Singles Roundup: Megadeth, Rob Zombie, & Neal Morse

Human beings are losing out to the algorithm, as this week proves out:

Megadeth - Tipping Point

I don't really have any thoughts about Megadeth calling it quits. Aside from the fact that no one ever stays retired (*cough* Rush *cough*), Megadeth feels like a band that is already retired. Dave hasn't been able to sing at all for years, and their last four or five records have all come and gone without making a dent. The only thing notable about them retiring is that Dave didn't feel the need to stick it out past Metallica just for the spite of it.

The final album is introduced to us with this song, which doesn't make me feel anything. The song is centered around speed, which is perhaps the least interesting thing a song has to offer. The main riff is simple chugging that has no groove whatsoever. It's merely a picking exercise, without any of the charm of Slash's that became "Sweet Child O Mine". This one thrashes through the verse, getting to a 'chorus' where Dave recites the title, almost speaking. It has little musicality to it, and doesn't stick with me at all. A different riff and feeling are introduces as the song gets through the solos, which are what Dave really cares about, but by that time it's too late. Anything good that comes then is in service of a song that doesn't deliver on its core goal.

I won't say this song proves Megadeth should have retired long ago, but I won't say I'm going to be sad about no more music like this coming along.

Rob Zombie - Punks & Demons

I once described Rob Zombie as a filmmaker who still makes music to fund his real passion, and never has that felt more on the nose than it does now. To play to the fans, he has welcomed back some of his collaborators from his classic days, but as we all have learned by now, time does not wait for anyone. Despite the band being back together, so to speak, this is not a return to the days of "Dragula" and "Living Dead Girl" breaking our necks with how hard they made us headbang.

Instead, Rob has gone all in on not trying to write songs anymore. The guitars skitter along, the 'riff' mostly being noise. Rob growls his vocal atop that, a harsh attack that is utterly indecipherable to me, that culminates without even noticing when the chorus comes and goes. This is noise as art, which is a bit like a horror movie that is nothing but the kills without a narrative to put them together. If that's what you're doing, you are more or less admitting you want to make a fake snuff film. That's what this song sounds like to me; death put to tape.

And hopefully that will be the last I have to say about Rob.

Neal Morse - Reach Deep/Grab It All/LeavingCalifornia

These songs are all from Neal's upcoming 'songwriter' album, where he is going to eschew prog for something more straight-forward and personal. I do like when he doesn't get bogged down in the prog of it all, but over the years Neal has developed a habit of saving all of his good ideas for the prog albums, leaving the songwriter albums to be rough sketches of wandering thoughts that never hit upon the infectious melodies that make his best music work. That's the case here, as these songs find Neal rambling through his life story, with seemingly endless verses that culminate in some of his weakest melodic hooks.

He has told these stories before, and subscribes to the theory of telling his testimony multiple times, so we are getting rehashes of rehashes at this point. The subject matter isn't even the problem, as you can get away with almost anything if the song is enjoyable enough to listen to. That's where Neal is falling short, as this is nowhere near as memorable as "Songs From November", which was the last one of these records that worked for me, and it's even further removed from his "God Won't Give Up" religious album, which might be the catchiest bit he's ever put out. These songs are just... flat.

Thinking About If I'm An Intellectual

Am I an 'intellectual'?

That's a difficult question to answer, because there is a very good chance you and I would draw different lines on where things shift into being pretentious. Intellectualism is more than mere intelligence, it's an attitude that embraces reason above emotion, and gives the impression of looking down on those who prefer to wallow in the shallow end of the theoretical brain vat. And yes, I realize just by making that allusion I am feeding into the perception.

The case for being an intellectual is obvious. I studied philosophy in college, and at one point wrote a twenty-page paper to work through my one original philosophical theory (which I have touched on over the years here) merely for the fun of it. As you have seen in the essays I post here, I find myself often thinking through the ramifications of the music we listen to, what our tastes say about ourselves, and how art can both explain and even define the people we are. That I can drop a pun about Duchamp and douche-bags is entirely in line with my personality.

The case for not being an intellectual is also obvious. I am the sort of person who claims Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman as my favorite artists, and the shapers of my identity. I listen to Steinman inserting 'boner lines' into several of his songs, and I find it stupidly charming. Depending on the day, I can still recite between most and all of the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire", which might be the single dumbest song ever written.

I wouldn't be helping the case to say we could look at this through utilitarian means, adding up the points on either side, which I think tells the whole story. While I am not generally the haughty type, and I have more than my share of moments where I go for the cheap option, I cannot deny that I prefer to actually use my brain.

