The songwriting on Due North is outstanding. That, and Kazar’s piano and guitar work, put him up there with Lindsey Buckingham and Joe Jackson in my opinion. This was one of the brightest spots of a gloomy year.
This double-album is one of the most beautiful records about death that you’ve ever heard. It’s grand, glorious, and resonant after a year when all of us lost someone – either within our own homes, across the street, or on the other side of the globe.
It’s no coincidence that Dry Cleaning’s first proper U.S. tour sold out at nearly every stop. They’re the queen and kings of British post-punk right now, and New Long Leg – their first full-length album – is a great follow-up to their multiple EPs (all of which were also excellent).
The second Levitation Sessions album from Osees was somehow wilder than the first. Livestreaming it in our home at loud volume during lockdown was a blissful escape for the entire time. The set included plenty of deep cuts, including multiple Chrome covers.
Recorded during their set night at The Chapel music venue in San Francisco, and just before the pandemic shut down touring for everyone everywhere, this live album is one of Osees’ best. It captures the chaos of their shows, highlights some of their prog-rock love, and served as a reminder to stay healthy and take care of each other so we could get back to seeing concerts again.
These are my top five shows of 2021. I hope to see more than 30 bands in 2022, but the future is now – so let’s get to it.
#5: Ty Segall – Psycho Music Festival – August 20th
Playing on a stage atop a wave pool, Ty Segall and his band put on one of the loudest, fiercest sets of the 2021 Psycho Music Festival. The power coming across the water was stunning.
Clutch are always a top tier live band, and this show kept their reputation intact. They played a few new cuts and a lot of stuff from early in their catalogue they hadn’t played in a long while.
I’m not sure I saw a more delighted crowd at any show in 2021. Everyone stopped caring about the heat and humidity, the overpriced food, and the terrible screamo bands on the lineup and started cheering, dancing, and singing.
This set stunned everyone at the Mandalay House of Blues. It was my first time seeing FATW live, and the first time many in the crowd had heard them. It was their first gig in two years, and they came out gunning. I heard someone in another crowd later raving about them and telling everyone he could to listen to them. I can’t put it better than that.
Holy crap. Osees closed the 2021 Psycho Music Festival’s outdoor stage on the last night of the four-night festival. They went bonkers. Yes, I know every Osees show is bonkers, but you could tell they had a lot of pent-up energy from not being able to play in front of a crowd for two years. People were charging through the wading pool in front of the stage, throwing beer buckets full of water on each other, or stumbling backwards on the beach as the wall of sound hit us like a bulldozer.
Everyone stay healthy in 2022 so we can see more shows.
Zipping over from their native Detroit (and sold-out shows there), Protomartyr came back to Kalamazoo, Michigan to make up for a cancelled show that was dropped due to, what else, the pandemic.
Opening for them were some other Michiganders, the punky trio of Erik Nervous, who might have the greatest kick drum head ever designed.
They played a fun batch of post-punk, full of weird guitar riffs, pogo-inducing beats, and snappy bass. They even got in a fun jab at Protomartyr, referring to them as “Joy Division 2.0.”
Erik Nervous showing no stage fright whatsoever.
Protomartyr (who lead singer Joe Casey claimed to be “Back in, well, not fighting shape. More like competitive eating shape.”) packed in a good crowd, and were soon flooring everyone with their mix of post-punk, prog rock, spoken word riffs, angry shouts, and spooky chants – most of those, by the way, were provided by the one and only Kelley Deal joining them onstage to sing and play guitar and synths.
Standouts included “Cowards Starve,” which came out like a sermon from the end of a bar, “Jumbo’s” – a song about a bar, the crowd-favorite “Michigan Hammers,” “Processed by the Boys,” and a new track – “Graft V.”
Protomartyr letting us know that frightened people go hungry.
It was a solid show, and Mr. Casey and Ms. Deal were a pleasure to meet afterwards. Catch them live if you can. Protomartyr sound like no one else – live or otherwise.
Keep your mind open.
Joe Casey kept pulling drinks out of his suit jacket like a stage magician.
This live recording from the ever-prolific, ever-bonkers Osees, finds them on the last night of a set of gigs in one of their practical backyards – The Chapel in San Francisco – just before the pandemic fully hit the United States and shut down band tours for over a year. The band had no idea that shutdown was coming, of course, but they played (like they always do) like it might be their last show for a while.
