Waltzing Is Frowned Upon

A webzine about music, probably.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2017: #1: Literally anything released by Chinese Football

Fuck it! This whole blog is a Chinese Football fan blog now. Sorry guys, come back in two years and maybe I’ll be back to the weird jazz shit that gave me my fifteen seconds of fame.

I couldn’t pick a favourite release of the year. “Here Comes A New Challenger!” is great, and the feeling behind it even better (it was recorded and released, I believe, to celebrate the new drummer joining the band), and Electronic Girl in particular (linked above) is nothing short of superb.

There’s also a chiptune-ish remix of Electronic Girl which I could talk about for days, it takes the entire song and makes it a wonderful, drifting, dreamlike adventure, the vocals take a backseat and are turned down a bit to focus on the music, and it’s something to play as you fall asleep and dream of electronic worlds, god, god it’s so good.

Then there’s Dog’s Diary from their last mixtape featuring all the bands they toured with in Japan, which is another lovely thing they keep doing (Chinese Football are so lovely! They’re really nice people!!), and the song itself is this upbeat, raucous blast of joy, driven by the constant momentum of the drums, that eventually slows down and starts up with my boss’s name being shouted over and over again, which is really weird so I switch it off then.

And just recently they released a split EP with a new track, Naive, and even THAT’s a killer track! It’s sung by the guitarist so there’s a whole new voice driving it, and it practically feels like a whole different band than usual but still holds their sound? I guess? I haven’t properly listened to it yet, forgive me, it’s on in the background now but I also just saw that I can get the original version of Goalkeeper, and fuck man, Goalkeeper is a killer song but the vocals on the original version are stellar and I want to hear the whole thing.

Sorry, yeah, fuck. Chinese Football man. Listen to them right now! Right fuckin’ now!!

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2017: #2: “Impermanence” - New Lands

Had to include a bandcamp link because none of their shit is on YouTube I guess? Ah well. RIP New Lands

Impermanence is a bittersweet album - it’s an album made up of all the things that failed to be, a collection of songs without words where there should be some, songs that only came about because two people wanted to give it all another go, songs that existed elsewhere, and a Christmas cover because fuck it, why not.

Why Are You All Wearing Coolio Hats?, the track linked to above, is of course the standout, a track I waited years to hear after a 10 second-long clip emerged on Facebook, and then the band vanished, again, as they kept doing, and I would return to that clip and listen and imagine what the rest of the song could be (for reference, it was towards the end of the opening, where it cleans up and goes a bit brighter).

I remember it so clearly - a shot of the inside of an amp, distortion all around, then the phone gets yanked out of there in time for the cleaner parts to kick in, and they’re all there, listening, nodding, one guy at the computer mixing it, it sounds now just like it did then, although without whole “being played through an amp” thing, but then this is New Lands, and literally every song sounds like it’s being played through a fucking amp.

If it sounds like three people fucking about it’s because it is three people fucking about, and that’s all it amounted to, three people fucking around and recording it because why not, and then it ends, and so does New Lands, forever and ever, amen.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2017: #3: “onigiri” - haikus

I just saw this referred to as “midwest emo” in genre but it’s... from Argentina? Where the fuck do people thing the midwest is exactly?

I have, all too late, as the case often is, realised now that onigiri is the demo version of what became haikus’ self-titled EP, where the production values are stepped up by a lot, and there’s more harmonies and stuff, but, like, I haven’t properly listened to that yet, so it’s gonna have to be onigiri, sorry.

onigiri isn’t usually my kind of thing - it’s a little too dreamy, a little too pretentious nonsense, and yet also there’s a lot of heart in there, you can feel it pumping out of the amps and into the microphones and stuff, it’s in the distortion that you can hear being switched on when it needs to be rather than overlayed or altered in the studio like it should be, it’s in the distant screams of the vocalists shouting words I don’t understand, it’s in the way I haven’t heard the bass until tonight, with my headphones actually on for once.

