Out With the New, In With the Old

This year, 2019, a handful of my favorite musicians released new albums: Tim Barry, Jimmy Eat World, Jesse Malin, etc. I enjoyed each of their records but none of them hit me like I know they will at some point. Timing is everything and I’ve learned, time and again, that just because an album doesn’t connect right now doesn’t mean it won’t find its way into regular rotation up the road. The album that shook me to the core this year is by a band that has sold 60 million records worldwide and yet my newly discovered favorite, their self-titled debut, is all but forgotten. INXS was released way back in 1980, the year I was born, and it sounds nothing like the new wave arena rockers that they would later become. 

For a number of years in the late 1980s / early 1990s INXS, along with U2 and REM, were amongst the biggest rock bands in the world. I was familiar with a few of their singles, enough so to sing along with them though, hearing it on the radio, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you whether the song was being performed by INXS, Depeche Mode, or Duran Duran. This is not to say that these bands sound alike but rather to put into context my lack of familiarity with the New Romantic bands of the era. This past June, while on a weekend getaway visiting my folks in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, my wife had an 80s mix playing on Spotify and twice after asking the question, “Who is this? It’s great!” I was surprised that the answer, on both occasions,  was INXS. I listened to their most well-known album, Kick, three times in a row on the drive back to New Jersey and, on that ride home, I had realized what was so special about this band that dominated the airwaves for the better part of my youth. I was also quite surprised at how many songs of theirs off this album alone that I recognized, as I kept thinking to myself: that’s their song too?!?

Everyone has heard the phrase: find your happy place. It’s an exercise used in meditation or in situations where we find ourselves needing to calm the stresses of daily life. Well, my happy place is inside a musical rabbit hole. For a music-obsessed nerd like myself, there’s nothing better than discovering an album that makes each hair on your body stand at attention. My customary ritual for traveling down one of these rabbit holes is as follows: 1) discover an album that I like, 2) head over to Wikipedia to find an overview of the band’s career, and 3) check Discogs to see if the album is available on vinyl and attempt to justify to my wife why I need this album right now. After hours of obsessing in this manner, if the album passes the “Let me sleep on this and see if I’m still excited about it in the morning,” test, then it’s off to the races of delving into anything and everything the Internet has to offer about the band. 

Scouring Wikipedia for all things INXS, I was surprised to read this on their page under Early Years: “These early records demonstrated their new wave/ska/pop style.” Having only heard the songs on Kick up until this point, I was very interested in hearing the early incarnation of the band as there was no ska to speak of in the songs I had heard. Spotify only goes back as far as 1982 with their Shabooh, Shoobah album (which contains one of the best songs ever written in Don’t Change) but Wikipedia insists that they had released two albums prior to this so I hopped on YouTube, found their first album, and didn’t come up for air for the rest of the night. Their eponymous debut has a sound more akin to Elvis Costello and The Jam than to the new wave hitmakers they would later become. The songs are upbeat, catchy, and powerful and will likely speak to any fans of melodic punk, power pop, and even early ska. While INXS does not have a horn section, the bass and drums have that bouncy, melodic flavor similar to First Wavers such as The Specials and Madness. Throughout the 33 minute album, INXS clearly left the fat on the recording studio floor, serving up ten straight-to-the-point cuts that will undoubtedly be stuck in your head for days to come.  

Approaching middle age (or, at 39, am I already there?!?) I refuse to be the guy standing behind his imaginary podium yelling about how things were better when I was a kid. That said (doesn’t it seem as if a “that said” always follows a statement like that?) one thing I miss about the days gone by is the effort it used to take to discover new music. Before Spotify and YouTube, bands and albums carried a certain mystique. As fans we’d read about a band or hear about them from a friend and wonder what they sounded like. This speculation could germinate in one’s imagination for weeks or even months before finally being able to track down something to listen to by the band in question. The Internet made it relatively easy to acquire the first INXS album. YouTube held me over until the cd that I ordered from Discogs arrived. Then I struck gold at my local record store where I was fortunate enough to come across a copy of the album on vinyl for a great price. The level of difficulty was nowhere near what it would’ve been like when I was a kid, but it was still a whole lot of fun going on the hunt for this record and finally being able to hold this relic of the past in my hands, one that feels like my own little secret treasure. 

 

INXS’s eponymous debut was my favorite discovery of 2019 but it was by no means the only discovery to resonate with me. Below is a list of the other albums that hit me hard, in no certain order, all released prior to 2019 that I was late to the party in finding. Each of these (except for the ever elusive To The Death by Earth Crisis) have found their way to my record shelves:

 

The Plimsouls- s/t: There’s a public radio station in my area, broadcast through Brookdale Community College, called 90.5 The Night. I’ve discovered a number of great bands from this station, one of whom being The Plimsouls. Spotify has their second album Everywhere At Once (which includes their pseudo-hit A Million Miles Away, which the Goo Goo Dolls do an excellent cover of) and a couple of live albums but it’s missing the album of theirs that resonates with me- their self-titled debut. It’s not easy to find but it is absolutely worth tracking down with its 32 minutes of straight up, Stones influenced, rootsy rock ‘n roll. 

 

INXS- Kick: This sounds like a completely different band than the album I gushed over earlier. No longer the power pop band heard on their debut, and not even the darker/sexy rock band that wrote one of the best songs ever in Don’t Change, at this point in 1987 INXS were a full on new wave/pop rock group and this album made them one of the biggest bands in the world. Every song on this one is great, most you’ve undoubtedly heard, my favorite being the title track, Kick, with it’s zen-like chorus: Sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked. 

 

The Alarm- Declaration: I, again, have 90.5 The Night to thank for introducing me to The Alarm. To get into this album proper you’ve got to look past the hairstyles that adorn the cover, keeping in mind that it was the 80s and also that they’re Welch (which should get them a bit of a pass based solely on the fact that you likely can’t name another band that hailed from Wales. I know I sure can’t). The songs on this album sound like a mix of The Clash and the best parts of 1980s anthemic rock, ala Bryan Adams, Billy Idol, etc. 

 

The Jam- The Gift: I’ve owned Setting Sons by The Jam for many years but other than the once per year listen I give it, I’ve never been able to truly sink my teeth into it fully. Traveling down one of those musical rabbit holes, this year, I discovered their final album from 1982, The Gift, and finally I embraced the brilliance of The Jam. This album is equal parts funk and power pop and, fortunately or unfortunately, it makes me want to dance every time I hear it (which is not a pretty sight for my wife to see but my 6 year old son is always happy to oblige and join me). Their debut, In the City, also hits the spot when I’m searching for something with a slightly sharper edge. 

 

White Lies- Friends: Because of how much INXS resonated with me, 2019 was the first year in which I began exploring new wave albums. I don’t recall exactly what led me to find White Lies, specifically their album Friends, but whatever it was I owe to it a massive debt of gratitude. Every song on this album is brilliant and each sound like they should be in a movie. White Lies play modern new wave/post punk that in no way feels like a novelty. If movies like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink were made today, White Lies would be all over their soundtracks. This British power trio write excellent songs and Friends will be a part of both mine and my wife’s regular rotation going for years to come. 

The Cure- Head on the Door: Prior to this year, I’ve never gotten into The Cure and it’s not for a lack of trying. Their track, Burn, from The Crow (a movie that I watched for approximately the 50th time recently and I’m happy to report that it still holds up) was my favorite on that soundtrack. I’ve asked friends who love them to recommend a starting point for me with the consensus always seeming to land on Disintegration. I gave that one a shot more than a few times throughout the years but The Cure’s brand of gloomy goth never did it for me. This year, upon further exploration, I discovered that it’s not all doom and gloom coming from Robert Smith and Co., and that they actually write excellent (and sometimes happy sounding) pop songs. I can’t get enough of Head on the Door and was lucky enough to find a great copy of the reissued vinyl for $25 at my local record store. There’s nothing gloomy about that! Wish is another album of theirs that checks all the boxes for me.

 

Smashing Pumpkins- Shiny and Oh So Bright: For a long time I had a theory that if the Smashing Pumpkins had a different singer (but one who still sang all of Billy Corgan’s excellent vocal melodies/patterns) they would be one of the greatest rock bands ever. Even without loving his voice, I still consider 1993’s Siamese Dream to be a near-perfect album (though it took me a good 22 years to come to that conclusion). Here, on their 2018 release, Shiny and Oh So Bright, Corgan is rejoined by original SP members, drummer Jimmy Chamberlain and guitarist James Iha, and, together, they have crafted what I believe to be their finest work to date. With a mere 8 songs, clocking in at 31 minutes, this record full of well-crafted and expertly played rock songs leaves me wanting more. 

