Album Review: Dead Poet Society - "Monarch"

First things first.  If any listener should take on Dead Poet Society’s new album Monarch without the benefit of proper speakers, the listening experience is automatically a failure.  Compression and tinniness of any kind will ruin the record.  This album can only be listened to with a set of woofers that will properly and truly replicate the fathoms-deep bass and full impact of the arrangement.  Anything else does a disservice to the listener and the artist both.

With that established, Monarch is as unique an album as DPS has released to this point, and that’s saying something for a band who has historically linked the tone of Soundgarden’s “4th of July” to the proto-emo of the turn of the millennium.  Monarch is not an easy album to quantify - as insane as it sounds, the record is half pop emo record, and half Doom soundtrack.  Thumping beats play to a metronome like hammering rhythms pound and never let up - but this is juxtaposed by airy, disinterested vocals, high guitar harmonies and a general sense of emotional unease.  As is often the hallmark of many of the best works of music, it feels like pieces from entirely different jigsaw puzzles have somehow been mashed together to fit, by some miracle without needing tape or glue or rageful pounding of the table.  Ever had a fragile repair or project where someone has said “so long as no one touches it, it’ll keep working?”  That’s kind of how this album is.

Take a listen to the album opener “Hollywood on Fire” (assuming proper speakers.  If not, don’t touch it.)  Skip to about two-thirds through.  There’s a discontentedly yelped section of “oh-ee-oh-oh” which in a different universe, might have been the sing-song outro to some Selena Gomez song, yet underneath it is a thunderous avalanche of music that is inherently incongruous and laughs wickedly at that very idea.

Same goes for “Die If You Don’t.”  There’s a pop song in there somewhere, and not in the sense that all rock-based music has popular elements to it.  Something in structures here is novel and different, as though the band is trying to write true top-40 music, but distorted and warped through the lens of their idiomatic sound. (Coincidentally, when we here interviewed Spider from Powerman 5000 some years ago, he confessed that this same concept is exactly what he’s trying to do.)

While it sounds like the music should be physically exhausting to listen to, it never really is, but the same can’t be said for the lyrics.  This is the third straight DPS album that spends the wide majority of its time crooning about the pain of shitty relationships, most romantic, but also platonic, and the veneer is wearing a little thin.  This is what made “HURT” on their previous album such a success - it was a window into the band’s struggle same as the rest, but about a different kind of struggle, and relatable to anyone who has chased a dream or felt misunderstood while doing so.  Which isn’t to say that shitty relationships aren’t relatable, but only to say they’re not the ONLY thing people can relate to.  

This is what in turn makes songs like “Miami For The Weekend” and “Get Hot” a breath of fresh air on the album’s second half.  Are they the best songs on the record?  Hell, no.  But they’re fun and defiant and offer a mental break from the dirge, not altogether different from when Ice Cube stuck “It Was A Good Day” in the middle of The Predator. “Get Hot” is worth discussion for a second - we stated previously that The Warning took some lessons from Dead Poet Society for their new record, and “Get Hot” might be evidence that DPS took some lessons back in turn.  There’s a rock edge to it that the band rarely employs.

Then we come just about to the end with “The Park,” which is discordant and creepy and weird in all the best ways.  It slams the experience back down to earth after the brief respite.

Dead Poet Society is and has always been a singles band.  No shame in that, lots of good bands could be qualified as such, and with the borderline experimental nature of their sound, it’s hard to envision everything Dead Poet Society throws at the wall working perfectly.  Monarch is riddled with great moments, but also possesses some filler and material that elicits little more than a shrug.  On balance though, the great moments outweigh the quiet ones.  Just make sure you have the right goddamn speakers.

Singles Roundup: Taylor Swift, Taylor Acorn, & Dragonforce

If life is like a box of chocolates, every choice is tempting fate that you're not going to hit the coconut one. In musical terms, one of these singles leaves that rancid taste in my mouth. Let's find out which one.

Taylor Swift - Patient Zero

Taylor Swift is a billionaire (according to estimates - not that I believe those numbers), and she continues to show why people hate billionaires by doing things like this, releasing an expanded and deluxe edition of "The Life Of A Showgirl" a year later. Her most devoted fans already bought multiple versions to get all the color variations and whatnot, and now there are four new songs currently available only through streaming, which means all those die-hard fans who spent their money (sometimes a lot) on the record now have an 'incomplete' version. It's one of those decisions that is unnecessary, and leaves a sour taste in my mouth. If anyone could afford to be kinder to the fans, and doesn't need the help staying in the spotlight, it's Taylor Swift.

Now to the promoted single from this new edition. What this song (and the others) prove are two things; 1) Taylor Swift is far from infallible, and 2) As bizarre as the album was, the right choices were made. The biggest thing about this song is that it is... dull. The album was a technicolor mess of weird ideas and cringe-worthy lyrics, while this song just sounds like a less hazy version of "Midnights". It's pleasant, but that's not what we expect from Taylor Swift. There isn't much personality to the production or the lyrics, which explains to me why it didn't make the cut on the record in the first place.

As much as the songs about Travis' dong were laughable, and fell into the Slayer-verse of getting more immature as we age, there was something oddly fun about how much Taylor was embracing being terrible. None of that is present here, instead returning to the bland platitudes of a writer who needs time to recharge.