The show starts with the instant mosh pit-inducing “Static God” with John Dwyer asking for a cigarette and wondering “What’s it like beneath the rubble?” while he and his bandmates go nuts. “Jettisoned” takes off into psychedelic territory with Dwyer’s soaring solo and Tom Dolan‘s trippy synths.
A shortened (yet still over seven minutes) version of “Henchlock” follows. It’s a brilliant psych. “Together Tomorrow” is a bit of a psych-rock appetizer to the massive, calorie-laden meal of “Animated Violence.” As if that weren’t crazy enough, along comes “Gholu,” during which drummers Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone seem to challenge each other in a contest of who can be the first to beat their kit through the floor.
“Plastic Plant” is one that the Osees don’t often play live, but it’s always great when they do. Dolan’s fat synths compliment well with Tim Hellman‘s wicked bass riffs. “C” is a funky one, with Dolan’s synths again taking on a lead role, sometimes more than Dwyer’s guitar. “Nite Expo” goes from plucky synths to rowdy guitar in a nearly neck-wrenching moment. The closer, “Encrypted Bounce,” is over fourteen minutes of wild psych mixed with garage rock mixed with chaos (translation: It’s outstanding.).
Don’t miss this if you’re a fan of Osees, or even live music in general. They’re one of the best live bands on the planet right now, and this is a great recording of their energy.
In case you’re unaware, Bordeaux, France’s Year of No Light has been churning out some of the heaviest post-metal rock for the last two decades. Their new album, Consolamentum, coincides with the release of the Mnemophobia – a box set that includes twelve LPs covering the earlier parts of their career.
Consolamentum is a double-album and it takes its time to pile riff upon riff on you. The shortest track on the album is over seven minutes long. The opener, “Objuration,” is nearly thirteen minutes in length and sounds like a summoning ritual being prepared in a dark tomb by men and women in black robes, but they’re interrupted by heavy guitar riffs that sound like they’re played by mystic time-traveling warriors from a post-apocalyptic wasteland. “Alèthia” is the “short” track at seven minutes-thirty-nine seconds, and the guitars on it soar like birds over a vast ocean…on another planet.
Want some doom? Well, “Interdit aux Vivants, aux Morts et aux Chiens” (“Forbidden to the Living, the Dead, and the Dogs”) fits the bill with the title and the heavy, sludgy bass and guitars, the monster-walk drums, and the synths that seem to be the sound of an inter-dimensional door opening.
The bass on “Réalgar” hits like a war hammer swung by a frost giant, while the synths and guitars are the avalanche caused by it and the drums are packs of polar bears descending upon your poor fourth-level Dungeons and Dragons party trying to find shelter in the blizzard. The closer, “Came,” has a cool darkwave feel to it with the echoing drums and synths that float between uplifting and menacing.
This is an album that can transport you to another plane, or at least make the one in which you’re sitting seem tenuous.
Bloc Party‘s 2008 album, Intimacy, is perfectly named. Every song on the record is about love – new love, lost love, dying love, old love, hopeful love, desperate love, and probably another five or six variations that I’ve forgotten. The album is loaded with Bloc Party’s signature heavy guitars, stadium rock drumming, prog-rock switches, intricate lyric stories, and passionate vocals.
Opening track “Ares” has the band wanting to declare a war and expressing anger and rage in the only way they know how – through warning alarm guitars and car crash drumming (instead of breaking things with their fists). Lead singer / guitarist Kele Okereke wants to punch something, but would rather use those hands that “could work wonders, with their touch listening to dead singers in your room in ’98” for more intimate matters.
“Mercury” brings in electro-beats as Okereke warns “This is not the time to start a new love, this is not the time to sign a lease.” He wants love, though. He’s tired of “sleeping with people I don’t even like,” but “Mercury’s in retrograde” and everything is fucked up beyond belief.
Gordon Moakes‘ bass licks are on fire throughout “Halo” – a powerful rocker that tells a tale of two lovers desperate for a connection (“I ask you for the time, but I am asking for so much more.”). “Biko” is a tragic tale of a lover’s impending death and how there’s nothing Okereke or anyone else can do to stop it. “Was my love strong enough to bring you back from the dead? If I could eat your cancer I would, but I can’t.” The song is a beautiful gut punch.
