Thursday, February 22, 2024

The Raven

 


Magnet School

The Raven EP

(Shifting Sounds) 

Has it really been eight years since Magnet School’s last album, 2016's The Art of Telling Truth?  Wow!  Lucky for us, they’re still at it and have graced us with another collection of cranking twin guitar majesty.  They have always reminded me of Swervedriver, with the dual exploratory guitars that aren’t afraid to lock in with the potent rhythm section and crank out some serious rock-n-roll. 

“The Raven” opens with an air raid siren that acts as a clarion call to action. Once the guitars kick in atop a beat full of stuttering nervous energy, “The Raven” jumps out as one of the most rousing songs I’ve heard in eons.  It feels like a call to action like New Model Army’s “Here Comes the War,” but with lyrics full of festering and rotten imagery, it is more of a call for some kind of hex on a betrayer.  The intensity of the instrumentation gives the song an undeniable urgency that feels incredibly vital.  There’s more turmoil ahead in “A Conversation,” which is pushed forward by a bass-line that sounds like the rumbling engine of a hot rod.  It’s another song that feels full of betrayal as the lyrics ruminate on the changing stories (misrepresentations?  lies?) from conversations between the past and the present. 

Magnet School are always reliable with some devastatingly good instrumentals, and here we’re treated to “Dotted Eighth,” which absolutely rips.  The band locks into a tightly wound riff and soon sparks begin to fly.  Once the cool breeze of “Mayor of Greenpoint” comes in, I envision hearing/seeing these songs live as part of an especially hot encore and this is the slow burning set closer that builds to the exciting conclusion, as well as the highlight of the set.  This EP closes with a classy piano and strings “Reprise” brief instrumental of “The Raven” – replacing the original’s harrowing and menacing threats into a quiet and peaceful reflection.    

It was a long wait for these new songs, but well worth it.  Magnet School have showed us that they set a high bar of quality control.  Happy to have them back.  Does this mean there’s more new music on the near horizon?

(https://shiftingsounds.bandcamp.com/album/the-raven)



Magnet School "The Raven"






Monday, January 15, 2024

Top 10 of 2023

 

Top 10 of 2023

 

These choices below are an approximation of what I believe my most listened to albums of 2023 have been. I feel like it’s been a great year for music and that I have missed a lot.  Once again, I am not ranking these.  All of these releases helped bring me great joy throughout this past difficult year.



Bleach Lab In a Rush of Emptiness 

 


Flyying Colours You Never Know 



Fragile Animals Slow Motion Burial 

 

The Julies Always & Always

 


Lanterns on the Lake Versions of Us

 


The Popguns Popism



She’s Green Wisteria

 


Slowdive Everything is Alive

Soft Science Lines

UJU The Sun is in Our Eyes







Sunday, November 12, 2023

POPISM

 





The Popguns are such a jewel.  I feel like this EP should be getting worldwide hit buzz, because every song here is exciting, fresh, bright, thought provoking and essential.  Pretty much every year, like so many others, I make a list of my favorite albums – or most listened to albums.  This is a four song EP that clocks in at less than twelve minutes, but it is easily my most listened to release this year.  Every single time I put it on the player, I listen to it at least twice, if not three or four times.  Talk about leaving an audience wanting more. 

“Caesar,” has a yearning chorus that is so goddamn pretty that it sends shivers down my spine.  Wendy Pickles’ mellifluous voice continues to be so charming that it took me several listens before I realized that she’s singing about the irreversible damages of climate change brought on by short-sighted greed.  Of course, this sobering message is delivered inside a brilliant and beautiful package.

Similarly, “Dirty London” takes a glance at monuments marking England’s far reaching history of Imperialism and weighs the pros and cons of the privileges earned from some disturbing history (“Now you see / how the hurt is just a page of history / how the end will justify the means”).  It’s a heavy subject that is delivered with a wicked combination of grinding bass and scratchy guitar stabs. 