Taylor Acorn - Growing Pains

"Poster Child" ended up as my #1 album of last year because Taylor Acorn was addressing existential issues that happened to coincide with a lot of things that had been cycling through my own mind as well. Hearing a part of your own thinking reflected back to you in a song is one of those rare occurrences that reminds me why I am still invested in the search. Finding Taylor's music, and "Birds Still Sing" in particular, was one of those moments that makes the struggles between them worth it all.

This new song finds Taylor in that same place of reflection, this time asking if we've all reached an age where we thought we would be further along than we are. That is something I have certainly tortured myself with, albeit in different contexts. Taylor is writing about feeling she has not yet grown into the woman she was meant to be, haunted by the same feelings she experienced as a younger girl. The whole world is just dressed up high school, people have said. That is the message Taylor is exploring here, wondering when we are supposed to grow out of the pain and demons we had back then, only to come to the conclusion that never happens. The scars might dull, and get hidden by layers of fresh skin and old makeup, but they never disappear. Who we are cannot be without who we were, sad as that is to say.

In my case, I find myself with the same thoughts and dreams I had when I was that age, no longer believing any of them will ever happen. I know exactly what Taylor is singing about, and that makes this yet another song of hers that somehow makes me think there is someone else out in there in the world who might not think my perspective and philosophy is as weird and messed up as most tell me it is.

Dragonforce - Heart Of A Beast

I'm confused. When it was announced Alissa White-Gulz was joining Dragonforce, the band's statement called her their 'frontwoman', and made no mention at all of Marc Hudson. Following the logic of their words, that sounded to me as if Alissa was going to be their one and only singer. That isn't the case, though, as she is joined by a new male singer, as Marc has left the band (at least for now) due to hearing-related issues. This doesn't make much sense to me. Aside from their initial statement feeling either disingenuous or exceptionally sloppy, having two singers for a back catalog that was not written for two singers, raises more questions than it provides answers.

Their upcoming album will be written for this configuration, which is a radical shift I'm not sure anyone wanted. I have no allegiance to Dragonforce beyond enjoying a few songs from their earliest days, but they are taking one of those wild left turns that betrays two decades of history. Alissa is a good singer, but she's not very present as a singer on this song. Oh, she's prominent, but it's mostly providing her growls between the weaker melodic vocals her co-singer is providing. Dragonforce is not, and has never been, a band with death metal elements, so why are they doing that? It made some sense when Alissa brought clean vocals into Arch Enemy, as that band was always melodic in their own way, so she was highlighting and expanding on that.

Dragonforce is about speed and flamboyance, and the growled sections provide neither. It not only drags down the excess Dragonforce exists on, but it saps the band of any of the cheesy fun they became known for. I don't have out credit for trying something new when it doesn't work, and this does not work at all. Dragonforce has been around too long for such a drastic shift in their sound. Luckily, I don't think this song is any good anyhow, which makes a lot of this talk more philosophically interesting then practically so.

Album Review: Graveyard - Fever

This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of "Hisingen Blues", which was the first time Graveyard came to my attention. My colleague here had raved about the album, which led me to listen to find out what I was missing. That initial experience with Graveyard was one I was not ready for, as their vintage blues-soaked version of rock was not something my ears were attuned to. That changed the next year, when I was handed the assignment of reviewing "Lights Out", and everything unlocked for me. I called Graveyard a time machine for those of us who weren't alive during the reign of classic rock, and I have stood by that as the band has released now six albums that put them at the upper echelon of 'modern' rock bands.

That being said, I would be lying if I didn't say there was some truth to the idea that your first experience with a band will always echo within you. While the last three albums have been very good, and earned plenty of plaudits here, the first three are still the ones I keep going back to. There was something special about that period that feels electric when the records play, and that raw feeling is what Graveyard was attempting to recapture on "Fever". Hallelujah?

"Back From The Grave" opens with lo-fi guitar fuzz, and a stomping riff that sets a Sabbath-like tone, complete with a slightly sinister set of notes ending the phrase. Joakim roars his vocals, and the guitar solo bends notes to an uncomfortable relation to the key, all of which makes this the kind of heaviness "Peace" was attempting but didn't quite hit. Graveyard hasn't been flat-out heavy like this very often, usually keeping their aggression to shorter bursts, but this slower wallop right off the bat is a mission statement that is music to my ears.

Graveyard's greatest strength has always been their embrace of simplicity, which allows them to build songs that form hypnotic grooves like "A Better Cut (Note To Self)", and turn the focus into a haze where we can see the forest, but not the trees. Metaphorically, that is. What their approach to songwriting and recording does is form a sound where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. A few fuzzy chords and a slightly distorted vocal turn into the kind of music that defies musicologists attempts to explain everything through theory. Graveyard is about the feeling of getting lost in time, where these thirty-eight minutes can fly by like when you become distracted and realize the clock has advanced further than you expected. These songs return them to that reality, narrowing the ebb and flow so their torrent more easily carves its way into our brains.

The first five songs hit hard, rarely slowing down for Graveyard's usual penchant for somber reflection. The outro of "Year Of The Horse" pulls back a bit, but the band isn't interested in playing with dynamics this time around. "6" was a record that focused on that aesthetic, while "Fever" is the mirror image. Together, they form a bit of a double album in that way. Interlacing them like a deck of cards would be an interesting journey to take, but perhaps I'm overly focused on mood swings at the moment, so the idea appeals to me more than most.

