Taster's Choice Is Coffee, Not Advice

It is true that our minds do not all work in the same way, and I am reminded of that every time someone tries to give me a piece of unsolicited 'advice'. Most of the time, the things people say are not only implausible or impossible for me, but make no logical sense whatsoever. Recently, I encountered one of those moments that made me stop and question if I am simply not made to coexist with this world.

I had been commenting that this year has been particularly bereft of interesting new music, and that finding anything that excites me has turned into more of a chore than it has ever been in the past. Someone took it upon themselves to give me 'advice', which consisted of saying, "change your taste".

I'm at a loss; can that even be done?

Taste is not a conscious choice we make, or at least it isn't for me. I was thinking of this in terms of loving a person, to make the idea more concrete. If we say we love someone, do we intend to say we wake up every day and choose to do that as if we had another option? I can see a degree of nobility in making the claim that we are choosing the person each and every day, but beneath that sentiment is an implication that we could change our minds at any point, because the person has not made any lasting impact on us. That feels like a terrible thing to put upon someone, a transactional relationship that does not at all feel like the sort of thing we want to consider love.

The same thing is true when we are talking about music. The songs and albums I love are not conscious choices I made. I did not wake up one day and decide I wanted to be a fan of certain styles of pop and rock, nor did I tell myself there were certain vocal tones that would be my favorites. Those were decided for me by chance, neurology, and chemical reactions. The music I love is the music that stirred something in me, that lodged in my head, that challenged my thinking and my emotions. I don't believe any of that can be done by making an argument in my own mind.

But what if it was possible? I think about the implications of being able to shift my allegiance from one genre to another, from set of bands to another, and I find it disconcerting. If the songs that echo in my head are only there because I told myself to like them, it renders emotions into a choice, which means everything we feel would be entirely in our own control. I think most of us have experienced situations that prove we are not in control of our emotions. Additionally, my particular strain of philosophy centers on emotions as the center of our experience, which requires us to accept the ways situations make us feel so we can then figure out how to navigate around the pitfalls and chasms. If it's all a choice, every bad mood or fit of sadness is not just a patch of darkness, it is a moral failing.

To get back to the main point; if we can choose what music we love, can we claim to love anything? It seems to me that if we can change our mind on a moment's notice, our attachment to the music we would be leaving behind was too tenuous to have ever been love. You can't walk away from love without feeling pain or loss, without regretting what you no longer have.

I think a lot of this stems from a disparity in how we think about music. For most people, music is a distraction from the rare times they have a thought in their head. If something makes them tap their toes, they say they love it. For someone like me, music is what makes me think, it's what fills my mind with questions that lead me toward truths about both myself and the world. The music I love is a relationship with a form of the truth, and the idea of being able to talk myself into having that kind of connection with something merely because I say it would be more convenient strikes me as the height of hubris.

Just change my taste... I don't think that is possible any more than talking yourself into not being allergic to your allergen. There are things that exist beyond our rational understanding, and love is one of them. What I tend to forget at times is that many people don't love music at all, but they convince themselves they do. When music means more to you than to them, the language we use to talk about it doesn't translate between us.

That leads to confusion when we can't explain what is going on in our heads, and it leads to frustration when people suggest you attempt the impossible. It also means that, once again, I'm left feeling as if I am completely misunderstood by everyone around me. It's a lonely feeling, and despite how many words I just wrote here, I'm goddamn sick and tired of trying to explain myself to people who don't care, and don't care to understand.

Album Review: Evanescence - Sanctuary

Twenty years ago was a weird time for rock and metal in the mainstream. With the ascension of nu-metal, we were wading through huge amounts of music that was the equivalent of those people who add protein powder to everything they eat or drink. When you remember that Drowning Pool had a genuine hit with "Bodies", it might be the weirdest time I've lived through as an observer of culture. What might be weirder yet is that in the midst of that, Evanescence rose near the top of that entire movement. They didn't fit in any box, and Amy Lee was worlds apart from any other singer you could hear on the radio at the time. Their success was confusing to me, and their enduring popularity remains as such.

Let's begin with this; I never got into Evanescence. I liked "My Immortal" and "Call Me When You're Sober", but I was distant from that entire wave of music in general, and classical sounding singers in particular. I thought very little about the band over the last twenty years, until very recently their name seemed to be everywhere. Maybe time has brought the streams closer together.

The first thing that hit me about listening to Evanescence intently for the first time in ages is that Amy Lee's voice is the missing connective tissue between the world of hard rock and symphonic metal. You can hear the classical influence, but it doesn't become as distracting as the operatic metal sirens. She is an outlier, and now I can see and hear why that would have been so appealing at the time.

