Murder By Death/O'Death Split 7"

"Murder By Death are releasing the first of 7 records in a 7" series where they trade covering songs with other bands they know. The second 7" will feature MBD performing O'Death's "Home" and O'Death performing MBD's "Brother"."
- via Murder By Death's official website

The split opens with Murder By Death's cover of "Home", a string-driven southern gothic carousel that would sound just at home on Who Will Survive... as it does on Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin.

O'Death's version of "Brother" follows, initially starting slower and more measured than the original, only to pick up to a frenzied, squealing pace come the chorus, sounding very much like the musical output of the barnyard band at a meth addict's country jamboree in the process.

Murder By Death/O'Death split

Snowing - Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit (Demo)

Snowing are a Pennsylvania-area band that play math-tinged emo in the vein of Cap'n Jazz, placing emphasis on smooth melodies and whirling, instrumental chaos, replete with light, winding guitar riffs and pained, throat-scraping vocals. Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit is a 5-song demo which was released by the band earlier this year, and although a demo, it has an orchestrated passion to it that far more experienced outfits would be hard-pressed to match. From the impassioned euphony of opener "Sam Rudich", to the fiercely energetic "Important Thngs (Specter Magic)", to math-influenced closer "Methuselah Rookie Card" , the group showcases an intriguing collusion of technicality, melody and emotion, a blend that is as much already realized as it is brimming with potential.


This is a must-listen for anyone who's a fan of Tim Kinsella, or even just 90's indie/emo in general.

Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit

Lifter Puller - Bay City Rolling 7"

Lifter Puller is what Craig Finn was up to prior to fronting The Hold Steady and personally, I've always seen them as the superior band regardless of the mainstream popularity of the latter. Their material was not only much more consistent, but featured the type of gripping tales of drugs, drunkenness and debauchery usually reserved for pulp fiction. Bay City Rolling was one of the group's last releases (post-Fiestas and Fiascos), and it features two songs, the raucous "Secret Santa Cruz" and the more restrained "Yo Quereria", both strong efforts which make good use of the band's established sound from F&F. For fans of the band, or for anyone interested in the whereabouts of post-punk before its mid-00's revival, this is a must.

Bay City Rolling

Best of 2008: #3. Verse En Coma - Rialto

I first found out about this album as part of a superb mega-post/analysis over at Last Train for Cool, and decided to check it out due to it being mentioned alongside two other post-Pg.99 bands I was rather big on, Malady and the already-covered Pygmy Lush. Anyway, I strongly recommend you check that out (Extra encouragement: it has a link).

Now then, Verse En Coma are kind of a hard band to nail down. They don't conform to any genre norms, despite their hardcore pedigree, and while this may make it hard for overly obsessive outsiders to properly categorize them, it also allows the band to run free with their ideas, unhindered by any bullshit expectations of what they should sound like. As a result, Rialto ends up with greater musical similarities to The Holy Bible-era Manic Street Preachers or Wire than it does to Pg.99, and frankly, it's far better for it.

Really, describing their sound relative to anything almost requires a certain contextual knowledge of the band members' past, as it could be surmised that everything on this album is an evolution of what Malady did (Verse En Coma being formed by two former members of Malady, Jonathon and Kevin). In this case, I would describe what Verse En Coma does as a more tempered, weary substitute for the dark, abyssal and endlessly pessimistic punk of Malady. The same expansive, dream-like atmosphere is in full effect here, but it comes off more like a hallucination than a nightmare, the bitterness of Malady eschewed in favour of a numbing feeling of dissociation. The instruments crackle with the same fuzz-laden cacophony seen on Malady, with the canned ferocity of the drums being especially notable (and fantastic). Guitar lines constantly move in and out of the translucent, reverb-drenched fog surrounding them, barely sounding recognizable amongst the midst of their own distortion. Even the vocals are blurred beyond being immediately identifiable; the singer's more desperate cries come off as even more restless as a result of the hedging waves of distortion, while the mellower vocals sound like little more than a gentle hum, clouded to the point where they sound almost indivisible from the bass.