When "Time To Tell" finally does slow things down, the guitars are still bristling with the electricity of amps pushed to the edge, which removes the forlorn mourning of much of Graveyard's balladic writing. That turns the song less into a lament, and more into a statement of simmering power, while the backing vocals that pop in for a brief call-and-response can be heard almost as the devil on your shoulder. It's not quite a return to "The Siren" and its ilk, but Graveyard is hitting hard even when playing soft.

While "Hisingen Blues" is the landmark album, it's actually the debut that "Fever" pulls more from. The prickly production is right out of that playbook, so too the more manic sounding playing. "Hisingen Blues" had a bit more polish and restraint, while this is Graveyard doing nothing to massage the rawness of their performances. When we have talked about Graveyard here, I have been the staunch defender of that debut album, going so far as to say there are days it is my favorite. That makes "Fever" an album directed squarely at me, which is something that hasn't happened in recent years with many of the bands I love.

"Fever" is Graveyard sounding like quintessential Graveyard, and reminding us that the experimentation of the last few records was not because they lost their way. They were finding what they were capable of, fully aware of the way back home. "Fever" might have a hard time competing with fifteen years of listening, love, and memories, but it's exactly what I wanted to hear from Graveyard.

Quick Reviews: Miley, Anthrax, & Europe

They say tragedies come in threes. These might not be tragic, but there are three of them. Themes, eh? 

Miley - Bass Persuades

Inertia is an interesting concept in the context of music. There are times when artists become so big that it feels inevitable their next song/album will go to the top of the charts no matter what it is. We see that when Taylor Swift releases an album with no advance singles, and it breaks sales records. We've seen it throughout history, as plenty of long-time hitmakers moved up the charts with songs that didn't deserve the acclaim, but got it simply because we were all in the habit of listening to anything they put out.

Then there are people like Miley (sans Cyrus now), who defy the laws of cultural physics. After finally breaking through as an artist instead of a Disney-fied remnant, she put out an album that was of the wrong time, and backslid as though it was the latest dance crazy. That brings us to this album, which wants to be a thumping dance album, but never commits to the exercise. The title track is undoubtedly that, but it's a 'banger' in the same way knocking on the stall to check if the person on the toilet has passed out is. Miley has once again lost feeling for songs that will connect with the audience through the energy and hooks, and this time she rarely sounds interested in her own music.

I know a lot of people didn't like "Flowers", but it was slick, and Miley's voice sold her story. Here, she doesn't get above a whisper very often, which might be protecting the damage her voice has taken, but it robs us of the tone that makes Miley sound like Miley. This album sounds like an album made by someone who misheard Hieronomous Bosch's name as 'anonymous pop'. That is a tortured attempt at a pun, but I swear it was the most fun part of spending 35 minutes thinking about Miley's music.

Anthrax - Cursum Perficio

Speaking of sounding bored, Anthrax has returned with their first new album in a decade. One might think that with that much time spent between albums, and with Charlie Benante having been on the road with 'Pantera' (sorry - they are not Pantera, they just aren't), Anthrax would have more energy than can fit on an album. That would be your first mistake. The second mistake would be to commit to playing the album in full. If you've heard the singles, you've already gotten as much as you need.

The thing about Anthrax is that they were always the most fun band of the Big Four. They didn't take themselves as seriously, and their music wasn't interesting in finding some form of extreme to convince you they were more than just another metal band. That doesn't feel true anymore, with the Latin title and the black metal riffs pointing toward something that doesn't exactly feel like Anthrax as we have known them. What's worse is that the sense of fun is all but gone, replaced with songs filled with basic riffs and lackluster melodies. Joey Belladonna tries his best, but the material is so weak he often sounds as if he is holding notes just to warm up his voice.

It could be read into the title and themes of the record that this is the end, and honestly, the record does sound a bit like an elegy. It wouldn't be as embarrassing as Dave Mustaine ending his career by refusing to let go of his forty year grudge, but it's every bit as bland and forgettable as whatever the last Slayer album was called. That's Anthrax's fate.

Europe - Come This Madness

It was a bit of a shock when I heard "War Of Kings", as all I knew at the time was Europe's cheesier 80s material. That they could convincingly be a Deep Purple inspired 70s rock band was hard to believe, and that they could do it so well was truly remarkable. That record shed a lot of jokes Arrested Development had foisted upon the band, and the follow-up record was nearly as good. Making fun of Europe was no longer as much fun.

This new record doesn't undo all that good, but it does disappoint. The shift isn't drastic, but there's just enough of a tilt back toward the slicker sound of the 80s to change bearings in a worse direction. This is not a full-on return to "The Final Countdown" by any means, but the sound is a bit less organic, and through that a bit less authentic. The extra sheen makes it harder for the songs to cut through, and that's the biggest issue. This record just isn't quite as strong as the last two, and it would be easy to blame that on the production choices. I don't think that is the cause, but correlation and causation often get mixed up.

Like with Anthrax, this is another case where I might be a bit more generous if the gap between albums hadn't been so long. After nine years, I suppose I expect a little more than this.

Myself, Or Someone Like Me

The post-grunge era got a bad reputation for being a watered-down version of the music that changed the world. Those bands were weaker, lamer, and more ineffective at eliciting the kind of emotional resonance that made grunge the voice of an apathetic generation. Those bands were too faceless for the task, instead becoming a battle to see who was most insulting to the legacy of the true artists. There was not much appreciation even in the moment for those bands, and time has not worn particularly well on them. Most of those bands have either faded completely from our memory, or have become touchstones for the interregnum between cultural moments.

