#galacticpiledriver

[galacticpiledriver]

Spirit Phone - Lemon Demon

welcome home everynyan!!!!!!! i'm so excited to be back today in particular because it is my BIRTHDAY!!! so to celebrate i wanted to talk about my favorite album ever made, which just so happens to be spirit phone by lemon demon :3

here's another HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT for you, this review marks the start of summerpiledriver, which means there will be one BRAND NEW music review EVERY SINGLE DAY from today until the end of June!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YYYYAYYYYYYY REJOICE, my little pile drivers !!!!!

this album is very special to me, for about the last 6 years every single song on this album has been on my mind almost all the time. his last few albums were more about making silly goofy music, while i'd say that this one does good in choosing an occult theme to follow throughout. SPOOOKYYYYY!! talking to GHOSTS n shit!!! the whole concept of the album is like calling all sortsa ghosts on your cool Spirit Phone and hearing their stories n whatnot, which is just so much fun.

i love neil cicierega a whole lot man, he's such a freaking nerdy dude. the other day i was listening to the spirit phone commentary track with my brother and the very first thing he says not even 10 seconds into the recording is "HEY BUDDIES!!" which i find hilarious every time. u can really hear how much of an absolute geek he is in every second of the music on this 1 which just adds such a layer of charm that i haven't been able to find anywhere else.

can i just say how much of an ABSOLUTE BLAST it is to hear this one front to back? every track flows into the next and it's textured so well all throughout. not just that but every single hook written on this record is incredibly well produced, like there's not a single bad one.

by the way, the funniest part from the commentary track is when he's talking about cabinet man and he says something like 'yeah idk where i came up with the idea of a guy shoving all his organs into an arcade cabinet.... that was kinda crazy like seriously i have no clue what i was doing when i made that' dude it kills me every time.

it's important for me to say that Soft Fuzzy Man is not just my favorite song ever but it's also the best two minutes and fifty-five seconds of music to ever be recorded in the history of the world. i don't really know why i love it so much i just think the end bit where he makes you see spots and floats through the air while every instrument on the planet harmonizes will forever be the greatest sound to me.

soft fuzzy man is a high point for a lot of people but even the lower points are some of my favorite songs ever. like man made object. i hjave a visionnnn of a man made object!!!!! i have the money!! i have the means!! i HAVE THEE STRANGEST DREAMS!!! also just wanted to say that you're at the party could have been on the record i think it sounds done. also redesign your logo.

spiral of ants is one of the best ending tracks of all time. that song is incredibly peak man. for a while, and this may in part be due to the enigmatic lyrics, but i thought there was some sort of strange meaning in the song that eluded me. that was until i heard the commentary track where he specifies that one has absolutely no meaning whatsoever and he just wanted to sing about bugs.

in conclusion i love music. thank you neil cicierega and happy birthday to ME!! absolute cinema

FAVORITE TRACKS: Lifetime Achievement Award, Touch-Tone Telephone, Cabinet Man, No Eyed Girl, When He Died, Sweet Bot, Eighth Wonder, Ancient Aliens, Soft Fuzzy Man, As Your Father I Expressly Forbid It, I Earn My Life, Reaganomics, Man-Made Object, Spiral of Ants

LEAST FAV TRACKS: *gulp

10/10

[galacticpiledriver]

Clancy - twenty one pilots

greetings, everynyan!!!