“Red Cocoon” comes on as a breezy love song.  Sparks flying between a pair out on an all-night bender?   It’s funny, because this song could easily be the feature song with its bouncy bass and suburb guitar leads, but it’s not! 

This all too brief EP closes with a fun punky anthem named “Indie Rock Goddess.”  Talk about leaving us wanting more!  This song abruptly ends just before it reaches two minutes, yet it’s pounding beat and Wendy’s commanding vocal will definitely imprint itself into your consciousness.

It’s wonderful to have the Popguns as our wonderful little indie pop secret, but I feel like they should be one of those bands that get much higher recognition.  I feel like we’re taking them for granted.  Please check them out. 

(https://thepopguns.bandcamp.com/album/popism)


 

 

The Popguns "Dirty London"






Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Candidate

 

During my last extended hospital stay for brain surgery, I experienced a lot of disturbing hallucinations.  I think I was mostly unconscious during these times, in my mind, I was convinced that I was being held captive by alternately two separate underground terrorist groups who for various reasons wanted me to pay for my alleged betrayal to their respective causes.  Despite not being able to walk, I managed to avoid capture for long periods of time by riding the rails all over the U.S.  Despite these situations all being imaginary, I found solace in forgoing my fight and flight instincts and giving up.  I allowed the hospital worker terrorist group to capture me for their surgical experiments and the military terrorist group to capture and imprison me for my beliefs.

It was all incredibly scary and I have had a difficult time putting these imaginary battles behind me.  However, the idea of giving up has continued to feel like a great decision – one that gains more and more appeal as time progresses.  In one of those hallucinations, I was trapped, so I simply laid down and tried to sleep.  I was done trying to find ways to allude my potential captors.  In reality, I am also finished with trying to find ways to continue to survive.  My long time fight against VHL (Von Hippel Lindau) has found me at a stalemate, yet it is a very precarious position.  I have lasted longer than I ever thought, and I am tired.

I am fully aware that millions, if not billions of people have much more difficult struggles which they handle with strength and grace.  In addition, I am fully aware that there are some people close to me who are in crisis.  I understand crisis and am absolutely out of energy to deal with it.  This is about me losing the desire to fight anymore.  VHL is a relentless and endless genetic syndrome and I am done with trying to navigate the unforgiving bureaucracy of health coverage in its many forms.  It is not enough that my health continues to decline, but that I constantly have to prove to faceless entities that I am broken.  There is a lot of paperwork necessary to prove that I am "sick," and most of it is insanely repetitive and incredibly inadequate.  I find it all discouraging and exhausting, which is why I am too tired to fight anymore.  I have fought very hard for a long time to live as normally as possible and not allow my medical asides to be anything more than an occasional distraction, which is why trying to convince others that I'm unwell is so awful..  I want to rest.  I want to crumple up all of the forms, pile it up, and climb atop and rest.






 


Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Lines

 

Soft Science

Lines

(Shelflife)

Ever since I was lucky enough to find Soft Science’s debut album, High and Lows, in 2011, I have been unabashedly in love.  Their fourth album, Lines, has now been out for about a month and it only affirms my continuing passion for their music.  The occasion has also provided me with the unnecessary excuse to go back and listen closely to their previous offerings.  What I’ve learned with this re-discovery tour is that they are actually better than I remembered, and that what I wrote about their second LP, 2014’s Detour: “in a subtle way they have tightened all the unnoticed loose screws and polished the surface,” amazingly holds true!  They continue to refine.

Lines plays like a legendary band’s best of/singles collection.  Their dreamy songs here lean more towards radio ready pop singles (is that a thing anymore?), and personally, I think that’s their biggest strength.  With their urgent and endlessly catchy song “Still,” my favorite song from their 2018 third album, Maps, Soft Science found the key to what sounds like effortless greatness. 

