mikemightwritesometimes

[mikemightwritesometimes]

The Brave Little Abacus - Just Got Back From the Discomfort-we’re alright

Describing something as “genre-bending” or “genre-defying” has perhaps become a bit of a cliche in the age of modern music criticism. The limits of genre are no longer a set-in-stone barrier to be broken through by the rare experimental act signed to a record label. However, there do remain genres that have such loyal, dedicated followings that - every once in a while - a record comes along and sparks constant arguments about whether or not it belongs among the ranks of the most prestigious albums of its kind. Black metal and Deafheaven’s 2013 landmark record Sunbather come to mind immediately, and the same goes for emo and New Hampshire’s own The Brave Little Abacus - a band that transcends past any cliche of “genre-breaking” and simply presents its music directly to you as-is: incredibly unique, heart-wrenchingly emotional, and deceptively technical. Emo is a genre dear to my heart, so I’ve seen more than my fair share of emo-tinged-post-hardcore and emoviolence purists in my day. Yet I believe emo, like any genre, needs to be constantly judged by the new watermarks set within it. With their sophomore effort “Just Got Back From the Discomfort-we’re alright” (henceforth referred to as simply “JGB”), The Brave Little Abacus created the absolute perfect emo record, a stunning achievement for the genre as well as indie music on the whole - one that subverts every trope you ever knew about the genre. They did this by not trying to create an emo record at all.

From the very beginning seconds of the record, the sample of a tape player rewinding is an unsuspecting yet perfectly indicative notification of the strangeness that is about to be contained within the next forty-four minutes. Almost immediately, following a barrage of crash cymbals and lo-fi intensity - perfectly lined with an extremely short and pretty key progression - the album has already enveloped you into its whimsical world. Whether you’d like to remain for the ride at this point is up to you, and at first - I actually couldn’t listen for much longer than that. The absolute strangeness of the first few tracks threw me off upon my initial listen. The unique brand of nasal vocals, the lo-fi aesthetic, and the prominent synth lines all shook a listener who was simply ready to hear something that sounded either like American Football or Snowing. And boy, am I so god damned glad I stuck around for that second listen.

Perhaps it wasn’t because I had my volume up enough. JGB is chock full of moments that reward tapping into that most primal, angst-ridden part of your brain. At first, you get to appreciate these moments at face-value, intelligently written, verbose, yet emotional lyrics on top of some intense instrumentation. Upon second listen, however, you realize the full compositional skill of the artists involved. The breakdown of  “pile! no pile! pile!” is musically hypnotizing, with a Modest Mouse-esque twanging guitar line punctuated by delay-soaked drums and alternating piano chords. Then, as so often on the record, singer, guitarist, lyricist, and drummer Adam Demirjian hits you with a lyric that cuts deep to the core of an emotional soul. A lyric like “I want to relearn why we’re friends again. I thought you knew?” or “I can’t pile one atop the other - just feels bad.” when screamed at the top of the lungs with some truly creative instrumentation behind it is pure, unadulterated catharsis. 

“Pile” is just the best example of why this album is so engrossing and captivating when given your full attention. Don’t get it twisted, however. The album is chock full of highlights. The first peak of “Please don’t cry, they stopped hours ago.” is yet another one, what with its repeated agony of something lurking in the water only until it suddenly bursts and then softens into an emotional tour-de-force of reminiscent nostalgia punctuated by what sounds like a glockenspiel. It’s only topped by the second peak of the song - our introduction into one of the defining phrases of the record: “Let me bathe amidst my ignorance as if I were asleep.”

“A highway got paved over my future, I drive it getting to school.” is a de facto showcase of every crazily unique musical idea the record will offer. Foreign synths slamming into your face in the first few seconds, arpeggiating, reverb-soaked synths caking your ears immediately after, a few sections of guitar-driven aggression and excitement, and a climax of one of the catchiest, infections lines ever being triumphantly paraded across the waveform of the song by some brass.

“the blah blah blahs” is - in my opinion - the most finely crafted emo song of all time, for every reason mentioned above. Incredibly complicated yet amazingly catchy composition from every main instrument juxtaposed with samples and synth weirdness that never let you forget you’re listening to the most unique record in the history of the genre, and let’s not forget the vocals. The Blah Blah Blahs has maybe the most famous vocal line on the entire album, and one that has the power to simultaneously shatter a heart and reconstruct it - filling it with newfound determination and anger at the same time. Repeated - nee, screaming - four times in increasing intensity is the summation of frustration that everyone from maladaptive daydreamers to businessmen can relate to: “It’s these ideas that waste all my time.”