welcome to the third official galacticpiledriver review

today we will be discussing Clancy, the 2024 album from twenty one pilots

this 1 goes out to scarlett snyder who is one of the only people i know that shares with me a deep love for twenty one pilots

this review comes to you from an absolute clikkie (first time using that word in at least like 6 years). ever since i heard Stressed Out (which i think is not that great of a song by the way) i completely fell in love with twenty one pilots. Blurryface was probably the first album i listened to from beginning to end when i was like 10 and is still one of my favorites to this day. all that isn't even mentioning Vessel which is one of the greatest musical projects ever to be worked on by human hands, minimal glaze by the way. i also have a very very deep love for Trench, which i think is also a legendary record. that said, i only ever heard the singles for this record when it came out and haven't listened to it yet, so i'm glad i'm getting around to it. this is TØP's first release since Scaled and Icy, which was the tonal equivalent of careening off of a cliff. Clancy definitely feels like a course correction, i can definitely feel some of the songs from this record belonging on Trench, which is the record that sounds the most similar if you ask me (they literally call it the sequel to trench). we're back to darker, more psychological songs, which is a way more comfortable sound than the radio-chasing pop from Scaled and Icy. there were also a weird amount of self referential lore lyrics? not sure about that but for fans of the dema plotline (me me me me me) it wasn't so bad. it was definitely weirder than the lorebuilding of Trench which felt a lot more like an extension of the lyrics and themes rather than the focus. the strongest lyrics were definitely when Tyler was able to forget about any lore and was able to sing plainly about his emotional vulnerabilities. as i was listening to it, i was increasingly more and more confused by scarlett's absolute refusal to like a single song from this record. i genuinely was really enjoying it man this record RULES. there were a couple times where i got a whiff of Scaled and Icy but it wasn't really enough to derail the entire thing for me. one of my favorite songs from this 1 was Oldies Station, which felt like a loveletter to people that grew up listening to TØP (ME ME ME ME ME ME M) so that was a really nice feeling. overall it was a very sincere return to form.

as always, Josh Dun deserves extremely high praise for the drumming he provided on this record. he truly is the Satoru Gojo of drumming (no glaze). a lot of the enjoyment i got from this record came from the drums giving almost a backbone to each and every track (minus the craving ofc). special thanks to my absolute goat of goats Josh Dun. by the way the highlight of the TØP concert i went to was the part when he took off his shirt. omg who said that.

overall really really loved it i will be adding several tracks to my main playlist. thank you twenty one pilots for reminding me why i was ever so few so proud and so emotional.

FAV TRACKS: Next Semester, Routines in the Night, Snap Back, Oldies Station, At the Risk of Feeling Dumb LEAST FAV TRACKS: Vignette (for the record i really struggled to pick one) 8/10

[galacticpiledriver]

A Love Supreme - John Coltrane

welcome to another one of these damn things, my little pile drivers

today's album of choice is John Coltrane's absolutely INCREDIBLE spiritual jazz album, A Love Supreme. it's 32 minutes long and from 1965.

yep we're doing more jazz i lowkey have been liking jazz more and more lately as u can tell since i recently reviewed Takanaka's samba jazz record. this is a relisten btw. i wanted to review a jazz record cus i just rewatched Soul which is a fireballin move by the way.

A Love Supreme is a special jazz record because it is the very culmination of Coltrane's devotion to Christ. imagine you have trained yourself to the very peak of physical and mental martial arts, and by the time you are forty, you have nothing else to do, so you go meditate on top of a mountain. then while you're meditating, you realize that above all, you feel gratitude. so you do 10,000 punches of gratitude to God every single day.

this album is very much like that but instead of being really good at martial arts you got really good at playing the saxophone and instead of doing 10,000 punches everyday, you decide to play your heart out in the form of jazz music as a show of your gratitude to God for giving you this gift.

that's pretty much the backstory of this record, and man even before i knew that, i could tell the music was something so so special. the way everything splits apart and comes together is so satisfying to me. every single instrumentalist playing on this recording was absolutely in flow state for the entire 30 minutes u can completely hear it all in the music.

