly as GIVE make punk rock in a way only GIVE are capable of doing.
Not quite unlike fellow tour mates Self Defense Family, GIVE made their early mark in the punk community with a series of strong seven-inch singles released and repressed by labels big and small within the scene. After years of touring in support “Flowerhead”, “I Am Love” and “Boots of Faith”, GIVE hit the studio to write an honest to god full length (not quite sure what you call their first self-titled release at seven songs: not quite an EP, not quite an album). Electric Flower Circus proves to be the band’s strongest material to date across all platforms as a band. The rhythm section is tighter and more intricate than ever heard before, the guitar work wails in its signature hi treble rock and roll tone and works with entirely new concepts while still sounding like a GIVE record. The vocal delivery is the same discernible shout from a poignant, long haired, very tall gentleman that you expect to hear; which is deeply appreciated because some of the lyrics on this record are the best GIVE have offered the world. “Death is so boring/until it happens to you”
GIVE is the closest thing that the modern punk world is going to get to a grassroots punk rock band. A loud, socially conscious group of talented musicians releasing their own music free of big industry ties like a profitable record label, a well connected artist manager or a relentless booking agent. And yet, they still tour the world and do so frequently, their singles and releases continue to be repressed, larger music journalism outlets validate the band’s efforts and through it all they continue to grow as a band. I think a band like GIVE is incredibly necessary in the digital age, to prove that there are parts of punk culture (or any subculture) that can’t be repackages and sterilized by an entity with money. If somehow listening to Electric Flower Circus doesn’t transform you into a flowerchild, just go see them perform. The first time I saw them I believed their set was the tightest of the evening; and that’s the opinion I stand by while they played alongside one of the most influential hardcore bands of the past decade Modern Life Is War.
Chumped | Teenage Retirement
Anchorless Records | November 18th, 2014
Stream: http://www.wonderingsound.com/album-premiere-chumped-teenage-retirement-interview/
Order: http://anchorlessrecords.bigcartel.com/product/alr-028-chumped-teenage-retirement-lp-cd-preorder
It’s the middle of November and unless you’re one of those freaks living in a state where seasons aren’t a thing; grey cold rain is dominating every corner of your life. Whether you’re walking to where you’re working or sticking your hands outside of your jacket for a smoke, everything you do gets slower and more difficult this time of year. In the midst of buying roommate holiday presents and preparing your vegan friendsgiving recipes, you’re reflecting on the past year of your life and writing your “album of the year” lists. Brooklyn based “bummer punks” Chumped will be releasing their debut LP Teenage Retirement tomorrow; an album that reminds the listener that warm weather does follow six months of shivering and that you could have made better decisions as pages of your calendar filled your wastebacket.
Chumped is a band that received some attention from their debut EP for the simple fact that a female is the primary vocalist of the band, something not so common in punk rock. I’m not going to turn this into a long rant about gender norms and sexuality within the confines of punk, so all I’m going to say is the singer of this band is in fact a woman and that shouldn’t make anyone listen to this punk band any differently than they’d listen to any other punk band. The ability to create good music should be the primary talking point of any band, and Chumped has good tunes (and sadness) in heavy abundance.
When I was younger someone asked me “Why do girls like pop punk so much? The singers just spend the whole time shitting on their exes, I don’t get why girls would want to hear that” to which I replied “Girls have exes they want to shit on too. Who cares if it’s a dude singing the things they want to say to someone who screwed them over?” Anika Pyle’s lyrics on Teenage Retirement are insanely relatable to anyone dissatisfied with their personal relationships, with themselves, or even with something as simple and inevitable as the weather. To me, Teenage Retirement is a record for someone with a detailed list of all their issues written out, a list they carry around everyday in their wallet. They read that list every day and have internalized what needs to get done to get better; but they don’t get around to it right away. Not before smoke and drink and the feeling of inadequacy have their way with the author. It’s only when the author is on the move or fatigued from months of running that they might stop and take a look at the list again.
Chumped evolved from the songwriting they hit on their self titled EP, no longer leaning heavily on a set of legendary influences and forging forward with what they believe will make an album last in the listener’s mind as well as writing something they can be proud of for years to come. For a band that hasn’t even existed for two years, Chumped are ahead of the game in finding their own distinct voice as a band and Teenage Retirement reflects not only the accomplishments the band has achieved in that short time but also communicates a longing to be more than what they’ve been, even more than what they achieved with Teenage Retirement itself. I wouldn’t expect Chumped to be a band you don’t hear about in 2015, and if they happen to roll through your town, I severely doubt the crowd during their set will be anything but quiet. You’d be doing yourself a favor to learn when to sing about “Spending the next few years underwater.” so when the time comes you can drown with your friends in a crowded basement.
