The (rest of the) Best of 2008 Pt. 2 - with words

Hardcore for Nerds: The Best of 2008 Mixtape, Part 2

('Jingle Bells & Snow Drifts')

Total: 29.6 mins

(Download)

7. Cold War Kids - 'Every Valley Is Not A Lake' - 3:34

8. The Gaslight Anthem - 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' - 3:34

9. Chequerboard - 'Toy Winds' - 3:53

10. So Cow - 'Shackleton' - 3:54

11. Foals - 'Olympic Airways' - 4:19

12. Envy - 'Conclusion of Existence' - 5:08

13. Fight Like Apes - 'Snore Bore Whore' - 5:20

Welcome to the doppelganger of Zeitgeist II - part two, the lower half of Hardcore for Nerd's top dozen (plus one) albums of 2008. These are the - at least -'very good' records; yet, although perhaps not reaching the excellence of the top six, they have many of their own moments of the sublime.

I've created a different coloured cassette in part because says-it doesn't have a 'side 2', but also because there's a sort of yin-yang division between the two mixes. Pt. 1 was the (comparatively) hard-rocking, propulsive and at times dissonantly erupting side; Pt. 2 is groovier and more expansive, though, at times, equally sonically dissolute - and on this basis, it has the festive subtitle 'Jingle Bells and Snow Drifts'.

Pt. 1 was almost exclusively guitar rock; Pt. 2 (excepting, mostly, the jazzy rhythms of Cold War Kids or the Springsteen-esque pop of The Gaslight Anthem) shades towards electronic sounds. Given those admittedly not completely sharp contrasts, there is also another important element of the yin-yang separation: the containment within each part of its opposite - the little oppositely-coloured dots in the tradtional ying-yang symbol. So, while on the one hand the first mix had the ambient sounds bleeding into Grails 'Natural Man', on the other this mix features the explosive, dissonant guitar freakout of So Cow's 'Shackleton'.

1. Cold War Kids, 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' from Loyalty to Loyalty

(Category: Alt-Americana (Jazz-Blues subcategory) Album of the Year - Runners Up, The Black Keys - Attack and Release)

"every sermon is not the gospel, babe,

let me put it another way, every valley is not a lake"

From Robbers and Cowards to Loyalty to Loyalty there is a huge improvement, but also a strong strain of familiarity. Cold War Kids have made a better album with better songs all round, but their sound - piano-laden hooks, trilling guitar, bluesy rhythms and disjointed construction - is still the same. Particularly, if you wanted singer Nathan Willett to dial down his wassailing, you'll be disappointed. For me, it's an essential part of the band: that edge of sonic anarchy and extra touch of expressiveness. In part, he's a guy channelling female blues singers, or channelling Jeff Buckley channelling female blues singers (and no, he's nowhere near as melodious... but it works better this, the dissonnant, way). 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' isn't the strongest example of that factor, but insofar as it does display the vocal experimentations of Loyalty to Loyalty, it blends well with the expressionist lyrics and jangly blues-pop to make a very fine song.

2. The Gaslight Anthem, 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' from The '59 Sound

(Category: Alt-Americana (Springsteen subcategory) Record of the Year - Runners Up, Bruce Springsteen - 'Dream Baby Dream', The Constantines - Kensington Heights)

Noel Murray, Popless - 30 favorite songs of 2008:

"It took me a spin or two to get used to the pop-punk polish and relentlessly anthemic nature of The '59 Sound, but I kept returning because the songs are so catchy—like Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. as recorded by The Bouncing Souls"

I've been following Noel Murray's 'Popless' column over at the AV Club throughout 2008, and at times intrigued, inspired, baffled and amused by his alphabetical trawl through modern popular music. Plus, of course, finding wonderfully apt descriptions of artists I myself know quite well - of which this is one. The song he chose, incidentally, was 'Miles Davis and the Cool' which I used for the Year End November selection. In the end of the column, furthermore, it seems that other albums that Noel Murray was listening to this year included Human Bell and Future of the Left. A man of taste.

