Singles Roundup: Jules & The Howl, Illumishade, Jorn, Bloodbound

Amazingly, there have been more albums to listen to and keep track of early in the year than usual, so today I'm taking a break to talk about a few of the recent singles that have come out. Let's see what smaller treats we have been given.

Jules & The Howl and Adam Nye - Rule Your Mind

After commending Jules' cover of "All Along The Watchtower" in a previous roundup, I was intrigued to hear what her own artistic voice would give us. The answer is this concentrated burst of energy that smacks you in the face, much like the cold temperatures do when you step out the door on a winter morning (at least where I am). The guitars have bite and a bluesy riff, the electronics and loops are perfectly utilized in the song's 'color' section, and Jules is impassioned as she sings about taking back control of her own person and reality. Control isn't something we always have, but she has it all over this track. It's perfectly constructed, and when she finally releases her howl, if you pardon the pun, it's a defiant statement that rises above the usual noise. Well done, Jules.

Illumishade – The Eternal Vow

I really loved the songs on Illumishade's debut album, and now we're being given a new one-off track that carries right on from where that record left off. They are already masters of putting together heavy modern guitar playing, symphonic metal ideas, and rousing choruses. Fabienne makes it sound effortless to create these sweeping journeys, when it's anything but. They are no fluke, that's for sure.

Jorn – Faith Bloody Faith

Did we ever think Jorn would be competing in a contrived song competition? Whatever it takes to get a proper focus is fine with me, and his need for mainstream appeal on this song makes it the best thing he's recorded in a long time. Rather than recycling his Dio-isms, he has a stronger pop sensibility, despite the subject matter. It's a fun, catchy song, and makes me sad Jorn has never made a solo album anywhere near this good.

Bloodbound – When Fate Is Calling

I've expressed my frustration with Bloodbound many times, but it boils down to this; their entire career has been taking sounds from other bands. The good thing about this song is that it didn't immediately hit me who they are borrowing from. Maybe I'm simply not aware, but it could also be that they've finally done something original. That would be a relief, although even this song doesn't deliver a great composition if that's the case. Bloodbound is a perfectly average band at this point, and their one shining moment is a glorious moment in time that will never return.

Album Review: MSG - Immortal

It's been a good long while since I found myself enjoying a Michael Schenker album. "In The Midst Of Beauty" was very good, even if it featured the controversial vocals of Gary Barden (his voice is shot, yes, but it turned into a tone I find interesting). Since then, Schenker has been touring and recording under various 'band' names, recruiting every singer he had ever played and broken up with, turning as much into a nostalgic festival dedicated to himself than anything forward looking. His recent albums have been more of the same, just with singers who are there to make you say, "hey, look who's singing!". Oh, and several of them happen to sound pretty old at this point.

So now that Schenker has revived the MSG moniker, you might think that means things have changed. It doesn't. This is still a Michael Schenker album as we have known them, and the rotating cast of voices is still here, albeit with a new addition. If anything says Schenker is up-to-date, it's the inclusion of Ronnie Romero. Good grief, I am sick of hearing the guy.

We also get vocals from Ralf Scheepers, Joe Lynn Turner, and Michael Voss, so if you expect this 'band' to sound like a band, you're out of luck. It sounds like a jukebox of Michael Schenker trademarks, which might be fine for you, but it's gets old for me. Other than his solos, there isn't much to tie the album together song-by-song.

Scheepers is the first one up on "Drilled To Kill", where he rasps more than screams over a chugging Schenker riff. There isn't much hook behind his military-themed lyrics, while the most interesting part of the song is the organ that colors the verses. The rest of the song is too cookie-cutter to be of much impact, and shows the wear and tear of fifty years of Schenker doing the exact same things. We've heard these same bits and pieces hundreds of times before, and we've heard most of them done better.

Voss sings the ballad "After The Rain", which feels far longer than its four-and-a-half minutes. Something about the song rings hollow, and doesn't have the emotional climax a great ballad needs. The parts are all there, but the spark isn't. It sounds more tired than it does emotional, so it doesn't work.

Also not working is "Devil's Daughter", where Scheepers takes on a vocal affect some people will describe as 'pure rock', but I will call unlistenable. He quietly shrieks his way through the verses with a ghastly tone, and I can't stand to make it through the rest of the song. If you ran Brian Johnson from AC/DC through vocal filters that sapped any of the bluesy swagger from him, you might have an approximation of what Scheepers is doing here. It's about as cool as rat-tail hairstyles were.

