The world probably doesn’t NEED a new Marilyn Manson record, but when it’s this good it just might be worth it.
Last week, he (and his band of the same name) dropped his eighth studio album, Born Villain, and to put it bluntly: it boasts some of the best MM music in at least a decade. Granted, that isn’t really saying much, considering how uneven Eat Me, Drink Me and The High End of Low were, but this should please even the most disillusioned of fans.
If you dug albums like Holywood and Mechanical Animals, you might want to give this one a try.
The lead single, No Reflection, is pretty solid even if it’s nothing new stylistically, but its video is pretty badass:
Thematically, Born Villain is also a return to form: songs like Pistol Whipped, Overneath the Path of Misery, and The Flowers of Evil let Manson revisit the sinister approaches that made his best albums so memorable.
Slo-Mo-Tion sounds like a b-side from the late 1990s, which in this context is a compliment – it’s throwback Manson, from the fuzzy electro-guitars to the creeping rhythmic approach.
Of course, no Manson record is complete without his signature snarling, moaning and wailing, and on more than one occasion here his voice calls to mind David Bowie, who arguably was the original Manson, at least in terms of musical eccentricity.
Children of Cain, with ominous electric drums and a deliberate, chain-gang pace, provides the foundation for Manson to say things like don’t assume that I’m always with you/It’s just where my mortal body happens to be.
The best (or perhaps most surprising) moment on the album has got to be Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms. Have you ever wondered what it’d sound like if Marilyn Manson did a grunge song? Odds are you haven’t, but you get to hear one anyway. It’s sublime – an off-time, Soundgarden-like tempo drives the song, which also features some Kim Thayil-esque guitars. If it sounds weird, it isn’t – it’s just awesome:
If you hadn’t ever expected Marilyn Manson to release anything impressive again, you ought to check out Born Villain. At 43, he probably could (and should, depending on your perspective) have hung up the black eyeliner and weird S&M bondage outfits, but if the result is this solid it might be worth sticking around a bit longer.
Oh, and there’s also bonus track featuring Manson and guest drummer Johnny Depp running through Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain…
To honor the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s landmark album Nevermind, original bassist Krist Novoselic decided to put together a pretty amazing party in Seattle.
On Tuesday, September 20th, he will gather with a bunch of his musician friends to play the album in its entirety at Experience Music Project’s Sky Church in Seattle.
Sadly, Dave Grohl won’t be in attendance, as his Foo Fighters are playing in Cleveland that night.
If you’re anywhere near Seattle or plan to be on that day, and miss out on this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime grunge fan’s dream, do yourself a favor and snatch up a $20 ticket before they’re all gone.
More details, from the ticket link: Performers include The Fastbacks, Krist Novoselic, Vaporland, The Long Winters, Visqueen, Valis (former Screaming Trees), and more to be announced soon. This show will be a benefit for long time Seattle music industry maven Susie Tennant, who was recently diagnosed with cancer.
For as long as I had been a fan of the “grunge” movement, I was never really in love with Soundgarden as much as I was with Nirvana and Alice in Chains. Chris Cornell‘s voice was always too much for me to handle…the songs themselves were fine, but something about Cornell’s throaty delivery threw me off.
When I started delving into all things grunge, including every Nirvana/Kurt Cobain book I could consume and albums by Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Melvins, and other flanneled Pacific Northwest bands, my appreciation for Soundgarden grew.
Before long, that appreciation turned to sadness, assuming I would never see Soundgarden live, since the band had long since broken up and Cornell was spinning his wheels in Audioslave (to say nothing of his ill-advised foray into dance-pop with Timbaland).
Well, since the band’s 2009 reformation, I (and millions of other grunge fans) had been hotly anticipating a full-on reunion tour, however unlikely it seemed. When they announced that tour a few months ago, that anticipation turned into feverish excitement, culminating in the band’s mammoth performance last Friday night at the Forum in Inglewood.
Simply put, this show was one of the best I have EVER seen. I’ve probably been to more than a hundred concerts in my life, but Soundgarden’s rousing, powerful, dynamic show at the Forum is easily within the 5 best I’ve ever seen.