Thematically, Rialto sees Verse En Coma look at the ennui of modern life through a number of narratives, executing this concept excellently both in its effusion of mood and in its lyrical content. "Through Ice Patches and Pine Trees" is a fast-paced musical whirl through continually unfamiliar territory, with the lyrics taking on an introspective, stream of consciousness style that emits the kind of honesty and self-discovery that comes only with a double dose of insomnia and alcohol. "In a Factory" teems with repression and angst as it tells a story of disenfranchised lovers amongst the backdrop of their mutual working-place. The music is bleak, but the vocals exude an entrancing warmth, suggesting the speaker's relationship is a lone yet utterly redeeming bright spot in the vast array of lifelessness and subordination he finds around him.

we were the young ones
we were the artistic ones
we were the "they don't know what life is really about" ones

Verse En Coma's Rialto is the best debut album of the year, an effort that takes the most distinct and intriguing parts of Malady and infuses them with a stellar song-writing skill and an even more ambitious musical approach. The album progresses like a long, bewildering dream, as it constantly changes narrative focus, but never seems to break the singular progression of mood. Unfortunately, clocking in at under a half-hour, Rialto isn't quite as epic in length as it feels in scope. But it is an enrapturing journey through the highs and lows of Richmond, delivered through such a dissociative state of ennui that it isn't sure if it still feels either.

but i'm still here

Best of 2008: #7. Pygmy Lush - Mount Hope

It is interesting to note the musical careers of the members of any successful, genre-defining band after they split up, especially for any former fans hoping for another taste of brilliance. In this case, we have Pg. 99, an extremely influential hardcore/screamo band from Virginia that lasted from 1998 to 2003, who played passionate and dissonant punk for the disillusioned and disaffected. Upon breaking up, its members went on to a number of different and increasingly diverse projects: from the progressive and elaborate hardcore of City of Caterpillar, to the eclectic punk dynamics of Malady, to the desolate instrumentalism of Ghastly City Sleep, each new project embarked upon added another layer of musical depth that was rarely if ever hinted at in the works of Pg. 99. Featuring three ex-members of Pg. 99, Pygmy Lush came in shortly after the break-up of Malady (of which singer Chris Taylor also performed in), born out of a desire to experiment with more lo-fi, organic compositions. And so the members of Pygmy Lush went about writing and recording a collection of songs that experimented with the limits of acoustic music as well as the misanthropic punk of their previous bands.

On their first album, Bitter River, Pygmy Lush took the harsh, unrelenting screamo of the group's pedigree (given the production quality, I Wrote Haikus About Cannibalism... is a good comparison here) and imbued it with flashes of lo-fi folk, creating an overall package that was as disparate as it was jarring to the senses. Which isn't to say that it was bad - it had some surprisingly strong individual tracks - just that some combinations are probably best left entirely separate from one another (I remain just as confident that mayonnaise and chocolate would not have lit the world aflame with quite the same level of passion as Reese's later, more heralded candy creation).

However, on Mount Hope an entirely different approach is taken, with the harsh screamo bits dropped entirely in favour of folk, and the record is much better for it. No longer will the listener be greeted with a startlingly aggressive transition following a dream-like passage of ambient musical minimalism; instead, Pygmy Lush develops a clear focus, emphasizing the band's expansive blend of melancholic folk.

Yet despite the traditional sameness of folk music, this is also a surprisingly varied album, likely due to the number of collaborators. While one of the strength's of Mount Hope is its consistent mood, Pygmy Lush still finds ways to experiment within the realm of their chosen genre. Offbeat instruments like the harmonica and accordion are given occasions to shine. Rhythm is kept in a number of ways, from the wood block chopping of "God Condition" to the flat foreboding echoes of "Dead Don't Pass", to the tin pitter-pattering of "Concrete Mountain". The depressive country-western feel that the band manages throughout the first-half is offset by the occasional blip of indie accessibility, such as in the title track or the eerie "Butches Dream", with the rest of the album being a more minimal, rustic affair, akin to what was seen on Pygmy Lush's first album (but with superior production).

