Five & Five on Friday, 7/21/2023
A last minute Bellows show, Barbie pre-gaming, and more!
Happy Friday! Congratulations on making it to the end of the week. As you head into your weekend, here are five recommendations and then five micro reviews of albums from my high school CD collection. Maybe you’ll find something new to read, listen to, or do this weekend. See you next week!
ICYMI: Yesterday I sent out the first single for my upcoming album. The song is called “Prayer Of The Open Plain”, and it has a trippy music video to go with it. You can listen to the song on Bandcamp, watch the video on YouTube, and read about it on my Substack. Thanks for taking the time, hope you dig the song.
Surprise! Bellows is playing a show tonight! In Brooklyn! At 7pm tonight, we return to Purgatory to open for Katy Kirby. Best of all, the show is free!
Speaking of videos, Calder Hannan has returned to his channel Metal Music Theory, with a video about the band Victory Over the Sun. Hannan’s mix of deep-tissue analysis and hilariously understated editing has survived his long hiatus. His videos never fail to make me excited about the compositional possibilities of heavy music, which is a rare gift in heavy music media.
As of today my tickets are locked in for the BARBENHEIMER double feature, though the group I’m going with is sensibly splitting it over two nights. In an act of intellectual pre-gaming I read two different pieces about Barbie (Oppenheimer requires significantly less legwork for me, Nolan, Manhattan Project, ‘nuff said). The central question of both comes to down whether it is possible in an age of IP-first filmmaking to still produce a human work of art. The glass half full side comes in the form of an interview with Greta Gerwig in the New York Times. The glass half empty view comes courtesy of Cinemovil. Where do I fall? Well, I’ll have to report back after Barbie to let you know, but my favorite classical composer is Dmitri Shostakovich and my favorite TV show is a seven season long set up to a Coca Cola ad, so…
Finally, in the interest of easing into the weekend, I loved this short essay on Blackbird Spyplane about the benefits of NOT rushing make every light in time, as New Yorkers are often prone to do. Moving slowly and deliberately will always be cooler than rushing with haste.
Now, onto the five micro reviews. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Sola Scriptura by Neal Morse (2007) - Progressive Rock
A prog rock opera about the protestant reformation that I bought because Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater played drums on it (fittingly, I bought it at Newbury Comics while attending a Berklee College of Music summer program) and because the art looked cooler than the other Neal Morse albums available. That isn’t a very high bar to clear, mind you. As an openly Christian rock songwriter Morse’s album art is seriously uncool. Same could be said for the music itself. The instrumental sections are pretty killer, but the songwriting itself plays it really safe, sticking to the inoffensive polish of soft rock radio.
Catch Without Arms by Dredg (2005) - Alternative Rock
This is another CD that I played a lot during the transit strike. I bought this one on the recommendation of Sputnik Music. I loved the guitar tone and the vibey ear candy of the production, but I never got into the songs enough to check out the rest of Dredg’s work. Listening now: holy cow is this thing loud! It is easy to forget how bad mid-00s compression was, but if I turn this up beyond 3 on my volume knob my head feels like its going to explode.
Absu by Absu (2009) - Black Metal
This album got hyped to hell and back by the metal internet when I was in college, but I wasn’t really feeling it. Bought this one at Reckless Records in Chicago. It is MUCH better than I remembered, with riffs for days and some cool, unconventional structures. Years after I bought this the band kicked out guitarist Melissa Moore after she came out as trans. That sucks ass, obviously. But the jokes on them because Moore’s new band Sonja are even better! Sucks to suck, losers!
Giles Corey by Giles Corey (2011) - Indie Rock
I got this as a Christmas gift during senior year of college and listened to it a lot during a stretch of time that I do not recall fondly. This is a Have A Nice Life side project so I knew what I was getting myself into. Frankly, I did not enjoy listening to this again. It is excruciatingly dark. This is the point, but that darkness is tied to some stuff I’d rather not stew in these days. Great for what it is.
The Essential Iron Maiden by Iron Maiden (2005) - Heavy Metal
One of many, many, many Iron Maiden best of’s. I bought this on 6/6/2006 lmao. I think my logic was that this would give me an idea of which Iron Maiden record to listen to next. Oh, the pre-streaming days. For some reason this record is organized in reverse chronological order. I can guarantee you that I could make a more interesting Iron Maiden mixtape than this. In fact…