If you listen to one song from the album, it has to be cornucopias, the lovely second track that drifts between segments effortlessly, doesn’t outstay its welcome, and features all the bits I mentioned above. It pulls you in with its tapping opener, before attacking you with distortion and distant screaming, and then calms down again and basically starts the whole thing over - it never loses its own pace, even as it experiments around its central sound, and it never wants you to be anywhere but right there with it, slamming into walls as it careers round corners you didn’t see coming, just the fucking raw energy of some dudes in a room putting everything they want to say in one moment and then shut the fuck up.

The rest of the EP is pretty good too. And I just listened to the s/t EP and cornucopias loses something in the transition to a cleaner sound (lol seriously when did I become this much of a prick) so check onigiri, there’s that video above but it’s on Spotify and of course you should absolutely buy it directly from the band.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2017: #4: “Mouth Moods” - Neil Cicierega

An invisible bed

A

freaky ghost bed

I mean, that’s really why this album is here. An invisible bed. A freaky ghost bed.

Did there need to be a bigger reason? Can I include an album based on a song released in 2015? Did you read the last post? There’s a freaky ghost bed. Ghost bed.

There are other songs on Mouth Moods, I believe. There was definitely an Eye of the Tiger one which is basically the same joke, but it’s Eye of the Tiger. Actually I really like that one, that can stay.

Look, if Bustin’ came on in a club, and you didn’t know it was a joke by the guy who made Brody Quest and shit like that, would you dance? Yes, you probably would. And then if the DJ cut straight into Gorillaz’ always excellent Feel Good Inc? Would you cry with joy and continue to boogie? Would you shout to your friend, holy shit, I love this song, what a fucking transition, someone give this DJ a raise? Sure, that would be you. Probably. I don’t fucking know, I haven’t been to a club in ages. I’ve seen the clubs round Oxford and they look proper wank.

Anyway.

Bustin makes me feel good and I just put Floor Corn on for good measure and hey, it’s a good song too! I love mash-ups of Bodies by Drowning Pool. Can’t go far wrong.

An invisible bed! A, freaky ghost bed!

Alright Wow Wow is pretty good too.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2017: #5: “Holocene” - Bon Iver

Now I will concede, from the off, that Holocene by Bon Iver was not released in 2017, but I don’t really care.

I had been listening to For Emma, Forever Ago at the start of the year, as you do, and then thought, hm, I should branch out to other Bon Iver, despite the fact I hate that fucking vocaloid bullshit they do sometimes, and I listened to Holocene, and then I haven’t stopped listening to Holocene.

Holocene, technically, is not a good song. It is awfully repetitive - it’s that one guitar part looping forever, and it’s on some weirdly strung guitar (Nashville tuning says UltimateGuitar.com, which... nah), and it’s a pretty standardly put together track, and it builds, and swells, and dies, and whatever, and the guy probably says fuck at some point, so yeah it’s radio friendly nonsense, go team.

But I dunno. It got its hooks in. I listen to it on repeat most days, usually at a high volume through tinny laptop speakers, going about my business, singing fake versions of the words cos I can’t tell what the bastard’s saying (SHAAAKE AND BAAKE AND STICK WITH EAAARTH), and then I let Towers play for half the song before hammering the “back” button twice and starting Holocene over, and over, and over, and over, and only turning it off once it’s fully borne its way into my skull.

I tried to learn it on guitar once. I gave up pretty quickly. Waste of time.

Holocene didn’t come out in 2017 and isn’t technically even a song I particularly like, but it’s hit me at a time when I needed it to hit me, and it will mark the latter half of 2017 (along with the first bit of Towers before the key change) as a very important song for me. Or maybe just one I stuck with. Whatever. At some point, having something to cling onto is what you really need.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Listening To: “Everyone Everywhere (2012)” - Everyone Everywhere

Maintaining a consistent rhythm is important.

I rarely click on the “related artists” section of Spotify because I tend to just like that one artist, not anything they’re influenced by (I swear everyone’s influenced by Algernon Cadwallader and I just can’t stand them (actually that’s kind of unfair, they’re good, but I’m not sure I’d listen to them of my own accord)), but sometimes you just have to take the plunge in life, and so here we are, on my new sofa, in my new home, my third in three years, listening to Everyone Everywhere’s self-titled album.

