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Matt's Monthly Music Musings: April 2014: What Constitutes An Album? (Or, A Mini-Review of Live From Death Valley)

Initially, I was going to use this month to talk about recent albums like Elbow's excellent The Take Off and Landing of Everything or personal favorite musician Chad VanGaalen's Shrink Dust. But, then, this album happened.

Well, it didn't recently happen. I just happened to stumble across it after seeing it talked about on forums for a while. Now that I consumed all of Death Grips's albums in record time and consider myself a very avid fan of them (I had a mini-freakout when I found at least one other person who loves them earlier this week), I'm starting to move into their deeper cuts. And this is quite a great find.

But, here's the thing. Those two songs I just linked? They're the entire album. Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I happened to find an "album" shorter than last year's Threat Level Ultra. This one clocks in at a mere three minutes. But, holy hell, what an amazing three minutes those are.

This got me thinking: What amount of music is needed to make up an album? This may seem irrelevant, as I'd consider both Live From Death Valley and Threat Level Ultra as EPs, but they both have a wealth of content in a short amount of time. Even more so than most major albums, I'd argue.

If I had to come up with an answer, I'd say that an album is any collection of music that gives you a good idea of its "feel" or "sound" in its entirety. For Live From Death Valley, in this case, it's a quicker, more punk vibe than Death Grips main stuff, with some rapid-fire drum beats from Zach Hill, more muddled and buried MC Ride lyrics, and some absolutely insane sampling. Seriously, if you thought their sampling of Venus Williams's grunts in "System Blower" was insane, you ain't seen nothin' yet. From what sounds like muffled, out-of-tune horns and Street Fighter "Hadouken" audio clips in "Poser Killer" to the crazy low, bird-like hums in "Fyrd Up," there's a ton of material buried in these songs that I haven't even scratched the surface of yet.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is that, you can debate endlessly over what qualifies as an album all you want, but I just managed to wring out all these words over this three minute EP. Before, I did the same with Threat Level Ultra. I think that's enough evidence for me.

Matt's Monthly Music Musings: February 2014: Album Roundup

And 2014 is now in full swing musically. After being somewhat bored last month, with nothing really interesting me other than Against Me!'s Transgender Dysphoria Blues, four (let me repeat that: FOUR) albums from February have not only come onto my radar, but been interesting enough for me to find something to talk about in all of them. Some were anticipated, some were unexpected, but all of them are worth checking out for very different reasons. So, let's get started.

St. Vincent - St. Vincent

Prior to late 2013, I had heard absolutely nothing about or by St. Vincent. "Birth In Reverse" instantly made me want to check out her work. Strange Mercy proved to be a compelling and moving album. Then "Digital Witness" and "Prince Johnny" further amped my hype for her upcoming album. And, lo and behold, the album is actually quite good overall. In fact, it's probably my current favorite album of the year. (We'll see if that remains unchanged when Chad VanGaalen has his chance to blow me away in April.) Starting with a frantic panic in "Rattlesnake," the album goes through various movements topically, including narratives about personal crises and epiphanies, meditations on modern technological trends, and drug addiction.

Yet, it never feels incongruous or jarring. The album is structured wonderfully and every song has something to love about it (still trying to gather my thoughts on "I Prefer Your Love," but aside from that, everything's golden). From the jittery brass of "Digital Witness" to the luscious narrative in "Prince Johnny" to the restrained teeth of "Huey Newton" to the unhinged murderous streak in "Bring Me Your Loves," every track brings something cool to the table. It doesn't hurt that Annie Clark's voice has a certain bravado this time around that shows real growth and her guitar chops are consistently engaging and solid throughout. Like the actions described in "Birth In Reverse," this could very easily turn into a typical part of my listening habits.

brentalfloss - Flossophy

YouTube musical prodigy brentalfloss has been a personal favorite of mine since I started watching his videos about three years ago. Since then, he's had this ambitious streak about him that has resulted in a surprising upswing in his music's quality, a bold feat in that I was already a big fan of what he was doing back then. 2012's Bits of Me showed the wide variety Brent is capable of and displayed great promise in what was to come, a musician able to create pieces both incredibly humorous and unexpectedly poignant (drawing from video game characters with minimal explicit background, no less). I haven't had as much time with this album as the others in this post, but the tracks on this one continually won me over one after the other, all 20 in all, over the album's 50+ minute runtime (brentalfloss's longest album yet).

