Best New Music (2.26.2018)

Drenge
Strange Creatures
Garage Rock

The easiest way to explain Drenge’s Strange Creatures is to use “When I Look Into Your Eyes,” the closing track, as a microcosm of the entire album. The bones of the song are simple. Even mundane. It’s a basic acoustic strum, a pretty sing-song melody, and a beat anyone could clap. But in the hands of Drenge, it becomes something much more expansive and dramatic.

The drama begins with singer Eoin Loveless’ voice, which has the wonderful ability to move between characters. Here, on “When I Look Into Your Eyes,” he’s singing with a Morrissey-esque sound, background vocals seemingly coming from chanting monks and Loveless’ guitar chiming selectively through the song. “Prom Night,” another ballad, also has an unsettling sound, but in a different way. Here, the fear rises out of a plodding beat and guitars that sound almost like a carnival organ. A saxophone comes out of nowhere and your first thought is, “did they abduct a saxophonist for this?” The saxophone, courtesy of the Loveless’ father, and most probably played of his own free will, also gives the track a very David Bowie kind of feel, which also helps to move the spooky needle.

It would be an oversimplification to say Strange Creatures sounds like an 80s post-punk album, but it’s definitely influenced by the music of that era. What’s nice about the album, though, is that it pours that decade’s hair product onto a head full of rock and roll. The woozy melody paints Eoin as the narrator in a Carrie-esque tale: visions of him lurking in an alleyway, leaning against a doorframe in noirish mode he watches the horrors unfold. “Something stepped out from under the rubble / Whatever it was it was like Halloween,” he sings. As well as the sax, there are touches of synthesizer on “Avalanches” and expansive percussion on closer “When I Look Into Your Eyes” alongside a haunting vocal chant; small additions that add to the overall feeling of fullness on the album.

On Strange Creatures the wrinkles have been ironed out. Quieted is the scrappiness of the to-ing and fro-ing of the guitar and drums during Drenge’s infant stages, instead thick layers of sound rage on. Something Drenge do particularly well is take the sickly sweet and throw it into the mud, adding a twisted element to the quotidian: “Milkshakes make me sick / Lactose intolerant” or “A boy vomits up his canteen dinner in the high-school’s honeysuckle garden.” This album still sounds undeniably Drenge-y, rattling and crashing along like a ramshackle rollercoaster; your only hope is to hold on for dear life.

Best New Music (2.25.2019)

Desperate Journalist
In Search of the Miraculous
Shoegaze

There is a distinct fragility and vitality contained within Desperate Journalist’s musical back catalog. It echoes through their work with a courage that cannot fail to delight and inspire in equal measure. The London quartet's third album, In Search of the Miraculous, borrows its title from the 1949 book of the same name by P. D. Ouspensky about his time with mystic George Gurdjieff, and his system of “self-development.” It more than earns the intellectual and spiritual connection.

In Search of the Miraculous is a work of indisputable artistic maturity entwined with sharply beautiful poetic integrity that current fans will recognize immediately. Perhaps more world-weary in places, the album's overall tone is one of hopeful recognition of the complexities of life and love in all its forms. Stalked by shadowy figures and ruinous politicians, it is as if they have not only captured the sound, but also the tumultuous age of their influences; the gloaming indie goth of The Cure and The Smiths hangs in the air, as does the unshakable shadow of an 80's Britain, ravaged and divided.

In spite of all of this, a restless fervor radiates through the layers of fuzz; a refusal not to be consigned to a predetermined fate, allowing the glint of just enough hope to salve the scarred heart of a country crumbling. At a time when our phone screens are filled with news too heartbreaking to hold, vocalist Jo Bevan seeks solace in the bravery found searching for that sublime feeling. As the transcendental lead guitar line in "Satellites" bores into the rapturous chorus and she sings "I was always reaching for you / Oh listen / You eclipse them," it creates a ground swell worthy of elevating them to another level entirely.

Bevan appreciates it can be easy to become numb to the extremes of emotion for fear of being overcome, and still that is why it is so important to keep fighting your own personal battles. In Search of the Miraculous finds Desperate Journalist striving and challenging themselves, happily searching for that sense of the sublime in a world that will outlive us all.

Best New Music (2.11.2019)

HEALTH
Volume 4 :: Slaves of Fear

HEALTH has been kicking people's butts in with loud electro-rock-noise for over a decade now, and their albums have telegraphed their arc from fully experimental to operatic. Volume 4 :: Slaves of Fear--technically the band's fourth album, but only if you don't include the best game soundtrack of all time, Max Payne 3--is the culmination of that journey, and it requires our full attention.