The Mars Volta wouldn't stand still for a decent picture
Kicking off the night was The Mars Volta, a band decidedly different now than they have been for most of their career. Playing mostly new tunes, they were much more low-key than usual. The new songs have *gasp* structure to them, a striking departure from the spastic freakouts fans have come to expect from the group, led by the hyphenated Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. A strobe-heavy light show spazzed out behind the band as they blazed through their 45-minute set with a combination of mesmerizing melodies, precise percussion and passionate delivery by Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala. If anything, the Mars Volta’s new music will help them further cement their place as one of rock’s most challenging and innovative bands around.
After a short break, it was time for a nostalgic trip back to the early 1990s. Taking the stage to the intro of Searching with My Good Eye Closed, Soundgarden demonstrated that they’re not just here for a cash-grab reunion tour. Jesus Christ Pose was particularly vicious:
There was an immense, powerful energy delivered by Cornell, Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd that lasted throughout their sprawling, 25-song set.
Anybody ever remotely interested in any Soundgarden song had to be satisfied through the course of the night. They played EVERYTHING any fan could want. All the hits that helped define 1990s modern rock radio were present and accounted for, as well as Ultramega OK and Louder than Love songs like Flower, Gun, Ugly Truth, Beyond the Wheel, Loud Love, and Big Dumb Sex. The band pulled songs from all throughout their career, and they all sounded flawless.
Speaking of being flawless, Chris Cornell has some seriously powerful pipes. He’s 47 years old, but his soaring trademark voice never tired throughout the evening. On songs like Jesus Christ Pose and Black Rain, in particular, he had the same fury and thunder in his voice that he probably had as a twenty-something up in Seattle.
Between songs, Cornell was candid and funny; he thanked us all for showing up after all these years, and told us to say thanks to our parents or older siblings for turning us on to the band. He also remarked that they did have new songs they could have played, but “it’s been so long, we figured we might as well play all the older stuff” instead.
Since this show was in Los Angeles, I almost expected some kind of special guest treatment. And, much to the delight of the screaming grunge fanatics in the crowd, that happened on the song Superunknown, when Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready showed up. He shredded through a solo for the song, creating a mini-grunge supergroup onstage that was as badass as it was sonically pleasing. Check out my video of that memorable moment:
As if that moment wasn’t cool enough, apparently Dave Grohl was rocking out IN THE PIT with the fans for a majority of the set. Here’s a video of him losing his shit during Fell On Black Days. Sadly, I wasn’t on that side of the venue, as I was over on Thayil’s side, so I will have to live vicariously through the excitement of the fans in Dave’s area. The image of Grohl bouncing around in a mosh pit at a Soundgarden show sounds like the stuff of legend…which it is, considering it’s Dave Fuckin’ Grohl.
Soundgarden saved its heaviest, most intense song, Slaves & Bulldozers, for the very end of the evening. Despite the fact that he’d been screaming for two hours at that point, Cornell drove the set home with such vocal energy that it was impressive he hadn’t totally shredded his vocal chords yet. The dude can sing.
It can’t be overstated just how impressive the band was at this show. For nearly two hours and fifteen minutes, Soundgarden sounded as vibrant and crisp as they must have been in the early 1990s. Thayil’s precise guitar work, always a highlight of Soundgarden’s music, was on full display all night long. Cameron pounded the skins like a man on a mission, and Shepherd was similarly pumped up. It was just remarkable.
Here’s hoping a new Soundgarden studio album, supposedly in the works, rocks just as hard as it should. If the Forum show was any indication, Soundgarden is indeed back, fresh and rested after a long time off. There’s no rust, no fatigue, no sober realization of the fact that they are dudes in their mid-forties playing aggressive “grunge” music.
Their return honestly couldn’t have come at a better time, and hopefully they make more noise sooner rather than later.
The golden ticket for the night
Soundgarden’s Set List at the Forum on 7/22/11:
Searching With My Good Eye Closed
Spoonman
Gun
Jesus Christ Pose
Room a Thousand Years Wide
Blow Up the Outside World
Loud Love
Big Dumb Sex
Ugly Truth
Fell on Black Days
Flower
Outshined
Black Rain
Rusty Cage
The Day I Tried to Live
My Wave
Burden in My Hand
Black Hole Sun
Head Down
Superunknown(with Mike McCready)
4th of July
Encore:
Beyond the Wheel
Hunted Down
Mailman
Slaves & Bulldozers
Below, enjoy some photos from the show, courtesy of my outdated and slightly broken Canon Powershot.