you hear it you hear the intro the first 5 minutes of the record and then he starts to vocalize, a love supreme... a love supreme.... and then you can't stop hearing it after that. that same riff stays with you the entire record. a love supreme a love supreme a love supreme. i picked this up on CD not too long ago by the way just fun fact. kind of the crown jewel of my CD collection, which doesn't have much icl... well i've got fifty shades darker soundtrack and MBDTF and Remain In Light which is a larp and is lowkey gonna be the next review. THAT DRUMMER JUST CAN'T STOP, MAN!!!! i don't know who that is but dude he is going HAM!!!! just absolutely going wild the entire runtime!!! not to mention the saxophone which is one of the best sounding instruments to me. i think playing the saxophone is one of the purest ways to express yourself in the entire world. which makes it perfect for this spiritual record. i lowkey wanna learn how to play the saxophone, but it'd be too much trouble. still, in a perfect world, i'd absolutely kill it at sax.

what is jazz, this has got mostly what other jazz music has. it's got a piano, a saxophone, a drumset, and a bass. that's pretty much it for most standard jazz/bebop stuff but what truly sets this shit apart is the a love supreme chant that makes it less of a jazz record and more of a prayer. seriously, they got in the stu and started praying as hard as they could with their instruments, it's absolutely CRAZY how much that can come across.

absolutely lovely music a love supreme will stick with me for a very very long time now i hope to hear jazz music that's just as good.

a love supreme

FAV TRACKS: Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm

LEAST FAV TRACKS: no such thing

10/10

[galacticpiledriver]

dream OS - alyzea

welcome home everynyan!! i wanted to do something different today so we're listening to or should i say booting up dream OS by alyzea! this is a purely atmospheric and instrumental record released in 2025 and only lasting 19 minutes.

i think the idea is that it's the music the fictional dream OS would use for certain things, which are the song titles. for example, 'home menu' or 'interface loading'. this album leans REALLY heavily into the frutiger aero side of technology and user interfaces, which is sadly a bygone era. i love love love staring at all kinds of frutiger aesthetics, especially the interior decorations and computer interfaces.

we as a society moved on from this type of maximalist, utopian type of theming for our computers and so on. i gotta say though, the pastiche work that people do of this sort of thing in retrospect really hits the spot. this one especially, a lot of the music hits you really hard right in the nostalgia bone, even though i was born in 2006 so most of the computers i used growing up were on the tail end of the frutiger stuff.

the music itself has a lot of the underwater ambience instruments you hear in Donkey Kong Country or Mario 64. or old-school nintendo music. it's that type of thing, but with a really satisfying drum or synth break thrown in occasionally.

it was especially satisfying trying to pick out all the UI sounds that were sampled, like i distinctly remember hearing a lot of Nintendo Switch sounds.

really i just realized that back in the 2010's people were making vaporwave records romanticizing the 90's (though they still do that). now we're in the 20's romanticizing the 00's. i wonder if in 20 years people will romanticize the type of stuff we've got right now.

at the end of the day guys it's a really really lovely record. so satisfying and chill to listen to. nostalgiabait in the best way possible. i got so much homework done listening to this bad boy. what an absolute blast to listen to. i wonder what it'd be like for a late 90's gen z person would feel listening to this, the nostalgia would probably explode your brain.

FAV TRACKS: home menu, interface loading

LEAST FAV TRACKS: distant ocean

8/10

[galacticpiledriver]

Breakfast With Girls - Self

welcome back everypony!! this is technically meant to be summerpiledriver day six. apparently there is a vicious rumor going around that i have a mental aversion to posting one new review per day. stay safe guys don’t believe everything you hear on the internet, my detractors are relentless

this is a historic moment for the pile driver because this is actually the first review of an album that was recommended to me by someone that i don’t actually know in person, this was a recommendation from someone that actually read my bullshit n liked it and commented an album rec which i think is the most wild thing i’ve ever said in my entire life. thank you curewishdoesalot I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU even when i make it to the top!!!!!!

okay anyways onto the music!! i saw this one is rated as indie pop/rock which as we have already established is totally my shit. also geek rock which apparently spirit phone falls under and is actually the #7 ranked geek rock record in the world that’s kinda wild.