There was a point in my life when I considered myself a Slayer fan. Not to any massive degree, but I enjoyed Slayer more than anyone who knew me would have assumed. Over the years, as the electricity running through the synapses in my mind has broken in my patterns of thought, Slayer has become a friction that now rubs me the wrong way. There's a specific point that illustrates this shift, which comes from the "God Hates Us All" album. In college, that was a record I listened to quite a bit, which is the sort of thing I shouldn't say out loud anymore.

They have a song called "Payback" on that record, which is a song that makes me question if evolution is theoretical like time travel, in that they can both go backwards. Kerry King writes, "Fuck you and your progress, watch me fucking regress." Nothing I can say will ever sum up Slayer's career better than that line. The man known how to be brutal.

The bigger point is there came a time when I simply couldn't put up with the pride Slayer felt for their ignorance. The same person who still gets a chuckle out of the name-dropping of Cracker Jack on "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" can't listen to Slayer explicitly write about beating people until they're lifeless carcasses anymore (to say nothing of Carcass, whose medical dictionary lyricism is the type of pseudo-intellectualism that gives actual thinking a bad name). To be more clever than Slayer has ever been in their lives, there comes a time when being so blunt means you can't make a point.

I've come to realize the mere fact I am writing these words, that I have given any thought at all to this issue, means that I most likely am an intellectual at heart. Perhaps I have always known this, but didn't want to admit it for the simple reason that I have known so few other people who fit the bill. To use an analogy from wrestling history, I will ask; Did you think the better story was Stone Cold giving his boss the finger, or Bret Hart blurring the line between heroism and villainy based on nothing but geography? The answer to that tells us everything, I suppose.

It was the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said intelligence is a 'curse', because it will lead to isolation and suffering. I'm tempted to believe in the psychological concept of the collective unconscious, because often it feels like much of humanity is pulling from the same well of mental resources, which would explain why there is so little to go around for each one of them.

I'm not saying that music must aim for the highest of brows. Some of my own songs were written about concepts such as the creation of the concept of fate as a rationalization to avoid the slings and arrows shot our way for having outrageous fortune (See, there I go paraphrasing "Hamlet"), or how inertia in our lives can make the past and future synonyms that make change a word that only exists in the language of our dreams, but we don't need to go to that extreme.

If it makes me an intellectual to want to be able to listen to music without feeling insulted by some of the language that gets used, I cannot deny the label. Whether it comes from songs that clearly have no intentional meaning behind them, no ability to communicate beyond an elementary school education, or an embrace of backwards social attitudes, I want something more from my music. Perhaps that explains why I have connected to so little of it over these last couple of years. The ways the world has shifted have made music more disposable, which has not been conducive to deeper thought.

So what does an intellectual do when he is given so little to think about?

I suppose he thinks about the lack of thought. The vicious circle continues. Ignorance may truly be bliss.

Album Review: John 5 - The Ghost

 

To begin by treading some old ground - what has always separated John 5 from the crowded field of talented and accomplished guitar virtuosos is that John 5 is not up there simply to record himself playing a bunch of fancy scales as fast as he can, or offer an elaborate technical demonstration.  John 5 composes songs (fine, pieces, if you want to follow the to-the-letter definition of which has lyrics and which doesn’t,) that are capable of telling stories through their movements and the pace and emotion of his playing.

His new album, Ghost just so happens to be his most accomplished in that space since the achievement that was Season of the Witch.

Worth noting: this is the first of John’s solo albums since Careful With That Axe to be listed as “John 5” and NOT “John 5 & The Creatures.”  One wonders what changed, but in any event, the difference is largely cosmetic - as talented as The Creatures were (and bass player Ian Ross in particular,) the focal point is really John 5 himself, and always has been.

Anyway, to get back to the main point, please submit into evidence “A Hollywood Story.”  It’s hard to know without speaking to the man what his actual intent with this piece was, but it’s abundantly clear that he’s telling a different, softer, more tender story than he is with “Fiend.”  The former is a pleasant hum on a summer’s afternoon stroll, the second is a comic book come to aural life, complete with a smirking guitar tone ripped straight from the halcyon days of Judas Priest.

The title track is the closest John 5 gets on Ghost to a true exhibition piece, and the opening sequence is enough to make one think he’s going to try and top Van Halen’s Eruption.  Ultimately, the piece breaks into something less solo-specific, but the same hallmarks of talent and expression are there.