All photos by me.
The Mars Volta wouldn’t stand still for a decent picture
September 2011 marks the 20th (yes, TWENTIETH) anniversary of Nirvana‘s classic album Nevermind. As expected, Universal Records is gearing up for the milestone in an unsurprising fashion: a crazy deluxe re-release that is basically a boxed set of even more unreleased Nirvana tunes.
Nevermind’s 20th birthday celebration edition will consist of 4 CD’s and 1 DVD. As Spin reports, it will include “rarities, b-sides, and unreleased recordings”, as well as a DVD of a previously unreleased live set. If the prospect of 4 more discs of Nirvana tunes confuses you, you’re not alone. With the Lights Out basically covered EVERY unreleased Nirvana song that we’re ever going to hear, so it will be interesting to find out if the Nevermind re-issue has any repeat tracks, or if it’s just more unreleased BBC Radio performances.
Hopefully, the CD of Nevermind itself will come in re-mastered form, since the original version is so…compressed and not as “raw” as it should have been. It would be great to get a scuzzy dissonant recording of Drain You and Lounge Act.
A statement from Universal hinted at various “special events and releases” throughout the year to further celebrate the second decade of Nevermind‘s influence on modern rock music.
The re-issue is set to be released on September 19th.
After teasing legions of grunge fans with Lollapalooza one-offs and Hollywood Guitar Hero party launches, grunge icons Soundgarden finally announced a legit US tour.
Set for July, the trek only consists of 4 dates thus far:
July 2 Toronto, ON Molson Canadian Ampitheatre
July 13 Philadelphia, PA Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing
July 18 Denver, CO Red Rocks Ampitheatre
July 22 Los Angeles, CA LA Forum
More dates will be announced soon.
In an effort to piss off scalpers everywhere, Soundgarden announced a special fan-site only presale set for Monday April 18. Only fans who were registered Soundgarden World users as of 11:59 PM this Wednesday, April 13 will be eligible to purchase presale tickets.
Read all of that information here in their official announcement. If you miss out on the special presale, public onsales are set for April 23.
The Foo Fighters must not have gotten the message that bands that have been around as long as they have don’t usually release quality records this late in their career.
The first minute of their new album, Wasting Light, makes that abundantly clear. Bridge Burning, the album’s blazing opening number, sets the tone for the rest of the record. The moment Dave Grohl howls These are my famous last words/ My number’s up, bridges booaauughh/BOOAUUGHHH, it’s apparent that the band might have finally captured the energy that Grohl brings to the live setting on record. In concert, Grohl routinely screams the last parts of lines rather than singing them, and that tactic is on display on Bridge Burning, a hell of a first track.
The Foo Fighters have three guitarists now, with Pat Smear having officially re-joined resident axemen Grohl and Chris Shiflett, and the triple blitz of guitars is evident on the opening cut and throughout the album.
A lot has already been said about Rope, the Rush/Led Zeppelin-ish lead single, with its echoed guitar and stop-start rhythmic flow. Drummer Taylor Hawkins smacks all of his drum equipment with precision, and his voice is a great match to Grohl’s familiar singing in the verses.
This album was recorded in Grohl’s garage, as everybody knows, on analog tape. No computers, no Auto-Tune, no Pro Tools, no nonsense. Just the Foos, producer Butch Vig, practice, and precision. Oh, and Bob Mould from Husker Du, who plays guitar on Dear Rosemary, one of the best moments on Wasting Light. Bringing the guitar count up to four, Mould also adds some husky background vocals. This song was one of the most impressive parts of the Foos’ recent LA club gigs, which even featured Mould onstage.
Yes, the verses of Dear Rosemary sound a lot like Joe Jackson’s Is She Really Going Out With Him? and, thus, The Raconteurs’ Steady As She Goes, but the similarity is only in the rhythm of the verse. Its grabbing melody and familiar rhythmic progression create a simply irresistible overall sound. Truth ain’t gonna change the way you lie/Youth ain’t gonna change the way you die yells Grohl, lyrics that sound meaningful, but in reality were created on the fly in the studio, as is revealed in Back & Forth, the Foos’ new feature length documentary.