As the album unfolds, she and the band deliver song after song that marry heavy groove in the guitars with vocals that flutter over the top with strong and memorable melodies. There's enough here to fit under the general umbrella of 'radio rock', but it's done with enough little diversions to be more interesting than the template following bands whose names I can never keep straight. Whether it's Amy's delivery, or a few seconds of a sludgy breakdown in "Tell Me When You've Had Enough", the band is offering something in every song that isn't quite what we expect.

I'm most intrigued by the song "About Us", where Amy takes out her anger on people who have created a world that paints us with shades of pain. After asking them if their actions have turned out how they wanted, she tells the audience that those people "don't give a damn about us", and neither does the God they use to justify their actions. We hear very little commentary in our discourse about what happens after prayer, only calls to engage in it. The interesting bit to reckon with is that distinction where faith and delusion intersect. Amy is pointing out that praying to someone who doesn't listen is no different than the actions that used to get people committed to mental institutions. I think the subtext of what she's referring to is clear enough, but we don't need to go there. That is almost irrelevant to the larger issue of people giving all credit to their religion when something goes right, but no blame when it doesn't. Logic, eh?

There is one issue I have with the record, which comes near the end in "Forever Without You". It's a nice enough piano ballad, but the chorus centers on a series of long, held notes. Lung power is impressive, but it doesn't make for a captivating melody on its own, and the song is the weakest on the album in that department.

Otherwise, Evanescence has impressed me greatly with this album. After twenty years that has involved a lot of drama, the band is not only still going, but might be making consistently better music than they ever have. I'm not sure how much the past will ever hit me, but the present is. And no, I will not finish that thought with the pun about it being a gift.

Singles Roundup: April Art, Greta Van Fleet, The Iron Roses, & Lex Legion

There's a lot to say this week, and not much of it is good.

April Art - Big Bubble B-

Every so often, a song comes along that makes me ask questions about why it exists at all. This is one of those songs. No, I'm not saying it's bad, because it isn't. I like April Art as a band, and they have one song in "Not Sorry" that is one of my favorites of recent years, but they have left me scratching my head at this particular moment. As you can see from the title, this song is called "Big Bubble B-", where the hyphen is standing in for the word "bullshit". Ok, I understand that you can't put an expletive in a title on every platform, so I don't begrudge them that one.

Where things break down is that if you encountered this song through the YouTube algorithm, as I did, the song itself censors the word. Every time the lyric comes along, the word is replaced with a sibilant skittering of electronic noise. It is an even more annoying version of radio censorship that cuts the vocal out with a second of silence to cover what can't be aired. So why is this so terrible? Because I can't stop myself from asking why a band would write and record a song to release as a single that needs to be censored in that way. Yes, I can listen to the song somewhere else and not have that experience, but the first impression was so awful it had already soured me. At least if I thought it was satire, I might understand why they went with what I still would think is a bad joke. But since that's not the case, I'm left shaking my head at what terrible judgment it is to ruin your own song in one of the places people can discover your music.

The bones of this song are good, but the execution is severely lacking. And on top of that, I'm struggling to figure out exactly what "big bubble bullshit" is even supposed to mean. If it's real slang, I'm too old for this stuff anymore. If they coined the phrase, it isn't explained well. It also sounds too comedic to be a putdown. So there's that. I would recommend skipping this song. Just about everything else April Art has done is better.

Greta Van Fleet - Play Your Games

The hype has been dead and buried, because I barely heard a work about the band's fake retirement tease. No one I take note of talks about Greta Van Fleet anymore, and I think it's safe to say they have shown their trajectory is very much like Evel Knievel at the Snake River Canyon. That is to say I had no care or expectation that they were in fact only trying to drum up attention for their return.

Now that we have this song, I have even less care. I'm sorry, and maybe it's just a function of my abnormal neurology, but high-pitched screaming vocals are one of the few things in life that give me the urge toward violence. The band's throwback music is inoffensively fine, but the vocals make me long for the days of silent film. When the chorus comes along, and the wailing turns into a warbled scream, the pitch and tone is unmistakable as fingernails on a chalkboard (or for me, rubbing Styrofoam). It is so painful to listen to, I can't remember why I actually liked a couple of songs off their initial EPs.

Normally, I would say replacing a singer is a death knell for a band. But when it comes to Greta Van Fleet, it might be the only way they'll ever get any respect.

The Iron Roses - Dead Eyes

A few years back, I found myself fond of the debut album from this dual-vocal punk band. Their melodic hooks and intertwined lead singers made for a unique package, and it was something that stood out from the usual crowd. The wait for what comes next is now ending, with their follow-up due in August. The first song released is what we are talking about today, and it's a case of a recipe not always turning out the same way, even when you follow the directions.