Moving chronologically, the next two cuts are where John 5 shows his versatility, with the lounge-act reminiscent “Moon Glow,” and the requisite country/rockabilly swing of “You Me and the Devil Makes Three.”  For as much as John 5 is known worldwide as a metal guitarist, these are passion pieces for him, and longtime fans have come to expect John to show this side of himself on his solo records as well.  Frankly, Ghost could have used a little more of that.

Which is to say, the first three real cuts on the album (the opening track is an introduction and nothing more,) aren’t particularly remarkable in any tangible way.  There’s nothing wrong with them, but given the spirit, fire and variety that comes later, “Deviant,” “Strung Out” and “La Express” don’t land with any real impact in the same way.

However, the best is saved for last, both for editorial purposes here, and on the album.  “Executioner” might be the best song released so far this year (amidst a field of capable contenders.) It takes a lot to say ‘wow, I haven’t heard that before,’ and that’s what “Executioner” is.  John 5 has never before packed so much drama into three-and-a-half minutes, and done it with such an incredible sense of tension and flow.  His individual, intricate guitar part features very little variance, but it’s the pieces around it which make the song build into something great.

John 5 demonstrates once again that he has a unique understanding of the necessary balance between composition and virtuosity.  If you’ve always been on board with John 5’s solo career, nothing changes here except that you’ve another album to add to your shelf and enjoy. If his previous effort, Sinner left you feeling unfulfilled, come back around and try Ghost. You won’t be disappointed.

Will Sapient Scar "Pay Forever", In Blood And Soul?

The Buddha is often cited as telling us "life is suffering", but we spend our time on this earth trying to outrun pain however we can. We treat happiness as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, often forgetting the arc traces over a horizon we will never reach. There is an irony that the inability to feel pain is a true disorder. Those who cannot physically feel pain often perish early, because they lacked the warning signs necessary to learn how to navigate this world we have constructed. Those who cannot emotionally feel pain often commit the worst of atrocities, because the only empathy they have is for their own appetites.

Pain is not just an uncomfortable fact of life, it is a necessary one. Without pain, we cannot know happiness when (or if, to be more precise) it flashes across the path we walk. Without pain, we would never metaphorically slit our wrists and bleed our souls to mix the waters and connect on fundamental levels of humanity.

For their second single, Sapient Scar is dipping their toe into those crimson waters, writing their name with the bloody point of the knife. The guitars that open the song pick a slow arpeggio, tiptoeing around the discomfort that is to come. If they punched us in the face, our eyes would water over and be unable to see the truth that will soon appear before us.

VK's first line says, "I can't tell you why you had to feel this pain, and I can't say I would do it all again." In those words, she understands that despite being 'rational animals', we cannot always explain why we do the things we do. Our drives and desires arise within us, and we feel them, but what causes those electrical sparks to fly across those particular synapses remains a mystery even to ourselves. We cannot avoid all pain, because we don't know where the landmines within ourselves are all hidden.

The band swells as the chorus arises, a dramatic shift that feels like the reveal of the monster in an old black-and-white horror movie. The monster was us, of course, hiding the scars we inflict with thick layers of makeup. VK implores that "you can't make me pay forever", which is true. The only person who can cut so deep the blade breaks off in our soul is ourself, and any hurt someone else causes is merely the pattern we trace as we cut ourselves again and again.

VK sings that "I played the villain, I began to believe there was no redemption." Recognizing the reality, of course, means there is indeed hope. That's why an apology means little when it has to be asked for, as opposed to when that person offers it of their own volition. In that way, this song is VK apologizing to herself for letting people pull her down, hold her back, dull her color.

"The pain in bloom, you fed the roots, they're dead in me," she sings. The ties that bind are strong, and they should be there to pull us up when we fall into one of the holes we dig for ourselves, but they can also be the reason we cannot reach for the surface when drowning. The connections we share with people are personal gravity, and without enough of that force, our universe falls apart. But if it pulls the wrong way, we wobble off our orbit, feeling lost in the blackness between the stars. Feeling dead inside is akin to being a black hole; a cosmic beauty that devours any light passing by, because we are desperately trying to illuminate the path back toward salvation.

These realities are accompanied by some of VK's most piercing vocals. She belts the notes with her entire frame, especially as she sings "I was born to bleed" with enough force to indeed draw blood from a lesser throat. She has showcased her power before, but rarely as the sharp edge of an arrow as it traces an arc into our hearts.

