The Bouncing Souls - The Gold Record

'The Gold Song'

'So Jersey'

'Sounds of the City'

These three songs may be all you need to hear to know how great an album The Gold Record is: a solid 1-2-3 opening punch of punk rock. It's not like the album is all frontloaded, with it best songs behind it by track 4; it's also not the case that How I Spent My Summer Vacation being the Souls' crowning achievement in ridiculously upbeat melodic punk-pop, or its immediate follow-up, Anchors Aweigh, being next in line in the band's musical artistry, makes this album any less of a great record. Like Insomniac Doze, The Gold Record is a maturation from its predecessors, not an equal copy.

That said, 'The Gold Song' is a quintessentially Bouncing Souls track - fast, shoutalong and melodic. I remember seeing the Souls here in Dublin as part of a double with (ex-Hot Water Music) The Draft in 2006, and hurrying down the stairs in the Temple Bar Music Centre from the roof garden, where we'd spent the break in between sets, to the sound of this song's opening drumbeat.

'So Jersey' is Springsteen-esque punk-pop, which the Bouncing Souls were doing in their own way before the Hold Steady or The Gaslight Anthem, complete with organ and piano licks. It's about childhood, New Jersey and the importance of music - backing vocals from Chuck Ragan and Brett Gurewitz, among others - a common theme of the songs on this album.

I've never been to Jersey, but it's funny how its residents simultaneously seem to deprecate it and elevate it, how it's both classy and lowbrow, both Springsteen and the Souls, Garden State and Clerks II. There are sunny afternoons everywhere in the world - everywhere habitable, at least - but a Jersey one sounds especially pleasant.

The closer of the trio, 'Sound of the City' takes the directness of classic, punk rock Bouncing Souls - of 'The Gold Song' - and combines it with the nostalgic anthemicism of 'So Jersey' and other, equally classic Souls songs. Lonely streets, whoahs, soaring guitar riffs, and the philosophy of sounds and music. It's the final passage that crushes and uplifts, the essence of the Bouncing Souls translation of melancholy into optimism.

Afterwards, it's a detour into the slow, acoustic but charming 'Pizza Song', a throwback to songs like those on Hopeless Romantic and before, when Bouncing Souls were half jokey and wistful as well as - usually in the other half of the album - frenetically punk. It's followed by the super-anthemic 'Sarah Saturday', and an inspired, enthusiastic and heartfelt cover of the Kinks' 'Better Days' - "I hope tomorrow you'll find better things".

The second half of the album begins with a tribute to teenagehood and, it seems, to Iron Maiden, 'The Messenger' - "oh to be a kid with no worries it seemed so hard". 'Lean on Sheena' is another cover, this time of the relatively obscure - but rather good - punk group Avoid One Thing and, like 'Better Things', makes for a very good Bouncing Souls song. Simple but enormously affecting, and catchy as hell too:

A topical and political song - the words written by a real soldier who served in the war - 'Letter from Iraq' reminds us that 2005 and its surrounding years were one of the worst for global conflict of this millenium so far, and the role punk rock in presenting such information. (Indeed, at the show mentioned above, the singer Greg took time out of the set to remind the audience in the most humble way possible of the differences between the American people and the then government. It's okay, we Europeans already knew that). The next track 'The New Thing' is an injection of personal optimism, forming the start of a closing trio of powerful, superbly emotional songs, along with 'Midnight Mile' and 'For All The Unheard'; "for all the music left behind, all the songs left on the floors in the closets of our minds".

The Gold Record was the last Epitaph album I bought, from a label which was instrumental in shaping the sort of music I listen to now, as well as the sorts that I don't, at least not anymore. It's a maturation as well as an encapsulation of everything that's great about the Bouncing Souls - their music, their humour, their attitude and their influences.

The Bouncing Souls - The Gold Record (2006)

Epitaph Records

Envy - Insomniac Doze

Envy - 'Further Ahead of Warp'

All photographs of the Insomniac Doze 2xLP - unfortunately sold out, according to the Temporary Residence Limited Catalog. Just sayin'.

Before I get on with the post for this excellent album (just listen to the rumbling bass, and trilling post-rock guitar, of the opening song above), a short service announcement...