so yeah man i heard the first couple tracks and just immediately fell in love, i was reminded of lemon demon (my favorite shit on the planet) on the first track. it’s like if neil cicierega got a band and made actual indie rock instead of uhhhhhhmmmmmm whatever he’s doing now.

so much personality just absolutely all over the place, i really love and value that. mostly ive realized that my favorite records are ones where the artist is doing whatever they want, like just making music cus it sounds good and they’re having fun doing it. i do think this one falls under that category and it definitely makes for bonus points in my book.

there’s something so charming about how playful the whole thing is. not like goofy or anything just that it feels alive and like i said it’s like you can tell the band was just having a blast recording ts.

this record also hit me at a good time, summer pile driver has had me listening to a buncha shit i normally wouldn’t and that’s not a bad thing or anything in fact i really like it, it’s just nice to feel at home.

songwriting wise one of the coolest records i’ve heard so far after starting this blog. it gets really dark at times like on What Are You Thinking and then it gets back to lighter silliness. really really cool i think this is mostly what you want out of a indie pop album.

really glad i enjoyed this one, a bunch of it went into my personal playlist. which i am willing to share i guess just ask for it guys. anyways i thought it had an incredible start but sorta lost steam around halfway through. that being said i can already tell you that Better Than Aliens is going to be one of my favorite songs ever.

thank you sElf!! thank you to my first and only moot!!!!!!

FAV TRACKS: The End Of It All, Kill The Barflies, Uno Song, Breakfast With Girls, Better Than Aliens, Placing The Blame

LEAST FAV TRACKS: Suzie Q Sailaway

8.5/10

[galacticpiledriver]

In Tongues - Joji

greetings everynyan!!!!!!!!! welcome home to galacticpiledriver!!

today we'll discuss joji's 2017 debut EP In Tongues. it's only 16 minutes long which i didn't actually expect because i've heard that one song worldstar money when it was popular on tiktok and it has interlude in the title, so i expected an LP going in. worldstar money rules by the way.

just to get it out of they way, YES i heard a bunch of filthy frank music and YES this is funny pink internet guy but DUDE. after hearing that first track Will He i remember thinking woah man this dude actually has something here.

i really should have listened to this back in high/middle school, back then that lofi sound where it's almost like it's being played from through a wall was totally my shit. i was OBSESSED. i even made a few lofi beats of my own using free loops on bandlab lol. i still like it but man my thirst could not be quenched and this totally scratches that itch.

this entire record is the sound equivalent of staring out the car window while it's raining, very very atmospheric and melancholic. that said it's on the more minimalist side production wise, which worked well for this record and its vulnerable lyrics. especially on Demons.

LOVELY LOVELY LOVELY starting point for the Joji project. that's sort of what it came across as to me, not just because of the 16 minute runtime, it felt like a proof of concept. and as far as that goes, it does that exceptionally well.

i do feel like i heard Will He and worldstar money and i was just waiting for the other tracks to be as fucking fire but i didn't get it, except a little bit on Demons and lowkey Window too.. maybe i'm hating for no reason idk.

OVERALL i loved it. i regret not listening to it sooner. also bonus points because it's pretty satisfying seeing someone reinvent themselves in this typa crazy way. like at least now i know that there IS indeed a walking internet meme -> sadboy lofi crooner pipeline.

FAV TRACKS: Will He, Demons, worldstar money LEAST FAV TRACKS: Bitter Fuck

7.5/10

[galacticpiledriver]

Naruto Original Soundtrack - Toshio Masuda & Musashi Project

welcome home everynyan! this is day 11 of summer pile driver! today is a lil bit historical because it’s the very FIRST ost record of ever reviewed on the pile driver!