Some of us have lived in that pause for all these years, hanging onto a sound that might have been more inauthentic for most, but rang more true for us. Those of us who have always questioned the wisdom of emotions, or if we have them as we should, can find in post-grunge a stimulus that does not overwhelm us in the way that the more pointed depressive angst is likely to. While others need to be hit harder, the softer breeze of the less aggressive amps is still enough to push us off our bearings.

I can hear some of you saying that Matchbox 20 (as it was spelled at the time) wasn't a post-grunge band. This is one of those 'you had to be there' moments, because in 1996 they absolutely were. This was before we had Nickelback redefining the defilement of grunge, so it was bands like Matchbox 20 who were the initial wave of post-grunge. It looks and sounds funny now to look back and think of them that way, along with "One Headlight" or "The Way" getting lumped in as well, given how those bands were influenced by Americana and 60s pop more than anything with treble-less guitars, but that's what it was. It was a weird time, ok?

Rob Thomas was a polarizing figure. His songs were overly earnest, his quasi-yarling voice was off-putting to many, and he came across as being even more embarrassing to be a fan of than Rivers Cuomo in his full "Buddy Holly" regalia. There was nothing cool about Matchbox 20, which might explain why thirty years later I still listen to this record more often than I should. I had tried to convince myself over the years that they got better when they became experimental with "Mad Season", or that they were always a pop band at heart, but the truth of the matter is "Yourself Or Someone Like You" is an album from a band that would no longer exist after the cycle was over. The same characters were in the cast, but they were reading from a different script.

Grunge was an exploration of what it meant to be unhappy when the world was moving into a period of peace and prosperity. When there was no overriding reason for the malaise we often feel, it tells us the reasons are internal, which makes them harder to identify or fix. That was where music came in, as the gloomy Seattle sound was the cloudy haze that filled the empty space inside us. At least for the people who were slightly older than me, that is. I was too young to be invested in that scene at the time, so the post-grunge era was when I started to understand any of this. When "Real World" opened this album by asking what it would be like to not feel as if they world is conspiring against us, what it would be like to have any of the things we want, I'm not sure I had gotten to the point of asking existential questions before. Deep thinking and Matchbox 20 might be an odd mix, but is that really a worse origin story than being bitten by a radioactive spider?

What I did not appreciate for many years was how angry this record is. There are hints of it when Rob nearly breaks his voice delivering the key lines, but the lyrics tell stories of being lost, beaten down, and tired of trying to carry on as if we aren't already broken. The "Long Day" the song talks of is every day when we need someone to find a shred of hope at the bottom of their pocket they can lend to us. When Kurt Cobain was writing "In Utero", he was happily(?) married and making reference to his wife's vagina in his lyrics. Was that really any more desperate or angst-ridden than how "Push" talks about needing to be an asshole to justify our feelings of worthlessness?

Beneath that surface, Rob understands that he is pushing people away before they can do the same to him, a defense mechanism many of us understand all too well. Having a sense of control can be the only thing making certain circumstances tolerable, and writing songs that frame the narrative in a sympathetic light is exactly the sort of thing creative people do so they can choose to believe the story is the actual truth. Whether or not things were ever actually what Rob tells us, the thought of going "Back 2 Good" is written to give us retroactive hope that something that once existed can exist again.

For me, the most important moment of the entire record comes in "Kody", where Rob writes a line that has echoed in my head for all these years. "If you've never heard that silence, it's a god-awful sound" he sings, which is a truth you're fortunate if you don't immediately understand. We often think that the fights and dust-ups are the worst parts of our relationships, but those are welcome memories when all you're left with is the silence that comes from no one being there. It goes back to the adage about love's opposite not being hate because they are both passions, but rather that love's opposite is actually apathy. That thought, and the irony of Rob singing the line with such obvious passion in his voice, was an indication that the post-grunge era was more attuned to psychology than grunge ever was. Trading heroin for therapy might not have been as 'cool', but it might have saved us all from additional self-destruction.

I started this year thinking about 1996 as perhaps the most pivotal year in music for me, personally. Four records would come to define me and the music I have listened to over these last three decades, and while one of them got me thinking about writing, another turned me into a musician, and a third became the True South to measure my moral compass by, "Yourself Or Someone Like You" is the one that resonates the most with me in this current time. While it has never been cool, I can say the same for myself.

VK Lynne Double Feature: Sapient Scar & The Devil's Blind Horse

Your favorite television show might not be back for a new season for another two years, but VK Lynne continues to busy herself with the furious flurry of a restlessly creative mind. She has two irons in the fire today.

Sapient Scar - Dolores

Here's the thing about pain, or "Dolores" when we want to dress it up so it feels like an invited guest; just like how scars last on our skin longer than the lipstick outline of a kiss, pain is the most lasting of our emotions. Forgetting the people and moments that hurt us is sometimes impossible, only hidden until we relapse into memories that seep blood once again. For some of us, that pain comes from watching humanity prove the philosophical doctrine that we are 'rational animals' to be a fool's thought, while for me it comes from recent realization there may only be two people in this world not related to me (and barely more who are) who remember me when I am not forcibly reminding them. In either event, music becomes a form of therapy wherein we dull our senses and vent our emotions, hoping to survive long enough to see the sunrise as something other than a threat again.