Pure Noise Records | October 21st, 2014
Stream: http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/gates_bloom_breathe_album_premiere
Order: http://gates.merchnow.com/
In 2011, I booked my first tour ever and landed myself in Worcester, Massachusetts the second day. Aside from The Hotelier, there isn’t much else in Worcester. They weren’t around that night; I’d go as far as to say no in town bands were around that night as I was part of a five band bill of all touring artists. Needless to say, I didn’t get paid; but that’s okay because that night I got to see Gates from New Jersey. At the time they were supporting their EP The Sun Will Rise And Lead Me Home which they gave me a copy of in exchange for a copy of my demos on a burned CD. I haven’t seen these individuals since that day in the center of Massachusetts, but they’ve been accomplishing astronomical things as a band including a short support tour with The Gaslight Anthem last year and the release of their debut full length Bloom & Breathe via Pure Noise Records.
The first noticeable difference between Gates first EP and Bloom & Breathe is the increase in production quality. It’s almost like Gates on The Sun Will Rise is a entirely different band of young dudes that heard Bloom & Breathe through some twizzy time travel shit and tried to rip off the sound with the tools available to them. Bloom & Breathe is criminally outrageous in its sonic clarity and quality and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Watts, engineer of B&B and like minded artists As Cities Burn and As Tall As Lion, is booked solid in the studio for the rest of the decade after this record went public. Lots of time, effort and money went into making this record as huge as it could be and it’s impossible to ignore, from the single “Not My Blood”, “Low” and “Bloom” as well as on the longer cuts of the album “At Last The Loneliest Of Them” and “Again At The Beginning”.
The evolution in songwriting between The Sun Will Rise And Lead Me Home, You Are All You Have Left To Fear to the full length effort on Bloom & Breathe shows a band unafraid to turn every stone in alternative music to find some nutrients within the soil and make their sound unique to their own efforts as a band. Bloom & Breathe compiles so many different promising and benevolent tools of craftsmanship in their songwriting delivery that any listener attune to any kind of rock based music would be hard pressed to say “there’s nothing about this album I could enjoy”. Relatable and discernable lyrics sung with a strong and sympathetic voice that’ll get you shouting along at a show, guitar work that’ll get you pantomiming along like a dork in the passenger seat and a rhythm section that’ll get you wearing your hair down whether you like it or not: Gates knows exactly what they’re doing and once they’re in your ears they’re not leaving.
The Smith Street Band | Throw Me In The River
Side One Dummy Records (US), Poison City Records (AU) | October 28th, 2014
Stream: http://themusic.com.au/music/streams/2014/10/27/exclusive-stream-the-smith-street-band-throw-me-in-the-river/
Order: https://store.sideonedummy.com/ | http://poisoncityestore.com/
Last November I went on a three week tour of the Midwest and North East of America to support my first full length Hope Is All We Have. The day tour ended I drove my life in car straight to a local venue to see a fellow stage mate Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls perform, and with enough time to see their supporting acts Koo Koo Kanga Roo and The Smith Street Band. A combination of 22 days of car-lag and less than impressive live sound execution left me less than blown away by the opening acts’ sets. Months later, my admiration of a friend in Belgium and her admiration with The Smith Street Band compelled me to stream their older records Sunshine & Technology, No One Gets Lost Anymore and Don’t Fuck With Our Dreams. The music combined with a charming accent, the sweat of summer and the promise of escape from upstate New York made me fall for TSSB fast and hard. When Autumn’s breezes rolled past my block the only thing keeping me warm on walks were these handsome Australians and the promise of their next full length, Throw Me In The River.
Last week I saw Koji playing for the jillionth time and he opened his set at Oneonta Punk by saying “I’m a punk musician that’s fed up with bands singing something sarcastic and ironic. I think that’s bullshit, I think punk rock is worthy of a more meaningful dialogue than that.”. To me, The Smith Street Band filled that half-hearted void in punk music perfectly. Much like Bukowski, Wil Wagner sings exactly what he thinks and feels stripped of all pretense and in his brutal honesty, what he’s saying is poetic and profound even when he’s singing about endlessly tapped topics like drinking and losing love. There aren’t many clever rhymes or typical verse-chorus lyrical structures, it’s as if he’s sitting in his flat with a notebook and a guitar trying to make sense of his stream of consciousness by framing it with riffs and rhythm. Not to take away from the musicianship of the rest of TSSB, but with a talent like Wil’s it’s hard not to talk it up.
Throw Me In The River is a record written by a matured band of punks that are still blown away by the good fortune their music has seen in a short four years. Several worldwide tours opening for their idols and packing out houses thousands of miles from their home in Melbourne, Australia could assure anyone that there’s something beautiful still in a world as chaotic as the one we live in, as seen in The Arrogance of The Drunk Pedestrian “We’ll keep on through the shitstorm until the metaphors are literal and forced screams are guttural.”. Sonically, Throw Me In The River is the biggest sounding record they’ve made with a supergroup of audio engineers working on this album including Jonathan Low & Jeff Rosenstock as well as the engineers responsible for their previous records Matt Voigt (Don’t Fuck With Our Dreams) and Sam Johnson (Sunshine & Technology). These folks know the band doesn’t have to struggle to fill the backroom of their local pubs anymore, they know where they want to be as a band and they recorded an album that reflects their ambitions.