White Limo throws a curveball into the smooth vibes and rhythm of the first three tracks, with its Motorhead-ish aggression and Dave screaming like he hasn’t since Weenie Beenie. The song, a snarling old-school blast of hard rock energy and fury, is a far cry from the more typical primed-for-radio-play Foo Fighters songs that casual radio listeners probably expected from this album, and it’s positioned perfectly as Wasting Light’s fourth track.
Arlandria starts out with a bang before quieting down and allowing Grohl to sing over the gentle guitar. The lyrics aren’t among the best Grohl’s ever penned, but again the rhythm and melody, aided by the siren wails of Shiflett’s and Smear’s guitars, take over. The chorus of You used to say I couldn’t save you enough/ So I’ve been saving it up/ I started saving it up was one of the more memorable moments of hearing the album premiered live for the first time, and it translates just as well in the studio.
Foo haters usually dismiss their music as “bland radio rock” and “unremarkable”, probably due to tunes like Learn to Fly and Times Like These, but These Days avoids such comparisons thanks to its quiet intro guitar and soft-loud-soft-loud dynamic. The steady rising action of the verses ends with Grohl’s passionate scream of Easy for you to say!! before a radio-friendly chorus kicks in. Its combination of the Foos’ past radio success and the new formula give it a freshness that helps it avoid falling into the traps of past “traditional Foo Fighters” material.
Just hangin' out, no big deal
Back & Forth is probably the weakest track on the album, but it isn’t terrible. The straightforward riffs and typically bouncy rhythm just aren’t as creative as the other tunes on the album, but the pre-chorus riffs are pretty sweet.
A Matter of Time’s off-beat tempo, staccato riffs and time changes give the song its best qualities. It’s definitely more of an “experimental” type of song for the Foos, and it works well.
The song segues into the crushing Miss the Misery, which is a cacophony of thunderous guitar riffs. Classic rock vocal hooks lead into the verse, giving the song its overall throwback feel. Nate Mendel’s steady bass line drives the song, and the guitar work accompanying the main riff is layered exquisitely. The bridge has fuzzy, distorted guitars and a key change, and it rocks.
While there are no acoustic guitars, pianos, or other softer stuff on the album, I Should Have Known is the album’s moment of somber reflection. No, the song isn’t about Kurt Cobain, but the general theme could be applied to his suicide, as many similar Foo songs can. Grohl likes being intentionally vague, with lyrics that may or may not refer to someone specific, when in reality they probably don’t. I should have known/ I was inside of you/ I should have known/ There was that side of you/ Came without a warning/ Caught me unaware sings Grohl, his voice distorted and fuzzy, as sad-sounding guitars and a violin give the whole thing its downbeat tone.
The song could have been part of the acoustic portion of In Your Honor, until Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic chimes in with his deliciously grunge-y bass solo in the bridge. It’s sludgy, dark, and dirty, just as a contribution from Novoselic should be. I Should Have Known is another of the album’s brightest moments, allowing the Foos to branch out a bit and get personal.
The album closes out with Walk, the second single from the album. Its opening guitar sounds like Tal Bachman’s She’s So High, but thankfully the song elevates itself from that unfortunate similarity into a fantastic album-capper. It’s basically the sequel to New Way Home, the epic closer to The Colour and the Shape. It’s also a great way to close out Wasting Light: hopeful guitar chords and confident declarations of self-discovery and a positive outlook for the future, fitting for an album like this.
The flaws with past Foo albums such as In Your Honor and parts of Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace implied that the band was perhaps running out of ideas, but it’s evident with this new record that things are back on track.
With Wasting Light, the band has managed to create its best full album in at least 10 years, if not longer. It’s great to see the Foos recapture some of the inventiveness and exuberance of their early career, and do it so impressively.
It’s 2011, but the Foo Fighters sound as strong and powerful as they did in 1996.
Well this is just sad news…Mike Starr, the original bassist from grunge band Alice in Chains, died today. According to TMZ, Starr’s body was found in a house in Salt Lake City with 6 Xanax pills and 6 Opana pills in his possession.