The core of the band's sound is still there; fast tempos, a bouncing hook, and those harmonized vocals. They get their political message across in the candy-coated way that makes the bitterness of the times harder to taste, but there's something a bit off about how they are doing it this time. The mix puts the vocals lower in the mix, which dulls the intent of the lyrics. Sussing them out is more difficult, and the interplay of the voices is harder to hear. That is a main appeal of the band, so having to work harder to pull out what I liked so much about the band is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Maybe it fits the punk ethos more, but it adds a layer between me and the music. To me, punk is at its best when both the songs and the messages are razor sharp, and this one is hinting at a hazier sound. Maybe it will hit harder when the full album is out, but right now I'm feeling a bit disappointed that this song hits softer.

Lex Legion - Sleep Eternally/Gypsy Tears

I'm going to be a cynic for a minute. We've been hearing for nearly ten years that the next King Diamond album is almost ready, and it will be "out next year". This band tells me that's always been a complete and total lie.

Lex Legion is made up of members of King Diamond's band, with Nils K Rue fronting them. They sound exactly like King Diamond, but without as much charisma fronting the group. That means Lex Legion come across sounding like a second-rate version of their own history, which is exactly the reason I don't get excited about the dozen or so new releases that come out every year with combinations of old rockers who were never the primary writing forces in their bands. Merely knowing how the music was made doesn't mean you'll be able to do it yourself.

Nils is a capable singer, but he's not King Diamond, which to be fair - no one is. Him trying to ape the falsetto style at all is a massive mistake, and only makes the comparisons between this group and King Diamond more blatantly obvious. The band is hardly carving out an identity of their own, and these two songs show they don't have enough of the flair and storytelling that makes the ridiculousness of King Diamond work. This sounds too stiff and too straight to be campy fun, which means it just sounds like people trying to hard to make the album they're waiting to really be playing.

Album Review: Kat Kennedy - A Part Of Me, A Piece Of You

A couple years ago, I came across Kat Kennedy as she was starting to release a string of singles that evoked the spirit of Taylor Swift's "Folklore" album, using hushed vocals and quiet acoustic guitars as an expression of the inner voice that may not be loud in volume, but can often deafen us to reason. I remember mentioning that I was eager to hear what a larger piece of work would sound like, as the three minute snapshots felt incomplete when I considered how long an emotion needs to resonate. That time has now come, although with a set of songs that doesn't include any of those that convinced me Kat was someone to keep an eye on.

This album continues along the same thread, but with a few differences. The arrangements are still sparse, and focused on simple acoustics to pair with Kat's subdued vocal performances. She doesn't draw attention to her voice, keeping the focus on the stories the lyrics are telling. They are portraits of moments when we reach emotional crossroads, drawing the chalk outlines on the ground so we can remember the exact position things were in when they began to fall apart. The opening track leans heavily into this, describing the love of the moment as a "future broken heart". It's the sort of cynical message pop music doesn't spend much time with, because we've been trained to expect happy endings even when they don't fit the story.

That's not what life is, and even if there is a happy ending, the path to get there is not a road paved in gold. Stories where nothing bad happens along the way aren't interesting, and if anything they make us hate the people who have that kind of luck. Call it jealousy if you want to, but it's a natural reaction.

Kat's songs talk about looking through the collection of stuff that reminds you of someone, only to realize you've outgrown who they are. And yet, she describes the feeling of them becoming just "another person" imagined as a one-sided affair, where she will avoid any mention or reminder far longer, until the day comes when she can barely remember their phone number anymore. Living in the "limbo" between the future you imaged and the future you will inherit can break both our backs and spirits if we aren't careful.

Kat's performances carry the somber sadness of these realizations, letting her music feel intimate and painful. It's a sound that comes without many silver linings, as holding onto what we consider precious doesn't always leave much that hasn't slipped through our fingers. When the songs utilize Kat's harmonies, there's a beautiful and ethereal quality that sounds like the velvet lining to the coffin we are burying our dreams in.

Now, for all of that, the album's bend to modernity leaves it a bit short of the mark. These thirteen songs come in at thirty-eight minutes, which doesn't give the songs enough time to always build the emotion they are trying to pay off. The sketches of the moments are incomplete, with the structures barely hitting two verses and choruses. The big emotional payoffs are missing, which does fit the theme and the tone, but without rousing us in the way that connects two hearts. A song like "Idiot Proof" isn't even two minutes long, which isn't enough time to invest me in that moment in time.

The best songs are the ones that inject a bit more 'energy' into the album, where the harmonies are a bit thicker, where the hazy atmosphere has a bit more depth to it. Those songs are the ones that are broken, sad, and damn beautiful. "Never See Me" is a prime example of that, and it's a reminder of those songs that attracted me to Kat's music in the first place. Maybe an entire album mining that territory would have been too much of the same thing, but the quieter and slower moments ask for a level of intimacy to love them that aren't easy for an artist and audience to have, especially without a long history between them.

