something about Beach House's "Superstar"

 

Beach House is releasing an album, Once Twice Melody, in "chapters." The four songs comprising the first chapter were released in November. One song was "Superstar."

"Superstar" offers sentimentality. Sentimental songs always have a chance with me. I like sentimentality. I like to remember good times from when I was younger because otherwise I just worry about everything that is happening now or might happen in the future. I like to think about the good times in past relationships.

    When you were mine
    We fell across the sky

 

Then the song (and I with it) turns maudlin for a moment.

    Something good
    Never meant to last

 

something about a couple of songs from Coilguns

Right after Thanksgiving, the Swiss noise-rock group, Coilguns, released two songs—the first installment of its new collection of 12-inch vinyl singles, the "Hummus 12-inch Maxi Collection," carried by guitarist Jona Nido's label, Hummus Records. Song one, “Shunners,” opens with thick, three-note progressions glaring down on tumbling drums. A high-strung vocal relives the anxieties of one asking himself how he will make it to the end of the year. The intensity builds as he loses his nerve amid the constant calls for vigilance—“Hold the line! Watch the line! Line the line! Watch the watch!” Approaching two minutes, the song shifts, then finally spasms out something like djent or groove metal, trying to stomp out anxieties that seem only to multiply. The lead guitar bends and loops through more anxious loops, getting nowhere. The song finally, after five minutes, falls apart, worn from worry.

Coilguns usually records live, and recent efforts have been entirely self-produced, like this EP. What is new is a bass guitar. Kevin Galland joined the band in March 2020 to play bass and help mix and master the audio. Song two, “Burrows,” shows off the new, gritty bass with a pummeling, forward-facing groove that knocks down what stands in the way.

This EP and the rest of the "Hummus 12-inch Maxi Collection" are pressed on transparent or transparent-colored vinyl and housed in a picture disc-style sleeve. Side A has the music, and side B has an original drawing from Noé Cauderay screen-printed in La Chaux-de-Fonds by Out of Gas.

Coilguns is not planning many shows for 2022, so the group, which started in 2011, will be producing its fourth studio album.

 

something about a Vandal X best-of

The band’s volume knob goes only one direction.

Vandal X’s noise-rock sound has moved over the last decade from angular punk and metal influences toward sludge and doom, away from bands like The Jesus Lizard and Helmet but still near to Unsane. Now the Belgian band, which formed around 1995, celebrates its career with a best-of album, XXV, accompanied by a compilation of rarities.

The band is a twosome of volume masochists dishing noise-rock fans all they can handle and more. Bart Timmermans is the original singer and guitarist, and Dave Schroyen took over the drum kit in 1999 after the original drummer, Jo Boes, left.

XXV starts with “Fuck ‘m All”—feedback feeds into riffs that punch through the wall. The scream-shout chorus “Fuck ‘em all!” burns through the mic connection. First songs are often statements, and this is a fine one. Drums on “Jacobs Wife” pop with syncopation as the guitar plays a guileless riff that turns out to be a great contrast to the song’s big bass-drum kicks.

On “All Lined Up,” the snare drum cracks out the bars and goes full bore into the chorus, where layered vocals seethe out “All lined up against the fuckin’ wall!” with the barking guitar’s tone buried in the low- and mid-range. XXV has 13 songs, and the last third or so sound more like sludge metal—maybe none more so than “Patient Zero.” The vocal is deeper, the guitar tone has a fuller, more present buzz, and the drums sound gauche. Next to the earlier, faster-paced songs, though, this final stretch drags.

The pandemic delayed the release of XXV, but the band has assured its audience that the best-of will finally come out December 10 (via 9000 Records). It will be offered in a limited-edition white vinyl (remixed and remastered) with a CD of previously unreleased demos, live recordings, and rarities from the band’s “archives.”

something about that dream-like moment between beginning and end

Her eyes tossed bouquets, and I chased after each one. Then, one day, sitting side-by-side on a cafeteria bench—“Okay, I’ll be your girlfriend.” She grew to fill my vision. We lay across the bench, and I felt so good my heart tumbled loose. But, in the very next moment, a centuries-traveled sense leaned in and cursed how her affection would not stay long for me. She was hardly real as it was. I tried to keep my signal-shattered smile a few more seconds.

something about “Falter” by Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben's was one of the first widely heard voices on the dangers of man-made climate change. His book, The End of Nature, cut through in 1989 with clear and urgent descriptions of the threat. McKibben has written maybe a dozen works since then, and in April 2019, he published Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, which follows up on his 1989 warning.