Usually when the bright, twinkly emo guitars come in you can expect some whiny white boy to come in over the top of it, half screaming, half whining, with that horrible nasaly voice (Algernon, Snowing, TWIABP) and like, sure, yeah we can do that, but we can also do so much more with the music than just playing off what’s already been done but with different lyrics.

Like, this song here I’m on, Fervor and Indifference in the Bica (is that a Panic! At The Disco joke), just came in with like, a banjo or something, and then some trumpets lightly playing over the top of it, and it just adds a small extra layer on the sound that doesn’t overpower the guitars (obviously the key part of any emo song) but actually complements it, and you just never seem to get complementary music in emo but guys, please, come on, the whole point is to make something enjoyable to listen to, right? Or get your emotions out or whatever, but you can still do this and make the song nice.

And the singer (don’t know his name) doesn’t whine as much, he more drones, and heck, I like a good drone every now and then, paticularly in a sea of whine, it’s that kind of melancholic acceptance, but also he’s in key and in tune and doesn’t make me want to rip off my own ears, which is always a bonus, and sorry I got distracted for a second there because I was looking into franchising my own burrito place, because damn why wouldn’t you? Imagine making burritos all day. And eating burritos all day.

Christ I’m really really hungry.

Everyone Everywhere doesn’t really make me feel anything - I’m not particuarly caught up in any of this, but it’s relatively relaxing (insofar as emo can be relaxing) and easy to just stick on the in background, and let’s be real, sometimes you just need that kind of shit in your life.

You can find Everyone Everywhere on Spotify if you’re a scrub like me, or you can check out their releases on Bandcamp despite the fact they seem to be defunct.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2016: #1: “The Impossible Kid” - Aesop Rock

The fact that this might not even rank on other Best Of lists is worrying to me, because it is, and will long be, one of the most beautiful albums ever release.

Ok so first I want to deal with some negatives: the three tracks after Lazy Eye may as well not be there - Defender is a slow drag through turf already tread, Water Tower just isn’t great, and by the time you get to Molecules, a good song, you’re basically done.

So if an album has bad songs, how can it still be the best? Is a question people who do not understand critical reviews would ask - it supposes that perfection means everything is always great, when in reality perfection is what sticks with you for a long time following, perfection is what you reach for when you’re feeling low - perfection is junk food or sweet drinks - it is not that every component of the thing is the best ever, but that for you, when you love it, when you accept its flaws and unceasingly praise its highs, for you it is perfect.

The Impossible Kid is perfect - it is Aesop Rock’s most honest release to date, brutally at times, talking about his depression, the root causes, going to a shrink, buying a cat just to try and feel better, feeling like he’s worthless, everything that he has been alluding to in his last releases but never explicitly said it out loud, and now here he is, like, fuck, Aes, you ok?

The lyrics are impenetrable as ever, but the delivery says it all - it’s downbeat and sad, its beats are dark, the bits you understand tell you everything you need to know about what’s going on here, but you can bop your head and feel the rhythm and not get too dragged down into the darkness, it’s a good sound and I want to play the songs at clubs and watch people jam or whatever people do these days.

This is the album I blasted while getting lost in Amsterdam and knew literally no one in the country while I was there. This is the album I reached for late at night when working, or during the day when working, or just working in general really. It soothes me, somehow.

It’s just a really, really, really good album, and Aesop is still a fantastic fucking rapper, and his production skill is at its all-time best, and just... give it a listen. Please.

Stand-out tracks: Rings, Lazy Eye, Rabies

You can find The Impossible Kid on a range of reputable sites and locations or find it on Aesop Rock’s bandcamp page.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2016: #2: “Late Again...” - Fox Lake

Yes a two-track single had more of an impact on me than the majority of music released in 2016.

I have written about Fox Lake before - I focused purely on the use of the word “fuck” in Summer Snow - but I have since gone back and listened to the two tracks that compose Late Again... again and again and again, more than, I think, any other album or single or song released this entire year, and I will now attempt to explain why.

Both songs on Late Again... are remarkably similar, not necessarily in structure, but the tone and sound and feel of the whole thing feels constant and familiar, so that both songs blend into one in a glorious way and not in a “christ is this still going” way.