The song winds through a mobius structure, mirroring how these stories do not hit precise act breaks like a tv drama. As it reaches its conclusion, David and Allie finally lay into some lead guitar, and the song shifts keys, signaling the lesson VK has learned. "I never owed you anyway, you never owned me anyway," she tells us. She's right. Whatever we give of ourselves to someone else, it is just that; a gift. We owe no one anything but our honesty, and our best attempt to keep our pain from spreading beyond our skin. We may not always succeed, but the work is the reward.

I wish many of us didn't have to hurt in such vivid color for art to echo from our pain, but it makes too much sense. Pain is our sense of survival, the force that drives us to be better, both for ourselves and for the people we love. Everything good in life can be traced back to a moment when we were hurt, and the ways that pain changed us. That's beautiful, and so is "Pay Forever".

 "Pay Forever" releases on October 24th. Pre-save it here! 

25 Years Later, Once More Unto The "Breach"

What becomes of a spark of inspiration when the fuel it ignited has been used up?

That thought has been on my mind for much of this year, as I have been wrestling with existential questions that have answers only insofar as I am willing to accept my own reasoning. While I know people mean well when they say "don't give up", their imploring never comes with an explanation for what nobility exists in continuing to venture down paths that cut and scrape, that leave scars which will not heal, but rather get swallowed up by the effects of time on our skin as we age. We have no trouble admitting there are times when continuing to hold on is less humane than letting go (as we do with our pets when they become sick), but we struggle to let ourselves have that same grace.

For longer than I have been writing about music, I have been writing music. I have talked about my own experiences as a musician to give context to why I think certain albums fall short of the intended mark. I am not merely someone saying I like or don't like something, I have the experience of trying to do this myself to explain what I think does and doesn't work.

That paragraph was written in the present tense, but it should be written in the past. The fact of the matter is recently I have committed myself to giving up on thinking of myself in that way. Music was not just a hobby, it was a form of therapy to be able to turn my thoughts into something productive, something I thought I was proud of. Those ideas have dried up, and the fuel that burned within me is now cold. I don't think that's intrinsically a bad thing, though.

None of the people who have told me to keep going have given me a good reason to, and most of them have never even listened to a note that I created, so what the fuck do they know? Giving up is something I am doing for my mental health, to save myself from the torment that comes with trying to force something that is no longer there. Beating my head against a wall is never going to do anything good for me. The flat-top isn't in style anymore.

So where does that leave "Breach", the album that is most responsible for setting these last twenty-five years in motion? Honestly, I'm not sure. I still call the record one of my favorites of all time, and I hear bits and pieces in the lyrical writing that still resonate with me in ways almost no other music does. I remember the feeling I had when I understood that music and poetry could blend together into something far deeper and more important than a typical pop song.

When Jakob Dylan sings, "I can't fix something this complex and more than I can build a rose", I can feel the inadequacy of knowing life exists beyond our capability to construct it. Though the concept of 'manifesting' was not as ubiquitous then, what he was saying was that we cannot cut and arrange the pieces of life as if arranging a bouquet. People are not in our control, nor is luck, and we rely on both of them far more than we like to admit.

Later, he sings "some flowers they never bloom, and some flowers they just bloom dead". Is there a more elegant way of saying "fuck you" to the people who promise you that your time is coming? Subconsciously or not, we erect markers in our minds for the milestones of life, and when they remain at the far edge of the horizon after getting postcards from everyone else who has arrived, hearing platitudes about everything good that will be waiting for us becomes less a measure of compassion, and more a reminder of our failures. I shouldn't use that particular word, because it isn't that I have failed, it's that my road was never going to be the highway I had charted out on the map. I didn't know that at the time, and I only found out after the damage was already done. Clearly, I didn't learn enough from "Breach".

Just a few weeks ago, the lyric to "Witness", in which Jakob sings "happy birthday, no one cares", was the mantra of that day. As is the case with many other issues, it took me a long time to fully understand how much that one day of the year has broken me again and again. The lyric was always there in the back of my mind, telling me something I didn't know I already knew, waiting for me to be ready to come to terms with the truth.

"Breach" has always been that record for me. It has pushed me to think about the uncomfortable things about myself, and to figure out my own way of saying the things that are too important to be said plainly. For so long, I loved the album for lighting the path as I explored my own artistic side. Now, I'm not sure if I hate it for how much time and energy I expended on things I was never going to be able to do properly.