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The Hardcore for Nerds (Retrospective) Manifesto, with exposition:

• to present music accompanied by writing; there are plenty of album blogs with little content other than download links, so basing myself on my original inspiration, I try to offer description and explanation of music that I think other people would like to hear. The aim is for it to be well-written, thoughtful and (to a degree) personal, but not an objective review - every album I put up here I already really like. At the same time, I want to show that I like this music for a reason, and that means putting it in context - genres, movements, history, and art.
• to present music accompanied by images; while music can be (and mostly is) enjoyed purely through sound, the aesthetic benefit of visual artwork is integral to its full enjoyment. Also, the internet is primarily a visual medium and text cannot generally be presented on its own. Therefore, I try at least to provide a decent-sized cover (400x400 pixels) for each album. Vinyl - I've owned a turntable for just over a year - is especially well suited to visual aesthetics, and when I'm feeling artistic I like to try out my minor interest in photography on the sleeves, records and insets.
• to provide music accessibly and responsibly; of course, words and pictures can be no substitute for the music itself, and it is in this sense that the internet is the most revolutionary for the transmission of new and old styles, artists and releases. I believe in the continuing and central importance of the 'album' in music, hence the full-album downloads instead of individual tracks - that's how I like to try out and hear new music. However, for the sake of immediacy, I've also been using streaming (full-song) clips in the past while, so you can listen to the band directly. On the flip-side of accessible music is the responsibility to support the artists and labels involved; I believe that "buy it if you like it" is implied with every download, at least where practical (and where you do really like it). To encourage an ethical approach of that kind, I try to include a link to the band and/or label website, and (legal download site) eMusic where available, and likewise to the Dublin city and online store of Road Records. Furthermore, I avoid posting full downloads of current (past year) album releases, although paradoxically a simple Google Blogs or Sordo db search will quickly lead you to at least the most popular ones.

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Envy's 2006 album, Insomniac Doze, represented a significant shift from the almost genre-defining, 2001 release A Dead Sinking Story (one of my top six punk albums of the 21st century), itself a significant development in the expanse and nuance of the group's style from All The Footprints You've Ever Left Behind And The Fear Expecting Ahead (1999). Between these three full-lengths there is a fairly rapid evolution by the Japanese band from screamo to post-rock, and for many people Insomniac Doze goes too far in the post-rock dimension. For me, however, it's a great album in both categories, and deserving of almost as much praise as A Dead Sinking Story for creating the uniquely epic and intense Envy sound.

That's not to say I don't understand other people's criticism of this album, though I don't always agree with them. Pitchfork's 6.3 review took issue with the album's relative somnolence, describing it as "mild enough for the dentist's office", whereas I really enjoy its epic, cinematic tones. Nick from Worship and Tribute's generally very positive review for Sputnikmusic has a gripe with its "harmonic vapidity" and otherwise unadventurous musicianship; I have to agree that listening to A Dead Sinking Story, it seems much more musically creative in certain ways. As he says, it's "a trade-off; I like their ability to build huge passages out of simple, slowly repeating chord progressions, but I dislike the plodding feeling of it all"; though I find that the simplicity is mirrored by emotional intensity, the post-rock side just a part of the adapted screamo style.

'Scene' (video)

Though I came to A Dead Sinking Story some years after the fact, I was eagerly anticipating the release of its follow-up. 'Scene' was the first song - in the form of this video - that I heard, and it was really a microcosm of the issues raised by the whole album. Expecting more of the really crushing heaviness of A Dead Sinking Story alongside that same album's quietitude, what 'Scene' presented was a far slower build-up to a more muted crescendo. On the album itself, 'Further Ahead of Warp' is a more energetic if broadly similar opening song, and 'Shield of Selflessness' is the closest Insomniac Doze gets to the shorter old-school Envy style of hardcore.

'Scene' is the statement of the new Envy, which is really just an adaptation of the old Envy, as the video makes clear. All in a blue monochrome blur, views of clouds in the ether are interspersed with shots of the band performing the song live, edging towards full catharsis mode. It's the combination of the cinematic with the electric which makes Insomniac Doze work so well, long arcs of harmony mixed with smooth crescendos of angst.

'Crystallize'

Right after 'Scene' comes this next post-rock song, so epic that it takes up a whole side of one LP (as does the next one, 'Unknown Glow'). 'Crystallize' is in many ways more cinematic, and certainly more artistic, than 'Scene'. As discussed previously, it's got an insistent melody that reminds me of 'Soon' from My Bloody Valentine's archetypal Loveless, and I think that Insomniac Doze as a whole has a strong shoegaze feel to it. More importantly, 'Crystallize' signals a new interest by Envy in simple, yet arty, melodic songs that continues into their more recent, shorter releases, such as Abyssal and songs like 'Life Caught in the Rain' and 'Conclusion of Existence' from the Jesu split.