There’s technical prowess here and everyone is clearly a master of what they play, but the band each get room to breathe and show off, and they also know what works well together to make a cohesive piece of music overall that doesn’t overpower the mix, it all just works in a way that so often math-y music just doesn’t, or at least in an interesting enough fashion for me.

But the vocals, even though I can’t work out the lyrics, are majestic - the refrain from Half-mast features a harmony that catches me off-guard every time, with its emotional lead carried by straight harmonics that stop it from being too whiny but don’t steal its thunder, but every track features this mix of clean and growled vocals and shouting and harmony that is intense and soft at the same time - it is a thing of beauty to hear.

It’s only ten minutes of your time and you should check it out, if you like punk and emo and math then this could be your new obsession.

Stand-out tracks: Half-mast, Summer Snow, there’s literally only two songs

You can listen to and buy Late Again... from Fox Lake’s bandcamp page.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2016: #3: “This Makes Me Wish I Didn’t Wish I Were Dead” - Hannibal Montana

, wIf the Best Of series were determined by title names this would win hands down, well done everyone, let’s go home and have a nice cuppa and enjoy the new year, but it isn’t, so let’s take a closer look I guess.

I own a poster of Hannibal Montana’s 28-20 EP but I never really considered myself a “fan” if you will, I just liked the art and was collecting CDs and enjoyed the first track on the album and, y’know, I wouldn’t skip it when it came on, but I wouldn’t actively seek it out either.

Don’t remember when I caught up on their latest material and first heard This Makes Me Wish I Didn’t Wish I Were Dead but when I did I was kind of mesmerised. It was the exact kind of album I was looking for at the time, with huge guitar and ridiculous skill across all three musicians, looping parts that never seemed to end, speeding up, slowing down, getting loud, getting quiet.

As a whole, the album is spectacular - it shifts almost seamlessly between tracks while still having a distinct feel for each of them, and the level of technical mastery on each one is mind-blowing, without being so ridiculously over-the-top that it becomes almost annoying and self-indulgent (although really all math-rock is self-indulgent but that’s just a given at this point), it hits that middle ground of being “oh shit how did they do that” and “jesus christ this is just really enjoyable to listen to and not over-analyse to death”.

It’s an album I got into late in the year, and I feel bad for doing that because I could’ve given it even more attention if I hadn’t sat on it for so long, but also heck yeah I listened to it all day on repeat once, you know yr boi is that kind of kid, and I’m listening to it now and it still surprises me at some points and feels lovely and familiar at others.

To Postpone the Hempen Dance is by far and away my favourite track, slowing everything right down and going a bit quieter on everything, before building up in an enormous swell that crashes down over you, and you come away from the experience feeling clean and refreshed and ready to take on anything, yet it kind of needs all the songs before you to get you to the point at which it works its magic best - alone, out of context, it might not give the same feeling as it does as part of the whole experience.

But that experience is deserving of the word - the album is fantastic, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Stand-out tracks: Reptile Dysfunction, Hannibal, Missouri, To Postpone the Hempen Dance

You can stream and download This Makes Me Wish I Didn’t Wish I Were Dead from Hannibal Montana’s bandcamp page.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2016: #4: “RTJ3″ - Run The Jewels

To steal a joke that is fast becoming well-worn and stupid, particularly because I don’t actually enjoy the song it’s based on, it’s a Christmas fucking miracle.

I took far too long to get into Run The Jewels - I had been aware of them for years because my friend Joe had repeatedly told me about how good RTJ2 was, and how much I’d enjoy the stylings of El-P and Killer Mike given my current propensities to rap music, particularly my love of Aesop Rock (formerly signed to El-P’s label and having worked with him in the past), something that I will have the great pleasure to remark on later.

When I finally gave Oh My Darling, Don’t Cry a real spin and paid attention I became instantly hooked, and downloaded both albums as soon as possible - I feel like I was in the Isle of Man at the time, so this must have been earlier this year perhaps, though I feel like it must have been sooner - but I digress.

RTJ3 has been slowly teased and each time I got more and more excited; Panther Like A Panther appearing in a Gears of War 4 ad scratched my Oh My Darling itch; Talk To Me wasn’t great on first listen but has steadily grown on me; 2100 again isn’t my personal favourite style of RTJ but I can still appreciate how good it is; Legend Has It, playing now, is nothing short of perfect.