And, not to speak too rashly, but this might be my favorite of his albums yet. The comedy is the funniest of Brent's career (particularly the spot-on criticism of the minutiae in "3DS Streetpass with Lyrics," the hard-rocking douchiness of "Ken's Theme with Lyrics," and the outright dickish portrayal of Link in "Zelda: A Link to the Past with Lyrics") and the resonance is the most powerful it's ever been (I know it's been released in a video of its own, but the Ben Folds-esque "Zidane to Vivi" might be the best thing brentalfloss has ever written). Even previously released songs have been aurally tweaked and spruced up, some with brand-spanking-new intros with fresh jokes, like the retooling of the setup to "Super Mario Land with Lyrics." It even starts wonderfully, with "Earthbound with Lyrics" (after a brief intro) serving as a perfect musical companion to "Zelda II with Lyrics" from Bits of Me in its evolving structure. If you haven't heard any of brentalfloss's stuff, you owe it to yourself to check it out, and this may be the greatest starting point.

[Random thought: Would this album's track listing flow better if the "Introspective Bounty Hunter in Space" piano instrumental came right before "Metroid: Fight for Love"? Or if the album was bookmarked with ukeleles by switching "The Bioshock Song" with "Ballad of the Mages"?]

Beck - Morning Phase

And here we have the first of two major folk rock albums of the month. I know I'm not the only one, but I like weird, zany Beck better than I like folk Beck. Don't get me wrong: Beck is a fine songwriter and makes what could be dull, monotonous folk music breathe with life and sincerity, but I just find the off-the-wall section of his career far more interesting.

Thankfully, Morning Phase is interesting enough for me to give it a recommendation. Like I said before, my favorites from this album are ones where it feels like Beck is infusing a livelihood into the folk music that just doesn't work as successfully elsewhere, such as in "Blue Moon," "Heart Is A Drum," and "Say Goodbye." Alternatively, even some of the rich musical landscapes he creates when he's not in this mode are compelling, like the climactic closer "Waking Light." Really, the only songs on here that I can find legitimate complaints with are the two brief instrumental interludes, both similar in sound and meaning, with no particular reason for two of them to exist on the same album that only has nine other songs. Meh. It's a minor gripe in a light album worth listening to at least once.

Sun Kil Moon - Benji

And, last but not least, we have THE album of the month. Not mine (St. Vincent takes that for me, easily), but the one that's been buzzing around in that there music blogosphere for the past month. I can see why this album's been attracting a ton of attention in music journalism, as its soul-baring bluntness is something really unique, one of the rare instances of "narrative music" if I had to invent a genre to describe it.

Although, it's not usually a "narrative" necessarily, but more of a stream-of-consciousness look into Mark Kozelek's mind as he reminisces on moments of life and death (but mostly death) in his lifetime. "Carissa" simultaneously starts the album and summarizes it. It's a melancholic, heartbreaking song about Mark's cousin dying in a freak accident at 35 that really aches and is teeming with emotional heft.

Other songs chronicling death are strewn throughout, but the ones that draw my attention are the ones that break from this thread. "Jim Wise" both musically and lyrically captures a vivid, bittersweet portrait of a the titular man's tragic life. "Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes" has an immediacy not seen in anything else on the album with its vocal intensity (eventually joined by an equally sharp percussion section) and rapid-fire listing of events. Coming in after a slew of downbeat songs, album closer "Ben's My Friend" is like an unexpected left hook with its sunny ukelele, central drum beat, and booming brass. But my favorite song from the album (and possibly my favorite of the year at this point) by far is "Dogs," an incredibly open and detailed account of every romantic and sexual experience in Mark's life. The specificity and calculated structure of the lyrics alone impress me, but the way the song continually builds on itself, whether its the percussion that enters midway through or the subtle guitar flourishes towards the end, makes it one of the most captivating on the album.

The reason why I love "Dogs" so much is also the reason why a lot of the album is lacking to me. I kinda feel like a jerk for saying this, but not much of the album hits me hard. "Carissa" is heart-wrenching, but there's not much musically that evokes for me. This may be an entirely subjective thing, but, while the lack of evolution and variation in most songs leaves the lyrics at the forefront, there are only a few isolated incidences where I felt something emotionally. Some songs merely stick with the same melody throughout which makes sense in context, but it makes quite a few of the tracks feel rigid and stationary. Maybe if the rest of the songs on the album were as dynamic as "Dogs," I would be fawning over this album as much as pretty much every other critic.

Matt's Monthly Music Musings: Album of the Month (January 2014): Against Me!'s Transgender Dysphoria Blues

Welcome to the first of what’s currently a planned monthly series of music posts! These can be reviews, musings, concert reviews, or other random music-related minutiae to keep my writing muscles working in between videos. This January post falls into the first field, picking out a recent album that held my attention the most this month and discussing why it’s worth hearing.

And, I’ve gotta admit, the album that stood out the most in January is one that certainly earns all the acclaim I’m about to heap onto it. While I could go into detail about Laura Jane Grace’s personal journey and how it impacts the music itself like every other reviewer who’s tackled this album, I’ll leave that outside reading to you and focus on how the album tackles its themes on its own terms.