 

Sting- Ten Summoner’s Tales: This year I fell in love with yoga, and I owe that to Sting. I also owe my recent appreciation for Sting’s solo music to yoga. As a teenager I was introduced to The Police by a couple of friends who I played in a band with. I immediately took to their faster material, mostly from Outlandos D’Amour and their double live album. Last year I jumped back in and fell in love with everything The Police did- their slow songs, their reggae-influenced songs, and even their more pop-sounding tunes. But I always wrote Sting off as a wanker. I thought his solo work was reserved for yuppies and soccer moms. Last winter, in the midst of my binge of The Police’s catalog I decided to give yoga a try, knowing that Sting was a major proponent of the practice, and I fell in love. It was in yoga class, while in a Child’s Pose, where I first listened to his solo track, Fields of Gold. I’d heard the song many times before: on the radio, as people’s wedding song, etc. but never before had I truly listened. With my head between my knees I was so moved by the smoothness of the song and Sting’s voice that, upon leaving the yoga studio, I immediately pulled up the album it came from, Ten Summoner’s Tales, and I haven’t looked back. Both Sting and The Police are included in My Top Five Artists according to Spotify Wrapped for 2019 so, much to the dismay of my wife, it’s been a whole lot of Sting at my house this year.  

 

Earth Crisis- Destroy the Machines & To the Death: One of the first hardcore bands I ever heard was Earth Crisis. A friend of my brother’s had showed me their groundbreaking ep, Firestorm, which had a massive influence on me. I saw them a handful of times back in the day (and again when they first reunited whenever that was, probably around 2007-08). I purchased their first full length, Destroy the Machines, back around 1996 at a CD show in New Brunswick that my dad drove me to and, although I liked the music, I could never get into the vocals. They had more of a deep, Cookie Monster tone, rather than the glass-eating ferocity heard on Firestorm. Fast forward all these years later and, traveling down a 90s hardcore rabbit hole, I decided to revisit, Destroy the Machines, the one that everyone considers to be their classic album. As Michael Scott once said: “it takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong, and I am that big man.” Boy was I wrong. I don’t know what it is in my brain that finally clicked but I now love everything about this record. My newfound admiration for it led me to check out their newer material and I found that their comeback record, 2010’s To The Death, is another killer hardcore album that I’ve been missing out on that I’m so glad I finally found. 

 

Soulfly- Ritual: This past November my wife and I took our son to Disney World. We arrived at The Happiest Place on Earth with me listening to loads of Sting, INXS, and The Beatles and we left with me listening to Soulfly and Sepultura. Adults in Mickey Ears and old people willing to use their Mr. Jazzy motorized wheelchairs as weapons in order to secure a better spot in line will do that to you. I’ve long admired Max Cavalera but outside of Sepultura’s Roots and Soulfly’s self-titled debut (is it me or do a ton of bands not give an album title to their debut?) I’ve never gotten into much of his enormous catalog. One night, while trying to fall asleep in our hotel room I listened to an episode of Jamey Jasta’s podcast in which Max was the guest, which prompted me to hop onto Spotify to see what he’d been up to musically these days. There I found Ritual, Soulfly’s blistering album released a year ago and it was just what I needed to balance out all the Toy Story rides (which were awesome) and Mickey-branded junk food being shoved in my face all week. Ten songs of powerful metal- chock full of thrash, groove, and Max’s signature brutal scream. 

 

Gojira- Magma: The name Gojira has been in my purview for years. They’ve been described as a mix between Tool and Meshuggah, but, even with such an intriguing comparison, I never felt compelled to check them out. I can again give credit for this exploration to The Jasta Show as he has time and again mentioned that they are a force to be reckoned with in the metal world and, while in Disney, after my Cavalera-binge I cued up Magma, Gojira’s 2016 masterpiece, and was immediately blown away. The style of heavy portrayed on Magma is perfect for the 39 year old version of myself. It is 1) heavy, yet not punishingly so, 2) short, clocking in at 43 minutes, at least for progressive metal standards, and 3) catchy as all hell, focused more on songwriting rather than just a collection of riffs. In the short time that I’ve considered myself a fan of their work I’ve fallen in love with three of their albums- Magma, L’Enfant Sauvage, and From Mars to Sirius. If you’ve never heard them I’d suggest Magma as a perfect jumping off point. 

 

The Beatles- Help: As a teenage, middle class suburban punk I found it my duty to decry the work of The Beatles. They were, after all, my mom’s all-time favorite band and it wasn’t cool to like the music your parents listened to. God, what a schmuck I was. Even after growing out of that snarky phase, something about The Beatles never quite did it for me. I started to come around while watching Beat Bugs, the kids show on Netflix that featured a whole slew of Beatles songs but what really did it for me was seeing this cover of my favorite Beatles song by The Living End (a band whose album Wunderbar was one of my 3 favorite albums of 2018- a mammoth year for new music in my opinion). After watching that video upwards of 25 times, I dove headfirst into Help and, after all these years, it finally clicked with me and The Beatles, as Beatles for Sale also struck a major chord with me. 

 

Dead 60s- s/t: At the end of last year and the beginning of this year I fully immersed myself in a band called Radio 4, an early 2000s post-punk band from NYC whose bass playing singer had roots in the hardcore/indie scene of the 90s. Under Spotify’s “Fans Also Like” feature is where I stumbled upon Liverpool, England’s The Dead 60s and their 2005 self-titled debut. Much like Radio 4, The Dead 60s play bass-driven songs clearly inspired by The Clash. The Dead 60s mix a heavy dose of The Wailers in there as well making the 34 minutes of music on this album quite enjoyable an enjoyable listen.  

 

Dreamcar- s/t: Back in 2017, Davey Havok from AFI teamed up with the members of No Doubt (minus Gwen Stefani) and formed Dreamcar, a modern new wave band. As so often is the case with me, I gave this album a try when it was first released, because I’m a big fan of Davey Havok, but it did not resonate with me at the time. This year though, my tastes have leaned new wave so I gave it another spin and it became one of my most listened to albums of the year. Like anyone who grew up in the 90s, I was very aware of No Doubt, but other than their singles I’ve never listened to them. I had no idea that they were such proficient players and songwriters. I truly hope this album is not just a one-off and that there’s more to come from this supergroup. 

 

Snapcase- Designs for Automation: I’m a 39 year old man but, if pressed, I would most likely consider myself a hardcore kid (a notion that makes my wife laugh with a touch of pity). I owe a lot to 90s hardcore, not just the music but the ethics I learned from the scene that are still a huge part of my life today. Snapcase’s 1997 album, Progression Through Unlearning, could be my favorite hardcore album of all time. Every part of it- from the music, to the lyrics, to the artwork, is perfect in my eyes. Oddly, my fandom halted after that release. These were the days before Spotify and YouTube made things so easy to listen to but I heard Designs for Automation a handful of times around its release in 1999 but it didn’t live up to the monumental album they released just two years. Well this year I dove back in and realized I had made a huge mistake in writing it off so quickly. This is an excellent album and the lyrics, especially on Side B, are truly special. 

 

AFI- The Blood Album & The Missing Man: I’ve been an AFI fan since they released their album Sing the Sorrow way back in 2003. When they released The Blood Album a couple of years back, I tried it a few times but it didn’t click. I also missed the release of their 5 song ep, The Missing Man, last year so when I discovered what an excellent record that was this year, I gave The Blood Album another chance and I’m thrilled that I did as I had 19 songs (new to me) from one of my all-time favorite bands to digest this year. A lot of (grumpy) folks my age only want to hear “Old AFI,” when they were a hardcore punk band but I, for one, think that The Cure-influence that shines through on the more recent sound of the band works perfectly. It’s incredible how this band changes so much from album to album. From Sing the Sorrow onward, AFI are perfect to me. 

 

2018 Albums of the Year

If there is a theme to my favorite albums of 2018 it would be: surprise. Six albums make up my Album of the Year list. Three of the bands who are on the list are bands who I have known of for many years but who I was never previously a fan. One of the bands I read about in the first fanzine I ever purchased back in 1995. Another is one that I saw open for Green Day back in 2001 but hadn’t listened to since then and yet another I heard for the first time on a Heineken commercial back around 2008 and even used that song in my wedding but never heard another song by since then, until now of course. Brevity is not my strong suit but I promise to keep each album description to a single paragraph. And I’m no good at reviewing albums and telling you why they are good, I can only tell you how they fit into my musical journey. So here are my favorite albums of 2018 in order of release date.

 

Matt Witte: Ol’ Boy – 01/05/18

Being a superfan sometimes has its perks and I had the pleasure of getting my hands on Ol’ Boy, the first solo album from Coach N’ Commando’s Matt Witte, months before it’s January 2018 release date. By the time it was officially released this album had already cemented itself deep inside my brain. Contained within these 10 songs is some of the most mind blowing finger-style guitar work I have ever heard that perfectly compliments Witte’s storytelling which ranges from tortured songs of lost love to tales of deceit and murder that will speak to fans of The Louvin Brothers and Johnny Cash. This is a perfect folk album that finds its way to my speakers each and every time I need a break from distorted guitars and power chords.