But for all the successes of Mount Hope, the eight-minute closing track, "Tumor", is easily the highlight of this album. It sums up the group at their best: warm, emotional, and vivid. It consists of a simple acoustic guitar lick and its accompanying chimes repeated, the atmospheric hum in the background making the song feel like a waking dream, haunting in its austerity. The overwhelming sparsity of it all feels like an examination of the warmth in desolation, with the compassion of the vocals feeling distant, as if to have faded away in the face of overwhelming apathy. All this makes for a mesmerizing finish to what is possibly the best folk album in years. Mount Hope is an emotional and deeply personal recording that is both simple and beautiful, with a strong sense of craftsmanship guiding it along its way.

Best of 2008: #8. Fight Like Apes - Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

Another discovery by way of Hardcore for Nerds. Fight Like Apes took the independent Irish music scene by storm last year through their dual EP releases David Carradine is a Bounty Hunter… and How Am I Supposed to Kill You If You Have All the Guns? On their first full-length album, they don’t cover a whole lot of new ground - only half of the recorded songs are new, and their best songs are available on previous releases - but for anyone who missed the hype the first time around (like me), this album should prove to be an enjoyable introduction to the synth-pop madness of this Dublin foursome.

What Fight Like Apes manufacture on Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion is a refreshing bit of pop nihilism, filled to the brim with stream of consciousness-style lyrics, catchy melodies, and a healthy use of electronics. The songs most well-accounted for here are the kind of fun, fast-paced manic absurdity that the group has made their calling-card. This is seen on tracks like "Jake Summers" and "Do You Karate?", which come off like the musical equivalent of the non-sequitur, a destructive kind of anti-pop that will stay in your head for days. Other tracks, like "Lumpy Dough", take on a slower, more atmospheric tone, almost coming off as a kind of delicate synth balladry, while still being imbued with the same sarcastically naive charm that is present throughout this album.

By combining pop accessibility with punk attitude, Fight Like Apes have made an album that appeals to more than just a dedicated local cadre of indie buffs, but to any number of potential fans that await their offbeat approach across a wider UK audience; which is practically a shame, considering the bented satire of the collaboration between music and marketing that appears on this very album ("Something Global"). Make no mistake about it - this is pop music, but with a loutish noisiness to it that seems to be rebelling against its own accessbility. But it IS accessible, it IS catchy, and really, it's all the better for it.

What I just can't figure out is how such ostensibly throwaway music could be so good - more than just enjoyable, but actually resonant for months afterwards. For anyone looking for a hook: here it is.

Best of 2008: #19. The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

Note: Due to the density of albums being presented over the upcoming weeks, I won't be posting links with them. If you want a link for any of the albums shown, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.

John Darnielle is a busy man.

Ignoring for a second the bevy of albums he’s released in his seventeen years as the singer/songwriter behind The Mountain Goats, and the hundreds of songs he’s written during that time, 2008 saw Darnielle release his fifteenth (really?) full-length album, Heretic Pride, as well as a free EP release, Satanic Messiah, which you can download here. How the man can find time for all of this is beyond me; I struggle finishing even the basest of tasks (like, say, this Best of 2008 list) even with no other responsibilities to tend to.

On Heretic Pride, Darnielle takes yet another step away from the lo-fi folk sounds of his earlier records, furnishing his songs with lush pianos, horns and string arrangements. All of this works in creating a very warm and comfortable atmosphere that’s perfect for immersion. Darnielle’s song-writing skills are also again up to task, as his erudite lyrics reveal the story of each individual song through layers of allusions and metaphors. This can all be quite daunting, and rightfully so, but the fact that such craft is put into the lyrics trumps any immediate sense of deterrence, allowing you to slowly delve into the rich tapestry of the song-writer’s vision.

I guess the only criticism I can levy here is that it’s been done before and better at that. Darnielle doesn’t really cover any new ground here or bring any new elements to the table that weren’t already apparent in the brilliant The Sunset Tree. Instead, his songs carry with them the sense of familiarity; which isn’t bad in of itself, only in that it reminds you of a superior work. But arguing that the artist set the bar too high is one of the more positive criticisms one can impose. Indeed, for what it is, Heretic Pride is still a great album in its own right. Warm, intelligent and emotional, this is yet another strong release from one of the best song-writers around.