a few words about MJ Lenderman

Noisy guitars, country influences vie on MJ Lenderman's new album.

The latest by MJ Lenderman sometimes sounds hard-luck; other times, hard-bitten. Both fates come in spades on Boat Songs.

“TLC Cage Match” opens with an acoustic guitar soon accompanied by a sympathetic slide guitar, and then comes a lucid Lenderman with his reedy and resigned vocal: “It’s hard to see you fall like that, though I know how much of it’s an act.” “SUV” imposes overdriven guitars and feedback on the bitterly steady beat, and the bad memories are seared in with the lyrics, “I still have the key to your boyfriend’s SUV / I keep it by my bed like a picture of you and me.”

Songs weave back and forth between the sounds of Modest Mouse and Drive-By Truckers.

MJ Lenderman lives in Asheville, North Carolina. His solo work—and his work with the band Wednesday—pulls between 1990s noisy shoegaze guitars and country rock. Boat Songs, released April 29, 2022, is less of a lo-fi production than the Wednesday releases, but the lyrics remain eagerly vulnerable, like on “Under Control” when Lenderman carefully changes chords on an electric guitar and sings, “I had it under control, and then it snow-balled and rolled and rolled and rolled / And I don’t have control anymore.” The reckoning ends with the verse, “I got my wheels in a ditch / There’s a word for this, for what used to scratch the itch / And then some day it quit / Ain’t that a bitch.”

His sense of humor streaks through the album, especially on “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat”—listen and hear the countrified funk of the earnest and absurd. And the album opens with “Hangover Game” and its lyrics that scoff at the myth of Michael Jordan suffering from flu or food poisoning during his epic “Flu Game” against the Utah Jazz in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals: “Oh, he looked so sick / It was all over the news / But it wasn’t the pizza, and it wasn’t the flu / Yeah, I love drinking too / I love drinking too.”

Note: I had not heard of MJ Lenderman until Boat Songs. I am a fan.

something or other

There are worlds on Earth he can never know—like a world in which his wife has a strong Christian faith and offers him her loving arms.

 

some "content" about an album from a Canadian death and thrash band

Besieged returns twelve years later

The engine is flooded with death metal and thrash, and because of that you can smell Violence Beyond All Reason. The new album from Besieged burns from track one with blink-and-you-miss-it atonal solos, spitfire chord changes, barking vocals and guitars, and hyper-driven drums.

“Paragons Of Brutality” opens with drum fills that fall into a groove before slam-dancing from riff to riff. This sound is part of the legacy of the classic Florida-based band, Death. The old way’s piss-stain spread shows darker on “Path to Defy,” where the band tries to piece together pit-bull bites. And drums first lead the attack and then hold back on “Descent into Despotism.”

Powder-flecked riffs spill from pockets and socks, and left turns blur into oncoming traffic.

Besieged started around 2010 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Twelve years somehow passed between the band’s debut, Victims Beyond All Help, and now. The sound is a mix of progenitor Death and Bay-area thrash. The songs sometimes lack flow, and the drums can sound canned as the mix buries the bass and cymbals, but the guitar is a self-cutter and this album is wild.

Unspeakable Axe Records releases Violence Beyond All Reason June 6, 2022.

 

something about lending support

The woman opened the package—the Ukraine flag had arrived from Amazon. She remembered ordering it on Saturday or Sunday and was grateful that she had not picked the big one, having chosen instead the tasteful 18"x27". She still had to find a place for it outside.

The blue and yellow colors were pure and signaled to neighbors that she is informed and feels passionately about the issues—that she, too, stood with the people of Ukraine.

Some weeks later, returning from her walk, the woman paused and counted three other Ukraine flags on her block. How long, she wondered, do we keep these up?

something about “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates

American author Richard Yates gives voice to friends of loneliness. He made an extraordinary debut in 1961 with Revolutionary Road. The novel’s aching pulse beats loudly, softens, then redoubles louder than before. Characters struggle to make sense of the feeling that they will never live the life they imagined. Yates once said, "If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."

Revolutionary Road plays out in East Coast suburbia, 1955. Frank and April Wheeler think they are in a rut. Frank, a charismatic intellectual in his college years, no longer finds ironic amusement in the nine-to-five workaday office life; April, an attractive, artistically inclined woman, is home with the kids and a growing sense of desperation. April persuades Frank to relocate their young family to Paris, where the promise of real life now awaits. This promise of change gives new spark to their relationship—but the spark dissolves in a thread of smoke.

One dampening force is the neighbor’s adult son, whose borderline personality and candidly delivered, jaded insight depicts the Wheeler's problems plainly. Then April discovers she is pregnant, conceiving reckonings. The desperation buried in the Wheeler’s unsatisfied lives surfaces for air, and change comes.

Yates once described Revolutionary Road’s subtext:

I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the fifties, there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price.

This quote surprises me in a way, though, because Yates sounds like he is criticizing people like Frank Wheeler because he could not leave the security of the suburban life and office job; but in reading Revolutionary Road, I thought Yates was criticizing Frank because he thought he deserved anything else.

Notes:

• Quotes from Boston Review, October 1999, and Ploughshares, Winter 1972.
• Revolutionary Road, the 2008 movie directed by Sam Mendes, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, but Michael Shannon owns it, of course, with his performance.
• Previous posts: something about Richard Yates and something about "The Easter Parade" by Richard Yates

something about the late full-length album from Anna Sage

The French band finally releases its long-awaited, highly anticipated debut.