Nowhere is the emotional core of this record more on display than in the track “bug infested floorboards-can we please just leave this place, now.” In its lyrics it portrays an almost childlike angst - with all the viciousness and importance that comes with that particular brand of anger. In it, it sounds as if Demirjian is tapping into the very core of what friendship means - once all of the superficial bullshit has been stripped away from it. The song (much like the album) has an absolutely incredible way of gracefully sliding between the poetically verbose and the uncomplicatedly concise. Lyrics like “Warm is what it is to see / His insides on the floor /Of an abandoned auditorium / Singing in polyphony” and “"Just shut up and swallow!" is what the kid meant / When he complained about all of it” ravage the emotional brain in equal measure. And of course, there’s the Malcolm in the Middle samples. Yeah - Malcolm in the Middle samples, that’s correct, and before you start to think of that as AT ALL weird, they’re some of the most pulverizing emotional moments on the record. I don’t want to even spoil them for you. Well ok, maybe just one.

After the (appearingly) straightforward, bittersweet and full-frontal “orange, blue with stripes,” in which Demirjian crafts wordplay about love never quite fully being what you picture it to be, and after the motif repeated through the album of a girl named Hannah and never quite being able to find the time to love her when it mattered - one sample plays. It’s a sample from Malcolm in the Middle again - this time of Malcolm sitting on the bed, looking right into the camera, saying: “At some point, it stops.” It’s true: the album has stopped - quite abruptly, in fact. Yet, like most of the motifs lying within the record - and the record itself - if you were to go back and try to dig deeper into the meaning and craftsmanship of it, you’d be rewarded. Keeping the album set to loop reminds you of all of the pain you might be feeling and how you just cathartically expelled it while listening to the record. Or perhaps it’ll be an indicator of the pain Demirjian went through in meticulously crafting a record that showed every part of his soul for the world to see. Either way, if you have it on loop, you’ll be greeted by the tape rewinding sound of the first track - preparing you for another go-around.

“You’re not listening, I said stop.” No Adam, I don’t think I ever will.

[mikemightwritesometimes]

Cardiacs - Sing to God

“Stick and suck dribble in my dirty shoes / And crown me everything alive.”

If you’re like me right now, you’re probably in a bit of a funk. Quarantine got you down, probably feeling very lonely, maybe some shit didn’t go your way. Sometimes, that unrelenting grasp of negativity can consume everything you do. It infects your entire way of thinking - the entire way you go about your day. There’s something to be said for just how powerful it can be. It can coat your entire body from head to toe. 

There’s none of that in the world of Tim Smith and the Cardiacs.

Or at least, if there is, it’s masterfully disguised.

I’m not going to start this like I started the Daughters write-up, I’m not extremely well versed in the Cardiacs’ immense catalog. I’ve dipped my toes into other albums and other songs. There are some I absolutely love: the “Fairy Tales from the Rotten Shed” sessions are impeccably tight, incredibly hard-hitting, catchy, and complex. Some of the best live rock I’ve heard in a long, long time. Along with that, their material around the release of diehard fan-favorite “The Seaside” is impeccable, and this video of the track “R.E.S” cemented the track as one of my favorites in their catalog. They’ve been covered by everyone alive. Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, Mike Patton of Faith No More and Mr. Bungle (I’ll get to you, “California,”), Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, and Radiohead all cite them as influences. Hell, their fantastic “Seaside” track “To Go Off and Things” was covered by none other than Napalm Death. Even complete with Cardiacs-esque bells chiming in towards the beginning of the track. There’s something to be said about the absolute magic of Tim Smith’s music that draws you in and - once it fully has you - ceases to ever let up. No other music will ever hit that same spot for you again. Yet, even compared to all the previously mentioned superb material, no other record in their entire catalog - or in the history of recorded music - captures the essence of the insanely unique, pure, raw fun like “Sing to God.”

Sing to God is every beautifully strange, hyper-pitched and lightning speed moment Tim Smith has ever written in microcosm. It is a record which forbids any and all from coming into it with sour attitudes - for these people were doomed to never have any fun from the start. Across its wondrous two discs are annihilating ear-worms, off-key circus arpeggios, beautiful instrumental work, and cryptically cathartic lyrics. This is one that rarely lets you get too long in its track listing without reminding you why it’s the only album of it’s kind. And it starts from the first track.