No stranger to drug battles, Starr was a cast member on last season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.
He had battled drug abuse all his life, much like his band mate Layne Staley (who also overdosed in 2002).
Starr was arrested back on February 18th for suspicion of felony possession of a controlled substance in Salt Lake City prior to his death today.
It’s a sad day for Alice in Chains fans.
*Personal commentary moment* It’s so very disheartening and unfortunate that people get hooked on drugs in the way Starr did. His addiction ruined his career, personal life, and ultimately was responsible for ending his life altogether.
Recently reunited iconic grunge-ers Soundgarden just posted this on their official Facebook page:
Over the past few months, we’ve been busy jamming, writing and hanging out together – exploring the creative aspect of being Soundgarden. It feels great. We have some cool new songs that we are going to record very soon. Thank you for all of the support!
Loudest of Love,
Ben, Chris, Kim and Matt
That ought to stir up some excitement for a more Soundgarden-heavy 2011, considering they haven’t really done a whole lot since reuniting in 2010.
Nirvana, the Pixies, Mudhoney, and buzzy anti-corporate indie-punk.
Did you think those words would be mentioned in a review of Cage the Elephant’s new album Thank You, Happy Birthday?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
When Kentucky lads Cage the Elephant lit a fire under the indie rock scene’s ass with 2009’s self-titled debut album, they quickly rose in notoriety. Songs like Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked and Back Against the Wall, hit singles from the disc, are still being played on FM rock radio stations. The band’s alluring blend of soulful bluesy rock and understated punk aggression turned many heads and allowed the band to support that album for the next year, playing tons of festival gigs.
After some downtime, they have returned with their follow-up to their smash debut record, and it sounds like something Kurt Cobain would dig.
The album starts off strongly, Always Something slinking along creepily with an Arctic Monkeys-ish feel to it. The song leads into Aberdeen, presumably named after the tiny rainy town in Washington that spawned the “grunge” movement, Kurt Cobain, Mudhoney, and many other prominent bands and individuals of that movement. Aberdeen is one of the “catchiest” songs on the album, and the most suited for radio play, with lead singer Matthew Schultz alternating between his usual lazy drawl and a bit more energetic vocals for the chorus. The guitars in the bridge are very grungy and dissonant, too.
As Aberdeen closes out, Schultz repeating “way back!” as the music drops out to some eerie backup vocals, the best part of the album starts up. Indy Kidz, a violently spastic song beginning with Schultz sarcastically saying “I wanna be just like you” before erupting into a frenetic, In Utero-esque freakout, is astounding. The song viciously lampoons the “cool kids” of the indie music scene, peppering in some off-key buzzy yelling (again coming off like Kurt Cobain’s ghost). The music is all over the place, riffing and chugging and slowing down and picking the pace back up and stopping and letting Schultz yell and scream some more, with or without a beat behind him. It honestly sounds like Nirvana, in the best possible way for a song released in 2011.
Perhaps ironically, the next track, Shake Me Down, is the album’s first single. Following up the fiercely aggressive punch of Indy Kidz with a more ear-friendly tune like this creates a pretty jarring transition, but it works since Shake Me Down is solid. Crunchy rhythm and drums, melodic vocals, an accessible overall quality, it’s all there.
Cage the Elephant holed up in the backwoods of Kentucky and listened to the Pixies, Mudhoney, and 1950s surf rock for inspiration for this record, and you can hear it in tracks like 2024 and Sabertooth Tiger.
A prevalent theme on this disc is the band’s refusal to adhere to a “catchy” sound. This is one of those instances when a band has a smash debut record, gets a lot of attention and exposure, and then grows bitter with the whole situation. Sell Yourself is an example of that, disjointed, off-kilter riffs churning while Schultz yells “sell yourself, don’t be a fool”, itself a criticism of the band’s rise in success. The song is abrasive, just as the band wants it to be.
Photo shoot? What photo shoot? We're just standing here
Whereas similar tactics have been attempted by other bands like MGMT (whose sophomore album Congratulations seems to have made everybody mad, fans and critics alike), Cage the Elephant instead did it right, creating something very unique and challenging.
Just look at the transition from Sell Yourself to Rubber Ball – the first track a clustercuss of noise and pissed-off energy, leading into a slow interlude that sounds like a lullaby. They’re exploring all types of sounds and energies on this album, and it works.