Just as a fun experiment, instead of a standard narrative review, I'm just going to post my notes from my first listen, unedited, unformatted. I think you'll still get the idea.

• Psychonaut: odd choice of acoustic guitar start then BAM!!! straight into some trio-EP era NIN drums, their own guitars from the Max Payne OST and the upfront lyrics from Death Magic
• Feel Nothing: Love the beat/hook here, this is what you get when perfectly combining dance-pop and industrial rock, I do wish it was used a bit more though, as it seems like they only save it for the intro and outro, could have really beefed up the chorus
• God Botherer: love the title, the chorus here mid-song is some frenetic metal awesomeness that sadly only appears here, easily could see this ending the album
• Black Static: They are really going full Rammstein here
• Loss Deluxe: basically a Death Magic b-side
• NC-17: this has a really cool Deftones-techno sound (see “Teenager” or “Lucky You”)
• The Message: the most consistent beat so far that really well constructed, the darkest the lyrics as well
• Rat Wars: this is a go at the darkest song for the album, like “Dark Enough” from Death Magic, also loving the Blade Runner 2049-esque sample
• Strange Days (1999): first off, the title can’t be anything but an allusion to the Kathryn Bigelow film starring Ralph Fiennes of the same name, Strange Days, which takes place in a fictional 1999; really great beats
• Wrong Bag: probably the most violent song on the album, and unless I was completely glazed over, I’m pretty sure this is the one instrumental song on the album
• Slaves of Fear: title track, been out a while as a single, love it, great intro, kick-ass beats, just all-around fantastic, still the highlight, obvious why they chose it as a single; love the little suite-esque change towards the end, it’s all great
• Decimation: this is very strange, I like it, but it’s very strange, like, it could fit in on that new Xiu Xiu album; gorgeous guitar overlayed with some pretty random noise elements, then this simple but powerful live drum comes in, like, what the hell
• Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but definitely need to let it stew a bit. Right now it seems like it’s definitely inferior to Get Color or Death Magic, but it’s also really different, like when I saw It Comes At Night the first time. Definitely have to revisit later, will require multiple listens
• Second listen, on better headphones...WAY better, love it now

So, TL;DR, it's great. This is the best of all of HEALTH's worlds, where their noise experiments from HEALTH blend with their pop experiments from Death Magic seamlessly to create a glorious wall of industrial-electro-noise-pop, like if Lady Gaga made Twitch.

P.S. Fuck Pitchfork and their surface-only reading of everything

Best New Music (2.08.2019)

Xiu Xiu
Girl with Basket of Fruit

Returning with their first album since 2017, the musical version of a Jodorowsky film, Xiu Xiu. Forget was a spectacular melding of electronic, experimental, and pure pop (see "Tonight"). Girl with Basket of Fruit is not that

it...is...not...that

If eldritch horrors had to pick one album to listen to forever, it would be Girl with Basket of Fruit. If the Eyes Wide Shut cult would modernize and listen to contemporary music, they would play Girl with Basket of Fruit. If Adventure Time's Golb, the personification of discord, came to life and passed into the real world, he would glean inspiration from Girl with Basket of Fruit.

But not to continually focus on the weirdness of Xiu Xiu's experimental leanings. This album, while incredibly disturbing and strange, is also filled with moments of beauty: string sections that harmonize effortlessly; Jamie Stewart's vocal performance on "The Wrong Thing" or "Scisssssssors"; or the entirety of album closer "Normal Love," a song that combines a gorgeously simple piano line with a strangely mesmerizing mimicry of Matthew Dear.

But then there's also...well to describe "Mary Turner Mary Turner" with words would be to imply that it might be comprehended by beings that experience time passively.

And then there's the highlight of Xiu Xiu's entire career to this point, "Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy." The ridiculous name is actually the most normal part of the entire experiment, a horrifying abrogation of reason replaced with Thrill Kill Cult samples and electronics pulled from Ministry's Wax Trax catalog. It is a glorious monolith of chaos that has to be experienced. But beware, it cannot be un-experienced.

Girl with Basket of Fruit is weird--it's REALLY weird--but it's also the most original, most fascinating thing to come out in quite some time.

I promise I'm not Bird Box-ing you, but that's only because you won't need eyes where we're going.