The melodic lead guitar line to “Grip,” along with the insistent bassline and Katie Haley’s perfect vocals, get me wanting to dance and completely lose myself in the amazing sounds.  It continues on from there.  “Deceiver” is like a favorite single I swear I already knew upon first listen (is that a cowbell?).  All three pre-LP singles are here: the buzzing “Sadness,” the rumbling, almost House of Love-like (Butterfly cover) “Kerosene,” and my early favorite “True,” with its words of betrayal.

With each album, Soft Science have included more keyboards which, instead of distracting or compromising their sound, has emphasized and enhanced what they already do well.  Somehow it has made their sound both more spacious and dense at the same time.  Songs like the heavy opener “Low” and its matching bookending closer “Polar,” along with the almost atonal saturation of “Stuck” and the dreamscape of “Zeros,” all remind me a little bit of excellent Spanish indie poppers Linda Guilala and their psychedelic overloads.

It is incredibly satisfying to see Soft Science getting so much attention for their new album!  Sadly, in this day and age, I don’t really know what that means.  We can all create our own little media focus, so I fully realize that I see Soft Science news, and most people likely do not.  I hope this changes.  I wish them great success and encouragement to keep our lives filled with their great music.  If you are not familiar with Soft Science and their lovable music, I strongly urge you to check them out for yourself.  All of their albums are a great place to start. 

 (https://softscienceband.bandcamp.com/)



Soft Science "True"





Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Scars Still LInger

 


Memories are strange things.  Each of us observes and perceives things differently, so shared memories can vary wildly.  Plus those occurrences have differing importance for each of us, so what might become a vivid memory for one observant, will become a forgotten memory for another.  It’s incomprehensible to me how memory works, or in many cases, doesn’t work.  Why do I remember very specific information about one hit wonder Canadian band, Glass Tiger, who I regard as one of the worst bands to ever have been professionally recorded, but can’t remember if I took my daily medications this morning.  I’m sure this is likely a worrisome sign of my on-setting dementia.  Why do some memories come flooding in with amazing detail at random times, while others languish in obscurity just out of reach? 

 


Glass Tiger "Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone"

I’ve heard that most women who have given birth, cannot recall exactly how painful the experience was.  That would explain people who give birth more than once, but something tells me that this is fiction created by some male, to feel better about himself.  During my multiple hospital stays over the past 40 years or so, I have experienced some pretty intense pain, and I can recall the experiences very clearly, if I choose to.  I generally do not choose to.  If I ever find myself in similar situations my fight and then flight mechanisms activate quickly.  I’ve had some embarrassing scenes in recent years because of my fear of re-experiencing medical pains from the past.

 


The numbing of past pain for me has generally occurred from emotional pain – not so much physical pain, although I do not deny that they can be deeply intertwined.  However, like so many of us, I get those random late night memories thinking about a past relationship that had run afoul years ago.  Sometimes those memories are positive ones, and those good memories can be tricky.  For example, this happened to me recently.  I was looking back at a past relationship fondly, and believe it or not, could not for the life of me, remember why the relationship ended.  In this case, the very next day, I pulled some random papers from a file that had bits of past writing inside, and there it was: evidence of why that particular relationship failed.  It astounded me that it all so easily slipped my mind.  There was plenty of solid proof as to why that shit needed to end for both parties involved.  I feel like an idiot typing this!  I know, I know, but it’s these lapses in memory that can get us into trouble. 

Aren’t we supposed to learn from our experiences?  Like the old example of a child burning their fingers on a hot stove.  Next time they’ll know better.  That gets socked away into the memory banks, and for most of us, stays there forever.  I wonder why our brains selectively choose what memories to lock away for future reference, and what to discard.  Obviously, some of us are better at learning lessons from past mistakes, or remembering how to avoid pain.   

I guess I’m a little stunned at reading about a past failed relationship from the perspective of when it had still been fresh, and discovering that I had pushed those negative feelings so far aside that I wasn’t really certain of the validity of what I was reading. I immediately began to make excuses.  I allowed the obvious: the failure part of the relationship was at least mine as much as it was hers. I could only remember those good times – the comforting times.  I envisioned how we have both changed over the past several years.  Forgiveness is one thing, but foolishness is another.  Light up that stove top!  Maybe I can stick my face on there. 