uhhhh i was listening to one track, Rising Fighting Spirit and then i kinda half jokingly put on the entire thing and i spent the next 40 minutes laughing my ass off 😭

that then spiraled into a full blown rewatch and reread of naruto

some eric lore everybody my dad watched naruto when i was young and that eventually translated to me watching it TOO when i was a little baby idiot so the 2000s naruto anime not only kickstarted my love for anime but is also very nostalgic for me

my dad also gave me my love for video games because he would play games together with me and buy a shitton of consoles and games so i guess i have him to thank for that too

so pretty much this one goes out to my dad for making me a fucking nerd thanks bro i love you

this soundtrack is so iconic though like especially the track Sadness and Sorrow. fully synonymous with suffering across the universe. also it’s just a really good track.

also i think Go Go Naruto! is another highlight that’s just pure shenanigans ass music, genuinely ur reading this i want you to put on that track RN and imagine the tomfoolery you could get up to to the tune of ts.

listening to this record was really fun not just for the nostalgia but because it would play a really fun shenanigans fun time in konohagakure music followed up by the intense ass battle music it was a really fun pendulum type of thing to listen ti

overall i love naruto 🍥 i think its really peam even chapter 1 is insanely good and then they hit you with the land of the mist arc which is just so insanely out of the ballpark man just absolute 10/10 arc

thank you Toshio Masuda and Musashi Project

FAV TRACKS: Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, Morning, Naruto’s Daily Life, Nervous, The Rising Fighting Spirit, Sadness And Sorrow, Loneliness, Sakura’s Theme, Kakashi’s Theme, Sexiness, Go Go Naruto!, Evening, Glued State, Need to Be Strong, Bad Situation, Strong and Strike, Turn Over, Victory, Naruto Main Theme

LEAST FAV TRACKS: I Said I’m Naruto!

Shadow Clone Jutsu/10

[galacticpiledriver]

Imaginal Disk - Magdalena Bay

greetings everynyan!

this marks day NINE of summerpiledriver! for this one we're discussing Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay, it's a 53 minute 2024 record which my attention was drawn to because i had seen it on the front of rym every time i go on there and it looked cool.

idk u guys i think i have a problem with only listening to albums that i think are interesting........ a long time ago i asked people for recommendations and i haven't got around to most of them cus uhhhh idk i'd just rather listen to other stuff. BUT ANYWAYS! (please don't be discouraged to send me recs i actually beg you.)

so about the music i mean you guys they were actually cookign down there making this. the production alone is actually stupid like i was completely hooked. pop music has been being made for a really long time especially nowadays and most popular music is some deformation of pop but this was a really creative spin on it that i really dig.

the early 90s computer type theming was absolutely lovely and it didn't hurt that it had a ton of electronic type production which i am pretty much addicted to. early 2000s internet culture is some of the most fascinating stuff to me that's a big reason that i love Lemon Demon so fckng much.

because for how experimental it sounds, these songs get STUCK dude. there were multiple melodies n shi that i caught myself humming like an hour after i finished listening. that's honestly one of the hardest balances eva

death & romance absolutely destroyed me by the way. what a ridiculous song. i genuinely had one of those moments where halfway through i just kinda laughed because i couldn't believe how good it was. image? incredible. cry for me? incredible. by the end of the record i was just sitting there like alright man uhhhhhhhh u win.

the synth pop was a lot of fun but i had a really great time listening to a lot of the progrock mixing in some spots. i also love when pop music isn't embarrassed to be pop music. this album is flashy and dramatic and emotional and catchy as hell without trying to pretend it's too cool an i respect that a lot

overall ts was a blast and i had a ton of fun with it. definitely a favorite so far from the stuff i 've listened to for galacticpiledriver. also mica's vocals are absolutely incredible.

thank you magdalena bay

FAV TRACKS: She Looked Like Me!, Killing Time, Image, Death & Romance, Vampire in the Corner, Watching T.V., Tunnel Vision, Love Is Everywhere, That's My Floor, Cry For Me, Angel on a Satellite, The Ballad of Matt & Mica

LEAST FAV TRACKS: Fear, Sex

9.5/10