Ultimately, the album leaves me in the same position those original singles did. I love the sound Kat has created for herself, but the experience still feels a bit incomplete, as if I still want something a bit 'more'. The sadness of Kat's songs resonates, but I'm tired of being tired, I'm sad about being sad... so I suppose an album that doesn't give much reason or incentive for my mood to shift isn't the easiest lift at the moment. Maybe someday, but not today.

It's satisfying to have a more full and rich experience with Kat's music. I'm sure in time I might be able to say something a bit more affectionate, but this is where I am right now. This album is lovely, but not for everyone or every mood.

Singles Roundup: Blank Era, Alana Springsteen, Anthrax, & Fallen Sanctuary

As we have reached the unofficial start of summer, let's see if we have an anthem for the season yet.

Blank Era - Sick Of Feeling

In the chorus of this song, Jaycee belts out "I'm sick of feeling... dead". It's a defiant statement about not letting the situation she finds herself in kill the light inside of her, but the ellipses give the statement a different context for me. The idea of being sick of feeling, in general, is something I can certainly identify with. As I have mentioned at times over the years, there was a long stretch of time when I thought my neurology was mis-wired in a way that left me without the normal array of feelings. I miss those times...

I encountered a list about introverts that said they "remember embarrassing moments forever". That is a narrow reading, but if we broaden the scope to the entirety of negative experiences, I think we're approaching the truth. It's easy to remember pain, and the echoes that live in our scars, while it's easy for the bright moments and smiles to dissolve when we get too tired to hold them in place. What Jaycee and the band are doing is reminding us to hold onto the parts of us that were good, that had hope, just with a bit less schmaltz than when Richard Marx told us to "hold onto the nights".

Jaycee's voice is able to hold the line between anger at how things are, and resolution that they won't be that way going forward. That balance has been the sinew of Blank Era, and it's why every song has been hitting hard.

Alana Springsteen - I Loved You Then

I often joke that love is a 'four-letter word', because it feels like a curse, and because I would sometimes prefer it to be censored. Alana's song is about the time when you are in love, but neither side is saying whether they realize it or not. Those are awkward moments where your heart is bursting out of your chest for someone, while at the same time being ripped apart at the seams by not knowing if it will be stabbed through by fate.

The track is a beautiful country-ish ballad where Alana's voice carries the confusion of those moments, and the longing to have figured out the answer sooner, because of what could have been. Through the choruses, it's one of my favorite songs of the year, but then it makes an interesting choice. Rather than have a bridge before coming back for one last soaring statement, the song instead shifts into a doubled coda, where the stirring emotion of the melody never returns. It's a dour ending to what could have been a great song.

What's interesting is that after running through it the first time, I can hear in my head how the questioning lyrics could have been put into the chorus melody, which would have brought everything full circle, and felt more like a resolution, even if nothing is being resolved. As it is, the song leaves me wanting, but not necessarily wanting more.

Anthrax - It's For The Kids

After waiting ten years for a new Anthrax album, I'm not sure what I should have been expecting. I was certainly not expecting a song with this title, which doesn't at all feel like something a veteran thrash band would be producing. There's a tonal disconnect between the verses and choruses, where it comes across as Anthrax being angry at the song's subject for being such an angry person creating a poisonous culture. That sort of reasoning is not at all out of character for the ways people actually think, but it makes following the thread of the lyric difficult.

The music itself doesn't do a lot to ameliorate that issue. Anthrax has never had the power of Metallica, or the riffiness of Megadeth, and this song finds itself moving along on start-stop riffs that put the emphasis back on the Joey Belladonna and the lyrics. The chorus melody is fine, but it's not immediately hooky, which is a problem when the song pushes us toward it. As a song, it's fine. As an opening statement after a ten year wait, it's definitely leaving me wanting more. If this is what they consider the best song on the album, it's concerning.

Fallen Sanctuary - Master Of The Sea

This is... interesting. Fallen Sanctuary is in the process of putting their second album together, which this time will be crowdfunded. While that is happening, they released this song that didn't make the cut for their first album. I'm a bit confused with the decision to release an old song that didn't make the cut right before you start promoting and pushing your new record.

Listening to the song, I can see why it didn't make the album. That record was a great blend of Serenity and Temperance, while each of their latest albums didn't hit me quite the same way. This song digs back further, with a chorus that is ripped from the power metal blueprint. Maybe I'm just tired of hearing that sort of thing, but it doesn't have the same staying power with me that the rest of their album did. This one reads as more generic, which might have worked in the context of an album, but doesn't have the same appeal when heard on its own. I can only hope this release isn't signaling a shift in where that second album is going to explore, because I don't think I can get excited about much more power metal that sounds just like power metal by rote.