“Eden on the Air” is sort of a misleading opening - in a sense. It’s absolutely not misleading when the chorus of pitch-shifted vocals back up Tim over a layer of sparkle and Disney-esque sheen, as this captures the demented magic that lies in store. Yet it may be misleading in the way that fails to inform the listener of the mountain of switch-ups and technically dynamic music in store. Instead, it opts for a relaxed, catchy chorus of vocals singing in harmony. As the track ends, the background noise begins to fade away, and the few seconds you have can only prepare you so much.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

With four counts on the drumsticks, “Eat It Up Worms Hero” sends you flying backwards into the wall, leaving glorious indentations in what you thought was a solid foundation. It’s best listened to with headphones turned to max. The chugging, uncommonly timed riffs find just enough time to burrow themselves into your brain before a few suddenly left turns punctuated by a burgeoning bassline and synth lines that came from another galaxy. It’d be impossible to try to name every switch-up in a Cardiacs track such as this, so I’ll only focus on my absolute favorite. Right on the mark of 1:01, more hell breaks loose than the even comparable amounts of hell that has broken loose before it. And for 15 seconds, it sounds as though the band is playing the song with earplugs in and blindfolds on. It was absolutely mesmerizing the first time I heard it. It was strange, because, as a ~16 year old kid - I never realized total random jumbles of complete random noise and sound could be so calculated. It wasn’t until about a year later that I realized that the band succeeded in making those 15 seconds more catchy than so, so many other rock records. However, my favorite part of this switch-up is that when the song breaks back into a glorious, major-key sing-a-long fest, that incredibly dissonant yet ungodly earworm-ish arpeggiating synth that sounds like it’s programmed to climb up an endless wall is still there. And it’s the catchiest part of the track. Even when the Cardiacs are indulging in the pure, clean type of fun - there’s always the Tim Smith lurking black comedy in the back of your mind. It’s beautiful. After one long-held Tim Smith shout, the song completely breaks apart for all of ten seconds. Right after, with the suddenness of an out-of-control freight train, that incredibly energetic riff from the first few seconds kicks you in the head. It slowly fades out into a classic Cardiacs piano progression until the sounds of someone actually being kicked in the head end the track. The track is over. This was the second track.

“Fiery Gun Hand” is a personal favorite on the record, and showcases the band’s ability to not only play into the tropes of their genre that they so thoroughly subvert in other material - but master them as well. The dueling guitar riffs are dueling in the most literal sense of the word. They’re fighting for individual strum space, syncing up perfectly in each of the listener’s ears until all of a sudden, this incredibly catchy synth line leads the band into two-chord heaven. It’s powerful - it feels raw while being immensely thought out and produced. The kicker here is the bridge, where the band switches key with so much effort and grace to complete another earworm on a record that’s probably already had, like, 9 or 10. “ "Click. Run! / Hello sir / I am in a tango / in a different timing I will never lose my anger I / haven't got a secret / Secrets are in my secret box / down my avenue / Suck away my tiny dress / I'm cleaner than a filthy mess / Cleaner than a big mess!"

“Bellyeye” was a single from this record, and it’s easy to hear why. That groovy guitar riff that graces the beginning is immediately pleasurable to even the most hellbent of Cardiacs despisers. The refrain after the verses accentuates what truly lies at the heart of the record - immense catchiness layered over and over again on top of itself to the point where - to an uninitiated listener - it may even sound overbearing. The real winning moment here however comes at the end of the third verse, where Smith, backed up by some newfound horns, feels the soul in his chest while singing “Storm of feeling good fun / fuck my animal heart / and ache / And heart  / and ache / Tiring now dishing out all my fancy almond ache / And arm and ache.” The song ends on an absolutely flabbergasting shift into what feels like less than half-time, swaggering itself out the door like the last man in a parade - who happens to be doing a conga dance.

If I kept writing about every song I loved off this record, this post would stretch for another three miles or so. So let me just talk about the crowned jewel of this album - the song that every Cardiacs fan will tell you absolutely blew them away the first time they heard it - the second disc’s opener: “Dirty Boy”