 


David & David "Welcome to the Boomtown"

I find memories, whether accurate or not, incredibly important and endlessly intriguing.  Memories are made up of all of our individual experiences.  I am fascinated by people’s stories, or their collection of memories – scars and all.  To me, these are what make us all unique and interesting.  Why does the memory of first hearing David & David’s “Welcome to the Boomtown” stick with me?  Why do I remember that more so than my high school graduation?  Maybe one day that specific memory will serve me.  Maybe not, but it does tell a small story about who I am and what I’m made of.  It’s these things that I want to know about others.  It concerns me that I know fictional characters from novels, television shows, or movies better than some people I’ve known for thirty years.  Why do so many of us keep our experiences so close to the vest?  I suppose that most of us simply don’t trust each other with this personal information or we don’t care.  Perhaps, if we were more willing to share our memories with each other, we might collectively learn more life lessons.  Or perhaps not.






Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Into Nothing

 


Ten Million Lights

Into Nothing

(self-released)

The ultimatum.  The word alone sends chills down my spine.  I guess I’m too wishy-washy.  I don’t think in terms of all or nothing all of the time.  Not only do I shy away from such definitive thought, but from people who think in such terms.  I simply don’t get it.  In some ways, I wish I did.  However, ultimatums are relationship sabotage.  A restricted choice that generally pits one person against another – as if one cannot accept both.  I can understand an ultimatum in some circumstances, but life is rarely so simple.  “Swaying,” the extended first song from Ten Million Lights’ new third LP, Into Nothing, encapsulates frustration at being pinned down by restrictive choices in a very relatable way. 

“Swaying” is perfectly titled, as it has a swaying musical quality, especially the extended instrumental dreaminess that makes up the final half of the song.  It shares a similar back and forth vibe to Slowdive’s early instrumental “Avalyn II.”  The first half, more reminds me of the old Jane’s Addiction song “Summertime Rolls.”  Despite the free-flowing swing of the music, there is a serious tension built up in the verses that releases in the defiant chorus.  When Ryan Carroll spurts out a sneering “No way,” it is incredibly satisfying.  One can sense a strong sarcasm as he sings “ooh, what’s it gonna be / the red pill or the green?” 

Into Nothing is full of strong and memorable choruses.  I’m particularly smitten with the Beach Boys-esque vocal melodies of the twisted two minute curiosity that is “Irreverence.”  “Lights Out” also shares an ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ chorus, along with a stuttering guitar riff that feels very comfortable for long time followers of this band.  The first single, “Snowdrift,” includes their usual subdued vocal approach, but has an incredibly light musical touch that feels fresh and intriguing.  My early favorite song is the melancholic “Wilder,” which captures the stifled feeling of being absolutely overwhelmed by something as to become speechless.  It includes a dreamy rainy day reflection that I have always found incredibly alluring.  The following song, “Shaky Man,” etches a similar vibe as it finds acceptance in the changing of the season and needing help.   

If you’re looking for crunchier numbers, they are here in spades.  The rollicking “On with the Show” begins with Russ Ellis’ lurking bassline and some serious buildup to another fantastic rousing chorus.  Likewise, “Burn it all Down,” achieves exactly as the title suggests, while the urgent “Cherry Sun” has some serious squalling guitar fills throughout. 

There is a bass-heavy murkiness in the sound of Into Nothing that reminds me of the old NW grunge days, and by that I mean before it became a buzz word.  There was a dark and shadowy fear-laden NW indie rock sound that was equal parts no frills hard as nails rock, Led Zeppelin wizardry, and punk.  “Hot Water,” the closing epic rocker, captures all of this and it sounds new and refreshing.

(https://tenmillionlights.bandcamp.com/)




Ten Million Lights "Lights Out"