An Update On Bloody Good Music

At the start of the year, I didn't do a 'State Of Bloody Good Music' post, because it felt like we were continuing the status quo, and the big existential question had already come and gone a couple of months before. Reiterating that nothing was going to change didn't feel necessary, and there wasn't a bigger project waiting in the wings to at least tease.

With the year approaching the midpoint, I've started reflecting on what these last few months have entailed, and there is one overriding sense I can't shake, nor ignore:

My relationship with music has changed.

I've been talking in my year-end recaps for several years now that each one has been more disappointing than the last, and the number of releases I listen to in a given year has been declining steadily, but I feel like a tipping point has been reached. The amount of new music that has caught my attention at all, let alone stirred something in me, has slowed to a mere trickle. Fewer albums cross my inbox now, and my daily exploration of what is out there to hear has been an exercise in diminishing returns.

I would like to blame all of this on the industry, and changing trends. There is certainly a degree to which this is true, as the amount of music that comes with the labels 'death metal', 'black metal', 'deathcore', 'electronic', and a host of other adjectives that hold absolutely zero interest to me has grown. To sort through the list of new releases is to wear out the red pen for grading, my eyes glazing over as I try to find anything that offers up what I'm looking for out of music. Even in those areas that feel safe, more records feature poorly utilized screaming than ever before. It becomes exhausting.

That is not the full explanation, of course. The trends do not help, but the real answer lies within me. My existential ennui has metastasized, leaving my mind a monochrome expanse that most music is not colorful enough to enliven. Perhaps this is because of the psychological reality that most minds lose interest and ability to absorb new music as we get older, but I think it goes beyond that. When existential crises began to become a regular thing, music moved from being a diversion to an essential part of controlling my feelings. When that happened, meaningless rock songs that had a riff and melody with nothing to say stopped being as enjoyable as they once were. If a song couldn't connect to life, it sloughed off more easily than ever.

That brings us to today, where I am looking at what music has had to offer over these first few months of the year. The truth of the matter is that there is one album that has genuinely affected me, with a few others I enjoy for more shallow reasons. I find myself listening to samples and singles on a daily basis, and almost nothing connects with me, nor moves me the way pulling an old CD off the shelf is able to. It isn't impossible, because NMB's album and Sailor Hunter's single have managed the feat, but they feel more like exceptions now than a rule.

I'm saying all of that to get to this point; I don't know how much new music I'm going to be covering during the rest of this year. I would love to have an abundance of riches and go back to the days of writing three reviews a week, but I know that isn't going to happen. I don't want to write for the sake of writing, and I don't think you want to read me going through the motions to talk about music that means nothing to me.

Please don't misinterpret; this is not an ending. I'm going to continue writing, and trying to figure out life through the prism of music, but the music used to do that might look backward even more than it already does. My current trajectory of writing retrospective essays will continue, mixed with some lists and rankings I have planned. Perhaps, if circumstances allow, I will even return to commenting on developments in the music news. New music coverage will be focused on the albums that give me something of note to say, whether for good or bad. That means we will probably spend more time on our singles roundup columns, which is an easier way for me to stay invested in the scene without wearing out my limited patience.

Time will tell if things will ever get back to 'normal'.

The "Horse" Was Brought Down 30 Years Ago

Many things in music are hard to see coming, even in retrospect. In 1996, there was not a mainstream groundswell for rock music in the Americana style. Tom Petty had already cranked out the last of his long run of consistent hit singles, and there was a small bubbling in the underground with bands like The Jayhawks, but the appetite for a band that was a direct link back to Bob Dylan (in both intentions of the phrase) was not something apparent to this young observer.

The Wallflowers were an unlikely choice to be the biggest rock stars of the year, and yet it was "Bringing Down The Horse" that left as big an impact on that year as anyone else in music. Where we might disagree is the degree to which that is something we should talk about as an achievement of the album, as opposed to being singularly the result of "One Headlight". While the album remains a gem of the time, and it was a necessary reinvention of a band that would have otherwise quickly faded away, my thoughts on it are tinted by the fact I haven't considered it their best album since October of the year 2000.

The obvious parallel to draw is that of Bob Dylan, because both father and son are writers of a poetic disposition in a format that doesn't have many literary aspirations. That feels too cheap for my tastes, both because of how obvious such a statement would be, but also because The Wallflowers have always owed more of a debt to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. It would become more noticeable on their next album, but Jakob Dylan's band was more engaged in rock and roll than Bob ever was, at least rock as it evolved past the 1950s. When Bob 'went electric', he was just playing folk music through an amp. The Wallflowers are a rock band through and through, which comes with a different mentality of composing.