Dirty Boy feels to me like the logical conclusion of prog rock music. That’s an overused term to describe a lot of things - but it’s hard for me to reach into my brain for a song that truly encases the essence of prog and twists it to such a pulp. Dirty Boy is climbing a mountain that never stops growing in front of your eyes, but you’re simultaneously turning into a giant while you do. And, oh, by the way, a chorus of actual literal angels are cheering you on and joining you in shanties. Good lord this song. The opening guitar chord and the ensuing, absolutely, mind-destroyingly catchy riff that follows, would fit perfectly in some type of futuristic old-western showdown type scenario. Within the first minute in a half, Dirty Boy already gives you a tease of the absolutely orgasmic euphoria you’ll feel once the song has peaked. The line “He skip with cow eyed smile / to the blissful / Into craggy dress and / we will praise him him / We will praise him/” gives you an incredibly powerful high before sending you back climbing up that beautiful, beautiful mountain. The track is just under nine minutes of pure genius and militaristically beautiful songwriting technique. That climax. Oh god, that climax. After the six minute mark - even though it’s far from the last song of an (in my opinion) perfect record, Smith leaves his parting words for the song - and for you - the listener that was previously so blind to the jubilistic ecstasy of the world of the Cardiacs. One that leaves you begging for more, much like me.

“Over and out.”

#music #cardiacs

[mikemightwritesometimes]

DAUGHTERS - HELL SONGS

"Love is a disgusting thing."

As of more recently, I've been re-connecting with the side of me that once was heavily enamored with thrashing and pulverising - at least in musical form. Last year I re-discovered and realized my absolute infatuation with The Blood Brothers, and I'm sure I'll end up writing about them at some point. The Blood Brothers opened my eyes to a forgotten pre-conceived notion that I once shed, gained back, and shed again - not everything labeled "screamo" or with a "-core" at the end of the genre descriptor is inherently inferior to other forms of heavy music. Quite the contrary, actually. Digging deeper into similar bands since then, I fell in love with everything Orchid has ever done and more recently came around to having some real pleasant body spasms while listening to Jeromes Dream. These three bands made me identify what I love so much about this early brand of """"screamo,"""" namely the menacingly gruesome demeanor and the visceral speed bands can take the style - leading to absolutely euphoric highs.

Bands such as Orchid, Jeromes Dream, and Swing Kids planted the seed for future bands to further twist and mangle the way hyper-speed, ear-shredding goodness is made - and bands like The Blood Brothers, The Locust, (and unknowingly to me for a while) Daughters, carried that torch into the new millennium. All three of the progenitors listed focused on raw power but with an easily perceivable subtext of wit, humor, and unique musical ideas. The successors took that pass from the top of the key and fucking slammed it NBA Jam-style into the future. An alley-oop of strange musical wonders.

When it comes to Daughters, I had never really heard anything by them outside of their incredibly acclaimed 2018 comeback "You Won't Get What You Want," a sublime record - albeit one that I've never really sat down and experienced as a whole. The single "Satan in the Wait" piqued my interest while the closer "Guest House" is really what widened my eyes to the band's sound. It's a fantastic track which beats the shit out of you from the starting gun only to slowly morph into a heart-wrenching (or maybe organ-removing) picture of madness. I bring this track up in particular not only because I love the song (seriously, that melodic, synth brass-sounding addition at the middle of the track is simply awesome and warranted many a replay from me), but because I think out of all the songs I've heard from "YWGWYW," it's the one that closest resembles the ecstasy I feel when listening to their second record, "Hell Songs."

Immediately after digging their comeback record, I did what I usually do - jump back to the debut. Their debut, "Canada Songs," is some pretty good stuff. Not my favorite mathcore (or even grindcore) project I've ever heard (thanks, Locust), but it shows the starting point for the logical progression to their current dense, yet hard-hitting sound. It sounds like shredding your ear with a cheese grater (in a good way, mind you) but even at ~12 minutes for the whole project it's not one I've been inclined to come back and listen to a lot. Where the magic for me truly has lied is listening to them develop into their current form on "Hell Songs," an album that brilliantly blends the incredibly unique character of their recent work with the aggression of their debut.

Right off the bat, "Hell" is a completely different animal than their debut. If "Canada" is a ravenous, rabid dog, than "Hell" is a grizzled, experienced fighting dog who only won't kill you if it feels like you deserve mercy. Immediately noticable in the opener, "Daughters Spelled Wrong," is the shift in the vocal stylings of Alexis Marshall. He's traded in the shrieking grindcore growl of the debut for this bafflingly unique and immediately impressionable southern drawl. One thing I love about bands like The Blood Brothers and The Locust are the flat rejection of traditional hardcore vocal stylings in favor of weirdness - which ends up not only resulting in catchier, more memorable music, but also emphasizes and helps to accentuate the technical virtuosity going on underneath it instead of just drowning it out. "Daughters Spelled Wrong" is a sludgey, slow behemoth that less threatens you at knifepoint than it stares at you with crazy fucking eyes from across the street. Marshall lists off every single negative thing he's ever been called, from a sinner, to a fallen angel, thief, black sheep, and finally: a good-for-nothing, ass fuckin' son of a bitch. If that doesn't hook you in, (especially with the thunderous low end backing him up the length of the track), I don't know what will. It certainly hooked me in.