'Night in Winter'

Although 'Further Ahead of Warp', 'Scene' and 'Crystallize' I think provide ample proof of Insomniac Doze's brilliance, it wouldn't be right not to include anything from the second LP of the album. The ten-minute long 'Unknown Glow' is, like 'Scene', an epic movement of post-rock/screamo, at times almost quasi-classical, spanning the range from near-silence to aural near-destruction; 'A Warm Room' is an intense, cathartic closer with some of the most A Dead Sinking Story-like moments on the album. 'Night in Winter', however, is a particularly beautiful, atmospheric track to bridge the gap between Insomniac Doze's weightier moments.

Envy - Insomniac Doze (2006) (link via Zen and the Art of Face Punching)

Temporary Residence Limited

i wish this blog was more like tumblr

...so that I could post like this more often.

let's see how this works out

Envy - 'Scene' from Insomniac Doze

burritolingus:

"Envy is far from your run-of-the-mill "I just got dumped by my girlfriend of two weeks and want to kill myself" scene or image conscious, attention-whoring pop-punk "emo" facade; no sir, Envy represents something far more cerebral, personal, real. It's no wonder, then, that despite the language barrier, they've become renowned worldwide as one of the finest screamo bands on Earth.

Oh, and worth noting is that (despite their album names and song titles being in English) the vast majority of Envy's music is, in fact, in Japanese. Very poetic Japanese that you could learn a thing or two from, at that."

Proper post on the album coming up next.

Shooting at Unarmed Men - Yes! Tinnitus!

Shooting at Unarmed Men - 'Pathos Ate Bathos'

Shooting at Unarmed Men's second album Yes! Tinnitus! is not really as good as last year's third effort, Triptych, but it's a testament to the strength of that album (my favourite of 2008) that Yes! Tinnitus! is still pretty great. In parts it benefits from being able to go back from Triptych in order to appreciate it better; in others it has a certain charm of its own.

The standout first song 'Pathos ate Bathos' starts off with Shooting at Unarmed Men's typical rhythm-heavy songwriting, post-hardcore guitar with a few spaghetti-western flourishes and a frantic but relatively simple beat. Four minutes of rocking out in this vein make for a badass introduction to the album, plus a little bit of start-stop dynamism tacked on at the end as well.

Writing about Triptych on Geek Down's Best of 2008: Rock Albums, josephlovesit referenced the Jesus Lizard and this band's "confident assholism"; likewise, the next couple songs here feature a misogynistic God and a capitalist-acquisitive cowboy. It's a snarling, intense bridge to the next really great song on the album, the single 'Girls Music' (post of the promo 7" here).

Rather like (the ever-unavoidable comparison) a Mclusky b-side put into overdrive, or "a great twisted pop song" as I described it before, 'Girls Music' is the fun, inventive side of Shooting at Unarmed Men which condenses down post-hardcore creativity. The following songs stretch things out a bit more, from the shoutalong "D-I-S-M-O-U-N-T" of 'I Am United Nations' to the slow, ratcheting melodicism of 'Pat Yourself On The Proverbial ("In the summer... she blisters... and her skin peels"). At this point, despite the garage-y immediacy of 'I Cry For No Man' and 'Get On Out And Come Right In', the album begins to drag somewhat; indeed slowed down almost unnaturally for the closer, 'In Flight Instructions Are A Joke, Say I' with its rousing chorus "she drank the whole bottle down".

Still, this is definitely a Shooting at Unarmed Men album as you would recognise from Triptych, if not quite of the same quality. Jon Chapple's voice, both literally and figuratively - i.e. musically - speaking, in this latter-day post-punk, ex-Welsh post-hardcore band deserves to be heard a lot more.

Shooting at Unarmed Men on eMusic

Myspace

a rather brilliant and suitably disturbing 'Girls Music' video:

slowcore/shoegaze/springtime post: Si Schroeder - Coping Mechanisms

Si Schroeder - Duck!

This is a conglomeration of different things, but mainly yet another post on this truly great Irish album. For me, Coping Mechanisms is Ireland's Spiderland, though in general it sounds quite different. This week is Slowcore Week on Drowned in Sound, as highlighted on do you compute. Watching the video on his blog of Codeine's 'Loss Leader' from the excellent The White Birch album, the particular way in which Steve Immerwahr sings "water" (and, I think, "watch her" as well) reminded me of that same word in Si Schroeder's 'Duck!' ("water/off a duck's back").

So, a flimsy enough connection. Si Schroeder doesn't really play slowcore (but then neither does David Grubbs, quite, anymore) or even shoegaze, both genres largely fixed in time as early-to-mid 1990s and probably deserving the prefix post- in their current configurations. Coping Mechanisms is an album of, at first, exceeding quietness and then consequently layered and shimmering loudness, all threaded together with a rich diversity of sounds - most of them electronic of some kind. Post-rock is the obvious but relatively uninformative classification for this beautiful, atmospheric - yet substantial - album.

