Fatter, Older, Displaced: REVIEWS OF OTHER ALBUMS

by Nate

I've been really burning on a bunch of albums. Until I am able to recover the password to my own blog, I will send them to the EiC of this blog and he will post them, because anything you send to him via digital correspondence will make its way in here eventually. 

OTHER ALBUMS:

Hell Is an Airport by Liquid Mike: Hell Is an Airport sounds like listening to the iTunes previews of an alternate-universe version of Weezer, where their animating inspiration was Sugar instead of KISS. The beefier guitar tone from Paul Bunyon's Slingshot is back, and the album has a welcome slickness that feels less like formal polish and more like the pinnacle of home recording capabilities. You can hear that high-gloss DIY oozing out of "Liam Gallagher" and "Meteor Hammer," though there remains a charming lo-fi quality to the vocals, which never quite fill the space the way the rest of the mix does.

Because this is a Liquid Mike joint, the songs only take as long as they need to, which titillates and frustrates in equal measure. "Claws" is perhaps the band's most complete song, the earworm most capable of breaking the gravitational force of Michigan and reaching higher orbits. "Bad Lung" would do it for sure if only the band could be assed to make it longer than 76 seconds. There's a heartbreaking thrill to having the floor fall out of songs like "Hell Is an Airport" and "Lit from the Wrong End," and there's a logic to going all-the-fuck-out for only a minute. Goddamn if it doesn't make you want to hit play again.

HIGHWAY TO THE END by DARK THOUGHTS: LP1 was an exciting exploration in giving a band the muscled-up front-end mixing blast of Dillinger Escape Plan and letting them basically try to rewrite the first five Ramones albums. HIGHWAY TO THE END follows the same atlas, this time out sounding more like Teenage Bottlerocket. You can make a steady living playing The Fest and selling out small-pressings on Dirtnap Records, but you could do more with a guitar solo or a melodic vocal concept more evolved than "first idea, best idea." 

Twelve by Psycho Moon Project: Foreboding tones, but coming from the computer as opposed to from the earth or from a druid circle. Digital deterioration as feel-bad music. To do more than identify would be to pass judgment on a world frankly not worth visiting. May the goblins and ghouls enjoy their doxxing soundtrack.

Home Taping Is Killing Music by Home Videos: Feeling equally indebted to bad-times slowcore of Smog and the second-wave bad times emo of Sunny Day Real Estate or Rainer Maria, Home Taping Is Killing Music has welcome moody dourness to its presentation that really scratches a rainy-fall itch. The album's best songs clock around five minutes and take their time getting to where they're going, but the path from A-to-B is always clear and the payoff is worth it, especially on could-be future teen classics like "an excuse, an apology, again" and "the devil's credit score." The other standout is "underwater breathing," which has the kind of cross-genre appeal that could unite sweater-wearers of all stripes. 

Six-Legs Inexperience by Bug Day: Claiming your release was intended to be an EP if not for the song "Ghosts," then for the song "Ghosts" to be nine minutes of tuneless, disorganized, cacophonous, instrument smashing, is a tremendous joke worthy of Archers of Loaf. Doesn't make the song any good, of course, but it's a great bit as far as bits go. 

Forget that, though. Forget, too, the excellent Guided by Voices cover that closes the album, though maybe don't totally forget that since Bug Day celebrates the same free-wheeling freedom of creativity that will power GBV well past the heat death of the universe. The band is developing a nice track record for writing pathos and meaning out of repetition and distortion, and they come back to that stone-wrung well and find water again with alt-rock smashes like "Methane Lake" and "The Observation Tower." This ain't pop music, so don't expect a tight package. This ain't punk music, so don't be surprised when you find out the fuckers can play. There are ribbons of nastiness throughout, but they come off more like proof that there is no spoon rather than clear direction of intent. Bug Day make alt-rock that can do it all. You either catch up or catch the next one.