I had enough to worry about when I started reading this, and I grew even more depressed and anxious with each paragraph. The last section of the book aims to inspire a final, last-ditch hope—but what is the use now?

Here is a good review of this book:

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/its-not-too-late-to-stem-climate-change-but-we-have-no-more-time-to-waste/2019/04/26/8406aa64-525b-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html

 

Note: Today is the last day of the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow.

about Texas sunsets in October

The sunset in Texas in October brushes us familiarly. I feel a twist in my heart as the late afternoon's gold mixes with shadows that take more and more space—much more space now than what blocks the light. And then the last rays slip over me and run fingers through the treetops.

Note: What can you do but notice the beauty of it, even during the final minutes of the football game.

 

about some little thing on local news

I watched a local TV news story in Dallas about a hotel damaged a few weeks ago during the annual Red River Showdown between Texas and Oklahoma. Some fans evidently damaged property during their stay. The hotel owner was on the news footage pointing out the damage. The next news camera shot—I'm not sure what the prompt was, maybe a question about regrets for serving rowdy fans of the football tradition—but it was the owner (he was a rough old guy) just beaming a big smile and saying, "But it's fun! I've had drama all my life!"

something about "Ylem" by Sunless

When songs on Ylem offer an opportunity for resolution, Sunless always takes a pass. Instead of allowing for the emotional release of a headbanging breakdown or final minor-to-major chord change, this Minneapolis-based death metal trio always chooses yet another stutter-step to keep you off balance.

My favorite song, "Spiraling into the Unfathomable," starts strong with a chaotic onslaught. Then the song pulls through nimble riffs and irregular beats, throwing lots of elbows and fingers. Most of the album is like this—dense, dissonant, mathy metal. Guitars slice thin cuts of spoiled notes, the snare drum pops like popcorn, and a raspy vocal growls to this kaleidoscopic examination of the dark.

Passion is channeled into proficiency, and emotional connections wither during the endless pursuit of curiosities. Ylem, through intricacy and denial of resolution, sublimates violence more than a lot of other death metal albums.

Sunless will release Ylem, the band's sophomore album, on October 29 on Willowtip Records. The album is billed as part two of a trilogy that began with the band's debut, Urraca, from February 2017.

something about "The Heavenly Table" by Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock writes a twisted version of American Southern Gothic fiction, and The Heavenly Table twists the genre to the point of torture. This novel, caked in cruelty, depravity, and poverty, is a hell of a story. The events are set in 1917 and, consistent with Pollack's other novels, unfolds in territory around southern Ohio. The story revolves around the three Jewett brothers; their father's death sends the impoverished brothers out on the road, their appetite for adventure primed by the Western pulp-fiction novel they have read so much they have it memorized. Pollock introduces many other characters, and shuffles between them chapter by chapter. Everyone—each barkeep, school teacher, vagabond, and whore—comes with a story, no matter how minor the part. It's a bargain. The cruelty, depravity, and poverty that splatter every other page make some passages tough reading. But few of the characters are straight-up bad, and the tidy, focused storytelling and prose compel further reading.

 

about when alley driveway gates went up

Jeremy had his big driveway gate installed after someone broke into his car and stole his golf clubs. His wasn’t the first gate in the alley, but it was a little different because his family lived next door to mom and dad. Every time I was around, I would see their SUV pull in and out, the 8-foot fence open and close, grinding the same, coming or going.

The first time I saw a gate like that in the neighborhood was probably 10 years earlier—on one of the houses in the alley opposite the field belonging to the public elementary school. Is that the one that started it all? Today, those alley driveway gates are everywhere. Whatever neighbors value is stored away safely now, along with whatever value neighbors have.