 

The Fratellis: In Your Own Sweet Time – 03/16/18

The Fratellis are a band that I heard back in 2008 when their undeniably catchy song Chelsea Dagger was used in a Heineken commercial that seemed to run about every 10 minutes. My wife and I used the song in our wedding as walk-out music for our wedding party but after that I didn’t hear or think much about The Fratellis until I randomly stumbled across their 2016 masterpiece, Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied, and fell head over heels in love with the Scottish power trio. While I was busy devouring that album I had noticed that they were releasing singles for their upcoming release, In Your Own Sweet Time. I hadn’t even gone back to digest their back catalog yet so they were still quite new to me and the falsetto voice that Jon Fratelli was using and the dance-like vibe on the new singles had thrown me for a loop. I could not wrap my head around this record until I heard this. Then it all clicked. In Your Own Sweet Time is a very different album than its predecessor and even more different from the album before that and so on. That is the beauty of The Fratellis. Their growth from album to album is stunning, almost as incredible as the amount of hooks that they have within each of their songs. I’ve only been digesting their catalog for a year so I don’t know if I can say that they’re the catchiest band I’ve ever heard, but I can say with confidence that they are as catchy as any band I’ve heard before. I could not love this band and this album more than I do which is made abundantly clear by my Spotify 2018 Wrapped Results: my Top 5 listened-to songs of the year are all by The Fratellis (4 out of those 5 are from In Your Own Sweet Time) and I spent 192 hours listening to them (which doesn’t take into consideration all the hours I spent listening to them on vinyl. Obsess much?!?

 

The Interrupters: Fight the Good Fight – 06/29/18

The Interrupters are a band whose name I’d been hearing for quite some time but I had never bothered to check out. Both my brother and my buddy Rob had been suggesting that I listen to them so I gave them a half-assed try and wrote them off as a Rancid …And Out Come the Wolves-era clone upon listening to all of a song and a half (if that). It’s strange that I didn’t give them more of a chance being that I’m a massive Rancid fan (their album Troublemaker was atop my Best of List of 2017). It wasn’t until I heard two of the members on the Turned Out a Punk podcast that I decided to give them a true listen and it didn’t take long for me to realize I had made a big mistake by being so quick to write them off. Fight the Good Fight, the third full length by The Interrupters, is a feel good, anthemic album that takes the best parts of both punk and ska and mashes them together, not unlike Rancid and Operation Ivy. It is an album that I have not stopped listening to since giving it its fair shake back in October. The songs are fun, extremely well written and incredibly catchy. This is a wonderful album that I’m glad my stubbornness didn’t prevent me from discovering.

 

Former Member: Old Youth – 07/13/18

Former Member is the new musical project of Jason Shevchuk who is known for his work in Kid Dynamite and None More Black. As much as I love Kid Dynamite, to me he’ll always be Jay from Bound who were the first local band I ever held onto as my own. Back in 1995 I was a kid who liked Green Day and Rancid (still do) until my older brother’s friend, Don, played me a demo tape by a hardcore band called Vision of Disorder which lead me onto a journey into the underground hardcore music scene. Don took me to my first show in December of 95 and the second band to play that day was Bound. The energy of their set and the fact that we had been chatting with Jay shortly before they played made a lasting impact on me that still has me going to shows to this day (perhaps with less screaming these days but still in the 100-300 people range). After Bound disbanded Jason went on to front Kid Dynamite who I loved and saw play a handful of times and then he formed the more melodic None More Black who weren’t my cup of tea but who I always rooted for because of how much I respected Jason as a musician and as a  hometown hero of sorts. When I read that he had released an album entitled Old Youth under the moniker Former Member (such a great, clever name) in which he’d handle all of the instruments except for drums I had myself a listen. By the second song I had jumped over to Bandcamp and bought the thing and didn’t listen to anything else for the next 3 weeks. The album has everything- great lyrics, tons of hooks, excellent production, etc. It’s pretty awesome that the guy who was blowing my mind up on stage at Middlesex County College has just put out one of my favorite albums of the year twenty three years later.    

 

The Living End: Wunderbar – 09/28/18

My mom was the music lover in my family. She had music playing nonstop and during my childhood she was into the modern rock of the time- Rick Springfield, Bryan Adams, The Outfield, etc so that’s what I liked as well. Then at 13, the band that made music an obsession of my own was Green Day. A few years later when I joined my first band, the two guys in the band were big fans of The Police and turned me onto them. While I have no way of knowing this, listening to Wunderbar, the latest album by The Living End, it sounds as if they may have had a similar musical upbringing. I’ve known of the Australian 3-piece for quite some time. They had a massive single, Prisoner of Society, that played non-stop when I worked at Skechers back in the late nineties. It was one of those songs that was so catchy that it was hard not to like and then it got played so much that it was impossible to enjoy anymore. In 2001 I saw them open for Green Day in Asbury Park, NJ. They were very entertaining and quite talented. I remember being mystified by their bassist who played an upright bass and climbed on top of it while playing but their brand of punk-rockabilly just wasn’t my thing. Earlier this year I noticed that a new single of theirs, Don’t Lose It, popped up on my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify and decided to give it a try. By the end of that song I was salivating to hear more. It would be a few months before their album Wunderbar was released but it was worth the wait. The Living End have grown into rock n’ roll powerhouse. Their punk and rockabilly roots are still in there but it’s clear that the sound that they’ve grown into over the years is just as influenced by the best parts of 80s rock. The common thread between the bands I grew up listening to and The Living End is that they all know their way around writing a well structured pop/rock song. Wunderbar is a damn near perfect album that will be in my rotation for years to come.

 

Sick of it All: Wake the Sleeping Dragon! – 11/02/18

Is it me or does it seem like law that record stores must play the absolute worst music at the loudest possible volume at all times? Every time I’ve been inside of one, which is a lot, the most god awful music is blaring and I’m left wondering if they’re trying to get people to leave. Maybe I’ve just seen Empire Records too many times. There’s an exception to every rule and on the night that I walked into my beloved Vintage Vinyl Records in Fords, NJ (a shop I’ve been frequenting for nearly 25 years) to pick up my special ordered copy of The Living End’s new record, the most powerful hardcore music was coming from the store’s speakers. At first I thought “who is this…Sick of it All?!?” but then I decided it couldn’t have been because I’ve never been a SOIA fan and here I was, roaming the aisles pretending to flip through records that I had no intention of buying just so I could hear more of this music. By the second song I had to open Shazam and sure enough, it was the new Sick of it All album, Wake the Sleeping Dragon! SOIA has been around forever and I’ve always had much respect for them but they’ve just never been my thing. Their shows always seemed too violent and I preferred a little metal in my hardcore so it just never clicked for me. But after I retrieved my special order I hopped in my car, queued up Wake the Sleeping Dragon! on Spotify, blasted it down the Garden State Parkway and had one of those perfect rides home that I never wanted to end. Wake the Sleeping Dragon! is an excellent record by a band that has been doing their thing for many years who I not only deeply respect but now am a fan.     

 

Death Ray Vision: Negative Mental Attitude – 11/30/18

First off, what an amazing album title! How has this not been used before? And I say this as a guy with a PMA tattoo on his arm and a PMA button on his jacket. I’m all about the positivity but I love the sarcasm and meanness of the title Negative Mental Attitude, especially for an album as hard hitting as this one. Death Ray Vision is a band that was comprised of 3 out of 5 members of the Massachusetts metalcore pioneers, Overcast. One of my all time favorite bands, Overcast played a brand of heavy music that, at the time, seemed to be too metal for the hardcore kids and too hardcore for the metal kids. That blend is the perfect balance for my ears and my other two favorite heavy bands of all time can be described in exactly the same way, those being Vision of Disorder and Candiria. On this, Death Ray Vision’s second full length, singer Brian Fair is no longer with the band. His replacement, Jeff Gard, has some big shoes to fill and does a hell of a job. He’s got a more “classic metal” voice as he sings in a higher register while Fair implemented his signature guttural screams mixed with his melodic, almost Hetfield-like singing. While no one could fill the shoes of one of my all time favorite vocalists Gard does as good a job as anyone could hope to do. Having Jeff Gard as the new vocalist of Death Ray Vision is what I imagine it’s like to have a really great stepdad move in while your, also awesome, dad moves out of the house. Both are rad dudes and if it can’t be your dad as the one living with you, you’re happy it’s this guy. Despite my truly awkward analogy, Negative Mental Attitude is an aggressive, in your face album that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go for the full 38 minutes.   