'The Patient Ferris Wheel' perhaps shows up the Bouncing Souls, Jerseyite punk-pop influence even more. If the Gaslight Anthem have their limitations, then the only really pertinent one is that The '59 Sound is a surrogate for the successor to 2006's The Gold Record by the Bouncing Souls, or Anchors Aweigh (more refined in its Springsteen-ism) or even (anthemic pop-punk masterpiece) How I Spent My Summer Vacation. For the moment, however, there's

"standing in the Jersey rain

thinking about what an old man said

maybe I should call me an ambulance

I've never felt so strange

standing in the pounding rain..."

3. Chequerboard, 'Toy Winds' from Penny Black

(Category: Electronic Album of the Year - Runners Up, Rarely Seen Above Ground - Organic Sampler, Matmos - Supreme Balloon)

It's been a pleasure to come back to this album again after marking it up for consideration in April. Even better, it seems to be cropping up quite frequently in comment submissions for Nialler9's Irish Albums and Songs Poll 2008. The winner two years ago was Si Schroeder's Coping Mechanisms, which I've discussed on this blog before, and of which there are certain echoes in Penny Black. 'Toy Winds' is the concluding track, which showcases perfectly the two elements of Chequerboard's sound: classical guitar lilts and glitchy electronic beats. Atmospheric music made extraordinarily visual (the creator, John Lambert, is a professional graphic artist as well) with the stunning artwork, and the conflictingly nostalgic sense of wistful Victoriana put to dubstep, in a loose sense, and meticulously crafted electronic sounds in general.

4. So Cow, 'Shackleton' from I'm Siding With My Captors

(Category: Irish Release of the Year Pt. 2 - Runners Up, Bats - Cruel Sea Scientist, Halves - Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy, Heathers - Here, Not There)

It's a bit disappointing, now, to hear So Cow backed with a drum machine - after seeing the current rhythm section in action, live - but it works, or is at least excused, here in I'm Siding With My Captors' mini-epic love song 'Shackleton' and its journey from minimum to max. It has its own "personification, exposition and tragic irony" all within its opening three, or even two, minutes: as the songwriter-within-a-song drafts his masterpiece, only to strip it all back down again, to the beat of a tinny drum machine and what sounds like a miniature organ; and haaving "paid the cellist for his time", all that's left is a heartful plea "one day I'll write the song that you require, and until then lalala [guitar noise]". Repeat, and close. Beautiful.

5. Foals, 'Olympic Airways' from Antidotes

(Category: Indie Album of the Year pt. 2 - Runners Up, Crystal Castles who were on Skins too)

A further stretch of finely crafted indie electronica, Foals 'Olympic Airways' is among at least a handful of other brilliantly constructed songs from Antidotes, the album that immediately separated Foals from being just another angular post-punk band, that happened to be on Skins playing one of their (now) duller tracks, 'Hummer', and showed them to be something altogether more interesting. After all, Radiohead's 'Nude' was used as almost the entire basis for the second season trailer of Skins - which was, televisually, also very interesting - but no-one goes around calling them 'Skinscore'. The breathy tension, the ably created mood of experimentation, and the obvious catchiness, make this track out to be what Q and not U's Power could have been had it taken another, equally valid direction. There's a certain post-rockiness to the sparse guitar lines, and the slightly over-predictable crescendo, but overall they are superficial elements to the underlying stylistic substance - nebulous, but affecting -of the track.

