Fives on Friday, 2/16/2024
Kombucha For Your Brain
Happy Friday! Congratulations on making it to the end of the week. As you head into your weekend, here are five recommendations, five track reviews, and five album micro reviews. Access to these curated links and tunes will only cost you your time and five pieces of self-promotion. Maybe you’ll find something new to read, listen to, or do this weekend. See you next week!
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There are some pieces of advice that, while not necessarily new, I find helpful to re-ingest every so often. They act as a kombucha for my mental biome. Here’s a particularly effective truism by way of writer Lincoln Michel: Finish stuff. Or, as I’ve also heard it put, play all of your cards and then draw new cards. The best way to get better at making anything is to finish making it and then make another thing. Though I know it doesn’t look like it from the outside, this idea is so central to my ethos as a musician that I encoded it straight into my band name. If you stop swimming, you’re dead, etc.
If one of the things you’re having trouble finishing is Guy Debord’s The Society of The Spectacle, I can relate and I’d suggest these cheat sheets from Patrick Roesle based on the old Love Is comics, which are both helpful and hilarious. Happy Belated Valentine’s Day!
Just because I’m comfortable admitting that I read French theory books in public doesn’t mean I don’t get down with some real low effort, potato chip-able content every now and then. This is how I found myself burning through the backlog of this YouTube channel that makes videos for the different charts on RateYourMusic. No annoying personality, no gimmicks, just clips of music and lots of arguments in the comments. My favorite of the bunch is the video for the top rated album from every country in the world. Not only does that video have a ton of great music in it, it’s also a fascinating example of the biases of the site’s mostly Western/Anglophone users.
I really liked this piece from Dada Drummer Almanach on the experience of working as a sound engineer and watching the different ways that musicians and audiences “hear the room”. It is an unfortunate consequence that performing well sometimes requires you to hear a completely different version of the music than the crowd. Some the ideas Krukowski works over in this short piece remind me of concepts that Yeah Yeah Yeah’s drummer Brian Chase brought up when I interviewed him a few years back, which I’ve mentioned before in my piece about “The Monophonic Ear”
Continuing my path through the bottom of my reading list: here’s a great piece from 2022 by Zachery Lipez about the strange resonances between the black metal band Watain and the downtown new right that people couldn’t stop talking about a few years ago. I’ve never given Watain an honest shot, my tastes in black metal being too self-consciously “hipster” even for them as you’ll see in the Micro Reviews below, so I appreciate the insight on what their whole deal is, along with the consideration of what leads hipsters (broadly, nebulously speaking) to embrace reactionary/edgy ideologies.
# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #
I’m going to bring up the Gunk For Palestine compilation until all of my followers tell me in unison that they’ve purchased it. Not only does it feature my cover of The Style Council’s “A Stone’s Throw Away”, all the proceeds go relief efforts in Palestine. The violence is so sickening for me to dwell on that I am just going to move right along to the next blurb before I melt something with my stomach acid.
ICYMI: Earlier this week I published Dad Rock Against Dad, the 42nd entry in my ongoing series Drumming Upstream. That’s right, I’m naming them now! This entry concerns Bruce Springsteen’s “Adam Raised A Cain”, which blends East of Eden and Springsteen’s own life into a bible-scale invective about father-son relationships. This will be the last Springsteen song for a while, I promise lol. To read this entry along with the rest of the Drumming Upstream archives, subscribe now for only $5 a month.
Word on the street is that the first Bellows show of 2024 is nearly sold out! If you want to see us, along with the homies in Sister, open for Frog at the Knitting Factory on March 15th you better act fast!
As I alluded to at the start of this letter, I am working on new music, maybe even as you’re reading this. As I work on finishing whatever it is that I’m working on, I also have some pre-finished music for you to enjoy. My personal favorite is Sisyphean, a slow & low doomy gloomy indie metal album inspired by Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus. I’d also recommend it’s companion album You Can’t Do This Alone, featuring eclectic remixes from my friends and collaborators. You can find both, along with some neat t-shirts, on my bandcamp!
Seattle’s Colony Drop recently announced this first short tour of the Pacific Northwest. If you want more info on why this band rocks so hard, check out my interview with their singer Joseph Schafer on Lamniformes Radio.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a playlist with all of this year’s tracks at the bottom of this section.
“Selectors on Rotation” by Fracture (All of the Massive, 2023)
Here’s some slamming drum’n’bass for your next trip to the gym or dance-floor. Fracture’s take on the sound is decidedly more old-school than the version some younger readers might be familiar with (more on that below). Classic amen break cuts, booming sub-bass, vocal samples of uncertain origin, this one’s got it all!