Now, I’ve never heard anything by Against Me! before, but I do like a good bit of punk and the two songs I heard from this album before I heard the full thing more than convinced me to give it a chance. And I’m absolutely glad I did. The album kicks off with a steady burst of energy, anger, and angst with the title track with Grace spitting out lyrics about ostracization and isolation despite trying to fit in. This theme permeates the album, the difficulty of living the way you identify and finding social acceptance at the forefront of songs like “Black Me Out,” “Drinking with the Jocks,” and “FUCKMYLIFE666.”

Musically, the songs rock as hard as you’d like a good punk record to, but have a melodic side too. “Drinking with the Jocks” is by far the most aggressive song here, Laura’s voice acidic and with some killer guitar riffs keeping the song driving all the way through. “FUCKMYLIFE66” has some of the most poignant lyrics on the album with imagery vividly painting the portrait the theme works hard to convey and also benefits from an incredibly evocative guitar hook. The title track, by far my favorite song of the bunch, carves out an awesomely impactful drum track and some of the greatest lyrics throughout, and is easily the catchiest thing here. Though the album leans towards the loud and heavy, even the acoustic ballad “Two Coffins” resonates emotionally in the context of the album as a whole.

However, there are a few stumbles in an otherwise smooth album. Even though I've listened to the album approximately five times already, I still have trouble recalling how the lackluster "Paralytic States" sounds. “Dead Friend” seems a little underdeveloped lyrically and could have probably used some tweaking and a more fleshed out chorus. The song is part of a different avenue the album takes in its second half, reflecting on death and its alienating loneliness that intertwines with the transgender themes. It works well given what the rest of the album deals with, which is more than I can say about “Osama Bin Laden as the Crucified Christ” (there’s a song title if I’ve ever heard one). Though the song’s instrumentation is intriguing enough so that it doesn’t become too much of a speed bump in the album’s flow, I can’t for the life of me decipher what place the song has in the album’s structure other than further adding to the fiery vitriol put forth elsewhere.

Ultimately, the album succeeds merely because it’s an interesting album. I can’t necessarily vouch for how well you’ll take to the album’s sound or quality, but I feel like it’s one worth checking out simply due to how unique it is. It’s a solid examination of a subject rarely discussed in music drawn from some deeply personal places in a labor of love. When Laura screams out the powerfully profane chorus of album closer “Black Me Out,” she transcends the lyrics themselves and conveys the point of the song through her vocal delivery alone. Here is an artist, putting out content that of great significance to her, with a passion unmatched by any of her contemporary peers.

Album Review: WYSIWYG by Chumbawamba

A few days ago, I vaguely knew of Chumbawamba's insanely storied and varied career, and was familiar with only a couple of their songs, but never delved deeper than that. That changed when I came across a CD copy of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) lying around, burned it onto my computer out of pure curiosity, sat back and listened.

I can't tell if this is the best decision of my life or what will ultimately doom me. This album has consumed my life. I've listened to it once a day for four days straight. I have multiple songs stuck in my head. And, perhaps the deadliest factor, I now want to listen to the entirety of Chumbawamba's discography.

WYSIWYG is one of the best albums I've heard in years. It's fantastic as an album, as a collection of songs, and as an entry point for Chumbawamba newbies such as myself. And it's slowly looking like it'll eventually creep onto my undocumented list of all-time favorite albums.

The album, the immediate follow-up to Tubthumper (featuring the band's massive hit Tubthumping), is a collection of various segments of musical avenues and detours, usually separated by some chatter or archaic sample, satirizing American pop culture as a response to the band's newfound popularity. As the recycled audio at the end of opener I'm With Stupid states:

And now, for the rest of the record,

We have a selection of musical items

A stereo treat for all your hard work

The band is sarcastically rewarding the audiences that launched them into cultural relevancy. How? By bitingly taking them down a few pegs. The names that get mentioned and subsequently skewered throughout the album include Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Jerry Springer, and Charlton Heston. When not particularly naming names, the group still has their sights dead-set on a specific audience (the upper class is notably brutally savaged lyrically on songs like She's Got All The Friends That Money Can Buy and I'm Coming Out). All of this is suitably fitting within Chumbawamba's left-wing, anarchist, constantly critical history, but has even more of a bite to it when paired with well-produced, catchy dance beats.

What separates WYSIWYG from other albums that need to be listened to entirely to get the full effect (like Need New Body's UFO) are two crucial things: musical motifs and overall quality of songs. Whereas UFO was a bizarre hodgepodge of throwing in every random idea in the hope that at least one would be worthwhile, WYSIWYG is simultaneously in a constant flow while subtly sneaking in signs that the album is a holistic affair. Melodies and samples resurface in the background or as outros to segue into the next song without any visible seams. It honestly feels as if the album was fully mapped out and planned meticulously, the band wholly aware of how the overall experience would come together.