6. Envy, 'Conclusion of Existence' from Envy/Jesu (Split EP)

(Category: Electronic Release of the Year Pt. 2)

Like Noel Murray's brief summation of The Gaslight Anthem above, this rather lengthier discussion of the Envy/Jesu split on sputnikmusic reflects a lot of my own thoughts on this record (I only have it in mp3 form at the moment, because it has only been released in Japan for most of the year, but I have the white vinyl on order). I'm far more of an Envy fan than a Jesu, but I like some of the work from the latter (more so than from Envy's other split partners this year, Thursday) and combination makes even more sense when one considers the direction Envy has been heading ever since A Dead Sinking Story. The most Jesu-like, electronic track, 'Conclusion of Existence' is barely screamo in any sense, but it's still very strongly Envy. Glitchy electronic beats, again, take up half the song before exploding (at 2:44) into unexpected strings and, in general, the sort of chaotic beauty, though now somewhat more restrained and subtler, that made Envy so surprising in the first place.

7. Fight Like Apes, 'Snore Bore Whore' from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

(Category: Irish Album of the Year Mostly Re-recorded So It Doesn't Count (As Much) But Still Really, Really Good)

And finally, the album I couldn't leave out of the mixtape, and which really is in its on way one of the best of the year - the Fight Like Apes full-length debut, and the album closer 'Snore Bore Whore' (originally, of course, the closer to the 'Do You Karate?'/David Carradine Is a Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch EP). One half hushed melody synth ditty, one half total wall-of-sound shoegaze synth epic; one complete miracle of a song. Do, if you're a convert, watch the ecclesiastical performance from Other Voices (recorded partly in St James' church, Dingle, Co. Kerry; it's also the original composition - as it does, technically, sound better on the album) below:

The (very) Best of 2008 Pt. 1

Hardcore For Nerds: The Best of 2008 Mixtape, Part 1

Total: 29.9 mins

(Download)

1. Shooting at Unarmed Men - '------------' ('Peristalsis') - 3:38

2. Ham Sandwich - 'click... click... BOOM!!!' - 3:21

3. ...Who Calls So Loud - 'What I Learned in the C.O.U.M.' - 9:38

4. Vampire Weekend - 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' - 4:03

5. Grails - 'The Natural Man' - 4:41

6. Human Bell - 'Ephaphatha (Be Opened)' - 4:40

Hello and welcome to the successor to Hardcore for Nerd's first end of year mix, Zeitgeist: The Mixtape (2007). These are the top six records from the provisional best of 2008 list in the last post. Each one is assigned to a category, some of which categories repeat themselves here or in the other half of the top 12, and some of which are slightly frivolous.

'Runners Up' for each category are included to give some depth to the list, and because it is rather early and I'm working from a provisional end cut, I've included a few extra releases I just discovered from Zen and the Art of Face Punching's new 'Stuff To Get Into' which lays out several excellent punk/hardcore records that had passed me by.

I've discussed all of these records at length in previous posts, so rather than repeating myself as to the descriptions, explanations, exhortations and justifications relating to the albums as a whole I will stick to the particular track at hand. (None of which, by the way, have been repeated from previous mixes) This carefully selected mix, which comes in at just under thirty minutes in length and thus one half of a cassette tape, has - if I do say so myself - a very good flow and sense of coherence, despite its variety of sounds and styles. So do enjoy the second part of the Zeitgeist series, from Hardcore for Nerds...

1. Shooting at Unarmed Men, 'Peristalsis' from Triptych.

(Category: Album of the Year Pt. 1; Contemporary Punk Rock Album of the Year - Runners Up, Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life, Failures - s/t, and (if you're in the US) Future of the Left - Curses)

"Your Dear John letter/had grammatical errors/

and failed to mention that you're a cunt

Your Dear John letter/had grammatical errors/

and your spelling was atrocious"

And so begins the third and final disc of Triptych. A heavy, raging song lyrically resonant of Mclusky ('Gareth Brown Says' from Mclusky Do Dallas - "all your friends are cunts/your mother is a ball point pen thief" - though the swearing is mostly a cultural British thing, and not evidence [necessarily] that all Welshmen are misogynists) but still several steps removed musically. As with the rest of the album, it's avant-garde, ironic hardcore; a faster, punker version of Young Widows. And the closing couplet to the song? "It's called peristalsis/ ...fuck off!"