That is the foundation of Sapient Scar's music, which makes it a different take on VK's artistic honesty. She has always bled her truth into her songs, but Sapient Scar does not attempt to gloss over the ugly parts of that truth with a polished sound that wants to lift our spirits. David and Allie's guitars are dark and dense, thumping muted notes and ringing melancholy chords. This is rock/metal played with the house lights turned down, forcing us to confront the things that are easier to handle when our eyes are blinded.

Over the course of these five songs, the band alternates between heavy rhythms that smack us upside the head to pay attention, and ethereal darkness that requires our focus. The result is an ebb and flow that resembles the night tide, moonlit blackness that laps closer with each wave, slowly enveloping us before we realize how much of our safe harbor has eroded. VK's ability to project power and vulnerability at the same time shines through on "Pay Forever" and "Silence", where her tone cuts through like a bat-signal for people who need a heroine. That might not come as "Silence" warns we might be on the verge of hearing the doomsday clock ringing, but a soundtrack for an apocalypse is a fitting way to go out.

We heard the mission statement when "Weak Is The Weapon" was released, a song stronger and more forceful than the people it takes to task. That carries into "Protectors" and "Beware The Whisper", where Dave and Allie provide chugging riffs that establish grooves and fill the mix, and VK fits her vocals into the spaces between the pounding. She sings on the former about people who believe they are doing good by protecting us, but from what they cannot say. There are people who know nothing who claim to know better, and VK ends by asking us repeatedly "Who are they saving?", because the answer is likely that they are trying to save themselves from a world that has shifted past their narrow vision. On the latter, VK uses the band's power to warn us about the quiet voices that seep into our minds when our defenses are down, that can speak loudest once we find ourselves listening to the silence. 

VK has spent her career defying expectations and refusing to be categorized. Sapient Scar is the most direct musical project she has been a part of, and perhaps that is the most daring thing to be done. This band offers no excuses for not hearing their message, so perhaps people will finally listen. They should, because much as Bruce Dickinson created a new but enduring chapter when "Accident Of Birth" and "The Chemical Wedding" were released, Sapient Scar could do the same.

The "Dolores" EP releases on October 2. Pre-save it here. 

The Devil's Blind Horse - Sister

The past never dies, it merely hibernates. That isn't an actual saying, but perhaps it should be, given how much we see remnants of history bobbing up to the surface with undying buoyancy. Musical history never dies either, constantly being recycled and refurbished so subsequent generations can experience the sounds as something beyond relics of bygone days. The Marshall amp and Hammond organ sound was a key element of classic rock, but it was nearly entirely absent from my formative years. Recently, as Deep Purple has had a renaissance I don't quite understand, and Europe washed off the scent of "The Final Countdown", that vein of classic rock has been producing ore again.

The Devil's Blind Horse is pulling from that mine, mixing elements of classic hard rock with psychedelic ambience, creating a swirl of sound that reminds me of the season of "The Twilight Zone" that opened with the spinning spiral. Opening with what sounds like cowbell leading into a bluesy groove, we're transported to a different time and place, one where the power of rock and roll can once again save the world. That was never the case, but the world was simpler in the past for letting us get lost in the music without feeling like everything would collapse into a quantum singularity of suck if we didn't keep up to date on how close we were to the reckoning.

Alex Knoll's guitars, along with the organs and synths, sway from one texture to another, taking us through a journey tinted by the ghost of prog past. The riff has elements of Kansas circa "Carry On Wayward Son", the solo is a slow burn, and the ringing chords are drenched in echoing layers of sound. As VK's voice reverberates over all of this, she reminds us we are all Satan's sister, and we ride along that proverbial road with rock and roll by our side. The good word has been corrupted by charlatans speaking with forked tongues, and playing the lamest of music, so perhaps it is time we remember questioning the wisdom of a supposed 'plan' might be the most human thing we can do.

"Sister" releases on October 7.

30 Years Wearing The Bruises Of "Pinkerton"

Looking back at the past, we often say it was a 'simpler time', but we don't stop to think about what that actually means. Often, what was simple is that we were either ignorant or oblivious to things  we should have been addressing earlier than we ever did. Saying 'that's the way things were' is the truth, but it doesn't address that the simplicity of the time was only for the people who were privileged enough not to have to worry about how society was treating them. For everyone else, the past was something they were running away from, in the hope that the arc of history does indeed bend toward justice.

When Weezer released "Pinkerton" in 1996, it was before we had entered the never-ending story of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, which brought blowjobs and the word 'fuck' to newspapers for the first time, and before we had half of our politicians try to remove a President for an affair while soon promoting an accused pedophile to their leader in Congress. That all feels quaint compared to today, when accused pedophiles have moved all the way to The White House, and we argue about the lack of accountability for misogynists rather than quietly shrug our shoulders at it.

I say all of this because the last time I wrote about "Pinkerton", it was to excoriate the record for being a toxic morass of psychological abuse framed as soul-bearing honesty, which allowed the album to become a blueprint for the entire emo scene in the following years. Rivers Cuomo's lyrics exposed the faults in our society's attitudes toward women at the time, and what is sad is not how the initial rejection of the album turned into reverence, but how our entire culture has now evolved to the point where an album like "Pinkerton" would hardly garner attention for everything it does wrong.