Though you would think that this would make the songs themselves less notable, every song has something to bring to the table and a sizable chunk of the songs have at least one deviously memorable element that's sure to root itself into your brain. From the looping strings and distorted title chant of I'm Coming Out, to the slinky surf guitar and blaring brass of I'm In Trouble Again, to the overpowering bombast and badassery of Jesus in Vegas, there's something to love in almost every song.

The tone of the album makes it simple for anyone to jump in as well. There's a general sense of humor to pretty much every song, as the minor-key I'm With Stupid displays in a crystal-clear punchline. This extends to the various brief segments peppered throughout, such as Monkees-satirizing Hey Hey We're The Junkies and the group's take on morality advocation organizations in Ladies For Compassionate Lynching. The one time that the album clearly deviates from this tone is in its somber and chilling acapella cover of the Bee Gee's already deadly serious New York Mining Disaster 1941. Though the song sits uncomfortably in between Internet Age track WWW Dot and Woodstock riot-centric I'm Not Sorry, I Was Having Fun without any clear build-up or bridging, the punch hits harder than anything else on WYSIWYG.

I'm going to be totally honest here: I was unsure if I could find a negative thing to say about this album. There are plenty of songs that are going to remain glued to my memory banks for years to come. Every extraneous byway has a point and contributes to the greater themes and mood of the album, and, unlike UFO, are ultimately worth taking the minor detour for. The only song I find lacking in the entire album is Celebration, Florida, which makes its message clear far too soon and has only a single clever line in its three-plus minutes of time, meandering for the rest of its duration around the same central idea. Even still, this song is merely mediocre and, when faced with the multitude of choice selections spread throughout the album, doesn't detract that much from the overall experience.

And, may I say, it's an experience well worth having. If I end up becoming a die-hard Chumbawamba fan as a result of listening to this album, I can safely say that I'll be more than glad to have done so. For better or worse, this album has squeezed its way into my life and, based on how I've been internalizing it over the past few days, is sure to remain a part of it for a while.

Best Songs: I'm In Trouble Again, Jesus in Vegas, I'm Coming Out
Worst Song (based solely on a relative scale): Celebration, Florida

Album Review: MGMT by MGMT

Most people who leap to claim that MGMT lost their way or wish that they'd return to their roots are those who pine over their blockbuster success that was their debut, Oracular Spectacular. I fall into a different camp. Perhaps it was because my initial exposure to the group was through Flash Delirium, but I consider their follow-up, Congratulations, to be their crowning achievement, near-perfect except for the aimless Lady Dada's Nightmare. So, when I heard that the band was moving even further away from their alt-pop image for a more experimental take, I was hyped.

This album does not live up to said hype. In fact, I don't know if it could live up to any fan's hype, unless they found both previous albums lacking.

The shift in the group's third, self-titled album is one that ditches the prog rock, multitiered songs of Congratulations and the poppy hooks of Oracular Spectacular, going for an odd psych-drone variant. I could have bought into that if the songs were well structured or memorable enough, but instead, many of them fling their ideas at you either too quickly or over a slow-build to nowhere, allowing for little room for building on top of these ideas.

OK, maybe I'm getting too in-depth too early. The best comparison I can make is that this album is their non-mainstream equivalent to Oracular Spectacular. By that, I mean that, while Congratulations had a great flow to it and was evenly paced throughout the album, Oracular Spectacular was front-loaded to a fault, dooming the second half of the album to the insurmountable feat of besting what came before. MGMT faces the same problem, but to a far graver extent.

The album opens with the prog-based Alien Days, the first single from the album. Despite some ill-fitting elements (the off-tune melody in the bridge), the format of the verses really stuck with me. It's a suitable opening in that it eases the gap between Congratulations and this album, but does little to signify what's to come.

While the following song, Cool Song No. 2, doesn't falter much in quality (despite not taking to it much on my first listen, it's grown to become one of my favorites on the album), it's quite the departure from the opener. The heavy beats, the low-register vocals, everything points to an entirely different direction. And that's one of the problems of this album: Despite coming up with a made-up term for the genre of the album, I had trouble figuring out just what sense of identity MGMT was going for on this thing. They cited Aphex Twin as a major source, but I see little to no sign of that influence emerging. If anything (as I'll get into later), it's more of an imitation of Animal Collective than anything.

The next couple of songs, Mystery Disease and Introspection, both seem under-confident for the usually boisterous group. The lacking vocals fit the subject matter of both of these songs, but ultimately lead to them fading into the background once they end (except for Introspection; dear God, I don't know how this song is stuck in my head but I want it out).

Your Life is a Lie, despite the lackluster vocals, won me over due to how cohesively the song works. Imagine this song as a loudspeaker announcement in an idyllic society where everything is going perfectly. Then it all makes sense: the monotone, the pseudo-chanting, the basic beat, and the minimalistic chords all paint a larger picture. If only the rest of the album's songs had this much thought put into muted results, I might have bought into it.