It's actually Romero who does the best job on this record, as he is the only singer who sounds comfortable singing hard rock that isn't trying to be metal. His songs, "Knight Of The Dead" and "Sail The Darkness" are perfectly solid Schenker tracks, and if they had gotten together to make an entire album of that sort, I would be pleasantly happy with the results. It still wouldn't be quite as good as "In The Midst Of Beauty", but it would have a lot going for it.

But with this cavalcade of voices that either don't sound good, or don't sound good for this music, MSG's album is more a collection of singles than a proper record. It's easier to take the handful of songs that are good separately, rather than sitting through the entire album. There simply isn't enough in this music to keep me interested for forty-five minutes through the questionable choices. At some point, I think Schenker needs to commit to one singer if he wants to make another great album, because these 'all-star' affairs never feel cohesive, and they have yet to really work.

Album Review: Soen - Imperial

As the metal universe continues to fracture under the weight of thousands of bands, what we have lost is an anchor point around which we can tie everything, a singular place to point to when we want to answer what metal is in the year 2021. When we examine the horizons, we see that metal can be heavy, metal can have groove, metal can be progressive, metal can be melodic, and metal can even be emotional. With so many nooks and crannies, defining what metal is in the here and now is nearly impossible.

And yet, Soen has done just that. Their blend of progressive and melodic, their blend of heavy and emotional, is the natural through-line of metal evolution. With their last two albums, "Lykaia" and "Lotus", Soen not only found their identity, but they have shown us everything modern metal can be. Those two albums stand above everything else metal has had to offer over these recent years, not only earning Album Of The Year from me on both occasions, but taking strains of Tool and Opeth, and turning them into the future I had been waiting for.

Time waits for no band, and evolving is the lifeblood of staying ahead of the curve. Despite their artistic triumphs, Soen is not settling for recycling what has already worked. After a year of anxiety and heartache, they return with an album that not only has to live up to their own lofty standards, but needs to reflect where we are as a society.

That makes this the third panel in a triptych, where "Lykaia" was the dark omen, "Lotus" was the corona we see shining around the edges from behind, and "Imperial" is the defiance we feel now that we fully see reality in its proper light.

There is a palpable energy that seeps through the recording, with the production slightly gritter than on "Lotus", emphasizing the band's heaviness while they still play with dynamics, fully embracing the need to ebb and flow to maximize every song's impact. When the band is in full flight, and Joel Ekelof is singing with everything he's got, Soen is powerful in a way more traditionally 'heavy' bands can't match. It's precisely that they aren't pummeling us endlessly which makes their impact that much stronger.

Soen's growth has coincided with Joel's development as a singer. On "Cognitive", both felt tentative as they took their first steps down this path. This far into their journey, they know exactly who they are, and who they want to be, and that has opened up not just their sound, but imbued it with a swaggering confidence that amplifies the melodies. Soen is a progressive metal band in the way they play with intricate rhythms and non-traditional song structures, but they are just as much an emotionally resonant melodic band. Few bands in metal have ever been able to put both sides of that equation in balance, and Soen does it in a way that doesn't sound like anyone else.

As "Imperial" unfolds, we hear the Soen trademarks revisited, twisted in on themselves and condensed to their most potent form. "Lumerian" opens the album with some of their most pummeling guitars, but gone are the instrumental codas of previous albums that played with new sounds to segue from one song to another. "Illusion" takes the melancholic ballad format of both "Lucidity" and "Lotus", but adds more layers of beauty while staying nary a second longer than needed. Soen has learned to stick-and-jab, going for the throat with every song. In these pandemic days we all have too much time on our hands, but Soen doesn't take that as an excuse to drag things out even further in the name of exploration. They treat time as precious, and remind us to make the most of every moment we have.

The evolution of Soen on this album comes not in giant leaps, but in small steps. It's the 80s synth that pops up in "Deceiver", the symphonic aura of "Modesty", the continued distillation of their songwriting to its razor-sharp core. Frankly, there is no need to evolve when no one has yet caught up.

Soen's ability to sound both melancholy and optimistic at the same time is intoxicating. When I listen to any of the three albums in this trilogy, there's a hunger to hear more of it. They are tapping into something primal in our experience, bridging our hearts and furies, or perhaps it's as simple as left and right brain connecting in a common language. Soen reaches us on a level you're not going to hear from your standard metal band. Plenty of musicians can play like Soen, but none can write like them, or nail the details that make their grooves swing that little bit more, that make the stories and melodies that much more inescapable.

I wondered how Soen could follow up two masterpieces. They took the counter-intuitive path, narrowing their focus rather than expanding, and by doing so have used their own echo to amplify everything that was already great about Soen.