There is a muscularity to the guitar punch of "One Headlight", the cutting lead tones we hear on "Laughing Out Loud", and the ragtag backing vocals that propel "6th Avenue Heartache". The Wallflowers were able to distill their songs to the core, and focus the performances and production to cut out all the extraneous bits that sank their debut album. The difference between the two is much the same as listening to people like Jimi Hendrix covering Bob Dylan's songs, except in this case it was The Wallflowers getting there before others had to show them what the songs could be.

In spirit, this album is a sister to The Jayhawk's classic "Hollywood Town Hall", with that record being the folk sibling to The Wallflower's rock aesthetic. Both take the sound of classic Americana and bring it forward into the present day, updating the folk roots with melodies that borrow the immediacy of pop music. Every music snob who touts "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" as one of the greatest albums of their lifetime would not have that record to adore if not for The Wallflowers and The Jayhawks paving the way for that experiment.

Of course, nothing the record achieved would have been possible without "One Headlight". We can debate whether or not it is Jakob Dylan's greatest feat of songwriting, but there is no question it is the song that defines the band, even though it sounds like nothing else they ever wrote. The lone bass rumble leading into the droning organ and syrupy lead guitar is an atmosphere the band would never revisit, but it provided the perfect cold atmosphere for Jakob's obscure poetry. Perhaps it worked because it was the one song of the band's that could echo a hint of the dying grunge aesthetic, but that might be looking for a cause when only an effect exists.

The song was written about 'the death of ideas', which I'm not sure anyone listening to the song on the radio in those days picked up on. I will never claim to have been so astute at the time. What was enthralling about the song was the cryptic sound of the poetry, how the scene Jakob described felt like a noir mystery we needed to investigate and solve of our own accord. The answers might be present, but they were encoded in the language, waiting to be discovered by keen observers.

The great thing about songwriting is that the same song can mean different things to different people. For me, "One Headlight" was not a song about morality and the rot of society, it was a commentary on the death of self.

"I'm so alone, I feel like somebody else
Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same"

Those are the lines that say everything to me. They express the existential horror of life, the fact that like the proverbial Ship Of Theseus, we are both the same as we ever were and yet completely new. To look at ourselves on any given day is to see the person we are, but also to not see a glimpse of the person we were. Taken that way, it's a complex bit of contemplation that speaks to our battles with our own psyches, but also to the ways the connections we hold with others fray and unravel. When everything is changing, yet staying the same, we don't know whether the love we hold for people (including ourselves) is alive or dead until we reach out and test whether it will crumble into dust.

"Bringing Down The Horse" was the sound of Jakob Dylan finding his voice, delivering on the promise that could almost be heard on the band's debut album. He would refine these skills even further on "Breach", making what I consider the band's true classic record. That one is filled to the brim with that kind of philosophical songwriting, and has been my source of inspiration for twenty-five years. It would not have been possible without this album first, which makes it a keystone worth celebrating.

And just because "One Headlight" overshadows everything else doesn't mean we should overlook what's hiding behind it, nor should we ignore just how damn good that song is. Few songs embody the decade of the 90s quite like that one, and there are a lot of days I long to go back then. I miss life feeling simpler, when a record could convince me life makes sense.

Singles Roundup: Sailor Hunter, Morrissey, & Deep Purple

We haven't ventured into these waters in a little while, so let's see what has been released recently we need to talk about.

Sailor Hunter - Unbound

It might be reductive to say, but a singer can make all the difference in the world. I know I had heard the band's name before, but this song with a new singer has caught my attention in a way they hadn't before. Sailor Hunter blends many things in these brief four minutes, with deep riffs and hints of symphonics, and a singer who is able to go from screaming to classical wailing with ease. Dimitra is the revelation, using her voice to paint colors on the band's sonic landscape, pushing her voice to deliver the chorus with power and passion.

The song wastes no time, dropping from the chorus into a reprise of the riff, then straight back into the chorus for the outro. It's both progressive and regressive to break apart typical structure to have even less parts, but it focuses the composition on the massive hook and Dimitra's delivery. I can't fault that approach, because each time she cycles through it grows larger and more epic, and she has no trouble scaling even higher highs. If this points to where Sailor Hunter is headed, I'm definitely interested to hear where else that will take us. This is one of my favorite songs of the year.

Morrissey - Happy New Tears

Remember when I said rather harsh things about Morrissey's new album? Well, he's already announced a 'deluxe' version coming next month with a new song attached, so let's talk about it. This song is more of the glitchy electro-disco that "Notre Dame" was, which doesn't provide much of a melodic base for Morrissey's croon. The melody is rather lackluster, which only highlights the biggest problem with the song; Morrissey is a lazy-ass writer.