After Your Life is a Lie, the album takes a catastrophic tailspin. A Good Sadness, though I found it interesting the first time around, ends up meandering for its entire length, never really doing much with the cool synth at its core. Astro-Mancy is the closest thing to homage this album comes to, with vocal style and instrumentation taken straight from Animal Collective's playbook. Yet, it fails to make it its own and dissipates from memory the second it ends.

And then there's I Love You Too, Death: the absolute nadir in both the album and MGMT's entire career. I'm OK with slow-build songs. I'm OK with off-kilter instrumentation. But, for whatever reason, this song just pisses me off to an irrational degree. Maybe it's the tonally-deafening recorders of doom. Maybe it's the lack of energy in vocal inflection (again). Maybe it's the fact that it makes the 12-minute Visiting Friends by Animal Collective seem progressive and evolving by comparison (yes, a weak comparison as I actually like that song, but still). Everything in this song just annoys me to an absurd degree. By the time the song finally builds to nothing, ending without a clear resolution, I was ready to just call it quits.

Then Plenty of Girls in the Sea comes on. Despite the unorthodox, out-of-key synth and the skittering beat throughout, something about this song just wins me over. Maybe it's because it includes the best vocals on the album save for Alien Days. Maybe it's the cool time signature swap in the breakdown. Maybe it's the group's best key change in the final verse. I just love everything about this song in ways that I can't adequately explain and it's by far my favorite song on the album.

The album ends on perhaps the most-telling note it could: the schizophrenic, uncertain An Orphan of Fortune. What starts out as a moody, solemn piece turns into a slow stomp, before shifting into a bluesy bridge, then reverting back to the stomp section. I honestly can't pin down my thoughts on this song as a whole, except that it ends leaving me even more mixed than before.

Did I enjoy this album? In parts. Did I dislike this album? In parts. Was I uncertain on how to feel overall? In parts. What does this show about MGMT's identity, as of now? That, it too, is in parts.

Best Songs: Plenty of Girls in the Sea, Cool Song No. 2, Your Life is a Lie
Worst Songs: I Love You Too, Death, Astro-Mancy, An Orphan of Fortune

Album Review: UFO by Need New Body

Lately, I've been getting somewhat desperate in terms of music that I latch onto. It's less that any song that's downright catchy leads me on an epic search for the rest of that artist's efforts, but more that if a song by a random artist, unbeknownst to me, that I've never heard of before suddenly enters my world at full force and I find it impossible to drive it out, that I search out the rest of what whoever that may be has to offer.

And this is what led me to Need New Body.

Backstory time! A few weeks back, Anthony Fantano (better known as "theneedledrop") did an online DJ set on turntable.fm. Curious as to what he would play, I dropped by for a few minutes and listened in. Aside from a familiar song from Minor Threat, I had never heard any of what Fantano played on that show before. And none of it really seemed to grab me. With the exception of one deceptively, insanely catchy song that is the epitome of an ear worm.

This song, with its unbelievable combination of electronica, banjo, strings, gypsy rock, and Frank Black-esque vocals, stuck with me for a long, long time. It was my go-to song when bored and unable to find a song. It became a musical drug unlike any other, the urge to return to it so strong I couldn't resist its charms for more than a day. And, more than anything else, it became a musical quandary unlike any other.

I believe that, if you try hard enough, you can categorize any music into genres. This isn't necessarily a good thing (lumping multiple things that only vaguely sounds like each other into the same field, yada yada), but it helps those lost in the myriad of music available at one's fingertips. Here, however, was the first time I've been unable to come up with a genre that even remotely describes that song above. The group's Wikipedia page described them as "avant-garde," but avant-garde music isn't this... catchy. Or this compulsively danceable.

It eventually drove me so obsessively insane that I had no choice but to seek out the full album. And, may I say, that "avant-garde" label certainly fits UFO as a whole.

The opening track, Giggle Bush Meets CompUSA, is a clear indicator of what you're getting yourself into: what begins as a simple melody devolves into a series of crazy bleeps and bloops that is too sudden to even call jarring. It's jagged in every sense of the word, but funny for how long it ends up going on. But, then, we get one of the most compelling tracks of the album, Hot Shot. After a squawky start, there's an incredibly simple yet delirious banjo(?) part that acts as the song's central melody. And, if you didn't realize from the previous track that the group has a crazy sense of humor, the track here fades before the melody is hilariously shouted at the top of the vocalist's lungs and the instrumentation lankily comes back into play. Suffice it to say, it's one of the more cohesive and noteworthy tracks on the album.

Since there are 23 songs on this album and many of them never evolve past simple ideas, I'll touch on the ones worth mentioning instead of doing my typical track-by-track business.

Let's start with the good. The main "single"(?) of the album is Beach, a ridiculous, parodical anthem for the oft-implemented setting in the same vein as America, Fuck Yeah (despite being released a year before that song, with the ubiquity of the latter, the comparison is inevitable). No, really.