 

I Fucked Up in 2017

Michael Scott once said “It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong…and I am that big man.” It’s funny and awesome, to me, that music is all about timing. The following two albums were released in 2017 and I was too damn stupid to realize how great they were at the time:

 

Quicksand: Interiors – 11/10/17

Man, I really missed the boat on this one. Quicksand has been one of my favorite bands for a long time. I went into this, their comeback release, with mixed feelings. They had only released two albums, 1993’s Slip and 1995’s Manic Compression, and both were perfect. Their lifespan as a band was so short that they didn’t have time to make a misstep. It was a lot like the part in Good Will Hunting where Will wanted to break off his budding relationship with Skylar because she was perfect at that moment so he wanted out before he could discover her imperfections. When Quicksand began playing shows again I was that cranky old guy who refused to go see them because I knew the shows would be sold out and people would be singing all the damn words and I didn’t want these people ruining this perfect band for me. So when I found out they were releasing a new album I went into it with hesitation and a feeling that it could never live up to their past efforts. I had seen Walter Schreifels enough in the past 10 years either solo or with Rival Schools to know that his voice and demeanor was different now (not necessarily a band thing as I love me some Rival Schools, I’m just pointing out that it’s a very different band than Quicksand). I was sure he couldn’t recreate the impassioned yelling/singing of 1990s Walter and it turns out I was right about that. Interiors doesn’t have the angst and bite that those other records had, so I listened to it once or twice and wrote it off. Guess what? I am an idiot. Why would Quicksand reconvene all these years later if they were just going to pick up right where they left off (when they were more or less kids) rather than grow as a band and put who they are now into this new album? What they’ve created with Interiors is a Quicksand album that sounds perfect to my 38 year old ears. I still love Slip and Manic Compression and I always will but they’ve breathed new life into their sound. Instead of their aggressive groove they play a more dreamy, spacey groove that comes off just as heavy, just a different type of heavy. Walter’s voice is much more fluid which goes perfectly with the playing of Sergio Vega and Alan Cage, who make up one of the best rhythm sections of all time. It may have taken me a year to realize the brilliance of Quicksand’s latest album, but much like Will Hunting…I eventually got it right.

 

Jeff Caudill: Reset the Sun – 04/21/17

I’ve been a fan of Jeff Caudill’s songwriting since I first heard his band, Gameface, back in 1995/96. In Gameface he wrote catchy, heartfelt punk songs that always hit the spot for me. Then he began releasing solo albums sometime around 2006 that leaned more towards the alt-country realm and those were perfect to my ears too. That’s why it’s so curious that I didn’t latch onto this 6 song ep until a full year after its release. The only reason I can think of is that there’s so much music out there that it’s easy for an album to get lost in the shuffle along the way. One of the many great things about music is that once its released it’ll always be there and, like with most things in life, timing is everything. Reset the Sun is chock-full of great lines that Caudill has been churning out for decades (Tears in my ears and Live fast and live young are two of my favorite examples from this one), excellent guitar playing and tons of catchy hooks that will be the worm in your ear for weeks. Jeff Caudill never disappoints and as long as he keeps putting out records, I’ll keep listening.  

 

Rediscovery of the Year

 

The Police

Rediscovering an old favorite of mine, The Police, has everything to do with my favorite albums of 2018. As I was getting into The Fratellis and reading about their history I saw that they supported The Police on some shows for their comeback tour back in 2007. Then while listening to Former Member I noticed some definite influences of The Police on there (most notably the backups and guitar lead in Mendoza Line). The Interrupters will, more often than not, be labeled as a ska-punk band but they’ve got an evident reggae influence as well which surely goes hand in hand with ska but also to The Police as nobody mixed reggae with rock better than they did. And The Living End has an obvious love of The Police which is heard on Wunderbar but even more so on their excellent 2016 release, Shift. This made me go back and listen to this old favorite of mine and I’m so glad that I did. The first real band I played in while in was with two older kids from the town over from mine. They were only one grade ahead of me but these guys had driver’s licenses, which I did not, and were in a real band that had demo tapes and that played shows so it seemed like a whole lot more than a year that separated us. I was a baggy pants-wearing hardcore kid and they were more into punk but they also shared a great affinity for The Police. Because I thought they were cool and I wanted to be into what they were into I started listening to The Police and I also started wearing more well-fitting pants. Back then it was mostly their faster songs that I grasped onto, songs like Next to You, Fallout, Truth Hits Everybody, etc. Sure I liked So Lonely and The Bed’s Too Big Without You as well but I mostly stuck to their amazing Live! double cd. Just now, at 38, with years in between listening to them, am I able to truly appreciate the brilliance of their ability to blend raw, early punk with reggae and a perfectly written pop song all rolled into one. When I was young I thought playing fast was the sign of a good musician, and sometimes it can be, but as I got more experienced as a player and also as a music listener I came to realize that the true challenge is being able to play slow (and soft) when the song called for it. The Police did all of those things and they did all of them well. This year was very much about discovery for me as nearly all of the albums on my 2018 Albums of the Year list are from bands I hadn’t been a fan of previously but also one of the true highlights was rekindled (and at the same time brand new) love of a band from my early days of discovering music.  

Colonel N’ Commando

 

A little more than two years ago, Saturday, April 9, 2016 to be exact, I saw a show at Roxy and Dukes Roadhouse in Dunellen, New Jersey that turned out to be one of the greatest live music experiences of my life. And for a guy that’s been obsessively going to shows for the past 22 years, it’s truly a special show when it stands out against the hundreds embedded in my memory. And what’s more, on June 16, 2018, I get to go back to the very same venue and do it all over as Matt Witte of Coach N’ Commando is once again opening for JD Wilkes of The Legendary Shack Shakers. And although that does seem like an awful lot of names to remember I hope that you’ll trust me when I tell you it’s so worth it.

I have a tendency to discover a band and completely obsess over them. Right now it’s The Fratellis. Just ask my wife and son because I discovered the Scottish three-piece a short while ago and have punished my family by listening to nothing but them for four weeks straight. In my defense, they’re really, really good. Seriously, check out their discography  and email me when you get to a bad song. I don’t expect to hear from you. But we’re not hear to talk about The Fratellis. We’re here to talk about the best damn fingerpicking guitar player I’ve ever heard and a true Kentucky Colonel who made me a believer in the power of the harmonica.

Back in 2016 I stumbled across the music of JD Wilkes and was immediately hooked. Part of me was bummed that I was only then discovering his work, being that he’d been making records since the mid-nineties, realizing how many awesome shows and record releases I missed. But then my PMA kicked in and I found fortune in getting to devour all of his records in one fell swoop, much like a Netflix binge. And binge I did. Just a few short months later, my luck would get even better as Wilkes and his Legendary Shack Shakers were coming through the North East on tour so I grabbed tickets to both the Brooklyn show and the Dunellen, NJ show two nights later. Told you I was an obsessor. In Brooklyn there were no local openers, it was just the two bands that were out on tour together- The Pine Hill Haints and the Shack Shakers. To a guy in his thirties, that is a perfect night. Two bands means I’d probably be home well before 2am. Nothing better. Well, there was one thing better…getting to witness one of the best damn frontmen that I had ever seen. JD owned the stage and commanded the crowd. And hearing him wail away on his harmonica moved me the same way that the distorted guitars of Candiria moved me back when I was discovering heavy music as a teenager. It coursed through my veins and made me feel more alive than anything else I’d ever experienced. Like I said…nothing better. Two nights later I was ready to do it all again but this time the venue was a mere 40 minutes from my house rather than the hour plus it took me to get to pain in the ass Brooklyn. And also my friend Rob was coming along to this one so I didn’t have to be the loner in the corner trying his best not to look creepy. Now I had someone to stand and look creepy with. Here’s the rub- at this show there were two opening bands in addition to the two touring bands. As JD Wilkes would say from the stage later that night “that’s a lot of entertainment.” The first band played and were fine. It was fun enough but it went on for too long. Me and Rob were getting antsy and just wanted to see the touring bands already. We then ran into a friend of ours from “the old days,” Tony Diamond, who told us we needed to check out the next band. He said it was only two guys but if we closed our eyes we’d never believe that a duo could be that powerful. “TWO GUYS,” he shouted as he walked away smiling the smile of a man who knew something that we did not. Being the music snobs that we are, Rob and I ignored Tony’s enthusiasm and complained about how late we’d be getting home that night. Rob went off to get a beer and before he had returned Matt Witte had become my favorite guitar player and his partner in crime, John Swayne, was just as entertaining on the drums. Witte and Swayne, these…two guys, had us completely mesmerized. After each song they played my reactions alternated from laughing in disbelief to what I had just seen/heard to yelling out “HOLY SHIT!!!” Midway through their set we saw Tony Diamond on the other side of the crowd mouthing the words “TWO GUYS.” Spot on, Tony. The Pine Hill Haints played next and were solid but Rob and I spent the majority of their set talking excitedly, like a couple of schoolgirls, about what we had just witnessed. Ever the pro, JD Wilkes led his Shack Shakers to the stage to close out the show and it wasn’t long into their set that he was hanging upside down from the rafters, still singing into the microphone leaving me to believe I was seeing the Dillinger Escape Plan of the rockabilly world. We got home well after 2am, it’s New Jersey after all so we had to stop at a diner to continue talking about what we had just seen. And there’s nothing like coffee and french fries to cap off a perfect night.