The two verses of this song are identical. I'm sorry, that isn't true. He adds the word 'for' to the start of a phrase the second time around. This penchant for repetition is not charming, and it grows tiresome on tracks that would be exhausting even with a developed lyric. Morrissey is getting by on his name and his 'charisma', and that's just not enough.

The song is a lament on how other people find happiness, and sometimes that is the only form of happiness we will ever see as possible. That sentiment speaks to me in this moment, as it's something I have noticed and commented on to myself, and yet Morrissey says it in such a meek and milquetoast way I don't feel the connection to the song I obviously should. The great artist is able to use their words to paint a picture that says more to us than mere words. Morrissey's great 'skill' these days is being able to say even less than face value with his words. It's remarkable how he can write a lyric about a deep topic that come across too shallow to drown in.

He once told us "there is a light that never goes out". Sorry, Morrissey, it has gone out on your career.

Deep Purple - Arrogant Boy

I've come to a conclusion; I don't like Ian Gillan. I don't like the shrillness of his voice, I don't like his increasingly bizarre and cringe-worthy lyrics, I probably wouldn't like him too much as a person if I knew him either. While I applaud Deep Purple for continuing to make albums this far into their career, I can't with any sense of honesty say I've enjoyed any of their recent efforts. The onomatopoeia album titles aren't cute or clever, and when they write songs with titles like "Vincent Price", I'm rather checked out when it comes to Deep Purple having anything of worth to say to me.

This song does nothing to rectify that. It's only three minutes, but it's half an instrumental that happens to have a weak and boring melody attached to the front end to make it into a proper song. Gillan sounds his age, and his lyric has all the aplomb of a Dr Seuss book. With lines like "he looked like shit" and he "didn't give a squirt", I felt embarrassed listening to ths song. Good on them if they aren't, but it just proves to me that Deep Purple for me is pretty much always going to be nothing more than memories of "Perfect Strangers" being the soundtrack to a wrestling character that has aged just as poorly.

Album Review: Crown Lands - Apocalypse

Over the years, I have described Dan Swano's album "Moontower" as 'if Rush played death metal' (I didn't invent the phrase, mind you), which has stuck with me as one of those phrases that seems too absurd to be true. It is, and every once in a while I run across something that cannot be explained in a way that doesn't sound utterly ridiculous without hearing the context. Today is one of those days, as there is only one thing I could think of when I played this album:

This is what it would sound like if Guns N Roses was a pop/prog band.

Yes, I know that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's the best way I can describe the basics of Crown Lands. Their sound is a combination of 70s prog riffing with 80s prog pop sensibility, capped off with vocals that sound like Axl Rose during his 'helium voice' period. It's utterly bizarre to wrap your head around, as something about the combination of sounds doesn't feel like it should work in the slightest, and yet... it does.

The songs leading up to the closing epic are tightly constructed, and do a fine job of balancing rock swagger with hooky accessibility. There is some 80s Rush in the sound, and maybe even a bit of yacht rock, but they are overwhelmingly entertaining songs. If they are cheesy, it's the type of cheese the band is well aware of, and melting into a silky fondue. I don't know if anyone can sing in this register and believe they can be taken seriously.

During the long wait for "Chinese Democracy", it was said Axl always wanted to be Elton John as much as he did a sleazy rock star. Crown Lands sound like what would happen if Axl's influence was 70s prog instead. It's a far more interesting perspective and 'what if' than Axl gave us with his industrial and electronic fascinations. The only place where it goes wrong is on the penultimate "The Revenants", which is more of a Zeppelin styled folk song, and happens to have the flattest and least interesting melody on the record. That the song goes absolutely nowhere doesn't help.

That journey is saved for the nineteen minute title track, which shifts its tone from moment to moment, trying to sum up and condense everything about the band into a single defining statement. It does that to a degree, but it suffers from the same problem a lot of prog bands fall victim to; the epic track is long, but not epic. Too often, these bands build their greatest statement from lesser parts, and trust that the size alone will be enough to set the narrative. That doesn't work for me, because I'm not impressed by the number of ideas you can stitch together one after the other if none of them leave an impression on me. The art of songwriting isn't amassing ideas, it's about creating great ones. There aren't nineteen minutes of them in this song.

That leaves me in a difficult position when it comes to telling you what I think about this album, because I'm torn. On the one hand, I find the first four full tracks strangely fascinating. If the album was fleshed out with more songs that continued that trend, I would be calling this an underdog contender for surprise of the year. The last two tracks, though, are half the record that finds the momentum running headlong into a brick wall. I can't say I enjoy those much at all. So are four short songs enough to recommend an album?