That list towards the middle of the song should set off some bells of familiarity in those of you who have heard America, Fuck Yeah. The fact that it concludes with "Race wars/I'm hanging out/The youth will rule/O.D./Totally/Awesome" should tip off anyone who hasn't spotted that by this point. Also, I will forever be compelled to randomly yell out "Robfish!" whenever anyone ever mentions a pufferfish ever again.

Red as a Bone is completely uninteresting musically, but notable for its droning recitation of a list that goes on for nearly four minutes, essentially a musical representation of the cake sphere from Portal. So, why is this mentioned in the "good" section of the review? Merely for the last 30 seconds, which shrugs off the length of the song in an overacted manner. Ox also sounds boring on paper; it's a single running melody that continually stops and starts back up again, but, for whatever reason, works and never gets boring. Perhaps it's due to the progressing instrumentation that overlays it approximately halfway into the track (something that the horribly dull two-minute-long I Know lacks).

Pow Pow gets by mostly on sheer diversity and its odd combination of elements, packing in a xylophone fill, low bass tones, a piano line and simple vocals in a minute and a half. Shark Attack is a compelling mix of hammer-ons and pull-offs and a constant "One! Two! Three!" shout that is one of the more exciting and memorable tracks. And, speaking of memorable, Pen hits the mark for its incredibly catchy chorus ("Pen, pen, pen/Where's my pen?") and darkly comedic verses about the pen's connection to the narrator's relatives (including a sick grandma and a cousin with one arm).

But, if there's one song worth mentioning over all others, it's Show Me Your Heart. If you listened to the link up above, you know why this song caught my attention and urged me to listen to the whole album. Its hybrid approach to numerous styles, humorous lyrics, memorable vocals, and overall completeness (more so than practically every other song on the album) is a near-perfect array of obtuseness. And, if the rest of the album was as fleshed out as this song, perhaps I'd like it more than I do.

This is due to the fact that, as you may have guessed from my description of the album, so many songs (if you can call them that) simply exist as brief ideas or interludes and are never fleshed out beyond their simplest concepts. This would be fine if they served simply as bridges between two fully developed songs, but, more often than not, they just lead into yet another bizarre yet brief track. After a while, the constant detours into acoustic ballads (Moondear), piano stings (Make Gay Love Not War, Coffee Shop Girl, Pt. 2), banjo music (Magic Finger), radio parodies (Dr. Spliffin's Food Drive), and feedback (Apple Snake) make the relief of a full-fledged, honest-to-God song that much more worthwhile. These diversions then cease to be amusing or interesting, instead dragging out the album beyond it's necessary threshold of tolerability. I know that this album was made with a "kitchen sink" mentality, but sometimes less is more and the fat needs to be trimmed.

Which brings me to the album's lowest point, only four tracks in. Popfest is banality incarnate: a simple bass line, a single line of lyrics, and random distortion for nearly three minutes before the distortion grows without becoming any more immediate or frantic. It meanders, it lingers, and makes me pine for the dull yet brief oddities that pepper the rest of the album.

Unlike the opening track, which has the element of surprise in its favor, closing song Turns Pillars Into Trees is a disappointing slinky bass line that just suddenly ends. And that's it. That's the end of the album.

"Frustrated" is the best way to describe my reaction to UFO. Based on my initial love of Show Me Your Heart and how much I enjoy the tracks that I ended up liking, I wanted, and was, in fact, quite ready to embrace the weirdness I was prepared to hear. What disappointed me was how boring most of it ended up sounding. Even after only one listen through, I found myself more compelled to revisit individual songs rather than the album as a whole, which speaks negatively to the album's overall smooth flow. Yet, if there's one thing I can take away from this album, it's that it certainly traversed the a wide range, in its genres and styles definitely, but more prominently in quality, from the excellent to the dull to (more often than anything else) the mediocre.

Best Songs: Show Me Your Heart, Hot Shot, Beach
Worst Songs: Popfest, Turn Pillars Into Trees, I Know

Mini Album Review: Threat Level Ultra by Ghidoragh

If there's one genre of music I really want to get into more than I already have, it's hardcore punk. Maybe it's just because, so far, I've listened to all the right stuff (Bad Brains, Minor Threat, etc.), but what I've heard is enough to convince me on the entirety of the genre. Thus, a random article on Kotaku became a blessing in disguise when it allowed me to discover an awesome contemporary addition to the genre. (The article mentioned the cover, reminiscent of an old-school video game cover and its extravagant physical packaging, but mentioned little to nothing about the album itself.)

Ghidoragh, if my understanding of the group is correct, is a hardcore punk outfit from New Zealand. I've been unable to find out how long they've been around, but perhaps the only existing YouTube video I could find seems to date them back to 1999. And it claims to be a reunion show. I honestly have no idea when the group got started (I doubt it's the same group, because some of the band's official pages call this EP their debut) but, no matter if this is their first effort or their thirtieth, one thing's certain: this EP kicks all kinds of ass.