Off the rails and whipping toward you, its headlight beaming the anger of God, Anna Sage’s new self-titled album is a thrill. The rapid-fire opening snare on “The Holy Mice” battles a staccato, off-time guitar riff. And the guitar tone is live; the amplifier practically hums in front of you. Feedback sometimes fills voids when the guitars break, like on “Sinner Ablaze.” Thirty seconds in, the song hits a groove, and bass guitar notes slide around the key as the six-string pours out a blurry, dissonant drone. Then comes “The Deadly Mess of a Dying Head,” where the atonal scream-shout vocal rages in cadence—"The wall in their eyes / they fall from their skies / hear ‘em antagonize!"

Anna Sage, a four-piece band from Paris, has issued at least two EPs in the band’s 10 years, but this self-titled album, released April 15, 2022, is the band’s proper debut. You can instantly hear the influence of Jane Doe-era Converge—the caustic intensity, the volume and passion, the mix of straight-ahead rhythms with frequent, chaotic tempo changes. Other hardcore and metal influences include Botch, Will Haven, Trap Them, and Gaza.

“Loveless” includes an oft-repeated sound on the album—dissonant high- or mid-range two-note chords that knead over crashing drums while the vocal smears its shredded personality onto the aggressively mordant sound. “Double Bind” begins much like a Jane Doe song, too, chaos pounding on all the doors and windows. Then around 50 seconds in, the song stabilizes and the guitar jams on a simple riff while the drums ratchet up the tension by slipping in fills and playing just off the beat.

On Anna Sage, the guitar riffs can be thrilling, taking the listener around blind corners and through dark doorways. The drums alternate between imposing order and creating high drama by stopping and starting; the guitars will repeat a riff, but the drums play differently the second time through. One thing I notice, though, is that the album has no big moments, no single part I would play for someone to say this is how good this band can sound. I think this just underscores how consistent this album is and how important the audio engineering and production are to making Anna Sage sound so good.

about an okay new death metal album

The delicate sound of beautifully engineered death metal.

Finland’s Corpsessed wheel out a new maggot-filled slab of 90s death metal on April 22nd. On Succumb to Rot, the band adds to its catalog eight more songs of the writhing dead. Hear the guitar picks flick up and down mightily; register the restless-leg syndrome of the drummer thumping down the seconds that lead you closer to the grave. But what registers for me most is the intestinal vocal, belching sequences of words that are more reminders than thought. What do they remind you of? Death. And metal.

I enjoy the production and guitar tone on this album. Succumb to Rot comes out via Dark Descent Records, and the band anticipates releasing a vinyl edition later in the year. Vladimir “Smerdulak” Chebakov created the artwork—the cover depicts a vaguely human abomination meeting his gruesome demise on the tar sand wasteland. And that reminds you to have a little fun.

something about a 2019 album, “What Life” by Club Night

First thing every morning—but especially Monday morning—I hear the bus flatulate to a stop 30 feet outside my bedroom, and I know the world is back at it. And through my window I watch garbage trucks collect piled trash behind the restaurants and bars and dump glass bottles, sucked empty, into breakage. The workers use bins, bags, and boxes to gavage-feed the truck until it pulls away, stuffed stupid, the engine howling hollow wind.

Listening to the brilliant album What Life makes me feel alive—like I want to catch every bus and all the garbage is a celebration. Club Night released What Life in April 2019, but I heard it only recently. The music often sounds high-spirited but contains multitudes. The songs convey spontaneity, as if Club Night is experimenting with changes and rhythms, but the band’s idiosyncrasies are masterful and the musical sum captures a contagious, noisy energy of hooks and melody.

What Life opens with “Path”—the drummer counts off 16 beats as the bass guitar insists on the note, then the drum rolls through fills while the guitar strings pull off and hammer on, wheedling notes, and the vocal—charged and high—cries out to all and sundry. The lack of inhibition speaks volumes. The music sweeps through emotions—joy, restlessness, righteousness, desperation. Even the quieter moments carry energy.

Club Night takes all the noise of daily life and filters it into music. What Life feels a little like the perspective grief can give you.

“Cough” opens with a brief mellow passage, then the restless drumming and guitar figure in. The song segues into a faster heartbeat. The vocal swallows water, as if drowning under reverb and the mix, but its expressiveness and pitched cry allow it to pierce the bonds of the surface.

The bass guitar starts “Cherry” with a head-nodding pulse. Then guitar harmonics ping a melody. Tumbling drum fills hold the momentum, and the volume grows, the rhythm quickens, the angles sharpen until the song drops into a nice and easy playout.

Club Night’s blend of fragility and ferocious animation reaches near-perfection on “Trance.” Take just the moment of one lyric: “I let out a howl so unspeakable.” Josh Bertram’s vocal starts as a hoarse, tortured scream, then slides into his melodical caterwaul. The song has incarnations, taking on different rhythms and paces. The vocal pierces, the guitar phases, the drums roll to a bass alive with inspiration. At 3:00, the song hits a triumphant coda.

And within an album full of highlights, the best among them is the last song, “Thousands.” I probably will play this song from time to time the rest of my life. I love it for the crescendo at 3:30—the snare drum starts cracking, the feedback sings, synthesized skies whistle as they fall—and then it all resolves with the lyrics, “What if we wanted more? Not waking up to the taste of bad news again. I dare not ever ask though I bawl at the splintered sunlight alone… What if we wanted more? Are you happy with the life that you chose?”

Club Night’s frontman, Josh Bertram, was previously in Our Brother the Native. What Life, and Club Night’s previous EP, Hell Ya, are far less experimental than Our Brother the Native and sound more like early Animal Collective and maybe Mae Shi. What Life captures something—a time, a storm of influences and events, maybe. But what if we wanted more?