That the album should launch on Christmas Day morning UK time makes it a Christmas present in the truest form, and I spent all morning trying to download it on my parent’s shitty Wi-Fi, finally running upstairs to listen to Panther Like A Panther on YouTube and feeling slightly disappointed that it wasn’t the GoW version I had hoped for, but slowly becoming an earworm as the day progressed and I thought back to it.

The whole album is wonderful - there isn’t a single bad beat for the entire duration, the lyrics are still fairly indecipherable but the snippets I catch always make me smile, and the themes are the best they’ve ever been - I particularly love A Report to the Shareholders and the positive vibes and that sense of love and friendship between El and Mike, and I interpret Stay Gold as a shoutout to their partners who they love very much for inappropriate reasons, which has its heart in the right place even if its genitalia might be elsewhere.

I want a different Panther Like A Panther but that is all - RTJ3 is phenomenal from start to finish and everyone should listen to it. It feels like the album the duo has been building up to, putting together everything they’ve got and everything they’ve learned and making the best damn thing they’ve released so far.

Stand-out tracks: Legend Has It, A Report to the Shareholders, Panther Like A Panther

You can find the whole of RTJ3 on the duo’s YouTube channel if you google it, or you can download it for free from their website.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2016: #5: “Don’t Piss On Me, I’m Already Dead” - Crywank

I haven’t listened to all that much music that was released this year, but I will still do my best to mark out the highlights of the year.

Crywank are a band that occupies a very special space in my heart and I’m sure the hearts of many others, given the numbers of people I see go to their gigs and try to make friends with James and shout how much they love him, which is cool I guess, but I feel like that might be missing the point.

Crywank, for a short time, were a three-piece band with a harder, punkier vibe on all of their songs, and it worked, and it was fun, and then it stopped, but the music continues to work, and yet we have the relic from that brief period which is Don’t Piss On Me, I’m Already Dead, a much-delayed album that was, in the end, entirely worth the wait.

The album itself highlights one of the things that I think Crywank don’t get enough credit for, and that’s Dan, the drummer/percussionist, mostly because this time The Box is retired for an actual drumkit, so it becomes more noticeable, but it’s sad to me that everyone always focuses almost exclusively on James’ lyrics (which are of course wonderful!)

Dan is absolutely fantastic at hitting things in a rhythmic fashion, and adding an extra layer of depth to the songs that you notice is lacking in earlier Crywank releases, and while I and everyone will always love the acoustic-only era, I think Crywank only got better with the addition of the rhythmic backbone of Dan.

Anyway.

The album is beautiful in its over-depressing fashion, filled with “honest” lyrics (I disagree that lyrics can be truly honest due to their constructed nature but that’s neither here nor there right now) and James’ ever-improving voice and guitar playing, and the aforementioned Dan, and Tom’s bass parts which give it all just that little bit of oomph, and it can’t best Tomorrow is Nearly Yesterday and Everyday is Stupid, but little can in my book, and really, like the rest of Crywank’s fans, I’m just happy I got to hear it.

Stand-out tracks: Forlorn Leghorn, Love, Me Me Me (Boo Hoo)

You can listen to and purchase Don’t Piss On Me, I’m Already Dead from Crywank’s bandcamp.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Listening To: “Summer Snow” - Fox Lake

I am, at my core, a very silly, and very basic, human being.

Now, I can pretend that I am more than just an idiot with dumb opinions about things, hence why I try (and fail) to maintain a large number of blogs about various things in one go, but ultimately, I am just some stupid man with too many words and not enough skill to put them in any kind of “good” order, and not enough ideas to attach words to, but ho hum.

This preamble leads up to me constantly smiling and giggling at Fox Lake’s song Summer Snow, the second track on their second release, Late Again..., a single/mini-EP that I don’t know when it came out but I’ve only just heard it, and I keep laughing because after a lot of angst and distortion and math, there’s a point in the song where there’s a pause in all the instruments just long enough for the singer to shout FUCK! before it all comes crashing in again.