So I return to the question I started with; If I have lost my passion and inspiration, and pushing the rock up that hill is as futile as it seems, what is the point of soldiering on? Why shouldn't I give up on something that no longer brings me joy, and that clearly no one else gives a damn about?

I may be quitting on music, but I can't quit on over-thinking. For that reason alone, no matter how bitter I get, I'm sure "Breach" will be my companion for another twenty-five years.

Album Review: Battle Beast - Steelbound

Sometimes, a band only needs one selling point to establish and maintain a career. There's so much music out there that everyone needs something that sets them apart, and there are times it isn't their songs. Gimmicks can catch people's attention, and personalities can hold it, but often it just comes down to one massive talent that give us hope the music will live up to that. 

In the case of Battle Beast, that talent has always been the voice of Noora Louhimo. Her voice is a massive force of nature, a gritty roar that rises to the absolute top of the mountain of power metal singers. The comparison between Battle Beast and Beast In Black makes this even more apparent, as does her performance on a song such as "Hurricane Love" from her Laurenne/Louhimo side-project. Noora is flat-out amazing.

Otherwise, Battle Beast is one of those bands like Powerwolf who deliver solid albums that are fun to listen to, but struggle to leave much of an impact. I really enjoyed "Circus Of Doom", but is there anything at all different about "Steelbound"? No, there isn't. You could play the records back-to-back and not know when one ended and the next began. The band has a very narrow perception of what their sound is, and they play within it the whole time.

At only thirty-seven minutes long, including a two-minute interlude, the band is delivering to us a compact burst of melodic metal that hits the same spot again and again. It's good, but how many times can you get a love smack in the same place before it starts to hurt in a way that isn't so enjoyable?

That is to say, the only issue with "Steelbound" is that I'm struggling to tell you why you need to listen to this album if you already know and love one of their earlier records. This one is good in the same way, and will scratch the exact same itch. If you find yourself in that mood, "Steelbound" is going to be perfect. I've certainly enjoyed my time with it. The band is professional, and gives Noora a solid platform to do what she does best. They deliver crunchy metal songs that have high-energy melodies that gets your fist pumping.

That comparison to Powerwolf works on two levels. Yes, they both make the same album again and again, but they also focus on their high-octane numbers to give us metal upon metal. They both have the talent and the voice to do more, and especially to lean into more dramatic fare, but they know what the audience wants. Not too many metal fans are like me, and love what power ballads can bring to the equation even more than the heartiest metallic attack.

Metal fans are going to find a lot to enjoy in "Steelbound". I did as well. Don't let my reticence hold you back.

Album Review: Dead Heat - "Process of Elimination"

 

Sometimes, you want something familiar.  That you know will satisfy, an old favorite.  You go to the Italian restaurant with every intention of expanding your palette with an exotic-tasting Tuscan or Sicilian dish, but in the end you order the chicken parmigiana.  You know it won’t let you down, and it tastes like comfort and cheese (and if it did let you down, anything else would have been much, much worse.)

That’s kind of how Dead Heat’s “Process of Elimination” feels.  You like thrash, and you need something that will stick to your ribs, so you grab some, already knowing what it tastes like.

The west coasters who comprise Dead Heat are following up their 2023 debut with this full-length record, and it’s more of the thrash you know and love.  There are scads of crunchy riffs and headbanging to be had, and some good, old-fashioned thrash breakdowns that make for easy mosh pit fodder. Take in the abounding solos, screaming vocals and lyrics that are firmly anti-establishment, and you have all the makings of a perfectly enjoyable thrash record, the like of which hasn’t really been released anywhere else yet this year.  

Now, the flip side to this is that “Process of Elimination” doesn’t feel very novel or particularly unique, although one doubts that was the point in the first place.  The album clearly follows the pattern of Power Trip’s classic Nightmare Logic, which has become rather the gold standard by which American thrash bands are judged since its release in 2017.  Process of Elimination doesn’t shine quite so brightly - there aren’t the single, earworm-y riffs of that celebrated album of metal, although Dead Heat’s “Enemy” certainly tries.  Dead Heat should also be given credit where it’s due - there’s a very solid bass sound that’s prominent on this record, in a genre that so often buries the bassist under a jagged pile of broken glass guitar.