“Trojan Horse” has Okereke trying to understand his lover’s depression (“You used to take your watch off before we made love.” / “Just take me back to the start, when your earthquake was just cracks.”). Russel Lissack‘s lead guitar sounds like angry hornets during his solo on it. “Signs” is another sad tale, with a ticking, chiming music box as its backdrop, of another lover who has passed from this world (or perhaps the same from “Biko”) and Okereke not quite being able to make sense of it.
Matt Tong‘s percussion and sizzling cymbals mix well with programmed beats on “One Month Off” – a tale of a cheating lover and Okereke claiming “I can be as cruel as you,” but by the end telling her, “If you need time…” Okereke admits his own faults on the choir-backed “Zephyrus” with lyrics like “Baby, I’m ashamed of the things I put you through. Baby, I’m ashamed of the man I was for you.”
“Talons” is story of impending death, but Okereke isn’t afraid of it (“When it comes, it will feel like a kiss.”). “Better Than Heaven” has Okereke settling down a bit and trying to seduce his lover as she becomes more and more tired of him (“You get sadder the smarter you get, and it’s a bore.”). Tong’s drum work on the track is outstanding. Okereke keeps up the sentiment of growing old in love together on “Ion Square,” with lyrics like “Let’s stay in, let the sofa be our car…All the bright lights do is bore me.” The synth-heavy track send the album out on an uplifting note.
Some versions of the album include extra tracks and remixes. The copy I own has four bonus songs and remixes of “Mercury” (by CSS) and “Talons” (by XXXchange). The bonus songs include a sharp post-punk track (“Letter to My Son”) and three electro dance-rock cuts (“Your Visits Are Getting Shorter,” the rave-ready “Flux,” and the slightly gothic “Idea for a Story”), and the remixes are top-notch.
Roaring in from London, Squid combine post-punk, art-punk, straight-up punk, no wave, jazz, and probably five other genres they enjoy into a cool, quirky record – Bright Green Field.
After a brief instrumental opener (“Resolution Square”), the album bops and funks with “G.S.K.” Saxophone honks, psychedelic bass, bright synths, and processed drums mix as Ollie Judge sings about the travails of staying up all night and getting into a car wreck. “I tried real hard. I think I made it up,” they say at the beginning of “Narrator.” The bass and guitar on it dance all over the place in it as the song explores taking control of one’s life amid external forces trying to control every aspect of what we consume. The song evolves into a wild, Pink Floyd-like psychedelic freak-out complete with Martha Skye Murphy screaming like she’s in a horror film one moment and in orgasmic throes the next.
You’re completely impressed with Laurie Nankivell‘s bass work by the time you get to “Boy Racers.” He has a way of playing that almost sounds like he’s doing whatever the hell he wants but yet fitting in perfectly with what the rest of the band is doing. The song becomes a weird, psychedelic, synth-heavy trip about halfway through its length, and I’m all for it. The build-up at the beginning of “Padding” is outstanding, as the band sings / chants, “Patient and in control…Dig holes like a mole…Patient and oars in stow…Just do what you’re told.” Louis Borlase and Anton Pearson chug out post-punk guitar stabs over Judge’s racing heartbeat drums when the song kicks into high gear.
“Documentary Filmmaker” has strange, warped horns and is pretty much a free-flow jazz tune, which makes sense when you consider that the members of Squid bonded over ambient jazz. “2010” is a crazy, prog-rock-inspired track that bounces back and forth between Arthur Leadbetter‘s spacey jazz keyboards and the rest of his bandmates playing proto-funk to wild cymbal crashes from Judge and crazy guitar swells from Borlase and Pearson.
“Where were you when the ice came to town? Where were you when the ice came around? You don’t remember? You don’t remember!”, Judge sings / yells on “Perry St.” – a song that could be about turning a blind eye to bigotry, but don’t quote me on that. I can tell you for certain that it’s a rocker, however. They don’t hold back much, even when the song hits the brakes and becomes a simmering pot of jazz / prog / post-punk stew. “I’m so sick and tired of dancing,” Judge proclaims on “Global Groove.” It’s interesting that he would write that lyric in the last year or so, when none of us could go out dancing and were doing all our dancing in the kitchen, while doing laundry, or with our pets as somewhat-reluctant partners. The song samples canned laughter and the guitars seem to be crying one moment and yawning the next – summing up the groove the entire globe has been in for a long time. Judge acknowledges this pandemic funk further on the closing track, “Pamphlets.” He growls about not wanting to leave the house, or even needing to thanks to all the pamphlets left on his doorstep claiming everything can be brought to him – food, entertainment, you name it. He’s become a hermit due to forces beyond his control, but he’s not sure if he wants to re-emerge into the world (“Legs still, but the herd is in motion.”). Squid predicted “re-entry anxiety” before it became a buzzword.