It’s a silly moment - maybe it is not meant to be silly, I do not know - but it feels so out of place with the rest of the heartfelt singing, the wonderful rhythm, the cacophony of noise melding together, it all stops just so one man can say one thing, and then everything comes back together to push the point home.

There’s a magnificent tone to his FUCK! though, something not quite aggressive, not angry, but just kind of like he’s realised he’s left the oven on after heading out for the night with a pizza in, and his friend has just said “oh hey man we should get pizza I am starving”, and our singer friend has just clicked to the mistake he’s made.

FUCK!

It’s something I say a lot, in a tone not dissimilar to our singer friend here, as I realise something important about myself, or something good but surprising happens, or I hear of terrible news but also I can’t quite process it, it’s short and sharp and like you’ve been defeated by something small but unstoppable, you’ve given up but you’re not seething with anger, you just kind of accept that this is your fate, and all you can say, really, is FUCK!

You can listen to and buy Fox Lake’s latest release, Late Again..., over on the band’s Bandcamp page.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2015: #1: “What Gives” - Gulfer

 Of course it is.

The minute I heard Gulfer‘s track Tiki Marathon from Transcendals, I knew I was going to be in love with them for a long time, and I spent so much of 2014 hyped to hear more of their stuff, fuelling my anticipation by planning trips to see them play in France that ultimately amounted to nothing, then revelling in clips of their show and new tracks and oh my.

It took me a while to get around to my first full listen of the EP, because I’d been so entranced by the early releases of Almost Sterling and Trim It Short that I ended up just revisiting those songs over and over, and I’ve already written about the time I nearly cried because Battlefield (Most Of My Time) lived up to the hype it generated in my entire body based on a thirty second clip I revisited around a hundred times before the full track was finally available. When it came time to fully listen to the EP, I went for a walk in the woods and blared it out of a huge set of headphones so I could hear every nuance, every note, every detail that pulled the whole thing together and made it a masterwork of punk/emo/math.

Honestly, it took me a while to get into Bloody Lookin’ and Getting Hit By Parked Cars - for me they are drastically different from what else is on show, starting off loud and brash rather than building into it, but over time (and especially thanks to a stunningly good video for the latter song), they grew on me, and are essential pieces of the overall thing. Plus, screaming the last few lines of Parked Cars is a lot of fun.

Battlefield is nothing short of amazing, starting off so delicately and building up into a grand cacophony of noise but still maintaining some parts of the fragile-sounding opening, it’s a soft surface with a rough edge, a poorly-upholstered leather sofa of music, if you will. And dear God, the last section, that constant repeated dudaladudala-de-dee-doo gets me every time and I don’t even know why, it just sounds perfect.

Trim It Short is just plain fucking excellent, an absolute powerhouse of a song from start to finish, an absolute mess of a thing, and I just got to the end of it now and I completely forgot the slowed, quiet section that just explodes back into the crunch of the beginning, trumpet blaring in the background, heartfelt vocals shouting over it all, drifting almost seamlessly into Altalalaval, with that fucking trumpet part, Jesus Christ.

And then Almost Sterling, of course, a truly unforgettable, largely instrumental track that builds into a beautiful crashing of drums and distorted guitars and the most intense screaming you’ll hear on the whole thing, just fucking, it’s been a year/I buried all my thoughts (I had to look that up because usually I just scream whatever I want, but that’s kind of the beauty of it, you can throw whatever you want into this song and it still works), I don’t know what it means but I feel it in myself. It has been a year. I buried so much. I never thought this place would take so much of me, yeah, that I completely and wholeheartedly feel. It all makes sense. It nearly makes me cry every time I listen to it.

(Bob Abate is also very good but doesn’t count as it was on the Del Paxton split.)

The whole EP is magnificent. It’s not for everyone - of course it’s not for everyone, it never could be - but for math-rock fans looking for more emo in their lives, or emo fans looking for more twinkly guitar, or just anyone who wants to hear what it sounds like when a bunch of dudes mash together emo, punk, and math-rock, this is probably the best damn example one could imagine. It’s as if the Kinsella brothers got pissed off one day and just fucking let rip. It’s late night drives home when you feel like shit and need to expel your demons. It’s a walk in the woods when there’s no one around and you can just lip-sync screaming and try to forget where the fuck you are.