Right Before My Eyes has more old-school vibes, a straightforward song that boasts one of the album’s best choruses, right before my eyes the whole world lost control. It would also work on the radio, perhaps maybe appealing to fans of the band’s radio songs.
Around My Head sounds like Brit Pop and the Pixies combined, and if it wasn’t for the weird ooh ooh ooh ooh ah ah ah ah monkey chirps before the chorus it’d be one of the album’s strongest songs.
Japanese Buffalo is another WTF? moment on the album, starting out like the Beach Boys before going down the “frantic sped-up garage rock” route, which a friend of mine referred to as “Iggy Pop doing Pinkerton”. All Schultz really says in the song is “alright? Okay. Uh huh.” over and over, and then some more yelling, before it slows down for some melody and, of course, more screaming. And buzzy guitars.
Album closer Flow starts out a bit in Kings of Leon territory, with jangly acoustic guitars and some mostly reserved vocals by Schultz. Surprisingly, it doesn’t explode into more screaming and aggression, instead keeping its hushed tone throughout. It’s a nice calm down after all the musical rollercoasting that goes on for the first eleven tracks. After some silence, a slowed-down acoustic reprise of Right Before My Eyes finishes the album off.
With Thank You, Happy Birthday, Cage the Elephant has really done something I hadn’t thought possible. They’ve created music that is both an homage to their heroes and something confrontationally original. They could have gone down the “indie buzz band” route and released crowd-pleasing recreations of their debut, but they didn’t.
Instead, they crafted songs bursting with the same kind of aggression and anti-corporate energy that Nirvana did with In Utero. These guys have made it pretty far, but now that they’re there they aren’t afraid to do what they want, all the time criticizing the scene and themselves.
It’s just a great (and somewhat unexpected) record, and while it may be one of the first releases of 2011, it may find itself on many “Best Of 2011″ lists come next December.
Take a moment to think of your favorite band, or if it’s too difficult to pick just one, grab a favorite at random. In the unlikely event that you’ve selected an artist with a single album, well.. this week’s list is for you. This is going to be all about bands who’ve put out a lone full-length, and left fans wondering what could have been.. would they have gone on to release one fantastic album after another? Or simply fall back into mediocrity, or worse, become total shit? In any case, here are ten bands and their solitary albums, which have surely made far more people than just me why the hell they didn’t just crank out at least a few more albums. Anyway, on with the list…
Operation Ivy – Energy
BOO
Well before both ska and pop-punk exploded in the mid to late 90s, Operation Ivy put out their one, highly influential, incredibly fun, and highly appropriately titled album, Energy. While clearly drawing on early 80s punk and second wave ska, Energy was really groundbreaking not just in its approach with blending the styles but with how fucking energetic the whole thing is. The twenty seven tracks breeze by, and even the songs that are less pleasant lyrically (Officer comes to mind) have such a carefree attitude that it rubs off on the listener. While Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman went on to bigger things with Rancid, Energy remains a stone cold classic.
Deltron 3030 – Self Titled
All futuristic n' shit
Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Kid Koala are all quite familiar with collaboration, but here they were each arguably at their peak. Armed with great futuristic beats to match the album’s sci-fi theme (laid out brilliantly by Del, with humor laced social commentary) yet never taking itself too seriously, Deltron 3030′s debut is textbook alternative hip-hop. There’s been a lot of talk of a sequel to this, but sadly it remains mostly that, and this is a story that deserves a quality follow-up.
Circle Takes the Square – As the Roots Undo
Wow what a crappy drawing
There are so many original takes on post-hardcore here that it boggles the mind. Ambient sections, traded off male and female vocals, thrash metal-inspired guitar, frantic, grindcore-inspired drums, mumbled poetry, harps, and so on and so forth. So much random shit is thrown into this album that it’s a wonder it worked at all, much less as tremendously well as it has. Perhaps a follow-up never came because the band was conscious of this, and feared never being able to get everything to click this well again.
The Avalanches – Since I Left You
"You're here to save us!" "Uh... yeah, that's what it is.."