 

something about a debut from a Dutch doom-noise trio

Each sate sullenly apart, gorging himself in gloom. – Lord Byron

Farer debuted last fall with Monad, four songs—exercises, really—of droning grinds of blistering, drilling bass; thunder-and-lightning drums; feedback; and throat-herniating, injurious shrieks that are more primal scream therapy than performance.

The doom-noise trio (two bass players and a drummer) started as Menhir in 2013 but changed the name to Farer in 2019 after recording this debut. The intensity in these four tracks carries on for 12 to 14 minutes at a time, and this prolonged length can recast the intensity as a drone effect.

This Dutch band is working out a sound. What they have so far is grim and brutal, all right. It's a difficult, hungering debut.

 
Monad was released in November 2020 through Aesthetic Death and Tartarus Records. (On September 24th, it will be available as a limited edition clear and black marbled-color double-LP housed in a heavy gatefold.)

a note about Talleen's new single and video, “Economics”

Last week, Montreal’s post-punk quintet, Talleen, put out a single, “Economics.” A pulsing bass drives the song while an insistent, anxious beat counters the woozy guitars. The combination produces a black cocktail of uppers and downers. The dominant sound, though, is the vocal—a mimic of ridicule and sneer. The song, accompanied by a video (by Alex Ortiz, the bass player and singer for We Are Wolves), gives a heavy-lidded glance at capitalism.

Talleen debuted with an EP, The Black Sea, in 2018. They sound a little like Killing Joke.

 

a quick review of a new album by an Italian band, Loose Sutures

Loose Sutures returns with a sound shot with axle grease and cheap wine. A Gash with Sharp Teeth and Other Tales, the band’s sophomore album, gets going with “Stupid Boy.” After two minutes of control-slipping rock ‘n roll, the song tumbles down a smokey segue, then falls back into stripped-down, heavily fuzzed rock.

My favorite song is “Sunny Cola”: the band’s faux-vintage sound blends sixties’ suede rock and a film-noire sound during the verses, but then sidesteps into an oceanic riff at the chorus. Just a city-leveling sound accompanied by dryly intoned lyrics: “The more you have, the more you smile.” On “Last Cry,” the overdriven guitars crackle out, with the lead guitar pumping more adrenaline into an already heart-pounding attack; and the final two minutes of the song are just a fuckin’ jam.

Loose Sutures are a heavy fuzz-rock group from Sardinia, a large Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. A Gash with Sharp Teeth and Other Tales, due out October 15 (via Electric Valley Records digitally and on colored vinyl), follows last year’s self-titled debut; since that release, guitarist-singer Gianpaolo Cherchi left the band, and guitar player Giuseppe Hussain joined up.

I asked the band how Hussain has changed the band’s sound. 

"Giuseppe joined the band when we were about to step into the studio to record A Gash. We soon realized how talented he was and how much his style could turn our music into something else. Comparing the two albums, you'll see that there's a groovier guitar sound, more solos, and more accuracy in the guitar texture. Thanks to Giuseppe! Moreover, he's a singer and songwriter, too."

Major influences remain The Blue Cheer and Fuzz; heavy fuzz and stoner rock still front the Loose Sutures sound. But the new album has a bit less punk and little more psychedelic-space rock.

Instruments are treated with echo and heavy reverb; the vocals, which sound less snotty than on the debut, are pushed to the back of the mix so that the singer often seems to be shouting over the instruments. So I also asked the band about its writing and recording process. 

"It all starts from guitar riffs: we used to play these tones ‘til we got a good rhythm session going, then we would add vocal lines and lyrics. The last and most important part is to get the best fuzzy sound from each instrument. We were lucky enough to record in the same place that we rehearsed and wrote the songs; that's pretty relaxing! We know how the room sounds while using the same gear and amps. And Alfredo Carboni, the sound engineer who recorded both albums, is a longtime friend who built up the studio. So recording for us is part of the same process, and it's extremely fun."

The band sounds like it's having fun on “Animal House,” pounding out an almost Sabbath-like groove. A Gash with Sharp Teeth and Other Tales closes out this binge with a big double: “Death Valley I” opens with more overdriven, blown-out guitar; that song takes a breath, and “Death Valley II” picks up there, lets the music drift, spaces out, and then pulls itself together with a little hair of the dog.