Attentive readers may notice that they haven’t seen a lot of songs singled out in the discussion of this album, and that’s by design.  Apart from “Enemy,” the album’s best cut is its final one, “Hatred Bestowed,” which offers a little more patience in the build up and uses its longer duration (it’s four and a half minutes, so we’re not talking about “2112” here,) to explore some more dynamic constructions and sounds.  Other than those, though, the album washes over with a wave of similar songs that are all equally fine, and all kind of sound like each other.

The worst fault of Process of Elimination isn’t its own fault; it’s the fault of the time of its birth.  If this is the first thrash album a listener ever hears, it’s a marvelous record worthy of high praise.  

For the more experienced among us however, Dead Heat’s new record is something akin to a James Patterson novel, or some other form of so-called beach reading - it’s fun and you’ll enjoy it for what it is, but it’s not the kind of record that makes you go to bed thinking about its themes and complexity and uniqueness.

Album Review: Taylor Swift - The Life Of A Showgirl

I find it amusing that Taylor Swift named her new album "The Life Of A Showgirl", because there is an interesting parallel to the movie "Showgirls". Namely, you don't want to look at either one of them, but you also can't look away. At the time, it was a right-of-passage for anyone who had seen "Saved By The Bell" to at least find out about "Showgirls", because the idea of TV's Jesse Spano going full-frontal in one of the worst movies ever made was the sort of fever-dream you would be embarrassed to tell your friends about. And yet it was real.

Taylor Swift now has that same level of cringe rubbernecking to her career, in that she has reached the level of cultural saturation where you wouldn't be blamed for wanting her life to turn out to be as much of a bomb as "Showgirls".  That isn't to be mean and actually wish unhappiness on her, but schadenfreude is a very real thing, and barely being able to turn on a TV without being inundated with her being a billionaire coming off using the money from the biggest tour in history to buy back her recordings, and now walking into a blissful (for now) marriage, is just too much good luck going to one person for the bitter among us to handle.

Taylor asks "what would you get for the girl who has everything?" on "Elizabeth Taylor". As it turns out, the answer to the question is a good idea for the next era of her career. That's what this album turns out to be, as teaming up with Max Martin instead of Jack Antonoff turns out to be the best thing Taylor could have done, because it solves the biggest problem she has had for the last four record cycles; she wasn't fun anymore.

"Folklore" was never supposed to be fun, or a pop record, so that one is understandable. "Midnights" was still a pop album at heart, so the move into drab and dour sounds was an odd juxtaposition of Taylor's desire to be a serious songwriter and her lack of skill in being one. As her lyrics became more profane, her songs became less engaging. There was still a hit here and there like "Anti-Hero", but by and large those records came and went without songs that are going to endure like "Love Story" or "Red" or "Style" or "Blank Space". Hollywood never learned the lesson that movies don't get better with more utterances of "fuck", and Taylor didn't learn albums don't either.

Eight of the twelve songs on this record carry the 'explicit language' warning, which is unnecessary, because there's no forgetting she's a 'grown ass woman' at this point. What bothers me more, though, is that she is suffering from what I call 'Slayer Syndrome'. She used to write songs that were smarter than her age, with allusions to literature or sturdy metaphors. Now, she often writes as if this really is her diary, listing off pop culture references as if we're on the home page of a streaming app that's trying to get you to watch their latest money dump. I did a double-take cringe when I heard her sing "I can make deals with the devil because my dick's bigger." Oh, Taylor, no. Just no. The first rule of 'Big Dick Club' is that if you have to talk about Big Dick Club, you're not really a member.

We want honesty from our music, but there's an irony that when you get too specific about what inspired you, the language makes the song less relatable. We can't put ourselves into the situation when the details are foreign to our lives. And to phrase it like Taylor would; Who the fuck can relate to Taylor Swift anymore?

On "Wi$h Li$t" (Ok, this spelling makes me think about taking back what I said about her being an adult), she sings about telling the world to "leave us the fuck alone" because all she needs is her man. Frankly, the sentiment rings so very hollow when Taylor puts herself in the public eye in the ways she does. If she really wanted us to leave her alone to enjoy her life with her fiance, she wouldn't be writing lines like "his love was the key to open my thighs". That is baiting us, and it feels like it's done as an excuse to later hate on us for reacting exactly how she wanted us to. Look, Taylor likes the attention, and that's fine... as long as she doesn't try to tell us she doesn't. People who don't want attention don't write songs tracing the precise GPS route that took them to Pound Town.