The brass ring has now been raised for 2021. Now we wait and see if anyone else can jump high enough to scrape their fingers across the bottom, much less grab hold strong enough to pull it down. "Imperial" is, yet again, truly stunning.

Album Review: Wig Wam - Never Say Die

I was not in a position to have heard Wig Wam's music before they took a break. I had heard of them, but knew not of their music until two of the members popped up with different projects. Trond Holter made the "Dracula: Swing Of Death" album with Jorn Lande that was one of my favorites of the last decade, while Age Sten Nilsen put together Ammunition with Erik Martensson of Eclipse. Both of those projects I was fond of, so now that their former group is back together, there should be a solid chance of this being great too, right? That's what we're going to find out.

The title track roars out of the gates with a heavy and almost thrashy riff that gives way to a more melodic song. It's big and powerful, and the hook is rousing. It's a nice blend of metal attitude with melodic rock sheen. Trond's guitar tone is pure metal, with waves of distortion filling the speakers. He gives the record a harder edge than much of the melodic rock I hear, and that alone is enough to make Wig Wam stand out from the pack.

"Kilimanjaro" is a song with some bluesier guitar playing, along with some hackneyed lyrics about not doing drugs but still being "high as Kilimanjaro". What confuses me is why they chose that mountain to write the song around, since it doesn't fit their geography, nor does it fit the geography of the blues sound. It strikes me as an odd choice to make for no apparent reason. It's not as if the rest of the song explains why that was the best illustration to draw.

After the anthemic opening song, the band gets caught between their two worlds a few times. The ballad "My Kaleidoscope Ark" is very good, but songs like "Where Does It Hurt" (What happened to the question mark that should be there?) don't have the fist-pumping chorus to go along with the heavy riffs. That problem pops up a few more times, as the different strains of songwriting fail to gel together as well as I would like them to. It isn't easy to be heavy and melodic at the same time, and Wig Wam shows the struggle in keeping yourself on that edge for an entire album.

On the songs where they do strike the balance, Wig Wam is great. Even on the lesser tracks, there's enough energy to the music to keep things going as a bit of a party record. There is definitely a feeling of good times 80s rock, thankfully without sounding dated like one of those records. There is some Van Halen in this, if David Lee Roth had been a better singer. Much as I cringe, I could imagine him singing about being a "heavy metal loverboy" just like Age does.

Trond throws in an instrumental track towards the end of the album, and it least this time it makes a bit more sense. I still don't care much for instrumentals, but it works a lot better in this context than in either of the Dracula themed concept albums. there is some very nice guitar playing in there, but not a lot of compelling listening, at least to my ears.

So when all is said and done, I come to this conclusion; Wig Wam is doing some good stuff, but they sound as if they are trying too hard, and I don't think this record is better than the Dracula project or Ammunition's last album. The other people they worked with brought out the best in them, and together the members of Wig Wam can't quite reach those same heights. "Never Say Die" is a fine record, and it helps get the year off to a solid start, but it's far from essential.

Album Review: The Dead Daisies - Holy Ground

Since the last time we heard from The Dead Daisies, a major shift has happened. John Corabi is out, and Glenn Hughes is in as the lead singer. I find it a curious decision, since bringing in someone in their late 60s doesn't sound like a solid long-term plan. It has all the earmarks of The Dead Daisies committing to being an ever-changing collection of whatever doesn't have anything else to do at the time. That's very dangerous, since I can't imagine how one declares themselves to be a fan of a band that seemingly has no set identity.

The Dead Daisies are still a straight-ahead rock band, but the new lineup does have some new tendencies. Hughes' bass is more prominent both in the mix and with some of the riffs, and his penchant for letting backing vocals do some of the heavy lifting in the choruses is something a bit different. I also don't think they would have written a song asking, "can you feel my bassline?" if Hughes hadn't joined. I'm not entirely clear if he's seriously asking if we love his bass playing, or if it's supposed to be a euphemism.

The Daisies get a bit heavier and bluesier in this guise, which I suppose is an indication of how much sway Hughes had in putting this album together. It sounds much more like his own most recent solo album than the last time I heard The Dead Daisies. The heavier sound gives Hughes more opportunity to wail away, his voice seemingly ageless as he continues to belt out songs few men his age would be able to handle.