Diverse electro sounds make their way through current indie rockers, post-rockers and shoegazers. Best example is Asobi Seksu's new album Hush which blends shoegaze, pop and electro to a hardcore punk back-beat (somewhat softened) to impressive effect. The latest Fight Like Apes b-side 'Telephone the Real Ham Jackson' spends some time in a tasty electro-shoegaze jam after its thick, bassy and synthy pop experimentation. King of the latter, Dan Deacon's upcoming album Bromst is a dense, familiar affair (read a first impression here and an unlikely negative review here) underpinned by modern big-band percussion. With lunchtime like a mid-summer's evening here in north-western Europe, spring has arrived with a shoegazing, electrifying soundtrack.

Coping Mechanisms vinyl from Road Records

Myspace - Si Schroeder

Trust Me I'm A Thief record label

and three of Ireland's best post-rock type acts, Jape, The Jimmy Cake and Si Schroeder, are playing a benefit + celebration gig for the aforementioned Road Records:

Festive Bestuv/Best Of Best ofs 2008

1. Best-Of Roundups

2. 2009 Schedule

1.

Recommended Blogroll Best-Ofs:

Failing the Rorschach Test: The Best Albums of 2008: from #30 to #21; #20; #19 ("and then eventually to #1). Example - "Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life: There was a lot of good hardcore music released this year. This wasn't even in my top ten." Plenty of hardcore/punk/screamo/post-rock/crescendo-core...

Geek Down, Best of 2008: Rock Albums, including Grails, Shooting at Unarmed Men, Mogwai and Have A Nice Life plus one other. Also, Rap and 'Pop Art' albums.

The Prisonship: Bestuv 2008, pt. 1: Haven’t Heards, Haven’t Heard Enoughs, General Trends. Example, 'Haven't Heards' - "No Age: I dunno, Bob Mould likes it". Also including Zomes, Earth, 'shoegaze' - i.e. "lush, rich gtr-blankets draped over sex-vocals with the feet-cymbals peaking out from under them blankets".

Last Train to Cool/Worship and Tribute (Sputnikmusic writers)

Still waiting on: Zen and the Art of Face Punching (his Best of 2007 list, from February 2008!)

Irish blog lists:

Swear I'm Not Paul: Best of 2008: Irish Blogs & Publications, Update 6 - like Largeheartedboy's worldwide aggregate list, but actually manageable.

Nialler9's Irish Albums of 2008 Reader's Poll: Jape and Rarely Seen Above Ground (see HfN: Year End November) at #1 and #2, streets ahead of the rest; Fight Like Apes at #3, Chequerboard at #9, So Cow and Ham Sandwich at #15 and #16 respectively.

Those Geese Were Stupefied: Best of 2008, including Interlude 2: Homemade, stapled-together super-limited EP, So Cow - Wackity Schmackity Doo (Unreleased); and Interlude 3: Free Download, Dublin Duck Dispensary - Luanqibazao, review by Brian Kelly, a.k.a. So Cow - example: "It's been tagged as no-fi. Incorrect. This is fi. It's pop-fi and it's smile-fi. It's gallop-fi and it's fist-fi."

Best Combined Post-Mcluskyite Inclusions in a List:

Gimme Tinnitus - Top 51 Downloadables of 2008 including Future of the Left, 'Adeadmanalwayssmellsgood' - "Award: Best awesomeness of the year" and Shooting At Unarmed Men, 'Boredom Is The Feeling That Everything Is A Waste Of Time' - "Award: Best song that took for fucking ever to be released in the states of the year".

Best/Most Inappropriate Description of Ham Sandwich - Carry The Meek:

Egoeccentric, Evil Bob's Best of 2008: "6. ...Ham Sandwich's first album mixes perfectly the female vocals of surprise preggers Niamh Farrell and fucking mentaller Podge McNamee to make some great pop-rock tunes. Great stuff all round."

(and thus) The Two Best Albums Of The Year That Almost Nobody's Heard (Yet):

Triptych.zip

Carry the Meek.zip

(If you like, buy: Shootingatunarmedmen.com, Eathamsandwich.com)

2.

Best of Albums of 2006*, including:

Envy, Insomniac Doze

Shooting At Unarmed Men, Yes! Tinnitus!

Si Schroeder, Coping Mechanisms

The Bouncing Souls, The Gold Record

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

*because it takes a year to hear about all the really good albums, and another year to appreciate them properly.

Looking forward to in 2009:

Dan Deacon, Bromst

and So Cow Greatest Hits LP

and Bats - split 7" with Fist Fite and forthcoming full-length album.

Happy New Year!