In 1996, "Pinkerton" followed "Jagged Little Pill" in re-writing the rules of being honest in popular songwriting. Together, the records showed you could be your truest self, you could explore the depths of your traumas and issues, and find an audience willing to listen and care about what you had to say. Platitudes were no longer needed if you were willing to cut yourself, in both the literal and figurative senses.

"Pinkerton" would also become prescient for all the wrong reasons.

Consider the case of "Pink Triangle", wherein Rivers becomes angry that the girl he has a crush on is a lesbian, so he both wishes her identity could be changed for his sexual benefit, but also that people like her would wear marks on their clothing so people like him would not find themselves blue-balled by people who want nothing to do with them. These issues were troubling enough when taken as the self-absorbed ramblings of someone who dehumanized such women to the point of considering them to have no identities outside of his desire for them, but consider where we are today. There is an entire movement within our politics trying to deny that certain identities even exist, and still fighting to keep conversion therapy a thing parents can do when their children don't turn out the way they want. I am not blaming Rivers for those developments, don't get me wrong, but having that kind of thought put into the mainstream and absorbed by ears that were not paying attention to what the words meant, softens the floor for the next time someone wants to dig a deeper bottom to sink to.

I have never heard anyone else read the song the same way, but I hear "Butterfly" as a rape allegory, which also plays into our current state. Would writing a song about such a thing be any different than having heard the supposed leader of the free world talk about being able to grab women whenever and however he wanted to? We have entered a backlash to cultural acceptance, where those who are losing their majority status cannot handle having to accept people who are different from them the same way those people have always had to accept them. This is the people who wear the biggest and most garish crosses telling people of other faiths they have to keep their religions in the background.

To return to "Pink Triangle", it can also be seen through the prism of the 'tradwife' movement, with Rivers erasing everything from the woman's identity except what she can do for him. After writing about being so bored by meaningless sex that he has to fantasize about barely legal (if we're generous) foreign girls, he still returns to the fantasy of being someone's entire world. Through all of this Rivers falls into a pattern of not knowing what love is, and blaming others when they don't submit everything to his pleasure. If you listen through the album, at no point does Rivers ever talk about why he pines for these women, why he wants to be with them, other than to save himself the supposed indignity of masturbation.

Throughout the record, Rivers is mired in a sense of entitlement to whatever he wants, which is usually women. We see this playing out in society, as we hear a lot about a generation of men who are upset that many women refuse to date the kind of men who have politics that seek to subjugate them as second-class. That is a sense of entitlement, for sure, and the sort of obliviousness that "Pinkerton" helped push onto many of those very same men. In my previous essay, I ended things by talking about being aware of the psychological damage "Pinkerton" could inflict, and the terrible things I could have done if I was in positions to listen to those base instincts Rivers was writing about. Those did not arise for me before I started to see more clearly, but I was lucky. Too many people didn't figure this out in time, if they ever did, or if they ever wanted to.

"Pinkerton" is a cautionary tale to something I talk about often, where important messages and sad stories are paired with catchy and infectious songs, as a bit of a trojan horse. The inverse to that is when those songs are used to deliver messages we shouldn't be hearing, and cannot ignore because they got stuck in our heads. Every disgusting thought Rivers shared on "Pinkerton" has echoed in our heads for thirty years now, because melodically the record is probably the best thing he ever wrote. There is power, and emotion, and unforgettable hooks all throughout the album. Rivers' honesty unlocked the best side of him as a musical craftsman, as the inspiration he felt shines through in the melodies and the playing. "Pinkerton" should be a magnum opus, and yet...

Once again, I come to the point of having to wrestle with my own thoughts. While I am fully aware of the ways "Pinkerton" can infect the soul, I will admit I have listened to it nearly as much in the last few years as I did in those before I put my thoughts in writing. It's funny... I have an entire extended family I have not seen or talked to in a decade, and I give that no thought. I have this album sitting on my shelf, and I still feel the urge to spend time with it, even knowing I shouldn't.

Maybe reminding me of my own flaws is what the legacy of "Pinkerton" means to me.

Album Review: The Warning - Everything's Falling

In his memoir, Sid Meier, one of the true titans of video game design, goes to length to explain that, in his view, to steal someone’s idea and clone it is plagiarism. He also says though, that to steal someone’s idea and add to it is the very soul of progress and advancement.

We talk a great deal around these pages about how musical artists, particularly in rock and all its various splinters, are faced with a decision - either do something new, or do something familiar really well.

The Warning, the upstart trio of Mexican sisters who have been clawing their way up into the public consciousness since they were literal children, have found that rarest of all paths - they achieve both.

If you want to lay down as fact that The Warning are a band with a lot of polish and a refinement in their production that belies their age and status in the pantheon of rock, you’ll get little argument here.  Those who thirst for the dingy edges and grimy ethos of the rock pits may well turn their noses as this new effort, Everything’s Falling, positively shines with high fidelity audio and pitch-perfect recording.

The loss is theirs.  To dig into this new record is to discover a collection of songs that are, yes, sent through a glossy filter, but all have their roots in the messy experimentation of their forebears.  The title track of this record may deceive through the prism of Dani’s airy vocals, but make no mistake - it’s a Soundgarden riff lurking under the melody, “Burden In My Hand” for the new millennium, juxtaposed against a bigger chorus and a (slightly) less fuzzy thump.