Yes and no. I can't tell you it's enough to want to revisit this as a whole, but I do think it's worth hearing the songs once just for the way it messes with your mind.

It's Still Not Easy Being "Green"

At its core, art is humanity. Yes, art is also a commodity these days, and we are all well aware of the ways it is produced and marketed for the sake of making money, but I like to think there's still some nobility in the hearts of most artists. They dig within themselves to pull out art because they have something they are trying to say, something they are trying to share. Art is the way we connect to one another that goes beyond words.

So what happens when art strips away all the pretense of being... well... art? That's what we faced when Weezer returned from their post-"Pinkerton" exile. Rivers Cuomo reacted to that albums very public failure by going into seclusion, and when he returned only doing so with music that stripped away everything personal that could be seen as a criticism of the man behind the music. He filled notebooks analyzing the formulas that created hit songs, and as he wrote through Adderall-fueled binges, he assembled songs as if they were Lego sets.

The funny thing about all that is that it worked. It really worked.

In hindsight, that isn't such a jarring statement to make. Given everything we have heard over the last twenty-five years, it's now clear that the less Rivers reveals about himself and his own tastes and proclivities in his music, the better off we are as listeners. "Pinkerton" was filled with toxic attitudes, but the records that followed "Green" were just as offensive for the blatant ways they tried to chase trends, manufacture hits, and basically laugh at anyone who ever took Weezer seriously.

"Green" was the turning point, and its success taught Rivers that he didn't need to bleed for his art, so to speak. As we had been told a few years earlier by Blues Traveler, "it doesn't matter what I say, so long as I sing with conviction". The idea that the hook of a song is all that really mattered was already out there in the ethos, but Rivers too it not to new heights, but to new levels of being obvious. He did nothing in interviews to hide the fact he had written dozens, if not hundreds, of songs that meant absolutely nothing to him, all in the hope of striking on a few hits.

The songs on "Green" are the most basic and obvious of platitudes, if they mean anything at all. No one can even agree on what the lyrics in "Hash Pipe" are supposed to be, but that's because whether Rivers is singing about having his 'eye swipe' or his 'ass wide', it's a collection of nonsense words regardless. Arguing over what gibberish means is a futile experience. And with the complete dispassion he sings with as he closes the album by telling us he's "love without [her] love", the delivery doesn't invite us to care either.

And yet, despite the mechanical nature of these songs, Rivers proved a point on this album. His study of the pop charts did reveal something about the songs that became inescapable, something he was able to capture and funnel into his own work (although why he lost that ability soon thereafter is a thorny issue). Even when we know these songs are cookie-cutter, and came from an assembly line of chord progressions he was scribbling by the dozens, it's hard to say they aren't power pop doing what power pop does best. These songs are tightly constructed balls of infectious melodies, and time after time they do exactly what they were written to do.

"Hash Pipe" is Weezer rocking more than they did even when Rivers went through his beard and cranked amp phase. It takes the absolute most elementary note progression (A-A-B-C), and becomes a statement on the communal power of the riff. Does it matter that he's singing about turning tricks on the street corner? No, because he's also obscuring the words with a falsetto that is telling us the song is an absurdity to him. The performances, both the hammy and apathetic, are signals to us not to get invested.

The smartest thing Rivers did with this album is keep it comically short. At just twenty-eight minutes, it punches the clock and ducks out of sight before the illusion can be figured out. The repetition of melodies as guitar solos would be an even more obvious formula if we heard it three or four more times. The vapid lyrics would be more cloying if Rivers had to recycle the same phrases another time (or if they were printed in the booklet). Like Slayer's "Reign In Blood", being short might have been an accident, but it was the album's saving grace.

In the years since "Green", two things have been made very clear about Weezer; Rivers has no idea what he's doing anymore, and I don't want to know anything about Rivers the person. Rivers is the guy who didn't want "Buddy Holly" to be on "Blue", he's the guy who wrote "Beverly Hills", he's the one who thought revealing his fully selfish sexual desires was a good idea. We have more than enough examples of Rivers being a very uncomfortable person to have in our minds that "Green" becomes a soothing antidote to everything else we have been subjected to.

That brings us back to the fundamental question of what art is. I do believe art should say something about the person who made it, but when we are cognizant that we don't want to know more than we already do about them, that thinking starts to shift. Maybe the boldest artistic statement someone like Rivers can make is to admit he has no art within him. He has songs, he has melodies, but he has no art. In a way, "Green" is anti-art; in its construction, and in it's own theft of a gimmick from "Blue".

Weezer is not a band you go to for art, and enough time has now passed to admit that's ok. We live in a commercial world, and Weezer provides us the jingles for the ad breaks. If we keep them in that role, I won't completely burn down their legacy... not yet at least.