Second only to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, Since I Left You is the most impressive mix of samples on an album. Everything is mixed perfectly, which is even more impressive when you consider how varied the sampled artists are – and yes, if you’re not familiar, the Avalanches blow Girl Talk away. This is perfect party music – it’s fun, it’s relentlessly feel-good, and if you pay attention you’re bound to recognize something. Now there’s just the matter of following it up… the joke is that the second album has long been completed, and the band is still waiting for all the samples to clear.
Radiation 4 – Wonderland
Wheee!
Likely to be some of the most bizarre and challenging metal you’ll ever hear. Radiation 4 forcibly puts awkward time signatures, styles, and even genres together (Tick. Tock. Tick.‘s angry offbeat hardcore concluding in that almost clown-reminiscent “la-la-la-la-la-la” being a perfect example) and makes it sound not only easy, but even charming. From epic to silly and everything in between, it’s easy to imagine that perhaps the band said everything they wanted to with Wonderland, but you can’t help wondering if they could’ve gotten any weirder than this.
Gospel – The Moon Is a Dead World
I don't even know what this means
One doesn’t really associate progressive rock with genres names like “Emo” (or the even more unfortunately named “Screamo”), but that’s exactly the angle Gospel took with their one and only album, The Moon Is a Dead World. The music is heavy, erratic, and raw, but its aggression really comes second to the emotional aggression, which is even more unrelenting and engaging. Post-hardcore, screamo, whatever you want to call it, this album is one of the most unique of its kind, and is a definite must-hear.
Mad Season – Above
Let's make out... TRAGICALLY
An excellent effort from a mid 90s supergroup comprised of members of the grunge elite, Above is a dark, harrowing trip through Alice in Chains vocalist Layne Staley’s mind, with a bluesy approach to the music courtesy of Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready on guitar and top blues bassist, John Baker Saunders. The rockers are harsh, the blues jams are fun, and the gentler tracks are downright haunting. This is clearly all we’re going to get, what with both Saunders and Staley being dead (and both due to heroin use), which is a damn shame – Above suggested that this band was capable of even better.
Jimmy Chamberlin Complex – Life Begins Again
Purty burdy
While we’re on the subject of 90s alternative, how about that Jimmy Chamberlin! The Smashing Pumpkins drummer founded a solo project in the early-mid noughts with a jazz fusion-meets-alternative rock sound in mind, and it’s accomplished surprisingly well on their debut. Along with songwriter Billy Mohler, Chamberlin constructs highly progressive (and at times beautiful) fusion built around his excellent drumming, with a revolving door of guest musicians (including Billy Corgan) helping out. What with Chamberlin’s involvement in the resurrected Pumpkins, this may end up being a one-off, which is a shame – it’s easily the most accessible and fun that any recent rock-based approach to jazz fusion has been, and Pumpkins fans would do well to give it a listen.
Yndi Halda – Enjoy Eternal Bliss
Here we see the hopeless, desolate town of... Candyland
What with the post-rock scene burgeoning at the time of this release, it’s remarkable how well it was able to stand out. Yndi Halda prove themselves to be masters of not only establishing tension and progression, but with instrument application as well – there are special little moments where a traditional drumbeat with pop up with a sweet violin hook riding it before crashing into something else, or a lone, intensifying bluesy guitar being joined by strings, horns, and marching drums, but they never feel random or the result of meandering. The approach used here is very similar to that of post-rock pioneers Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but much brighter and uplifting. And four years later, it’s starting to look sadly as if they’ve nothing else to say.
The Postal Service – Give Up
Jump out the window! NOW
Here’s one where it’s easy to think that perhaps it’s for the best that the musicians involved (Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard and Dntel, or Jimmy Tamborello) don’t seem anywhere near following up their collaboration’s debut. Give Up just has a certain air about it, like it was created at just the right point in not just the collaborators’ lives, but in the music scene as well. Everything, from Gibbard’s lyrics to Tamborello’s quirky electronic flourishes, feels so genuine, and even fresh – upon its release, there really wasn’t anything else that sounded like it, and it’s spawned quite a bit of mimicry, both well-conceived (Bright Eyes’ Digital Ash in a Digital Urn) and god-awful (anything by Owl City) alike. Even now, seven years after its release, it still sounds unique, and stands quite well on its own.