The album moves seamlessly to “Why Do You Like It When I Cry?” and now we’ve blended The Warning’s traditional tone with the playful rock romp of Canada’s BRKN Love. There’s a little melodrama here, to be sure, but that has more to do with The Warning and their idiom than it does with the style they’re weaving in.

And then the band takes us to “Bite My Tongue.”  The Warning famously had a collaboration with Boston’s Dead Poet Society, a re-edit of the latter band’s “HURT” with the assorted vocalists trading spots.  The two bands have also worked together on the festival circuit, and that connection bears fruit here for this single. “Bite My Tongue” is in many ways a DPS song, but again, filtered through the kind of melody and well-structured chorused that The Warning have become known for.

For all that, there are still two spots on the record where The Warning are inimitably their own - the requisite song “Ego” sung in the band’s native Spanish, thus continuing and long and successful succession of such songs.  It does merit mention; the last couple tunes in their native tongue have the same rough cadence and tone.  While catchy and listenable, it would be nice to see them blend this style and the playfulness of previous efforts like “Narcisista” into something new.

And at the end, the single “Kerosene.” Some Foo Fighters in there.  A dose of Queens of the Stone Age.  But all The Warning, especially the quasi-playground R&B chant in the song’s final third.  This is the most successful blend of elements The Warning demonstrate on Everything’s Falling, and we haven’t even discussed the band’s penchant for groovy rhythms.

What we have here is a record that both synthesizes the success of the other members of rock’s current vanguard, and also displays what we’ve come to know from The Warning.  Their ability to layer their own style over the…borrowed…concepts creates something new and advances the cause of the band as a whole. It’s well-crafted and original, even as the echoes of other artists ring in the background.  It also proves that rock may not be dead after all.

"23": Prime Numbers & Never Having A Prime...

There's an irony I am giving a wry smile this morning. Today is my birthday, and it is the beginning of a year that is a prime number, which is funny to me because it feels as if I've never had a prime of life. Last year, I was grappling with jokes about 42 being the answer to everything, as we learned in "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", but that turned out to be a joke on me more than anything. This past year did not answer anything, or at least not in a way I wanted to listen to. If anything was made clear to me, it was that effort does not equal results, at least when it comes to relationships with people.

On this day last year, I posted a piece talking about The Wallflower's song "Witness", because it had slipped past me all these years that it contained the lyric, "Happy birthday, no one cares."

That isn't literally true, but the feeling echoed as if it was, to the point where this essay is the only mention I am making of the event this year. As I was listening to my favorite album of all time, Jimmy Eat World's "Futures", at some point, I started thinking about how the closing song "23" could swap numbers with my new age and yet still feel as if it is saying everything that needs to be said. That's a rather sad thing to admit, but where have these pages ever been a source of optimism?

"No one else will know these lonely dreams/No one else will know that part of me"

As I have attempted to understand myself on a more fundamental level, what has become clear to me is that if I struggled with this up until now, no one else has ever truly understood me either. The people who asked me for help only to disappear when they didn't need it any longer, the people who chose to leave things unfinished when I had explicitly told them about my sensitivities regarding that, the people who tell me the very way I see and experience the world are wrong...

I have been accused of being too self-deprecating and too hard on myself, but I tend to think there is a difference between being negative and being realistic. When I realized how tone deaf I am, it wasn't being negative to abandon my dreams of being a musician. That was never going to happen, so torturing myself with more music I was never going to be happy with, and basically no one else would ever give a fuck about, was the more negative option to me. When I noticed that ideas stopped coming to me, and pulling them out of my mind required months of agonizing, trying to keep writing in the face of my creative abyss was the more negative option. Let's not even speak about people here.

No one will ever know my dreams again, because I don't have them.

"I won't always love what I'll never have/I won't always live in my regrets"

Rare is the ability to regret every decision you've ever made, while at the same time knowing you would have regretted doing anything differently. That is the ability I am 'blessed' with, and it has given me reason to question the idea of fate on more than one occasion. Ideas, a voice, love; I have spent too many years trying to delude myself into believing I can have those things. The truth has been made apparent, which sends me back into regretting all the time and energy I could have spent shifting the focus to things that were not dreams, but could have at least been attainable.

And to make matters worse, I am aware enough to have 'second order' regrets, which mean I not only regret the steps that I have taken along this path, but I regret the very fact that I have those regrets, because I know I would have ended up in the same place anyway. Things would not have been different had I made other choices, so there isn't anything to actually regret, and yet the feeling persists.

"You'll sit alone forever/If you wait for the right time.... Don't give away the end/The one thing that stays mine"

Would it have been better to make the mistakes I avoided over the years? It's hard to say if the pain of terrible experiences would have hurt in a more endurable way than the pain of waiting for them. It would be a different pain, but in the end we're talking about the vibrancy of different shades of grey. Those dreams I used to have are not dreams anymore, per se, but they are not erased from my mind. I still think about what they would be like if they could come true, and to be honest, the answer is that they would terrify me. I haven't been joking all along when I say the cruelest thing anyone can do is say "yes" to me.
 