This also means the album is filled with more 'riff and wail' songs than usual, with more focus on power than on melodies. That's not my preferred style of rock, but it will hold strong appeal for a lot of people. This is the kind of rock you put on, and you can nod your head and bounce your foot to. It isn't funk, as Hughes is apt to mix in, but it has more groove to it than usual. Taken all together, it makes The Dead Daisies a better band than before, a louder group that demands your attention rather than politely asking for it.

So yes, "Holy Ground" is the best Dead Daisies album yet, and it's because of their malleable identity. Peter Sellers once remarked he was so good at playing so many characters because he had no personality of his own. I don't mean this to sound harsh, but that's what The Dead Daisies remind me of. They take on the tone and tenor of whomever comes into their ranks, and Glenn Hughes is the strongest songwriting voice they have yet had, so perhaps by osmosis they have been imbued with what they have always needed.

The Dead Daisies are finally living up to the potential of their veteran membership, and it's great to hear them deliver an album that rocks this hard.

Album Review: Phantom Elite - Titanium

It's nice when a project sees two people come together to raise their personal bar, which happens less often than you might think. For all the people who are currently engaged in multiple bands or projects, only a small number of them have created a secondary outlet that is superior (at least to me) to their original claim to fame. I won't bother listing them for you, but let's just say that once you become established with your sound and identity, breaking out of that to make something better becomes very difficult.

Phantom Elite is able to do that, however. The combination of Sander Gommans from After Forever (not a member of the band, but who produced the record and contributed songwriting) and Marina La Torraca from Exit Eden (the fun metal band covering pop songs - I wouldn't mind a second album from them one of these days) is more than that previous sentence might lead you to believe. Over these eleven tracks, they put together a strong album of modern metal that is the best thing I've heard from either contributor.

Being modern, Phantom Elite's sound blends traditional metal guitar playing with bits of tech, djent, and a hugely saturated sound that tries to be as heavy as possible. It can be a bit much, but Marina's up to the task of keeping up with that much power from the band. It's a similar formula to what Nightmare was doing on their album "Aeternam" last year, but here we find a better balance between the metallic crunch and the vocal power.

Marina also proves to be a bit of a vocal chameleon, shifting her tone and approach to fit the song. "Conjure Rains" opens the album with a symphonic bent, and her voice has classical elements to fit that dramatic atmosphere. When "The Race" goes into heavier territory, she belts the song, letting a bit of grit shine through to amplify the energy of the chorus. She is singing for the song, which is an underrated aspect of a singer's skill set. It shows a deft touch to be able to mold yourself to make the song its most effective.

I find the band is at their best when they keep things simple and focused. On "Diamonds And Dark", they spend the verses going through some Gothic overtones I don't think are as effective as they do, but the chorus punches through with some real power by being more straight-forward. It raises the song into something quite enjoyable.

The only downside to the album is "Worst Part Of Me", which feature guest growling vocals. I don't know if it's the particular tone of them, or if they simply aren't necessary, but however brief their appearance is, it ruins whatever good the song was building up to. The later guest appearance from Amanda Somerville may also be unnecessary, but she and Marina have more chemistry from their work in Exit Eden, and Amanda fits what the rest of the album has been doing all along. The one instance of growling just feels out of place.

Other than that one misstep, Phantom Elite is doing very good things on this record. They can do heavy, they can do intricate, and they always keep things melodic. Marina's the sort of singer you can build a great band around, and there's potential for Phantom Elite to get there. This is a good step in that direction.

Album Review: Voodoo Circle - Locked & Loaded

As music fans, we constantly compare what we are hearing now to what we have heard before. It's totally natural, and completely understandable. What isn't as easy to swallow is how we draw different conclusions to the same facts, based on nothing more than whether or not we like the people involved. Let's take Voodoo Circle as an example. In the press release that comes along with this album, they mention wanting to take the band in a more 'Zeppelin oriented' sound this time around. Hmm... isn't that exactly what people whine about Greta Van Fleet doing, minus the difference in vocal tone? I'll save you the thinking; yes, it is. When a band we find pretentious and bratty apes Zeppelin, they're fake posers. When veterans with a bit of good will in some circles do the same thing, they're exploring the roots of rock.

That's a crock, for two reasons.

The first is what I already said, namely that if we find intentionally taking on another band's persona to be contemptible, it should be for everyone. The second reason makes much of what I've already said a moot point; this album sounds absolutely nothing like Led Zeppelin. I don't know why they even mentioned that fact, because all it does is make me hear this music as a complete failure to execute what they were going for.

There is a bluesy tinge to their sound, but for the most part it's a hybrid of hard rock and melodic metal that has as much in common with the saturated guitars and backing vocals of Def Leppard as it does their stated mindset. The guitars especially have so much gain to them that any nuance in the playing, which the blues is based on, gets lost in the wash. It might sound 'heavier', but it loses all expression, and it comes across as far too polished for the era they are playing off.