On the closing title track, she sings that she's "addicted to the hustle". It's nice to hear she is self-aware, and that is the single line in the entire album that gives me the most respect for her. Taylor does work hard at being the biggest pop star in the world. She writes and records tirelessly, and she doesn't coast on five-year cycles when she obviously could. Maybe we get too much of her at times, but that's not worse than being the kind of artist who gives you the impression only makes albums because they need to keep their career afloat.

So what of this album, then? "The Life Of A Showgirl" is the most fun Taylor Swift album since "1989", bar none. It's not a full-on return to 'sunny days pop', but there is a spark to these songs that has been missing for a while. Perhaps playing all the eras during her tour reminded Taylor that she became 'Taylor Swift' by making fun music. Perhaps being happy makes all the difference. Regardless of the reason, the result is the same; I kind of like this record. No, not as much as "1989", because her writing these days is a fountain pen torrent of ink getting smeared by my left-handed wishful editing. Still, this is definitely better than "Lover", "Evermore", "Midnights", and "The Tortured Poets Department". The emo in me might still like "Folklore" better, but that doesn't matter much. The point is that Taylor is close enough to being back in my good graces, at least enough that I'll curse the Chiefs being on my screen every Sunday, not her.

To return to my starting metaphor, this album is not "Showgirls". This is not Taylor's musical version of gratuitous nudity for the sake of shocking the audience. This is an attempt at artistic nudity, but it comes in a vehicle that doesn't quite hold up, so it's a nude scene that will far outlive the movie it comes from. Being the best of Taylor in a while still doesn't make it the best of Taylor overall.

Does any of this make sense?

EP Review: The Bloody Beetroots - "Forever Part One"

Who knew?  Who knew an Italian guy in a Grendel mask (the comic character, not the villainous monster from Beowulf,) could take a bunch of rock and punk songs and make them into loud, overdriven dance fodder in such an entertaining way.

Look, for ease of argument, let’s lump rock, metal, punk, alternative and everything in between into a catch-all term that we’ll call ‘the aggressive music community.’  It seems high time, not only with the success of this EP from Bloody Beetroots, but with the prominence over recent years from acts like Dampf, Zardonic and the resurrected Nine Inch Nails, that the aggressive music community come to recognize that electronic music will have a hand in the genre going forward.  Best to embrace it now.  

What stands out the most about all of these compositions is the way in which Rifo (the man behind The Bloody Beetroots,) uses his unique touch to accent and enhance the songs.  It’s not a delicate touch - Rifo’s hand overwhelms each track when his particular flavor of sound hits - but that’s what makes the EP work.  Where Rifo shows restraint is in the measures where he takes his hand away completely.

There’s going to be a lot of backhanded commentary coming, apologies in advance.  Focusing for a moment on the single “NUMB” that features Tokky Horror, the first forty-five seconds is a perfectly average alternative rock song.  And then it explodes.  The juxtaposition of noise level (and bass level) is the kind of switch-throwing that makes Forever Part One work so well.  Two worlds are colliding in a way that’s both refreshing and unique.  Add in the fact that Rifo stays his hand and only brings his electronic wall full bore during the choruses (and the thunderous outro,) and he, in conjunction with the band, has made something special.

This theme extends for the duration of the experience.  There’s nothing that would truly draw a listener into the basic premise of “I’m Not Holy” until the song breaks out into a dance hall thumper (one is reminded ever so slightly of the opening of season 2 of The Venture Bros, which featured the Aquagen song “Everybody’s Free.”)  The same applies towards the end of the EP with the song “Free,” which builds and builds until it eventually sounds like the best moments of a Streets of Rage soundtrack.  This is the kind of thing electronic music has been mastering over the last, oh, say four decades or so; the ability to slow build until the tension becomes burgeoning to the point that catharsis is all that’s left.  To hear that applied to aggressive music is a touch that’s been…’missing’ is the wrong word, but underutilized, for sure.

Spend some time with this.  Soak it in.  There’s a lot to like, both in the pleasure-of-listening sense (the bass alone will make you feel something,) and in the academic sense (the ongoing fusion of aggressive music and electronic dance music, which is a separate breed entirely from industrial.)  If we endeavor as music fans to grow and find new avenues for our fandom, then the Bloody Beetroots is offering something novel and different for us to imbibe.

Is It Artificial Intelligence, Or Artificial Humanity?

"Don't worry about the future, sooner or later it's the past."

Sometimes, that process happens faster than we expect it to. Right now, we are seeing AI seep into nearly every aspect of life, re-writing the rules of how the world operates. Music has not been immune to this, and what we are dealing with is a full-fledged existential crisis, as we have to wrap our heads around big questions about what exactly this art that means so much to us truly is.