As the guitars in the song swell into the final chorus, and the strings cut through the empty night air, there's a sense of optimism in the pain of the song that perhaps all we have to do is act and the tesseract of life will unfold along a less worn out crease. Jim Adkins delivers the final vocals with an almost boyish naivety, because when you're twenty-three, everything still seems possible. Two decades later, that is no longer the case, but hearing the reminder that you once believed it so is... both discomforting and reassuring."Futures" is an album about how to get through one chapter of life and into the next without feeling as if you had to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt, although some of us might need that kind of reconstruction. "Futures" echoes the darkness of doubt, but ends with a resolve to try remembering how and why we had the belief that turned into it. Sometimes I forget.

And so I wait to see if those things will ever happen, feeling alone and awful that they haven't, knowing I'll feel awful in a different way if they do. At a certain point, I stopped trying to bring them into being, because at least if I wasn't being ignored by the world, I was the one in charge of why they hadn't worked out. The ending, so to speak, was of my own doing. That was more comforting to me than knowing other people had closed the book before I could finish writing my chapter.
Today is the end of this latest chapter, and the beginning of the next. For most people, it is a day they look forward to as a reminder of the impact they have made on the people around them. For me, it is a day where I realize how ephemeral I am.

I wonder what depressing song I'll find to mark the occasion next year.

Singles Roundup: Miley, Spanish Love Songs, & Fear Factory

Disappointment seems to be the theme this week. That, and creative decision making that leaves me with questions.

Miley Cyrus - Bass Persuades

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between creative experimentation and a simple lack of focus. Sometimes there might not be a difference, if we're honest about things. Miley has refused to be pinned down by any one style or sound since becoming her own woman, which has made trying to understand her decision making a rather difficult practice. It feels like every time she finds something the fans embrace, she veers into left field. "Plastic Hearts" won over the rock fans, only to lead to "Endless Summer Vacation" and songwriter-pop. "Flowers" was a #1 hit, and she made an album of dramatic disco showtunes. And now... I'm not sure what she's up to this time.

The title track to her very soon to arrive album sounds like Miley trying to insert herself back into the pop matrix, which is a far different place than it was when "Flowers" ruled the airwaves. The sound of this song is entirely artificial and plasticine, a robotic composition that leaves little room for Miley's voice to work. Her voice is placed in the mix in a way that sands down the grit her voice is known for, which removes most of her personality. Coupled with a tune that has very little melodic contour, it ends up being a song that sounds like a rough sketch someone made fiddling with the presets on a synth. The song is lacking an interesting musical motif, a memorable vocal, or a passionate performance. There's not much here to dissuade me from thinking this is pandering for another hit.

And when the lyric starts to tell us to engage with the real world, essentially to 'touch grass', it's laughable when delivered through such a fake sounding bit of music. There are many reasons why the "kids don't want to dance", as Miley repeats many times, and among them is that music like this gives them no reason to. Dour pop, sad pop, deflated pop; call it whatever you want, but it's been a long time since pop music was actually fun. Who's going to have a great time to this sound?

Spanish Love Songs - Good American

It's always fascinating when a band throws away all the good will they have earned. "Brave Faces Everyone" was an album that might have set a modern standard for what confessional emo should be, and they followed that up with an EP and an album that stripped away all of the power of that record in favor of glossier 80s productions. The visceral emotion was gone, with the roaring vocals and guitars replaced with jangle and singing that highlighted the most whining of tones. I can understand that putting so much of yourself into a record can be draining, and uncomfortable, but the shift in sound obliterated the band's very identity... at least to me.

This song hints at a step back in the right direction. It is not a full-blown return to the "Brave Faces" sound, but the guitars are being hit harder, and the vocals aren't as cloying. The song is talking about being "born in the age of decline", and taking to task the society that is currently hell-bent on making life harder for everyone but the chosen few. The lyrics paint the picture of spending what little money you have on getting drunk so you don't process what happens as cops are violently detaining people in the streets, because not questioning how we have let the world burn is what makes a "good American".

It's a powerful subject, and it serves as a rejoinder to Bruce Springsteen's optimism that the best in people will get us through this. I'm sorry, but we've seen far too many people embrace the absolute worst to still believe that humans are inherently good as a species. We need the reminder, but I do think it would make an even stronger impact if the band cranked the performance up just a bit more. When you sound 'hipster', it leads to too many people tuning out before you can make your point.

Fear Factory - Roboticist

If you followed the story of Fear Factory, what is amazing is how you can hear almost none of it in the music bearing the band's name. Whether Dino Cazares was in the band or not, Fear Factory has made the exact same kind of music for thirty years. The machinations of their mechanized sound as so well-oiled and ingrained that it feels like anyone can step in and make the records. We're proving that out yet again with this song, only this time Dino is back and singer Burton C Bell is the one absent.

You might think the absence of a band's only singer would make an impact in what we hear, but that is not the case. Dino has recruited a new vocalist who fills the role with almost the same vocal tone, easily able to capture the ethereal delivery that made Fear Factory unique even when others copied the harsh/clean dynamic. Unfortunately, that is exactly the problem. If this is a new era of Fear Factory, and Dino is making the case that he was the driving force of the band all along, putting out a song that sounds indistinguishable from everything that came before proves exactly the opposite point.

There's nothing wrong with this song at all, but there's also nothing to say about it outside of the narrative of Fear Factory's career. It feels very much like another cog in the machinery, and it makes me hope the band was always aware of the irony of being robotic while preaching about the dangers of mechanizing the world. If not, it might be too sad what they have become.