There's another point of contention, at least for me. These guys are all a bit older than I am, and they grew up with this kind of simple blues-rock still hanging around. I did not, which means I find it much harder to be moved by the songwriting cliches of that time, which this album is filled with. The vocal melodies, especially, borrow heavily from the bluesy bag of tricks. Nothing about them is surprising, and while many people will like hearing the same call and response lines they've been listening to for the last fifty years, I am not entertained by it. That approach isn't memorable to me, and the guitar playing isn't filled with enough amazing riffs to make up for that.

Honestly, what this album sounds like is a band caught between two identities. There are the elements of modern European rock where Voodoo Circle has been in recent years, and elements of their Zeppelin worship, but they don't really come together. "Straight For The Heart" leaves behind any pretense of the 70s, and because its modern sound meshes with everything these guys have spent decades writing, it sounds honest and authentic. "Magic Woman Chile" doesn't just borrow Jimi Hendrix's grammar, it's a recitation of tropes that feels like the band ticking off elements of the past they think need to be included.

If Voodoo Circle made a Voodoo Circle album, it would be a solid release. The songs that sound like them are good, and I can see the appeal. When they decide to be a 70s cover band, it's not interesting, and it's not as good, frankly. This is a case of a band having an idea, and not realizing what it is they're good at. "Locked & Loaded" is an album sabotaged by a bad idea.

Album Review: Bloody Hammers - Songs Of Unspeakable Terror

For this album, Bloody Hammers are visiting their horror-punk influences, which means we're going to get short songs about monsters and violence. In a way, I envision horror-punk as being the "Evil Dead" of music; horror, yes, but also campy and a bit funny. If we were to take songs about spitting on a corpse literally, it wouldn't paint a very good picture of the people involved. But as long as it's all in good fun, we can all laugh at the absurdity. Now, I'm going to put this out at the onset of this review; last year saw the release of a horror-rock album from South Of Salem I really enjoyed, which is going to be the benchmark Bloody Hammers has to live up to.

One of the longer tracks, "A Night To Dismember" leads things off with an enjoyable little jaunt that I'm sure borrows from the same Misfits influence, but to my ears sounds very much like a Volbeat track. I don't know if it has quite the punk attitude the band is advertising, but the song does have a solid hook that's plenty of fun. That's especially true when compared to the single, "Hands Of The Ripper", where the hook is slower and lumbering, and doesn't have that same sense of fun. I get it does fit the theme of being hunted by Jack The Ripper, but it isn't as appealing a song.

I think the album gets caught between influences for much of its running time. There are punk influences, to be sure, but the album doesn't speed along with the right energy to properly be punk. At other times, it's clear the band wants to be more sinister, but that doesn't play as well with the shorter running times, nor the promises made. Some songs want to be melodic over bursts of guitars, while others want to crawl through the darkness. They don't fit together on the same album particularly well.

To get back to my benchmark, here's where this album really falls flat. That album I mentioned from South Of Salem was also telling tales and monsters, zombies, and violence, but it was done with bigger hooks, more fun, and songs that became memorable the instant you heard them. That doesn't happen with most of the songs on this record. They're fine, but neither the punk riffs (usually played with a more stoner guitar tone that dulls their edge) nor the vocal lines are going to leave that kind of mark. Put the albums side-by-side, and the difference is a chasm.

Ultimately, this album comes across as a missed opportunity. Stripping things down to the bare bones, and getting back to the roots of horror-punk, should have resulted in a tight, punchy album. Instead, we get songs that fail to deliver on either the fun, camp, or infectiousness of the best the genre has to offer. It's sort of like sitting down to watch a terrible B-movie, only to realize it's bad in a way that isn't funny. You can still find something to enjoy about it, but it's not what you wanted, and it's not all it could have been. Bloody Hammers needed more songs to make this project work.

Album Review: W.E.T. - Retransmission

Some bands are greater than the sum of their parts, others are less, and some are made up of spare parts that never fit together in the first place. When dealing with these bands composed of notable members of other bands, any of the three are likely options. I've heard more than enough 'supergroups' that have put together multiple people who can't write songs, which means the 'super' band is less interesting than where they came from. W.E.T. proved on their last album, "Earthrage", to be one of the rare bands to be better than their origins. That album was a gem of melodic rock that I was listening to not long ago, and still found to be jam-packed with amazing songs. I don't get that same vibe from anything else Jeff Scott Soto does, nor Work Of Art, or even Eclipse. Something about that record was special.