Throughout the record's ~25 minutes or so, there are a few tracks that instrumentally harken back to the grindcore sounds of their debut - namely "Fiery", "Crotch Buffet", and the fantastic "X-Ray" (I CALL AT FUCKIN ONEEEE, I CALL AT FUCKIN TWOOOOO). The difference here is both the aforementioned shift in vocal style - which lends the songs far more staying power - and the band's ability to elevate their game when it comes to breaking up the madness for a good slice of weirdness. Not only are Daughters a more technical, clean, and more evil beast on this record - they're a stranger one.

However, the crown jewels here are the "longer" tracks. "Feisty Snakewoman" has an opening death wail on guitar that persists throughout the track, winding up to be perfectly symmetrical with the half-time stomps of the drummer - just further proof that the craziest, nastiest music doesn't have to rely on the tired tropes of the genre. "Hyperventilationsystem" is another personal favorite - opening with some mind-melting double bass and high-pitched grinding guitars before suddenly throwing the steering wheel as far as it can go. Punctuated by a spy-thriller bassline and two guitar tracks - one punching, one gushing - Marshall echoes one phrase to himself over and over again, expressing his absolute disgust with love with the phrase, uh, well, "Love is a disgusting thing." As the song builds steam, the southern drawl of the vocal inflection burrows itself into your mind in perfect step with the bass drum - and have fun not singing it to yourself for a week. At the climax of the track, the band sets the car on fire while Marshall yelps, only for the band to drop out behind him for just long enough that your brain gets tenderized as soon as they pick up again.

That's a good time to talk about the lyrics, as well. "Hell Songs" beautifully blurs the line between the wordily poetic and outright debauchery. Within the same record, Marshall paints hauntingly dark imagery such as "When I awoke, a vicious dark hung in the sky / My surroundings foreign and discomforting", and lacerating himself and the listener with his tongue via lines like "I wear my sickness like a wedding band / I've been touching myself all day with a hammer and nail / I'm the flat-footed-mule-faced-fucker, the shit-bird-derelict-king."

Those last lines come from what I feel is the shining achievement of the record - and the song that quickly became one of my favorite extreme music-related songs of all time: "Recorded in a Pyramid." It's almost off-putting how traditional the main rift lining the song is, however as the song takes shape - what with its spastic snare drum fills and such - the underlying strangeness blends with the catchiness to become completely homogenous. By the time the chorus hits, the riff has suddenly jolted into an immediately wonderous major-key riff with a slab of heavy double bass underneath. This is all beautifully topped off with two of my favorite vocal lines I have ever heard in any genre relating to this one, with Marshall expelling all the breath from his lungs on top of this impeccably weird, pretty, and boisterous group of instruments until he sounds physically unable to do so anymore. The band, of course, catches him right at that picture-perfect final word both times to create one of the most memorable moments in hardcore I've ever heard. Again, never does the vocalist achieve this amazing tenacity by outright growling or shrieking - not that growling doesn't have its place - but somehow I picture grindcore grit not coming out anywhere nearly as magical as it does on this track.

The record ties itself up with two similarly great tracks - the much-acclaimed "Cheers, Pricks" which is a six minute (!) excursion into multi-part songwriting, mathcore brutality, Mach 10 funky strumming, and guitar ambience alike. The closer, "The Fuck Whisperer," is a short yet ungodly vast summary of just how much the band has shown on the record. Opening with stop-start fireworks, Marshall drops one line near the beginning of the track and the band follows suit mid-line. Suddenly, all there is is band members in the back murmuring to themselves as if they've just seen the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse: "It's already too late." But just when you think the record may be allowing itself to be completely engulfed in brooding torment for too long, Marshall (from seemingly across the room), reveals the ace up the band's sleeve (that mixture of crazy, evil chaos and unique character) with one line that intersects with the band: "There will be no leap into hyperspace and, it's already too late." The record's death yelp summarizes the lyrical themes throughout, with Marshall simultaneously unleashing one monstrous scream whilst making exaggerated sex moans. The band may have just told you that there will be no leap into hyperspace, but for the last half hour or so, you were just traveling at fucking warp speed. What a great record.