In a couple weeks time Rob and I will be back at the same venue and the nice thing about true originals like Matt Witte and JD Wilkes is we’re not going in trying to relive a great night of the past but rather we’re going in to see what they’ll do next. Both Witte and Wilkes released solo albums in 2018, Ol’ Boy and Fire Dream, and both of those albums will be high atop my End of the Year List. Those Scottish guys I mentioned earlier will be on the list too.

Candiria Is My Bad Brains

I’m 37 years old and I consider myself to be a bit of a hardcore music historian, which is a more slick way of saying I’m a nerd who spends a lot of time alone reading about all things punk rock and hardcore. Being that I first got into hardcore in 1995 I missed the Bad Brains, a band who so many people and bands credit for opening their ears and eyes to something they had never heard or seen before. Going back to the nerd historian label, I have read just about everything there is out there about the band, but that’s not the same as being there. I was, however, fortunate enough to be introduced to a band very early on in their career who was unlike anything I’d heard before that would open my mind the very same way that the Bad Brains did for so many others before me and that band is Candiria.

Before the days of Spotify, YouTube and Amazon recommending things for us to check out based on the other things we like, real people did this for each other. Back in 1995 when I was first getting into hardcore I didn’t have one specific guide- be it a cousin, kid from the neighborhood or degenerate uncle- who would let me rifle through their record collection and the internet was in its’ infancy so I had to seek guidance through this new (to me) world of underground music in a variety of ways. My brother had a friend who was into hardcore who would introduce me to bands, I’d take note of the t-shirts other hardcore kids were wearing at shows, I’d scour the thank you lists of the albums I liked, etc. I discovered Candiria through a local New Jersey band who I loved called Bloodrust. I was talking to their guitar player at one of their shows and as we looked through Rick Ta Life’s cd distro he picked up Candiria’s Surrealistic Madness and told me that it was an album I should definitely check out. He described it as a mix of death metal, jazz and hardcore and it was unlike anything he’d ever heard before. Sold! I didn’t like death metal or jazz but if the guy from Bloodrust loved it and I loved his band…well that was all the math I needed to solve this equation. I took home my new cd, popped it in my boombox and promptly had the living shit scared out of me. And I liked it. I didn’t understand the music, as it was the most complicated, challenging stuff I had ever heard (and probably still to this day), but it compelled me to keep listening and here I am, over 20 years later, still listening and still having my mind blown by the Brooklyn based outfit.

There is no indifference with Candiria. People are either going get it or they’re not. You’ll never hear someone answer “they’re ok,” when asked whether or not they are a fan. The people who like Candiria, fucking love Candiria and it’s almost like our own little club. If I come across someone who is into them I immediately feel a kinship to them. It must be what those douches in Porsches who are all so happy to wave at each other on the highway must feel. I also feel that Candiria kind of ruined most hardcore for me. Each of the members are so unbelievably good at what they do, with unbelievable being the operative word, that it put a damper on so many other hardcore bands. It wasn’t just how they were playing, it was also what they were playing. To me, hardcore can get a little stale after a while. Earth Crisis put out Firestorm and suddenly every band is doing open E divebombs and seeing who could out-breakdown each other. Candiria sounded like no one else. To hear something truly and utterly unique was truly inspiring. I regularly still put on Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Candiria’s second full length album that was released in 1997 and 21 years later I continue to hear things that I never noticed before. The same could be said about any one of their albums.  

Twenty years of listening to a band and seeing them live at least a dozen times apparently doesn’t shield a person from having an asshole moment. In 2016 when I heard that Candiria would be releasing a new record without their original drummer, Ken Schalk, I had my reservations. Candiria was the first band that I saw in which I would spend as much, if not more, time staring at the drummer as I would the other members. He was so technical, he beat upon his drums as if he were mad at them and yet played with such a groove. Schalk was such an integral part of Candiria’s unique flavor that I was convinced he was impossible to replace. So I let the release of, While They Were Sleeping, one of my favorite bands’ brand new albums pass me by. That is until I heard Carley Coma on an episode of The Jasta Show, Jamey Jasta from Hatebreed’s excellent podcast. Carley was such a nice guy and it made my love of Candiria come rushing back to me. The next day while my wife and son were out and I painted a few rooms of my house I had my 36 year old mind blown, the same way my 15 year old world was turned on its head 21 years prior. I’d be hard pressed to say that While They Were Sleeping is Candiria’s best album because when I was younger albums like Process of Self Development and 300 Percent Density, which were filled with pure insanity, were exactly what I wanted at that time in my life. But I can say, with more focus on songwriting rather than on writing the craziest parts imaginable, that While They Were Sleeping is the best record they could have released at this point in their career. It is heavy and, like Candiria always does, pushes musical boundaries that will keep old school Candiria fans happy but is also by far their most accessible album which should speak to a larger audience than their previous albums were able to do. So if you’re a Candiria fan from back in the day and have not yet given While They Were Sleeping a chance, I hope you will do so. And if you’ve never heard Candiria before, this album is as good a place to start as any. 

Album of the Years

10.3.16

It’s early October. We’ve still got three months left in 2016 and a bunch of albums will be released in that time but my favorite album of the year has already been decided: Sara Watkins’ Young in All the Wrong Ways. Arriving at this conclusion and realizing what a surprise it was, as I was unaware of her work before hearing this album, I decided to put together a playlist of my picks for Album of the Year for the past four years, each of which were equally surprising.

2013  Pearl Jam Lightning Bolt  

This album came out of nowhere for me. Pearl Jam’s first three albums made a huge impact on me just as I was really getting into music. I’ve always been a “fan” because of that but after Vitalogy nothing ever resonated with me. Then I went to see Nine Inch Nails at a hockey arena. I left about 5-6 songs in, not because they were bad necessarily. The setting and the crowd just wasn’t for me. So as I waited in Newark for a train, on a whim I put on Lightning Bolt which had come out that day and have been hooked on it ever since. I even have a tattoo somewhat inspired by the song Lightning Bolt, so stick that in the “fun facts” file. 

2014  Ryan Adams Ryan Adams  

Most of my friends are big into Ryan Adams but by the time I decided I should check him out, his catalogue was so intimidatingly vast that I didn’t know where to start. Then one night I went to see Bob Mould with friends. We were discussing Ryan Adams when he walked right past us. Then he kept showing up wherever we ended up in the venue. After the show I freaked out Bob Mould by drunkenly telling him that we followed Ryan around all night and then about a week later my friend suggested I listen to his self titled album and it is one of my absolute favorite albums. To this day it’s still the only album of his that has clicked for me, but this is definitely an all-time album in my book. 

2015  Jesse Malin New York Before the War  

Ever get blown away by seeing an artist live and then on the way home with the perfect buzz of half a pot brownie (never a whole!) and a couple beers discover an entirely different artist who turns out to be a complete game changer?? I’m fortunate to say that I have- the night I saw Mark Lanegan perform a mind blowing set and then on the train ride home I discovered Jesse Malin via his 2015 masterpiece New York Before the War. There are so many things about that night that I will never forget. Those kinds of nights are pretty great. Even though I didn’t hear this album until 2016, it was released in 2015 and tops everything I heard from that year so I’m posthumously declaring it my favorite album of 2015. Now I have to go look up “posthumously” and figure out if I used it correctly. 

2016  Sara Watkins Young in All the Wrong Ways  

As with the three previous albums that I’ve written of, I came across Young in All the Wrong Ways in a fairly unique way. It has to do with Paul Thomas Anderson and Fiona Apple and if you’re not already disgusted by my pop culture name drops then I’ll tell you the full story the next time we run into each other. This album cuts right through to my soul. Each listen brings me new joy- her voice, the drums (goddamn, the drums!!), the sequencing, the lyrics…shall I go on?!? We’ve all heard albums and felt like they were singing the words directly to us. The lyrics on this album, almost eerily, feel like they are describing my life. This is an album that’s going to be with me for a long time. I am so glad that I found it. Thanks PT and Fiona. And don’t worry…I’ll show myself out. 