So now we find the band trying to follow up that highlight, which is a difficult task for anyone, no matter how talented. The opening track, "Big Boys Don't Cry", was the first single, and didn't present us with the best evidence they were going to pull off the feat. This was threefold; 1)The song boasts one of their flatter hooks, 2)It reminds me of the (gasp) superior Fergie song "Big Girls Don't Cry", and 3)Many people will only hear the title and get the wrong impression.

"Got To Be About Love" hearkens right back to the previous album, where the blend of chunky guitars and cheesy charm is right on balance, and the sweetened backing vocals make the chorus both huge and irresistible. It's a perfect example of W.E.T. at their best, and one of those songs I know is going to be stuck in my head through much of the year. What I loved about "Earthrage" was that regardless of the tone or tempo of the songs, there was a feel-good sense I got from everything. The songs are amazing, but the record felt uplifting and fun. This record dials back on that feeling, and that makes quite the difference.

"How Far To Babylon" has an aggressive tone that brings more darkness than usual to W.E.T., and while the backing vocals make the chorus stand out, the song lacks the sparkle that still made it come out with a smile. I get that this record was written and recorded during times when being happy and/or optimistic wasn't easy, but the slight change in tone does make the music a tad less effective. "What Are You Waiting For" is a ballad much like "Heart Is On The Line" from the last album, but there's just a dip in the energy that holds things back from getting to that next level. That happens a few times on the record, and it does leave this record feeling a bit like a re-run of "Earthrage", rather than its own entity.

That being said, while "Retransmission" is a tick below "Earthrage" in my estimation, it's still a very good melodic rock record. The songs I've already mentioned, plus "Coming Home" and "You Better Believe It" are top-notch tracks that deliver exactly what we want from this style of music, while "How Do I Know" is one of their best songs yet. There's no shame in not bettering a career highlight, which is all that has happened here. Without the shadow of "Earthrage", "Retransmission" is a great record to get the year started. We all could use a jump-start, and W.E.T. has provided that for us.

The Spider Accomplice "Keep" Moving Forward

We don't always give a lot of thought to the words we use. We throw things out there that sound good, without taking the time to really analyze what it is we're saying. Often, we will say something to the effect that a band has 'grown apart' from us. But what does that mean? Many times, it's a nicer way of saying we don't like the music we're hearing anymore, one that didn't come from a lot of deep introspection. But then there is the opposite case, where we say that a band is thinking along the same lines as we are. Is that any different? Aren't we just finding a way to shoe-horn ourselves in and try to take a bit of credit for why we like the music?

I'm confronting these questions while listening to the latest single from The Spider Accomplice. Titled "Keep", the band's new ballad once again hits the mark as a great song, but also engages my mind in the kind of existential thinking largely absent from my music listening. We'll get to that in a moment.

The last ballad the band released, "Crawl", was my favorite song of 2020. They showed their commitment to being a bit outside-the-box, and VK's theatrical background, were the perfect recipe for a dramatic ballad that could tear the sky open. This time around, they aren't trying to condense the entire world into one song. "Keep" is an even softer song, one that makes introspection a private act, and not performance art. It's a different take on a similar sound, but wisely doesn't try to compete with their own perfection.

We're invited in by the warm sound of 12-string acoustic guitars, as Arno adds flourishes to the chord structure, and VK's vocal comes in and sets the solemn tone. She sings of secrets, and when Arno's electric guitars fill the chorus, it marks a shift in tone where we note that secrets are a marker of trust. Keeping them can be indicators of love, honor, and character. Sometimes. Other times, secrets are a burden we place on others without realizing the weight keeps them tied down, unable to walk their own path freely.

But it's the bridge that gets to me. VK sings, "this barbed wire in my tapestry/digs in to skin reminding me/binding me". It's a vivid image, yet I'm sure it hits me harder than it will most anyone else listening to the song. In my own writings, I have (more than once) written my own song centered around a similar image, using the conceit of bleeding for our faith in another person. My initial thought was how interesting it was that VK and I fell into similar metaphors, but after giving it a bit more thought, it struck me this is what it means to be on the same page as a band. Not only is their style enmeshed with my own taste, but the very way VK's words are born uses the same language as my own. I find that fascinating.

