about an album from Montreal-based indie pop duo Bibi Club

A blend of new wave and French pop to cool you off

Guitarist Nicolas Basque met singer/keyboardist Adèle Trottier-Rivard at a Plants and Animals recording session. They started dating and formed Bibi Club in 2019.

The duo debuted that year with an EP, followed up with a full-length in 2022, and, on May 10th, released a new album, "Feu de garde."

It opens with the downbeat "La Terre." Trottier-Rivard sings this in French, and her unfussy vocal counters Basque's wobbling, preoccupied guitars. The vocal melodies catch like a nursery rhyme. All the while, the bass stretches ahead like a sidewalk decorated in hopscotch squares of multicolored chalk.

The French pop-inspired Stereolab comes to mind. Bibi Club say they make living room party music. Up- or downtempo, it sounds great.

The cool grass of Trottier-Rivard's delivery pairs wonderfully with Basque's suggestive guitar sounds and rhythms. His guitar tone often echoes The Cure. Bibi Club knit songs with inspired, layered arrangements of easy melodies, and notes hang like ribbons in the breeze. Guitars, bass, and drums—each gives a focused performance.

On "Parc de Beauvoir," a pulse-quickened guitar rings out. The soft, seemingly superficial lyrics—"Did you see the flowers on the brick wall? Did you see how people dress? We walk around, we talk together"—belie the tension gradually building layer by layer.

"Le feu" is one of my favorites. The bass offers Trottier-Rivard space, and her breathy French does not even flinch when the rhythm section skips by. The guitar's beautiful summer tones chime over the snappy drums.

 

 

Songs like this, "L'île aux bleuets," and "Rue du Repos" sound like a nice little string of luck.

The French pop "Rue du Repos" streams up-tempo rhythms and jangly jazz-inflected chords tinted in echo and reverb. The solid bass shifts its weight with ease to Trottier-Rivard's mellow vocal. The song is a sparrow's dust bath.

"Feu de garde" is available on Secret City Records.

about a loud band that sounds good

Hazing Over sounds fantastic on "Tunnel Vision," the band’s new EP. Hardcore, mathcore, grindcore, metalcore—all those cores fly like musical shrapnel.

“Gushing Wound” intends next-level wreckage beginning at the 30-second mark with the vocal “Corrosive connection, it wore me down.” Then a writhing riff at 1:30 folds melting beams into a mechanized monster—one of the most devastating sequences to hit ears in a while.

“Disavowed” razes in melody. The track with its clean vocals is an outlier in the young band’s small catalog. I hope the band tries more of it. The melodic turn starts 45 seconds in with the lyric, “Gutted prey swallow rain in neglect," the vocal melody summoned somehow from a gory parade of inspired hardcore. At 1:25, the song transitions into some weight-throwing chords and the lyrics, "Strangers in motion see through on their own the changes that no one seems to undergo / Disavowed, they wait it out / It weighs us down!" What a song.

"Tunnel Vision" was released July 7, 2023, via 1126 Records. All six songs run under 3 minutes. “Pestilence,” the first EP from the Pittsburgh-based five-piece, was released in early 2021.

 

Note: I started writing music reviews in June 2006. The first site I wrote for was taken down by the owner after years and years.

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 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.)

an album review of “Let’s Not (And Say We Did)” by Zeahorse

The blurry streetlights and bitterly ferocious noise rock of Sidney.

Zeahorse’s latest album tyrannosauruses through a world experiencing a mass-extinction event. The first song, “Designer Smile,” careens forward with its weight-throwing groove and tyrannical vocals. The sweaty, raving lyrics—“I wish you could see me know / I'm exercising my designer smile!”—sound both insecure and commanding.

Let’s Not (And Say We Did) is the Sydney-based band’s third album and first in over four years. Zeahorse’s sound calls to mind bands like Unwound and Fugazi. Think noise rock and post-punk.

After a couple of galloping tracks, Zeahorse canter through a chunkier groove on “Guilty.” The lyrics describe treading water in a hyper-self-conscious culture of self-improvement. The rising and falling vocal sneers, “When our heads get turned into mush, blame it on the hoo-haa, the Friday night fuss ‘cause I’m dated and bloated and boring and sinking / The party will never end with someone like you / Whatever you do will only make it worse; whatever you do now will only make it hurt.”

On “The Ladder,” Zeahorse bare teeth at the ladder-climbing company man: “Ah, I climb the ladder—there is nothing better! If I could be the spanner, will you be my hammer? Ah, I climb the ladder—there is nothing better! I could be a friend to everyone!” This disaffected lament boils over to the sound of hard-charging post-punk.

Find a slight change in sound, from post-punk to a sludge-gummed crush, on “20 Nothing.” The song opens with a big beat, then rolls out a savage bass tone that sounds great with splashy cymbals. Zeahorse flash big, broad noise-rock stripes and more satire in the lyrics: “I'm so happy, I'm so ready to turn my moments into nothing / Suffocating under the money tree / This ain’t no place for you, and it ain’t no place for me.”

The four-piece band keeps it loud in the pocket. Songs on Let’s Not (And Say We Did) seethe massive grooves and layered, blaring vocals. The singing has that quality of sounding taunting, scolding, and pleading all at once—Johnny Rotten-style, already done. The lyrics deliver indelicate attacks on the materialistic, shallow, and image-obsessed—familiar targets and features of culture that, the louder you rail against them, the more they envelope you.