Squid predicted, and confronts, a lot of 2021 angst on Bright Green Fields. It’s one of the sharpest albums of the year so far.
Keep your mind open.
[No pamphlets, just e-mail updates when you subscribe.]
Bordeaux, France post-metal sextet Year of No Light announce their forthcoming fifth studio album Consolamentum today, sharing the first single “Réalgar” via all DSPs. Hear and share “Réalgar” via Bandcamp, Spotify and YouTube.
Consolamentum is the band’s first album on Pelagic Records. To celebrate joining the label and Year of No Lights‘s 20th anniversary, they will release a limited edition deluxe wooden box set of the band’s entire discography, titled Mnemophobia on July 2nd. The handmade, hand-silkscreened wooden box features 12 vinyl LPs in 6 gatefold sleeves, exclusive colored vinyl variants, a slipmat, metal pin, patch and poster. For more information, see HERE.
Year of No Light’s lengthy, sprawling compositions of towering walls of guitars and sombre synths irradiate a sense of dire solemnity and spiritual gravity, and couldn’t be a more fitting soundtrack for such grim medieval scenarios. But there is also the element of absolution, regeneration, elevation, transcendence in the face of death. Consolamentum is dense, rich and lush and yet somehow feels starved and deprived. It comes as no surprise that ever since the beginning of their career, the band have had an obsession for the fall of man and salvation through darkness. The term “consolamentum” describes the sacrament, the initiation ritual of the Catharic Church, which thrived in Southern Europe in the 12th – 14th Century – a ritual that brought eternal austereness and immersion in the Holy Spirit.
“There’s a thread running through all of our albums”, says the band, collectively “an exploration of the sensitive world that obeys a certain telos, first fantasized (“Nord”) and reverberated (“Ausserwelt”), then declaimed as a warning (“Tocsin”). The deeper we dig, the more the motifs we have to unveil appear to us. Yes, it’s a bit gnostic. This album is invoked after the Tocsin, it’s the epiphany of the Fall.”
With debut album Nord (2006) and sophomore release Ausserwelt (2010), the band madethemselves a name in the European avant-metal scene. Extensive tours of Europe, North America and Russia in 2013 and 2014, including two appearances at Roadburn festival, Hellfest and a spectacular performance in a 17th Century fortress in the Carpathian mountains introduced them to a broader and quickly growing international audience.
With their seminal 3rd album Tocsin, released in 2013, Year Of No Light reached the peak of their career thus far – a logical decision that Consolamentum was made with the same team again: recorded and mixed by Cyrille Gachet at Cryogene in Begles / Bordeaux, mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side.
“We wanted this album to sound as organic and analog as possible”, comments the band. “All tracks were recorded live. The goal was to have the most natural, warm and clean takes possible, to give volume to the dynamics of the songs. We aimed to have a production with a singular personality.”
For the adept listener, Consolamentum seems to be venturing deeper into the dark and claustrophobic spheres explored on Tocsin – but the band doesn’t conceive of the evolution of their music in a linear way, as it would be apparent from looking at their discography.
“It’s more a matter of sonic devotion. Music against modern times. Year Of No Light” is above all a praxis. We wanted intensity, trance, climax and threat, all of them embedded in a bipolar and mournful ethos.”
Consolamentum is huge, poignant, frightening, sublime, smothering and cathartic – and, much like Decibel Magazine says of its predecessor, it’s “audacious, memorable and supremely confident.”
Consolamentum will be available on 2xLP, CD and digital on July 2nd, 2021 via Pelagic Records. Preorders are available HERE.