As someone who apologetically cashed in their late pass on this band last Spring, I want to encourage anyone unfamiliar with the group reading this to start from the beginning of TSSB catalog and work forward. Don’t jump straight to Throw Me In The River just because its new and readily available, see the evolution of these young drunks and let their earlier, poignant, enthusiastic punk rock anthems shake your bones. When the reverberant, relentless refrain on Throw Me In The River washes over you, you’ll appreciate this gem of an album that much more. There are some bands you listen to and think “how did I go so long without listening to this band?”; the equivalent of meeting someone who will be a lifelong friend or one of your more meaningful romantic relationships. The Smith Street Band will be that band that keeps you out of a circling spiral of endless despair when it’s too cold to ride your bike and the band that will redden your throat when sun burns your skin. They'll be there to hold you when you get dumped and displaced, and they'll always buy the last round when you're out at the bar.
At the end of this summer’s past I witnessed stoner metal legends Sleep at a sold out show at the Union Transfer in Philadelphia with Windhand. A friend who had seen them at the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn several years before claimed “I may never smoke weed again because it won’t ever feel like that show felt.” and the expectations were met in Philly and then some. For a number of different reasons, I regrettably removed a certain herb many individuals keep in their kitchen out of my diet shortly after that concert. These past two months have been a cosmic internal debate: will the power of dark fuzzy riffs ever lift me the way it did with green in my veins? In that time I’ve been fortunate enough to see Boston’s psychedelic triumvirate Elder play Boot & Saddle and had a dark offering sent to my doorstep: Pharaoh’s debut LP Negative Everything. There is hope for those who are sober to feel the lift of the sweet leaf, and it’s in the form of 30+ minutes of music being released to the public on Halloween through A389 Recordings,top contenders for best modern record label in extreme music.
My introduction to this band was seeing them play a basement show in Rockland county back in 2009, well before the recording & release of I, Murderer, I or This House Is Doomed via A389. Aside from being located somewhere in New Jersey and including ex-members of The Banner, I do not know any intimate details about this group of warlocks & have not seen them perform since. 19 year old me didn’t need to know anything about their personal history and neither does present day me: once their set begins the outside world is consumed in a doomed, spiraling plume of horror, despair and distortion. As a Philadelphia resident I am heavily debating leaving my fair city to trek to Baltimore or northern New Jersey to witness the inescapable trauma their set will create at the tail end of their six week North American tour with Ashtabula, Ohio’s metallic-hardcore outfit Homewrecker. It’s worth noting Homewrecker is touring in support of a new full length being released this Halloween via A389 Recordings as well called Circle Of Death, a release which (in my opinion) is also worth your time and attention.
Let’s talk about the record itself, aptly titled Negative Everything. Musically it is a vast evolution from Pharaoh’s previous 7” efforts, predominantly compositions that revolved around a single relentless riff for four to six minutes. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with one riff songs, I play in a band currently that does exactly that. As a listener it’s refreshing to hear a band you respect evolve their sound over releases rather than rehash previous tropes and tricks. Pharaoh incorporates rhythm styles and intricate riffs of Negative Everything that stretch across the wide spectrum of metal and not obtusely focused on the monodrone stoner metal formula of mid tempo groove to slow groove and back and forth again and again, ad naseum. Pharaoh even takes a leap and throws in a little electronic sampling at the tail end of the record. Admittedly it took a few listens for me to warm up to it, but within the entire album I think it fits. The vocal delivery of Pharaoh augments the crushing torrent of sound that washes over you, as if you were defying science by smoking weed at the bottom of the Nile River with the chilling current rushing through your unkempt hair admist the frogs and locust corpses. Lyrically, the words keep true to the mixture of doom and stoner metal that Pharaoh is close to perfecting as a three piece and hold true to the theme of Negative Everything, the first line being “Every time I hear a lie, inside, it’s what I want to hear anyway.”. Negative Everything isn’t merely an extreme exercise in self-deprecation (although there is some present), Pharaohchimes in some socio-political issues within the lyrics including allusions class warfare, inequality in the workforce, violence in foreign policy, mass suicides, and as one might except, a suspicious outlook on organized religion.
Pharaoh has a shamelessly bleak outlook on things, and for everyone’s sake it doesn’t start and end with what they see in the mirror. They decided to leave the whimpering about life’s shortcomings in other subgenres, Pharaoh wants to take the woes of the world and mutilate them through a fuzz pedal and an emperor cabinet with drums that sound like they’re furiously pounding from the depths of the mines of Moria. They don’t see their efforts making the world a better place for anyone, but at least they had a hand in destroying something bigger than themselves. The soundscape of Negative Everything is congruent with the conflict in my own head of how I can feel so great listening to music while the music itself is so god damned heavy and depressing, depressing to the point that I think my stereo will sink through the floor into the abyss where my self doubt and old grinders are kept. I still haven’t found a resolution to the conflict, but as long as the needle doesn’t ware through the wax I have a lot of time to find an answer. Simply put, Negative Everything made me simultaneously euphoric as if partaking in reefer madness while also crushing my spirit into nothingness.