Nerd Bonus Content:

Favorite shows of 2016-

4.9.16  Legendary Shack Shakers, Coach N Commando Dunellen, NJ

6.17.16 Bill Burr Newark, NJ

6.23.16 Mark Lanegan NYC, NY

9.10.16 JD Wilkes solo Rehoboth Beach, DE

Still to come…

10.5.16  Sara Watkins NYC, NY

10.14.16 Jesse Malin Maplewood, NJ

12.2.16  Slim Cessna’s Auto Club Brooklyn, NY

Guilty Pleasure

10.1.16

Recently I’ve come across a few interviews in which an artist is asked to open up about their musical guilty pleasures and they give an answer such as “I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If it gives you pleasure, then why should you feel guilty about it?” Well apparently these artists had the good fortune of not being raised Catholic, because just about everything I do comes with some semblance of guilt. And as far as music goes, yeah, I’ve got a few. In fact…I’ve got a bunch.

A few months back I was at my favorite record store, Vintage Vinyl, in Fords NJ. I’ve been going there since well before I could drive. The first time I went I must’ve been in the seventh grade as I had just found out that Green Day had released two albums prior to Dookie. A friend of mine told me about this record store called Vintage Vinyl that carried them and was about 45 minutes away which may have well been in a different country to a kid whose entire existence was lived within a distance of being able to hear his dad whistle so he knew when to come home for dinner. I asked my mom to drive me and because she’s a huge music lover and because those were her old stomping grounds (she grew up around the corner in Edison), she jumped at the chance. So I’ve been frequenting this store for more than 20 years and I still feel awkward in there. It’s a record store thing. You feel judged for your choices and that’s the way it is. A record store isn’t alone in instilling instant, unavoidable awkwardness in its’ customers. Other places include tattoo shops, guitar stores, vegan restaurants and a bar that has no business having a dress code but feels entitled to blindly enforce a no jeans policy or no sneakers policy without any signs or warning (not that I have a specific example in mind for the last one or anything).

So there I was in Vintage Vinyl a few months back with a gift card in hand and there wasn’t much I needed but I had free money to spend. So this is what power feels like?!? There was an album that I’ve loved since it’s come out but I usually admitted to loving it only to my closest friends. I didn’t yet own it on vinyl and there it was staring me in the face: My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. Fuck what a catchy record that is!! My wife likes the album and it’s also an album I can play when in the presence of my two year old son which is now a factor in buying albums. It ups the albums’ worth, in a sense, if I can play it at times when everyone’s home. I pulled it from the slot, put in underneath the Bonnie Prince Billy album I was also purchasing and headed up to the counter. The clerk behind the counter had rung me up quite a few times before and was always quite nice, never coming off as judgy so I felt it was as good a time as any to walk up with an album that I felt needed an explanation with my purchase of it (“yes I’m buying this album but i went to my first hardcore show in 1995, I own “X” amount of Ebullition Records releases, etc.) and with this particular employee I could get away with not feeling the burning desire to spit this out as I handed it to him. As he scanned the Bonnie Prince Billy album he looked at the cover and asked “When did this one come out?” to which I wittily replied “Man, he puts out like 3 albums a year so I’ve lost track,” and we both shared a pretentious record collector chuckle. His chuckle ended before mine as the cover of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge entered his line of vision. This ended our kindred banter and he got right back to the nuts and bolts of the transaction. If we were Spanish this is the point in which he would’ve switched to the usted form. $34.98 please. Here you go.

I walked to my car, ran over my punk credentials in my head, made sure my windows were rolled up (and were air fucking tight) and queued up Helena on Spotify (I’m losing punk points left and right here) and had the time of my life singing at the top of my lungs for the entire 25 minute journey home. So yeah…sometimes pleasure feels guilty. And that’s part of the fun.

Here’s a playlist of some other guilty pleasures of mine. I’ve loved these albums since they came out. For the most part I kept my love of them secret until I’d meet someone else “in the know.” And they always felt guilty about loving them too so having this unspoken bond with someone was cathartic. But really, all four of these albums are excellent. Third Eye Blind has, hands down one of the douchiest lead singers around who writes some of the lamest lyrics I’ve ever read. But the dude writes a hell of a catchy song and has some incredible melodies. Their first two albums rip. I feel as guilty about loving them as I do about my use of the word “rip,” but I’m sticking with both. As for The Goo Goo Dolls (or would it be simply Goo Goo Dolls, with no “the?” Who the hell knows?)…anytime I think of them I think of working at Skechers my senior year of high school. I was a hardcore kid who ran the stock room and my assistant manager let me set up a cd player and play whatever music I wanted as long as it was low enough that they couldn’t hear it out front. It was 1999 so I was listening to Torn Apart, Kid Dynamite, Samiam, etc. One day I was stocking the shit out of some Skechers and my soundtrack was Dizzy Up the Girl by The (?) Goo Goo Dolls. Denise, my assistant manager, comes in the back looking for shoes, hears the music, looks at me like I had just slaughtered my own family and says “YOU are listening to THIS?!?” Hell, I even remember the song that was playing when this occurred. It was Black Balloon. Of course a goddamned ballad was playing. Why couldn’t she have walked in when a rocker was playing?!? Yes, the Goo Goo Dolls has some rockers goddammit!! I tried justifying my choice but I had clearly lost some street cred in her eyes and was just another stock-schmuck. Oh well…those people out front never understood me anyway. I was better off being left alone in my cave with my endless crates of Skechers and my 90s mid-tempo girly rock. In a way, if you think about it, that’s as punk as it gets. Perhaps that’s the guilt talking…

Finally, a friend to go record shopping with. 

 

 

Maybe Not Every Time, But This Time I’ll Die

Tomorrow, Every Time I Die, a band that has been releasing music and touring for the past 15+ years will be releasing an album called Low Teens on Epitaph Records and for the first time in that decade and a half…I cannot friggin’ wait.

The first time I heard of Every Time I Die was back in the early aughts. My friend, Portland, who was working at Ferret Records suggested I check them out as they were Ferret’s latest signing. He knew how much I loved Torn Apart (their The Fifty-Ninth Session ep was a total gamechanger for me) and said that Every Time I Die had a similar feel. I liked their name, I loved that their website was ShittyDudes.com but being the Torn Apart Snob that I was I didn’t feel it lived up to the all but unknown Maryland band that I held in such high regard, so I didn’t latch onto their music. A few years later, in 2004, I was fortunate enough to go on tour with The Dillinger Escape Plan for a month across the U.S. on their Miss Machine Gets Pregnant tour. Every Time I Die was direct support and while they put on a great show every night and I highly enjoyed Keith Buckley’s in between song banter I still didn’t run out and buy any of their records. Well, twelve years later, all of that is about to change.

Even though I’ve never been a fan, ETID is a band that I’ve always respected, rooted for and with each album they release I will track down their lyrics as I’ve always been a fan of Keith Buckley’s wit and way with words (unlike yours truly. “Wit and way with words?!?” Shakespeare, I am not!). Upon reading that Tim Singer, vocalist of Deadguy and Kiss it Goodbye (two of my all time favorite bands and another of my favorite lyricists) would be on their upcoming album I clicked on their stream of C++ (Love Will Get You Killed) a song off the forthcoming Low Teens. Tim Singer was not on that song but about 30 seconds into the song I forgot all about that. What I heard was what I was hoping to hear on the new Deftones album. A perfect blend of singing and screaming, an amazing groove with the drums and some killer riffs that had me air guitaring so much it would color Bjorn Turoque impressed. I quickly queued up the other two songs they had released on Spotify, Glitches and The Coin Has a Say, and just like that, it became one of my most anticipated albums of the end of 2016 along with Dangers, Neurosis and Green Day.

I’m nearly 36 and, these days, heavy music doesn’t have quite the same effect on me as it once did. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the classics. Put on Overcast, old Candiria or VOD, Deadguy or that Torn Apart ep that I mentioned and I’ll be whisper-screaming and air-drumming like it’s nobody’s business. But for a guy who uses the Instagram handle TheNinetiesGuy (before passing judgement just consider how quickly RyanRoberts was taken and then you tell me what I was supposed to pick) you might be surprised at how little hardcore actually speaks to me. That’s what is so surprising and refreshing about a band who has been out there grinding for nearly twenty years who is still clearly evolving and can turn a curmudgeon like me, who doesn’t relate to much with screaming that doesn’t come out on Vitriol Records these days, into a fan. I’ve heard three songs off of Low Teens and I am chomping at the bit to hear more. Tomorrow after getting off work I will be picking up my toddler from my in laws’ house and together we will be heading up to Vintage Vinyl to support one of the hardest working hardcore bands in the game and grabbing Low Teens on vinyl. Sure, I won’t be able to listen to it on the ride home…I’m no sadist after all. But the kid has to go to sleep at some point. And I just hope these 35 year old bones will still have something left in them so they can be awake past 9pm to enjoy this album on its’ release date.