You can listen to What Gives over on Bandcamp, which also includes a link to buy the EP, which everyone should do.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2015: #2: “Beat The Champ” - The Mountain Goats

What. The. Fuck. Is this album.

There’s a quote somewhere from John Darnielle that says when he pitched the concept of an album entirely about wrestling to the rest of the band, they initially went “u wot m8″ and then, because it’s John Fucking Darnielle, went “alrite m8 wotever u say”, and then they went off and made this album all about wrestling, except it’s not about wrestling at all really, wrestling is just this overriding metaphor for everything else, and at its core it’s really just another Mountain Goats album, but I don’t mean that in a bad way, just that it isn’t as subversive and weird as it first appears.

Yet it’s also the best damn Mountain Goats album, in terms of production value, in terms of writing, in terms of how many different things it tries and succeeds in its trying. There’s a few staple big-hit-feeling songs in there (The Legend of Chavo Guerrero is definitely one) but then you’ve got long-ass, self-indulgent tracks like Heel Turn 2 which runs for nearly six minutes, a large chunk of which is JD playing piano (I’m hestiant to say piano solo because it’s practically its own composition), and Hair Match which looks like it’ll last forever but feels as long as the rest of the tracks in a wonderful feat of time-bending magic.

The opener, Southwestern Territory, feels like the opening number for a big stage musical, orchestral swells and a rhythm that doesn’t quite feel there, a bridge thrown in out of nowhere but it works perfectly, and I’d listen to it while driving home late at night and feel an affinity with the hero, except instead of the I-60 being empty, a road from the lights and show of the match to home, it’d be the M6-M66 from Lancaster to Burnley, the dim rooms of bars that would never pay me for my services but I needed so badly to feel alive and loved, all the way back to my family home which hasn’t felt like my home in years.

I told my sister about the album and she immediately fell in love with Choked Out, taking a love for the line everybody’s got their limits/nobody’s found mine, and one day I wrote I don’t want to die in here on my arm (Heel Turn 2) and it felt right somehow. There’s so much here to relate to even when it’s almost completely unrelatable, we will not be wrestlers or stabbed to death, but we can still feel their glory and pain, both physical and emotional.

My editor told me his wife used to be a wrestler and my first thought was of this album.

There’s nothing else to say. This is a very special album. You should listen to it. Do it. C’mon.

Beat The Champ is available on streaming outlets like Spotify, I believe, but you can pick it direct from Merge Records right over here.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2015: #3: “Prison Simulator Baseball” - Macaulay Vulcan

There’s so much in this world to love, and Prison Simulator Baseball by Macaulay Vulcan is one of those things.

If you have heard the EP already, it’s likely you were drawn in by the ridiculous name (every band with a pop-culture mash-up name is worth a look, see Postmadonna and Hannibal Montana), laughed at the title of Panic! At The Costco, and then actually listened to the talented bastards and immediately threw money at them so you could keep listening to it.

Macaulay Vulcan aren’t the most impressively technical band of all time. Huge sections of their songs are the same note plucked over and over again in a strange rhythm. The opening track feels like something that, with a crudely written tab and a few hours of practice, even a fuck-up of a guitarist like me could probably manage.

But it’s put together in such a wonderful way, like making a pasta dish that contains only a handful of ingredients, but the ingredients work so well together and you cooked the pasta just right and didn’t add too much olive oil, and you eat some and think, fuck, maybe I can cook after all, and all you want to do is make your friends eat your food except you know they won’t because you’ve gone vegetarian and they’re all quietly a bit weird with you about it because it’s just another in a long list of things you’ve done to appear “alternative” rather than actually making a change in your life that makes any real difference.

I have two issues with Prison Simulator Baseball, in that the intro to track three, Never-Ending Innings, Never Any Outings is almost completely forgettable for some strange reason (but when it gets going about halfway through, it gets seriously good, like a plot twist that you had absolutely no idea was coming but makes perfect sense when you look back at the narrative), and that there just isn’t enough of the damn thing. With only four tracks, one of which is taken up mostly by samples of rain and a movie quote (my favourite thing in instrumental music), the whole thing is over in less than 15 minutes, leaving you begging for more so you can lie back and drift away to somewhere nice for a while longer.