If "Crawl" was the anthem of self-empowerment leading us to shed our masks and costumes, "Keep" is the hymn reminding us good works do not need to be done in public. Small moments, small acts, can be just as powerful. Sometimes the biggest things we can do for people involve doing nothing, that simply being and believing expresses more than a grand act ever could. Conversely, that same approach can be the most painful sacrifice of all, where we take on someone else's burdens, because we don't know what else we can do for them. Through our secrets, we can show both love and contempt, depending on how noble the details happen to be.

Maybe that's asking a lot for a three minute song to convey, but I'm glad The Spider Accomplice keeps me thinking. That's why they're special.

 "Keep" will be released on January 15th. Pre-save the song here.

EP Review: The Lickerish Quartet - Threesome, Vol 2

Last year, members of the band Jellyfish got together and recorded for the first time in almost thirty years. I was of the wrong age, nor did I listen to anything off the beaten path at the time, so I have no recollection of Jellyfish, other than hearing other people talking about how influential they were in certain circles. In fact, this is the second EP this reimagining has put out, which means I completely missed out on the first one. That goes to show how much of an impact Jellyfish had on my life.

But since the start of the year is a slow time, I have the chance to take on a release like this I otherwise wouldn't have time for. Is that a good thing?

"Do You Feel Better" kicks things off with a pulsing rhythm and plenty of Beatles-esque touches in the melodies. It's a perfectly lovely sounding track, except for the fact it doesn't have a strong enough hook. Some people might compare it to vanilla ice cream, but I like vanilla. This is more like a sno-cone before the syrup is poured on it. It does the job, but with no flair whatsoever. It lacks a moment that tells me what idea the musicians had they felt they needed to turn into this song.

"Sovereignty Blues" follows in much the same mold, but this time it's how far back the vocals are mixed that make the hook come across flat. Instead of sounding like a big, rousing moment, it sounds small and timid. That can't be what they were aiming for. I'm also not sure what the aim of "The Dream That Took Me Over" is, as the band moves into making essentially a dance song. It sounds so unlike either of the previous songs the move is jarring, and I can't speak on whether it's good dance music or not, but that's not a sound I wanted to hear.

The closing "Snollygoster Goon" is perhaps the best song of the four, since it has a bit more energy and hook to it, but even that one comes with its flaws. I like the moments where it sounds like the era of Fastball you would have possibly heard of, but the backing vocals are placed in a very odd way, leaving the song a bit unpleasant to listen to.

If this is what Jellyfish was all about, I see exactly why they are revered by musicians, and forgotten by everyone else. For people who are bored with doing things the normal way, their almost abstract songwriting is a lot of fun. For people who want to hear great songs, and don't care about breaking down norms, they're a bit much. I'm in that camp.

Bloody Good News: Bob Dylan Sells (Out?)

Not long ago, we got word of a massive, and massively unexpected, development in the world of classic music. While a major trend in the last couple of years has been investors buying up the rights to music catalogs, it was nonetheless shocking to hear that Bob Dylan had agreed to sell his life's work. It was not surprising the number he was able to receive, reportedly between $200-400 million, but Dylan seemed like one of the last people who would ever succumb to the urge to commercialize his music.

Dylan's history has always been that of someone doing his own thing, regardless of the impact it would have on his career. He went electric when it was still a radical thing for a folk player. He went born-again Christian when that was certainly not a 'cool' thing to do. He recorded albums of himself singing classic standards when his voice was beyond shot, and the results are only viewed more favorably than "Danzig Sings Elvis" because he's not as much of an unpersonable grouch.

The deal means two things to me. 1)Someone thinks there's a lot more commercial use for Dylan's music than I do, and 2)This could mean the end of Bob Dylan.

Let me start with that first point. Bob Dylan's music has always had its uses in tv, film, and commercials, but we're about to be inundated by it. You don't buy the rights to music without exploiting them for every penny you can generate. Dylan's music isn't going to be selling or streaming enough to justify the hundreds of millions spent on them, which means licensing is where they think the real money is going to be made. So the rest of us are going to be faced with a wave of Dylan soundtracked pleas for our money, whether that's a Levi's commercial telling us we're "Tangled Up In Blue (Jeans)" or something else equally face-palm inducing.

Bob Dylan is not cool, and is especially uncool to the demographic advertisers are aiming at. Most don't know who Dylan is, let alone know his songs without being prompted, so I'm not sure where these people think his songs are going to help sell products. The best commercial uses of music marry a product to an anthem, where you can't separate the selling from the song. I don't see how you can do that with Dylan's music, which doesn't feature those kinds of earworms or massive anthems.