News came recently that an artist who composes through AI signed a million-dollar deal with a label. Bands that are entirely fictitious are amassing streams on Spotify that are generating real money for the people who are running the algorithms. We now have songs that are protected by copyright, despite not being written by anyone human. This all might sound theoretical, except for the fact that AI has very quickly gotten to the point where it is not inherently inferior to human produced work. The kinks are getting smoothed out, and with that comes more reasons to knot our thinking.

"It's all about the music."

That is the refrain many of us have long defaulted to. Often, it gets used in the context of putting down music we find less 'real' and less 'authentic' than what we listen to. Rock fans will deride pop music for being synthetic and manufactured, as if we don't have countless rock bands that have been put together simply because there were a few 'names' involved, or that rock bands have been bringing in professional songwriters to help them find the mainstream for decades. Authenticity is less a fact, and more a rationalization we use to fool ourselves.

If it really is all about the music, AI shouldn't matter, should it? A great song is a great song regardless of how it was created. At least that's what our attitude tells us.

And yet, that is not the reality we find ourselves in. Shaking the emotional reaction we have to AI music is a difficult task, if it's one we even want to undertake. Our emotions dominate the way we think, even in the philosophical pursuits. Ethics are as much about what feels right as what we can argue objectively is right. Art is pure emotion. It's the digression from perfect representations of reality that make art what it is, that give it power, and that separate a painting from a photograph.

In an edition of "Singles Roundup", I talked about the 'band' Secret Frequency. Their song "Crashing Words" caught my attention when the YouTube algorithm pushed it to me. They have no online presence outside of AI generated music videos and the songs appearing on Spotify. They give every indication of being artificial, but I can't say if it is just the performances being generated, or if the compositions themselves are written by computer code. In either case, I feel safe in saying they are not a real band.

And yet, that song is one of my favorite songs of the year. It does everything a good song should, and the artifacts of sound in early AI generations is nearly no longer present. If you heard the song on the radio, you would never bat an eye at it. Saying that is a scary thing.

The 'band' has been releasing a song every week, and now has generated enough to fill out an album. While there are ebbs and flows to the quality, I can't sit here and tell you there's anything inferior about this to much of the music I have listened to this year from our traditional sources. Every week, as I sift through the albums being released looking for something that will spark my interest, I hear huge amounts of music that is worse than Secret Frequency.

On the one hand, I should be happy to welcome AI music if it is going to increase the amount of music out there on the scene I might find myself enjoying. On the other hand, the (former) artist in me is deeply offended at humanity being replaced by something that doesn't understand the very core of what art is.

And here's where we get to the uncomfortable part; the music we listen to has never been as pure as we like to think.

While of course there are artists out there who painstakingly craft works that put their souls on display for the world, there is also a massive amount of music that is made to sell music. Whether it was the glam metal that thought sex was the only subject that existed in the 80s, the boy-bands of the early 00s, or the trend of meaningless interpolations of today, so many of the songs we know and love weren't written with deep thoughts and powerful emotions behind them. They were written to flesh out an album, to fulfill a contract, and so on and so forth.

To put it in these terms; when so many rock songs are written about how rocking rock is, can we really say there is humanity, let alone art, in them?

AI's biggest problem is in justifying its existence in the artistic sphere. AI cannot write music that comes with a human story, so it will never be able to reach the true heights of artistry. The top shelf is out of the question, but it can be the proverbial 'volume scorer', right? Not really, because when AI makes generic and meaningless music, we already have humanity doing that. AI is supposed to be smarter than us, so making schlock isn't impressive. LA Guns is still out there, so we have plenty of garbage music made the old-fashioned way.

As I'm listening to these Secret Frequency songs, I'm worried less about AI rising up and taking over music, and worried more about how little we have expected from the humans making our music. Perhaps it is because we lowered the standards, because we didn't demand more, that we left the door open for this to happen. I was concerned years ago when a certain label whose albums we sometimes cover here had an in-house writer compose upwards of ten albums in a single year. It was already clear music was not actually saying anything, was not being treated as important. If that's the case, why shouldn't we farm out the busy-work?

The answer is because it offends our senses. Despite our own limitations, mediocre human art is still better than the best AI art, because art reflects who we are. AI music might sound just like the real thing, but it reflects the emptiness inside us.

I may be emotionally empty, but even though I like some of these songs, I'm not ready to say they speak to me.