“Bayou Rouge” by Dreamwheel (Redeemer, 2023)
Sometimes you can tell that a song was written from the perspective of guitarists who really, really enjoy playing guitar. Not that this track from Julia Gaeta & Evan Linger is some self-indulgent shred fest, on the contrary “Bayou Rouge” is full of sticky, ear-wormy guitar lines that sound like they emerged from genuine excitement on the fretboard. No wonder they let the riffs ride out so long as the end of the tune. I really wish this band would play the states because they’d be a great fit for a show with Laughing Stock. One day!
“Capable of Love” by PinkPantheress (Heaven Knows, 2023)
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t write about very popular contemporary artists over the chance to highlight something less well regarded, but considering the general demographic distribution of my readership I wouldn’t be surprised if this track from the Gen Z popstar PinkPanthress is new to a bunch of you. I’m on record as being a big fan of the youth’s embrace of drum’n’bass aesthetics, and I love the way that groove is balanced by delicate acoustic guitar, somber piano, and a lead guitar that sounds like it was imported straight from an Isley Brothers tune. Just wait for the bit where the vocal line syncs up with the lead in the chorus, whew, that’s pop songwriting baby!
“Marionette” by Akina Nakamori (Fushigi, 1986)
Big shouts out to Brandon Sheffield of Insert Credit for putting this one on my radar. The backstory here is that once given the reigns to produce her own music, Idol singer Akina Nakamori got extremely freaky with it. This song sounds like the theme to a Rocky movie that takes place entirely in a subterranean sewer system. It is objectively cool as hell that a pop singer would mix their own vocals this low. Its such a bold artistic decision that I’m certain, despite my woefully underdeveloped Japanese skills, that there is a broader thematic reason for it. Absent that lyrical context, I’m content to listen to this one for the rad violin solo and the orchestra hits the size of God’s biceps.
“A Loving Feeling” by Mitski (Puberty 2, 2016)
Research for DU#39. I’ll be honest, before I started working on my cover of “Once More To You See” I hadn’t listened to Puberty 2 in years and I was worried that it wouldn’t age well, burdened as it is with memories of my mid-20s. Those concerns were unfounded! Rather than wilting in the dusty backlogs of my mind, this tune had waited patiently for me to rediscover it. Once I hit play all of the melodies sprung back to life immediately. What an efficient little pop song, the kind you’d come up with while singing to your pet (extremely high compliment).
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
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.
Écailles De Lune by Alcest (2010) - Black Metal
When this album dropped black metal was already gaining steam among the non-metal hip music world, but Alcest’s introduction of shoegaze and dream pop aesthetics into the mix accelerated that crossover. A ton of bands were formed because of this record and its descendants. Album’s still good! The drop in the second half of the first track remains my favorite Alcest moment, and the rest of the record is gorgeous. Deserves its reputation. [Editor’s Note: For more on Alcest and this album, check out DU#16]
Metal: A Headbanger’s Companion by Earache Records (2007) - Metal
This compilation takes tracks from Earache’s entire history and organizes them into different genres across six CDs. My guess from the name/packaging is that this was released to capitalize on the popularity of the documentary A Headbangers Journey, which had just come out when I bought this. Do labels still release these sorts of comps? I feel like streaming has made them completely irrelevant. Just make a playlist instead!
Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. 1 by Nachtmystium (2008) - Black Metal
Another example of black metal that crossed over to the hipster crowd in the late 00s/early 10s, in the case of this record by adding psych rock into the mix. This record and band got a tons of press but have since self-sabotaged like few others. The “psych” side of their sound has also been greatly overstated, especially compared to a band like Oranssi Pazuzu. There are a few cool riffs but overall this isn’t particularly memorable.
Seediq Bale by Chthonic (2007) - Black Metal
A Taiwanese metal band that I saw open for Nile in 2007. I was sold the minute they busted out the erhu. From what I can gather, a lot of their lyrics are based on Taiwanese folklore and have an anti-Chinese-Imperialism bent. Erhu + heavy metal is a very cool idea, but most of this record is pretty conventional keyboard focused black metal a la Cradle of Filth. Super clicky drum sounds and a crunched mix don’t help. I should see whether things improved on that front on their newer releases.
Blue Record by Baroness (2009) - Brewer Metal
At the time I thought this was a big step up from Red Album, in that it tightened up the meandering instrumental stuff into focused songs. Surprisingly, I’ve flipped that position. I still enjoy this, especially the righteous guitar harmonies, but the rhythm section feels less thoroughly involved this time around.