The other thing that I immediately thought was that this could be the end of Bob Dylan's career. I heard someone else speculating that the sale of these songs could signal Dylan preparing his estate for his eventual death, and that only makes sense if this is the end. From both sides, the deal makes the most sense if Dylan's catalog is now complete. If there are more songs to come, either this deal is projecting the future, or it doesn't include any music that has to be written. If it's the former, it's too much money to be throwing around on a guess as to Dylan's future productivity, and if it's the latter, Dylan isn't making anything easier on himself.

But what interests me most might be this; what does it mean to sell your life's work? Mine is worth precisely nothing, so it's not a question I will ever have to face, but I do find it fascinating for someone who has poured so much of themselves into their music to turn it into money and lose control over how it is used. In both a literal and figurative sense, the music no longer belongs to an artist when they take this step, and I'm not sure I understand how you come to that decision. There are people who make art because they are artists, and people who make art to make a living. There is overlap, but the process tends to lean one direction or the other. Dylan always struck me as an artist's artist, and now to give up that identity for a payday is quite the riddle. I won't be able to answer it here, but it's something we will have to think about moving forward, because the echoes of this deal will reverberate for years.

Ten Years Singing The "Hisingen Blues"

Time passes by, and before we know it, we've been living with music and memories longer than we realized. Occasionally, that time obscures the regrets we have for our own mistakes, where we don't remember being so wrong in the moment, because we don't like what it says about how stupid we once were. 2021 will have one of those moments for me, when we reach the ten year anniversary of Graveyard's "Hisingen Blues" being released.

I did not have my ears to the right ground in 2011, so I did not hear about Graveyard when they were putting out what is now a classic album. I may have heard the name in passing, but I hadn't started my journey of writing about music yet, so I was not quite as obsessive about hearing so many new records as I have become (within reason - I still don't overload myself with new album as I could). My first memory of Graveyard was reading my colleague D.M's best of the year list, wherein he named "Hisingen Blues" his favorite record of the year. Respecting his opinion, I made sure I gave the album a chance.

I didn't care for it.

For most of the next year, I thought about what I wasn't hearing in Graveyard's music that he was, and I couldn't come up with an answer. Perhaps it was my having less of a history with blues rock, or perhaps I was simply less open to things I hadn't found on my own, but no amount of trying changed my mind about Graveyard.

Then I was given the job of reviewing the follow-up album less than a year later, "Lights Out". Upon my first listen, I immediately heard in that record what D.M heard in "Hisingen Blues". Many times over the years, I have described that album as being a time capsule, as being the closest thing I'll ever know to feeling what it was like to live in the 70s as classic rock was taking shape. That naturally led me back to the starting point (for me - I wouldn't hear their debut album for a while yet).

Over the last ten years, I have been stunned to see how high "Hisingen Blues" has climbed in my estimation. What started as an album I dismissed before it had even finished playing now sits on my latest tally of my twenty favorite albums ever. What I at first didn't quite understand has now become an album that is a blueprint for what rock and roll is all about. Somehow, I didn't hear at first that Graveyard was hitting on my very own rules of songwriting.

Listening to it now, "Hisingen Blues" is a nearly perfect record. Graveyard has mastered the art of being timeless, with their music sounding both contemporary with today's trends, but also at home in the mid 70s. They are also a fusion of classic rock ideas, taking swagger from one area, the blues from another, and aggression from yet another. Within those 39 minutes, Graveyard boiled down the entirety of classic rock into one package, and did so with some of the strongest songs those bands never wrote.

The key to Graveyard is their simplicity. With a few chords and a small drum kit, they embrace the philosophy that the core of a song is a great idea. There's nothing fancy about what they do, but they have a little extra punch no other band doing the same thing is capable of. Their riffs are heavier, their melodies more haunting, their production more natural. While other bands sound like they are trying to replicate the past, Graveyard sounds like the past lives within them. Trust me, that's a major difference.

I could rattle off every song on the record and make the same points about the genius of their simplicity, but nothing proves Graveyard's worth more than the closing song, "The Siren". For six minutes, Graveyard gives us a song of extreme drama that plays out across tidal waves of dynamics, slashing guitars, and Joakim Nilsson shredding his vocals chords as he screams about how "a demon came into my room". I've always found Led Zeppelin to be overrated, but listening to "The Siren", I hear the same things people from the 70s talk about. It's the purest expression of rock, a moment of perfection bands stumble upon rarely. It's something more than music, bigger than an album. It's the transcendent ability of music to speak directly into us.

I didn't hear that in 2011 when I first listened to "Hisingen Blues", but I damn sure do now. Ten years changes a lot, but few changes have been more welcome than the revelation of Graveyard's first classic album.