 

Note: Not really my taste in music, but I think it sounds good and can imagine others enjoying it.

 

something almost true

I was a member of a show-business family. We were in a movie that was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. I got blackout drunk at the awards ceremony. Early the next morning, I asked someone what happened. He answered, "You won!" I was disbelieving. He added, "Yeah, and you spoke! You gave a speech!" More disbelief; plus anxiety. He showed me a transcript of what I said, and, of course, it was incoherent. I felt ashamed; this would be my legacy.

Note: The ceremony included a great live performance of scenes from the movie version of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

(posts) "Nevermine" by Forth Wanderers

(posts) Converge's "A Single Tear"

Note: I enjoy the song very much but not the video.

(posts) "Bruises" by Dusted

the lyrics to Metallica's "Damage, Inc."

Dealing out the agony within
Charging hard and no one's gonna give in
Living on your knees, conformity
Or dying on your feet for honesty
Inbred, our bodies work as one
Bloody, but never cry submission
Following our instinct not a trend
Go against the grain until the end

Blood will follow blood
Dying time is here
Damage Incorporated

Slamming through, don't fuck with razorback
Stepping out? You'll feel our hell on your back
Blood follows blood and we make sure
Life ain't for you and we're the cure
Honesty is my only excuse
Try to rob us of it, but it's no use
Steamroller action crushing all
Victim is your name and you shall fall

We chew and spit you out
We laugh, you scream and shout
All flee, with fear you run
You'll know just where we come from
Damage Incorporated
Damage jackals ripping right through you
Sight and smell of this, it gets me goin'
Know just how to get just what we want
Tear it from your soul in nightly hunt
Fuck it all and fucking no regrets
Never happy ending on these dark sets
All's fair for Damage Inc. you see
Step a little closer if you please

 
Notes: Song credits - James Hetfield, Clifford Burton, Kirk Hammett, and Lars Ulrich. Copyright Creeping Death Music.

the lyrics to Ozzy Osbourne's "Tonight"

Now I'm back out on the street again
It never rains unless it pours
Try to get back on my feet again
I hear the raging thunder as it roars

Tonight, tonight
Is it just a rhapsody
Or am I right?
Tonight, tonight
Is it all a mystery?
I just can't fight no more

I hear the questions surface in my mind
Of my mistakes that I have made
Times and places I have left behind
And am I ever gonna make the grade?

Tonight, tonight
Is it just a rhapsody
Or am I right?
Tonight, tonight
Is it all a mystery?
I just can't fight no more

As I beat my head against the wall
Running 'round in circles in vain
I'm feeling three-foot tall
You don't understand
I'm fading away

Don't want your pity or your sympathy
It isn't gonna prove a thing to me
Good intentions pave the way to hell
Don't you worry when you hear me sing

Tonight, tonight
Is it just a rhapsody
Or am I right?
Tonight, tonight
Is it all a mystery?
I just can't fight

Notes:
Song credits Daisley, Kerslake, Osbourne, and Rhoads. From the great album "Diary of a Madman."

How does his new stuff stack up against the old? I don't really care.

Last week I heard Paul Simon's new album, So Beautiful or So What, reviewed twice on NPR. The first reviewer withholds a definitive verdict on the music. He does, however, imply that Simon may have worn out his once fruitful formulas, and that he relies now more on craftiness than sincerity. Then the review mysteriously concludes with,

Whatever the reason, Paul Simon has made an album that succeeds in blending the two best strands of his solo career: the articulate navel-gazing of his 1972 solo debut and Graceland's 25-year-old rhymin' Simon in rhythm. And only a few songs here could use the heavy hand of a rewrite.

The second reviewer offers praise after first wondering if Simon has yet again rehashed his summit solo effort, Graceland. That's yet another way of asking if Simon has worn out his once fruitful formulas, and does he rely now on craftiness instead of sincerity? The second reviewer concludes,

Maybe these familiar echoes, ghosts of past glories, are inevitable. Maybe, as happens to so many elder statesmen of pop, Simon's best work is in the past. Here's all I know: Whenever my attention drifted while listening to this mixed bag of a record, along would come a stark insight, delivered in a tone of cool ambivalence — the audio equivalent of a tug on the sleeve. That's what is so interesting about this album. It's all "Meh," "So what?" and "Heard that one before." Until, quite suddenly, it's so beautiful.

Both reviewers focus primarily on uncovering the artist's motives. Neither wants to be fooled. They elaborate on what personal drama may be unfolding behind the music rather than on what the music supposedly sounds like and whether they enjoy the sounds they hear. And both assume Simon was once in an ideal state--that of The Sincere Artist.

Often, the art critic seeks an understanding with the artist. In this case, the critics want to know that the artist has taken his own music as seriously as they do. A critic may fault a work or its artist by saying that the work failed to achieve what it meant to achieve; this is a kind of positive criticism in that the work is to be taken seriously despite its faults. A negative criticism, for example, would say that a work takes itself too seriously. Sometimes a work or artist is dismissed outright: "You can't expect me to take this seriously?"

I don't.

First review: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/04/135112880/paul-simon-back-in-graceland-with-so-beautiful
Second review: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/11/135319218/paul-simon-old-sounds-new-perspectives