The first thing that has to be noted is the length of this thing. Staying true to their roots, Threat Level Ultra clocks in at just under nine minutes over the course of eight tracks. No track is longer than a minute and a half, and I'll be damned if the group doesn't pack in some serious punch in record time.

The first track demonstrates exactly what this group is going for: Fledgling Industry is a light-hearted, parodical perspective into the business world with the driving line of "One hundred million dollars/One hundred million dollars/Business, business." There's a lot to get psyched for in this 48-second track, and as it seamlessly segues into First Contact, we get an even catchier line that jumps from 15 to 16 to 18 to 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 to 1000. (I can't quite make out what comes after each of the numbers, but it doesn't make it any less noteworthy.) For all of the hardcore punk I've listened too, very little of it has been enough to make me hum it nonchalantly during mundane activities (with the exception of Sailin' On by Bad Brains). Not only does this rock, but it's surprisingly compulsively listenable.

Suncrash offers the first of many retro-inspired audio clips, this one appearing from what sounds like a sci-fi film, as well as more of the same in terms of music. Bonus Level is a neat little lo-fi epilogue to this song taken from what sounds like either live footage or a raw recording of rehearsal footage.

Goop on the Perimeter has one of the most bafflingly funny audio clips from what sounds like an old PC game with a voiceover that sounds like John Cleese, culminating with the line "Now... masturbate!" The album's sole instrumental, it starts fast-paced like it's predecessors before coming down into a sludgy stomp that is hypnotically intoxicating.

Spiders is another light-hearted, fast 'n' heavy romp that plays like a punk version of something from Need New Body. It's a fun little non-sequitur of a song with lines like "Spiders, spiders everywhere/Spiders, spiders in my hair." And it ends with yet another cool audio clip, this one coming from what sounds like an old grindhouse movie trailer.

Threat Level Ultra is probably the most epic track on the EP, beginning with a siren wail before a slow opening and going through several progressions too numerous to note in writing before ending as soon as it began. It never repeats, never becomes dull, and is continuously interesting. It's an awe-inspiring track simply in its nature and really shows off the group's potential better than any other.

Dirt Dicks (yes, that's the actual name of the track) begins in one of the most oddly fitting ways I've ever heard a song start; it opens with an audio clip of Bill Cosby explaining an experience he had drumming with Sonny Stitt before effortlessly working in a count-in to the actual song. And it works. Flawlessly. The song itself fits the typical hardcore punk vibe more than the rest of the EP, working in nihilism and pure unfiltered energy (as opposed to previous songs about business, contact with aliens, militarism, and space) before ending with more of what we've come to expect: the climactic ending audio clip from the game The Chaos Engine.

As much as I've enjoyed writing this review for this short but sweet taste of the band's output, it really can't compare to hearing the actual thing. So, regardless of if you're a fan of hardcore punk or new to the genre, take a listen to the EP over on the group's Bandcamp page (linked below). Best of all, if, like me, you really enjoy this collection of music, you can download it at a price of your own choosing. I'd really like to see more from this group, so any bit of contribution helps. I really dug this small taste of what Ghidoragh can offer and definitely look forward to whatever they put out next.

Best Songs: Threat Level Ultra, Fledgling Industry, First Contact
Worst Songs: It's a 9 minute, 8 track EP. Does it fucking matter if there's anything worth being called "worst"? (Not that anything on here even comes close deserves that label.)

Album Review: ...Like Clockwork by Queens of the Stone Age

As someone who professes to be a critic, it's commonplace assumption that this means you need to find something to criticize in everything. I'll admit, this has been true for most of the stuff I've reviewed since I've never claimed anything to be "perfect," but...

GOD. DAMN. This album. I mean, it's not necessarily perfect, but it was certainly the best experience I had listening to music this year, in the last few years, and possibly one of the best of all time. I've already been hyping the hell out of this album internally and externally, put out two videos about it in anticipation, and probably drove off a few of my so-called "friends" on Facebook posting about this, but it somehow met and exceeded all of my expectations. A music nerd needs to be able to obsessively geek out over something every now and then, and that now and then is right now.

...Like Clockwork did the impossible: take a band I merely had a passing interest in due to one fantastic album and turned them into bona fide rockstars. Songs for the Deaf was the quintessential rock album of the last decade and, as of right now, ...Like Clockwork is the standout of the genre for this decade. Every song is fleshed out and with a sound of its own (not unlike Deaf), but unlike that past entry, every song seems to have its own emotional core. Sure, Six Shooter was a funny little throwaway song, but it didn't have the melancholic breakdown of album opener Keep Your Eyes Peeled, wherein the album's nastiest song turns into a lament on fading optimism. Right off the bat, you can tell that ...Like Clockwork is going for something special and of its own, unlike anything that Queens of the Stone Age  has done before. Many have attributed this to frontman Josh Homme's near-death experience following knee surgery, and there's a certain mortality in his lyrics that rock music hasn't touched upon since Bruce Springsteen's The Rising.