Today, black midi present a new single/video, “Slow,” from their forthcoming album, Cavalcade, out May 28th on Rough Trade. In conjunction, they announce a fall North American tour, plus a new KEXP interview and performance. A full circle moment for black midi, their first KEXP performance (live from Iceland Airwaves in 2019) is how many first experienced the band. Following lead single “John L,” “a zoomed-out optical illusion, making you question what you’re witnessing at every turn,” (Pitchfork, “Best New Track”) “Slow” is one of two Cavalcade songs fronted by bassist Cameron Picton. The music for “Slow” was written just before black midi’s February 2020 UK tour with the lyrics finalised when demos were recorded in June 2020. They tell the story of a young and idealistic revolutionary dreaming of a better world who ends up being shot in the national stadium after a coup d’état.
“The ‘Slow’ video was made to fit the oscillating dynamics of the song. Going from calm to chaos over and over again,” says director and animator Gustaf Holtenäs. “The video tells the story of a character who creates AI-generated worlds. To emphasize this, I let real AI’s generate a lot of the backgrounds in these worlds. So they are partly AI-generated, but It isn’t long before an AI could create the whole deal and create endless iterations of fantasy worlds. It can already create a random beautiful landscape painting in 1 second.”
Cavalcade is a dynamic, hellacious, and inventive follow-up to black midi’s debut, Schlagenheim, one of 2019’s most widely-praised albums. Cavalcade scales beautiful new heights, pulling widely from a plethora of genres and influences, reaching ever upwards from an already lofty base of early achievements. black midi — Geordie Greep (guitar, primary vocals), Cameron Picton (bass, vocals), and Morgan Simpson (drums) — picture Cavalcade as a line of larger than life figures, from a cult leader fallen on hard times and an ancient corpse found in a diamond mine to legendary cabaret singer Marlene Dietrich, strolling seductively past them. Watch New KEXP Session
black midi Tour Dates: Mon. Oct. 4 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall Thu. Oct. 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre Fri. Oct. 8 – San Diego, CA @ The Casbah Sat. Oct. 9 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy and Harriet’s Mon. Oct. 11 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Music Cafe Tue. Oct. 12 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Thu. Oct. 14 – Lakewood, OH @ Mahall’s Fri. Oct. 15 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Sat. Oct. 15 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s Mon. Oct. 18 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair Tue. Oct. 19 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall Thu. Oct. 21 – Baltimore, MD @ Union Brewery Sat. Oct. 23 – Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle Tavern Tue. Oct. 26 – Birmingham, AL @ Saturn Wed. Oct. 27 – New Orleans, LA @ Republic Fri. Oct. 29 – Austin, TX @ ?????????? Sat. Oct. 30 – Houston, TX @ The Secret Group
Keep your mind open.
[Take a stroll over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
This album is “only” three tracks, but one of them is over twenty-three minutes long. The other two are over seven minutes each. Even more impressive? This entire psychedelic / prog-rock album was improvised. Yardsss came in without a game plan and created a monster of a record that you can’t believe was done on the fly.
#4: Caroline Rose – Superstar
This is Caroline Rose’s best album to date. She tackles subjects like fame, flying your freak flag, sex, love, lust, and finding the self with power pop riffs, playful, lovely vocals, and some of her wittiest songwriting to date.
#3: Windhand – Levitation Sessions
I watched several livestream concerts this year, and all were good. This one by doom metal giants Windhand, however, literally gave me chills. That moment came during “Forest Clouds” when I could feel something happening. The hairs on my arms stood up and I couldn’t stop grinning. It was a powerful moment that I needed to remind me that live music will return. Nothing can stop it (or Windhand, it seems), and this entire live album was like being handed a battle axe as a hobgoblin army advances on the city.
#2: Automatic – Signal
I knew right away upon hearing Signalthat (A) it was a post-punk gauntlet thrown down at other bands, (B) it was sexy as an underground 1960s dance club in Paris, and (C) it was going to be my favorite debut album of 2020. Everything on this album works at a high level. It makes you feel like a sexy bad ass, and all three ladies in Automatic are such. Tread lightly, however. They’re not screwing around and might whack you with a claw hammer if you cross the line.
#1: Flat Worms – Antarctica
This psych / garage / punk masterpiece by Flat Worms went into my #1 spot upon first hearing it in April 2020 and never moved. It is stunningly powerful and chock-full of killer lyrics about fighting against the rat race, internet addiction, the depersonalization of others, economic inequality, and toxic relationships. This is one of those albums that sounds new every time I hear it. It’s a shame they couldn’t tour to promote it, because this album could’ve and should’ve made them big-time draws.
I’m already hearing good stuff in 2021, so let’s stay healthy and get back to shows and festivals.