It’s the kind of music I would put on a record player and lie on a terrace in a villa in a European country towards of the end of spring and listen to, turning it up to drown out those fucking cicadas and maybe doze off for a while, it carries you on its wings through the sky but throws in enough drive and aggression that it never drifts into a monotone, and even the last track, the slowest by far, is held together by delightly refrains that keep coming back for more, the aforementioned sample, and an ending that even after about fifty listens, I never see coming.

It’s a truly magnificent EP, and I sincerely hope that 2016 will see more from Macaulay Vulcan. Lots more. Like, 2013-era New Lands frequency of releases.

If you’ve not yet heard it, you can stream/buy Prison Simulator Baseball over on the band’s bandcamp.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2015: #4: “Better Nature” - Silversun Pickups

There’s something very weird about the latest album by Silversun Pickups in that I know, deep down, that it is a great album, but I don’t like it.

I have been arguing with myself for months over why this is, and I have yet to pinpoint an exact reason. My main problem, in terms of my own taste, and not that I think it is an issue with the album, is that the sound has shifted more towards indietronica than just being straight up indie. The fuzz is still there, the passionate vocals, shouting, it’s all there, but there’s more noticeable keyboards and electronics than ever before, and it feels off somehow because of it. It is still Silversun Pickups, there’s no doubt about that, but it has this unidentifiable quality within it that makes me dislike it.

Why do I put an album I don’t like at number 4, I hear precisely no one ask, as I type this alone in my room at midnight, one beer down, hungry, tired, but needing to stay awake to rapidly get work done? There are two reasons, and they are called Nightlight and Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance), which almost instantly became two of my favourite SSPU songs ever, the former being a near-perfect example of everything that made the band so enjoyable for their entire duration (Swoon never happened, in my eyes), with its lovely riffs and pounding bassline and anthemic chorus, and Brian’s vocals are just wonderful, and then the latter because it lets Nikki take centre stage vocally, something that has become increasingly rare as the band has continued on, and it retains all the energy of their usual songs but in a strangely stripped-back fashion.

Better Nature is not a bad album, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s the album you’d put in a playlist for a long car journey and not flip through any of the songs, but only really tap along to two of the tracks, with the rest of them as a pleasant background noise. But the two tracks that do get your attention are so good that they will be remembered alongside the legendary Lazy Eye as some of the absolute best examples of what SSPU is capable of.

It’s an album I really want to love, but there’s something about it that just doesn’t grab me. But maybe that’s just my fault.

You can, and should, pick up Better Nature from any fine online retailer, though personally I like Amazon these days.

[waltzingisfrowneduponzine]

Best of 2015: #5: “Dealer” - Foxing

If Foxing’s The Albatross is the sound of a breaking heart, Dealer is the melancholic realisation that you’ll always be alone.

I’ve been toying with that line for nearly 24 hours now, and it’s beginning to feel inauthentic, like I’ve perfected it too much to be a real thought, it began as a thought and evolved into a crafted piece of writing, and fuck this craft that I have turned into work, it’s stupid anyway, the future is video and all who rail against it are Luddites and idiots, or so a million voices scream in my head as I hear the uniques for my latest article and crumble into my sheets once again.

I don’t even know what I mean by it anymore. I was on a train home late at night, and I listened to both albums back to back, chronological order, and I was nearly in tears halfway through Dealer. Is that the fault of a lone album, or the two working together? Had I just worn myself down too much? My thoughts had drifted considerably and that deep level of The Sadz had settled in just enough that anything could’ve tipped me over the edge. So whatever.

It is an achingly beautiful album. It never lets up, never sounds upbeat, it is just slow and melancholy and drab, it is grey turned into sound, but it shifts, it’s looking up and seeing storm clouds but not feeling the rain, yet knowing it will be coming soon and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s walking home from a nice time at a friend’s house to your own empty, dark home where everything is waiting for you to deal with it. It’s the morning after the night before.

You can pick up Dealer from the band’s bandcamp page.