By now, it sounds like I'm laying the praises on heavily, but an album that can rock as hard as this and holds so many more layers than its peers deserves to be made an example of. The melancholy is brought to the forefront with I Sat By The Ocean, a title that conjures weariness and pausing as the world passes you by. The guitar riff here is foregrounded, but in a muted, expressive manner that allows for a line comparing the speaker and the subject to "passing ships in the night" to evolve into "crashing ships in the night." Something that could merely be a subtle shift instead ends up a literal wreck. When was the last time you heard something like this in rock music?

Just when the album looks to be settling into a groove, though, it ramps things up in terms of both quality and content. Even with an opening song that details the view from Hell, when the first words out of Homme's mouth are "I want God to come and take me home," you're in for an entirely different beast. Thus, The Vampyre Of Time And Memory marks the turning point of the album. Though it lacks the intensity of the two previous tracks, the melancholy and emotion overwhelms to the point of sensory overload. It sinks in that this is what the album is going for, this is the type of album Homme intended to make, especially with the title track following in its footsteps at the album's conclusion.

The streak of great songs continues with If I Had A Tail, wherein Homme rattles off some of the album's best lyrics about the state of the world and his own being. What the meaning behind the song lacks, the excellent instrumentation and clever writing makes up for, giving the tune its own sense of sheer funk rock bravado. My God Is The Sun follows suit and wins simply for being an exciting, exhilarating rock song. (My God, when was the last time we had one of those?) Even with some jarringly out-of-place lyrics ("I don't know what time it was/I don't wear a watch," comedic drum effect optional), the song never lets up and succeeds merely on the steam on which it runs.

And then there's Kalopsia. What starts off as slow introspection turns into a schizophrenic back-and-forth between Homme and guest vocalist Trent Reznor before the unhinged come-down. Mixing equal parts Bowie-era glam rock and some of the heaviest power chords on the album, the duality of the song works in tandem with excellent lyrics such as "forget the rat in the race, we'll choke-chain them all."

Fairweather Friends works in a similar duality, tying a hard rock sensibility that most of the album has going for it with a driving piano riff led by Elton John. It's one of the more fun tracks on the album (even with the pessimistic lyrics) and is elevated by an ending so unexpected that it had me laughing purely from shock value.

It makes sense then that Smooth Sailing should follow this song, as it continues that "couldn't care less" attitude from Fairweather Friends with a cocky stride unrivaled (expertly mirroring the title). Again, the lyricism here is top-notch; where else are you going to find the line "I will blow my load over the status quo?"

What follows is what could easily be called the album's centerpiece: the epic, moody I Appear Missing. I've already talked in length about what makes this song so special, but, to add to the absolutely brilliant, striking lyrics that run throughout this thing, the second half of the song, which results in one of the most cathartic musical conclusions in recent memory, is interminably stunning. One could write essays about the depth of the lyrics, the marvelous instrumentation, or the fascinating structure of it all, even perhaps how all three intertwine in a way most musicians wouldn't even begin to dream about. Regardless, it's by far the most alluring cut from the album.

The band closes the album in a quiet fashion, with the title track detailing nerve-wracked thoughts of the past and coming to terms with the present. The barebones piano of the song's first half is haunting, allowing for reflection of all things that passed, before the most muted instrumental backing on the album comes in. Given the mood of the rest of the album, lyrically and instrumentally, it's somewhat fitting that ...Like Clockwork ends in a state of melancholic understatement rather than a show-stopping finale.

This album is a rarity in music. Every track has something worth talking about, greater depth and more nuanced instrumentation than most music currently out there. The band gives the album its all (especially the drums, which add a crucial layer to every song and serve as the backbone to the stellar lyrics and blistering guitar riffs). It's been a while since I've found something to like in every moment of an album; there's not a wasted moment, not a single expendable piece. I'm simply amazed that an album like this can simultaneously satisfy visceral rock urges and analytical tendencies, and, more importantly, simply exist.

(Author's Note: This late review is due to me ordering the Deluxe Double LP of the album, which suffered some delays. However, it was definitely worth the wait. The vinyl was in excellent condition, as to be expected, but the real winner of this packaging is the 20-page art booklet built into the package. The absolutely gorgeous artwork from Boneface coupled with complete lyric sheets makes this a must-own for those who want the complete package. Hands-down: this is one of the greatest vinyl packagings I've ever seen as a record collector.)

Best Songs: I Appear Missing, My God Is The Sun, The Vampyre Of Time And Memory
Worst Songs: For just once, would anyone be upset if I put nothing here? I really can't justify calling anything on this album "worst."