Love it to Life

“Do you ever look around and think to yourself- My god, we’re friggin’ doomed?!?” This is the question that I posed to my wife, Gia, as we exited the rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike last Friday. We were on our way to Philadelphia for a wedding and when we made a quick pit stop we were surrounded by the kinds of people that Bill Burr so brilliantly depicted as animals in his 2010 special Let it Go. Call them what you will: Mouthbreathers, In-the-Way-People or just go with Burr’s summary and call them Animals…but they’re everywhere and if you’re not careful they will destroy your spirit. And then, not even 10 minutes further on that unsightly highway that they call the Turnpike, I received an email from a guy named Alex who worked at Side One Dummy Records that reminded me that people are a lot like bands- there are still gems out there…you just have to sift through a lot of shit to find them.

Even though he’s been making it since the early eighties, I only just discovered Jesse Malin’s music about a month and a half ago. I had traveled into New York City to see Mark Lanegan at The Gramercy Theater and an ad for a D Generation show, the reunited glam-punk band from the nineties, continuously ran before and in between bands. The hypnotic advertising did its job because after an incredible performance by Lanegan that put me on cloud nine, I got on a train headed back to Jersey and queued up D Generation on Spotify. As buzzed minds tend to do, mine wandered to the biography portion of the user-friendly (but artist-unfriendly) app and learned that the lead singer of D Generation was Jesse Malin who was now about a decade and a half into a solo career. I had heard the name, Jesse Malin, before but I never did bother to listen because for some reason my mind was convinced that he was the MTV VJ with the hair that was so obnoxious that it took the attention off of his piercing voice for just long enough to get the next video queued up.

Now, realizing that these were two completely different humans (which I felt less foolish about after spreading The Word of Malin and two friends and my wife all had the same response [I’m paraphrasing]: the MTV dude with the hair?!?), I was up for hearing some new music and with a plethora of albums to choose from I did what anyone fueled on Brooklyn Lager and half a pot brownie would do- I picked the one with the coolest title: New York Before the War. From that moment on I was a different person. That night, Jesse Malin took me on a journey that I doubt I will ever forget and his album was the soundtrack to my NJ Transit ride home from one of the best shows I have seen all year. It’s not often, if ever, that someone has the privilege of seeing a live show that shakes them to the bone and then discovers a completely different artist that would go on to be such a game changer for them. And yes, I have done this plenty of times before. By “this” I mean I have heard something that I deemed a game changer while my mind was altered only to hear it completely differently under less altered states only to curb my hopeful exuberance. So, of course, the first thing I did the next day was fire up New York Before the War while stone-cold sober and it gave me the same charge as the night before.

Since that wild summer night I have really connected with a few of Malin’s releases, namely 2010’s Love it to Life, and both albums that he released in 2015: New York Before the War and Outsiders. I made the half hour journey to Vintage Vinyl, the record store that I’ve been frequenting since the eighth grade after finding out that Green Day had released two albums before Dookie (thanks for all the rides, Mom), and I picked up his two latest albums on vinyl but I could not find Love it to Life. The more I listened to Love it to Life, the full-band album that was released on Side One Dummy Records, the more I had to have it. Not since discovering Tim Barry back in 2012 or so, have an artist’s lyrics affected me so deeply. While both Barry and Malin, and Bill Burr too for that matter, come from completely different places (and certainly different than where I come from) I know that they feel so many of the same things that I feel. And isn’t that what we all seem to be looking for- someone to relate to? A friend, an ally….someone who makes us feel not so crazy after all? Maynard Keenan said it better than I ever could: I’m so eager to identify with someone above the ground, someone who seemed to feel the same.

Onward to Philadelphia. We left the rest stop and I was trying to keep a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude, a mindset that Napoleon Hill introduced way back in 1937 and the Bad Brains adopted and enlightened so many hardcore kids with, including Jesse Malin and yours truly). I try not to get too doom and gloomy around Gia. Unlike Bill Burr or Larry David who can rant about society’s flaws and sound annoyed but hilarious, I come off sounding annoying and mass killer-y. So I tend to save those types of diatribes for my friend, Rob, who shares my misanthropic feelings but who also knows that I have no intention of going postal; that I’d rather just let the frustration out and then numb myself with some music and perhaps my trusty vaporizer. But, in just 10 short minutes, the rest stop crowd lead me to my wit’s end. Having to dodge those who come to a dead stop out of nowhere while walking so they could check their ever so important text messages and the cuisine aficionados who are wrestling with the dilemma of Burger King or Nathan’s, it’s easy to lose hope and want to trade in my Eckhart Tolle and Herman Hesse books for a subscription to Doomsday Prepper Monthly. So I said my piece to Gia and left her wondering if she was going to have to deal with the dark side of me who listens to Neurosis and thinks Bobcat Goldthwait is the genius director of our time (if you haven’t seen World’s Greatest Dad and/or God Bless America I implore you to do so…NOW) or the happy go lucky guy who likes Green Day and popsicle stick jokes. At that point, I didn’t know either. And then my email bing-bonged. Opening my email (Gia was driving) I was delighted to see that it was from my less-popular personal email rather than my work email. I opened it up to a note from Alex from Side One Dummy Records. At that moment I remembered that I had sent an email-on-a-whim the night before. I had been scouring Discogs for the past week looking at vinyl copies of Malin’s Love it to Life for sale. It was out there in Internet record-land and for a reasonable price too but the earnest music lover in me wants to go straight to the source for records that hit this hard. Of course I know that one guy showing interest in a record released six years prior isn’t going to make a huge difference on Soundscan (which I’m sure is a dated reference), but if it’s available from the artist or the label then that’s where I prefer to go first goddammit. So the night before I had filled out one of those contact forms on Side One Dummy’s website asking if they had any copies for sale because I had just discovered it, thought it was amazing and wanted to purchase it (it is not available in their webstore, which is why I asked the question). Much to my surprise, and delight, I received a message back from Alex saying that they had a single copy in the office which was used for promotional photos at one point and because it was used he didn’t feel comfortable selling it to me, but he’d happily send it to me if I were just to provide my address. Wow. This was a huge difference from what I had just experienced on the Walt Whitman Rest Stop of the New Jersey Turnpike. Here was a guy that works for a label that’s big enough that I never expected to even hear back from, that didn’t want to sell me this record but he would send it to me for free because he wanted it to go to a good home. I then had a 3-4 email exchange with Alex that not only made my night, but reminded me that there is a lot of good out there in this backwards moving world. Sure, there’s a ton of shit too but that just makes finding the good even better.

Being a music obsessed guy, day in and day out I search for the soundtrack to my day. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. But the cool thing about finding inspiration in music or whatever brings you joy, whether it be sports, movies, books, bicycling, gardening, etc. is that you wake up with hope each day. One day Jesse Malin’s PMA can remind me that everything is going to be okay and the next Neurosis’ bleakness is what will give me comfort. Also, outside of the music itself it is nice to know that there are others out there like me, who are finding inspiration, hope, solace and happiness within a couple of chords and some earnest words. It’s nice to have others to remind us that we’re not alone and we’re not fucking crazy…as long as we keep working at it, anyway.

 

 

To Slim, I Give Thanks

“Music: it takes you on a journey that you never expected to go on.”

I cannot recall where I first heard the above quote but I do know when. On May 9th, 2015 I jotted down these words into my iPhone Notes and it’s about the truest statement I’ve heard in some time. Although we’re not quite in The Jetsons or even Marty McFly’s version of 2015, we are absolutely in the future, certainly in a technological sense, and the way we acquire and consume music is a perfect example of that. The sheer accessibility of being able to hear any song, by any band, at any given time simply by pushing a button on a screen that is attached to us at all times is a reality. Spotify has made Musical ADHD an actual thing (okay, not a thing found in medical journals but trust me…it’s a thing). Because music is so readily available and because of the sheer volume of bands that exist today it makes it very hard to stumble across something that is unfamiliar territory to our ears. But then, just like that, a band with a name that sounds nothing like a band name at all can roll through like a tumbleweed and change everything you thought you knew about music. So on this, a day of thanks, I am thankful to Slim Cessna’s Auto Club.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club have been around for a good twenty years but they had never crossed my radar until just last year. I can actually remember the exact moment when I first heard them. It was Thanksgiving and I had a full day of dog walks ahead of me. While my clients were off with their families stuffing themselves silly with cranberry sauce and screaming at the television for their team to SCORE!!, I was driving from house to house walking dogs and in between I was desperately searching Spotify for albums that I could make it through listening to more than just two songs. This band with the confusing name was constantly popping up in the “Related artists” section when I would listen to 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand so on my way to walk JoJo the Jack Russell I gave them a shot. At the time the only two albums that Spotify had available was their self-titled debut from 1995 and their live album from 2005, Jesus Let Me Down. In most cases a live album is not the greatest way to experience a band for the first time, especially not to a music nerd such as myself who considers albums and their sequencing to be sacred territory. But Slim Cessna’s Auto Club is a band like no other and their live album is the perfect way to get acquainted with them.

For the next two weeks I listened to that live album as if it were my job. I was intrigued, confused and mystified by the performance captured on that recording. They are storytellers and have songs about murder, redemption and religion. It is clear that this band takes what they do quite seriously but, refreshingly, they do not take themselves too seriously. They have fast songs, slow songs, old timey country songs, gospel songs, dark songs and songs that make you want to get up and dance. I will stop here, as trying to describe their music would be a futile endeavor. I still cannot figure out how to put their music into words and besides- it’s out there in the world so it’s the listener’s job to figure it out. It wasn’t long after hearing Jesus Let Me Down that I decided I needed to hear more so I hopped on Discogs and purchased a copy of their album from 2008, Cipher. If I wasn’t already obsessed enough (I was) this album put me over the top. It is a masterpiece from start to finish and is a desert island album for me. This, then, began my mission to track down and consume every piece of music that this band had put out. Technology made acquiring their albums relatively easy but I knew that this was a band that I needed to experience live and luckily I would not have to wait long to do so.

On May 28, 2015 The Auto Club rolled into The Mercury Lounge in New York City. It was just six months, almost to the day, after I had first heard them but it seemed like I had been waiting a lifetime to see them. Their live show is unlike anything I have ever seen before. After 20 years of obsessive show-going, while it’s probably an impossible task to nail down the best show I’ve ever seen, this one is certainly in my Top 3 of all-time. Unlike the shows that I’m used to going to where everyone looks like…well…me, the crowd that turned out to see this one of a kind band was one of the most diverse groups of people that I have ever been around. And the beautiful thing was that once the music started the crowd, filled with folks young and old and from all different walks of life, became one. And, yes, I’m well aware of how incredibly lame that sounds. Never have I seen a band captivate a crowd the way that The Auto Club did. People clapped, danced, sang along and moved out of the way when singers Slim Cessna and Munly Munly would decide to venture into the crowd…which was quite often. Everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives and, just like that, the way in which I experienced live music was completely transformed.

In the year since discovering Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, on top of their amazing discography, I have also been turned onto other great works of art coming out of their home city of Denver. Benjamin Whitmer is an author who I was first exposed to when The Auto Club launched their new website last summer. As soon as I got to the end of the bio he had written for them I ordered a copy of his most recent novel, Cry Father, which was hands down my favorite book that I read last year. His first novel, Pike, was also a very good read and I’m three quarters of the way through Satan is Real, The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers which is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading that Whitmer co-wrote with Charlie Louvin. Another great artist that I was exposed to is a photographer named Gary Isaacs who does a ton of work with Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and all of their many side projects. I’ve spent many nights on his website just looking through all of his amazing photographs. Hell, I even have a framed print of his hanging on my wall that gets more compliments than just about anything else that we have in our house.

Part of me is saddened by the fact that I’m only now discovering this band, twenty plus years into their existence, as I think of all the shows I’ve missed and the anticipation of all of these great album releases. But the optimist in me realizes that the Ryan of his teens and twenties wasn’t ready for this music. If I had heard Slim and Co. back in the mid-nineties or the first decade of the 2000s I would’ve shrugged it off half a song in and went back to my favorite bands who were screaming their heads off and whose live shows resembled riots to the uninitiated (and sometimes even to the initiated). But since last Thanksgiving, much like this new binge-watching phenomenon that Netflix has instilled upon us, I’ve been enjoying catching up on so many great albums by a band who has changed the way I hear, see and feel music. For me 2015 was The Year of Slim. And with talks of a new album on its way next year, and with every intention to fly to Denver for its album release show, well I don’t foresee having to think of a new nickname for 2016.

Now I Remember

As I stood in the most secluded part of the Starland Ballroom that I could find, I sent my pal, Rob, the following text: “I’m at Starland Ballroom with my brownie about to kick in, realizing that I’m too old (and bitter) for these kinds of shows.” Not long after hitting send, Death Ray Vision took the stage and ripped through a blistering eleven song set that reminded me that there is not much better than live hardcore music when done right.

(photo credit: Steph Malfatto; StephMalfatto.com)

I haven’t been listening to much hardcore these days and I’ve narrowed it down to two main reasons why not:

1. At the ripe old age of 34 I find myself not being able to relate to what hardcore bands of today are screaming about. At 16 years old, just like VOD said, dropping the oppressor did seem like the only solution. Nowadays the only solution in my mind is to avoid the oppressor. The world is a fucked up place so my plan is to create a bubble and keep the good ones in and the bad ones out. And I certainly don’t want to scream about this. That would only draw attention to, and burst, said bubble.

and

2. I have a kid now. This doesn’t mean I’ve gotten soft and only listen to The Wiggles, though they are awesome. But rather, I find that there’s far less opportunity for me to put my hardcore records on the turntable. Most times that I am home with him, Willie is either playing or napping so as much as I’d love to drop the needle on Turmoil’s The Process Of, I think that the opening line (truly one of the most brutal openings of any hardcore record ever) “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?!?” might wake Willie and get me into a heap of trouble. So I’ve been discovering all of this great, quieter music that doesn’t disturb the household which would in turn leave me sleeping outside. And don’t mistake quiet for light. These new (to me) artists are teaching me that an acoustic guitar can make some of the darkest, most haunting music I’ve ever heard.

The Starland Ballroom is a venue that is a mere 25 minutes from my house and it’s one that I go to maybe once every two or three years. It’s a beautiful venue and one that’s so convenient for me to get to but they host bands that don’t interest me. The bands that were being advertised on the screen that I stared at from corner while nursing a beer were: Say Anything, Nonpoint, Staind, Emmure, Halestorm, etc. Apart from Staind I have never actually heard any of these bands and I don’t plan on doing so. But on this night, Killswitch Engage was headlining a show with direct support from All That Remains. This is one of those shows that I would typically avoid as well but the second band on the bill was Death Ray Vision. This would be my fourth time seeing them in four different states. The first time I hopped on a bus and saw them play in Revere, Massachusetts. They played for half an hour and it was every bit worth the 500 mile, 9 hour round trip trek. I then saw them in Philly in a 100 capacity club on my 31st birthday. The third time was in New York at The Studio at Webster Hall, an amazing place to see an intimate show. As I pulled up to the Starland Ballroom and shelled out seven bucks to park my car in the VFW lot across the street I knew that tonight was a different kind of a show than I was used to but it was Death Ray Vision so I was going to suck it up for the night.

(Gia thinks it’s odd that I write in the band I went to see on my tickets if I wasn’t there for the headliner. Even after 10 years of being together, my nerdy-ness still surprises her.)

As I stood there waiting for them to take the stage, my pot brownie had begun to set in and I had started to second guess my decision to come. Maybe I was too old for hardcore shows. I was starting to get inside my own head wondering if everyone around me was staring at me with pity for not having a friend to come to the show with. Was I the lonely soul that eats alone at the same table of a TGI Fridays every week? I buckled down and decided to make my way close to the front and told myself that if the crowd absolutely sucked and I couldn’t focus, I could just go stand in the back. After they played their first song, Shattered Frames, there was no goddamned that way I was moving from my spot.

For the next thirty minutes (a perfect set length for a hardcore band) I was 16 again. I whisper-screamed along to every word and bopped my head along with the drums with reckless abandon and without worry of the Metallica-neck I would face for the next few days. There is no doubt that the band, who before they played, were probably known by most in the crowd as Mike D. from Killswitch and Brian from Shadows Fall’s other band, had captivated and commanded everyone watching and the crowd now knew exactly who they were. They also reminded this old grump of music’s ability to allow one to escape from everything, whether that music was coming out of earbuds and helping to forget about a shitty day at work or if it came from a stage and was somehow able to make the Slipknot shirts and cell phones being held overhead become nothing more than blurred images in one’s peripheral vision.

As All That Remains began their set and after seeing not one, but two grown men dressed in cow suits (it was the night before Halloween but that didn’t make it right) I got out of the club as quickly as possible so that I wouldn’t come down from my high…either one of them. Reminding me that I was at a concert rather than a show was the fact that the gate to the VFW lot that I had parked in was locked shut. I headed inside the hall where Joel and Adam from Killswitch were sitting drinking beer at a half full bar and an older gentleman said he would unlock the gate so that I could be on my way. He apologized for it being locked saying that most people didn’t leave this early on in a show and told me that “Killswitch are right over there.” He was an awesome guy and I enjoyed my chat with him on the way to my car. It’s funny that the person I found myself most able to relate to on this night was a VFW member who had no idea who the hell the bands across the street were. As I drove home I promised myself, as I did after each time I have seen them, that every time Death Ray Vision comes within a few hours of my house I will be in the crowd remembering what I love so much about this kind of music…just incase the picture sitting on my desk from the last time they came through New York doesn’t remind me of this each and everyday.

(Death Ray Vision, Studio at Webster Hall- NYC 09/13/13 with yours truly either screaming along or reacting to taking a dreadlock to the face)