2. Ham Sandwich, 'click... click... BOOM!!!' from Carry the Meek.

(Category: Album of the Year Pt. 2; Irish Album of the Year Pt. 1 - Runners Up, Fight Like Apes - Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion, Jape - Ritual)

It's difficult to follow up the preceding fury without it being something less harsh, but here's the track with the hardest edge from Carry the Meek, anyway. The review in the end-of-year roundup of State wrote of the album, which came in at 24 of 50, that it arrived as fully-formed singles collection. All the songs are stand-out tracks, which is a prime reason for why I think this album is so good. 'click... click.. BOOM!!!' combines in stereo sound deep bass, crushing distortion and a lighter melody, female and male vocals, into a great dynamic pop song. Three justified guitars and great songwriting make for punk-pop, pop-rock, whatever, with real weight.

3. ...Who Calls So Loud, 'What I Learned in C.O.U.M.' from ...Who Calls So Loud.

(Category: 'Real' Screamo Record of the Year - Runners Up, Sinaloa - Oceans and Islands, Loma Prieta - Last City, Suis La Lune - Heir, La Quiete - s/t 7")

A nine-and-a-half minute long screamo song? Yep, that's what defines one of the greatest releases of the year. The true sound of screamo - blurred with some very pedantic and unnecessary descriptions, but having very recognisable and salient features - has been around, and evolving at a reasonable pace, for at least a decade at this stage. Building on the epic mode of preceding band Funeral Diner, ...Who Calls So Loud's debut album is a roller-coaster ride of barely-restrained emotion and technical proficiency, of which 'What I Learned in the C.O.U.M.' is the effective apex, as well as possibly the greatest excesss. As noted just above, there are numerous good screamo releases this year, from across the US and Europe, but this is still my definite favourite. Previously I've oscillated between the US vein of hardcore and 'Euro screamo', searching for the right balance between emotion, melody, speed and technical skill. This year, I think I've found it.

4. Vampire Weekend, 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' from Vampire Weekend.

(Category: Indie Album of the Year Pt. 1 - Runners Up, whatever else the cool kids are listening to these days - s/t)

And how to segue between screamo and Vampire Weekend? It's a difficult task, and one I've already attempted; but in this case, I chose a particularly appropriate, somewhat atypical track from everyone's favourite over-hyped indie debut. Seguing from the closing ambient streetsounds of ...Who Calls So Loud', it's the opening, solo rhythm of Vampire Weekend's last song on their album. 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' has a softer, looser feel to it than the other tracks, almost as if it's been produced differently from the rest of the album (it hasn't, as far as I know). Lyrically and compositionally, it is in reality just as archly indie - itself a perfectly acceptable quality - as the rest of Vampire Weekend, but to me it gives a certain warm feeling of, say, a Clash record. If you've seen singer Ezra Koenig's very competent appearance as guest vocalist for Fucked Up, you'll know there is an extra dimension to this band. But even the more obvious ones are more than remarkable enough.

5. Grails, 'The Natural Man' from Doomsdayer's Holiday.

(Category: Post-Rock/[un]Conventional Style Album of the Year - Runners Up, Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling, God Is An Astronaut - s/t, The Jimmy Cake - Spectre and Crown)

For this band I have, as in the case of the previous mix, eschewed the typically heavier, more forthright songs from the album, such as 'Reincarnation Blues' and 'Predestination Blues', despite the fact that, on the surface, they are probably closer to the album's intended 'sound' overall. And right from the start, 'Doomsdayer's Holiday' makes it clear that Grails are in take-no-prisoners post-rock mode; ramping it up exponentially from equivalent rockers like 'Silk Rd.' from 2007's Burning Off Impurities. Likewise, I saw an Irish commenter named Void describe the album as "giving post-rock a much-need Gothic metal kick up the arse" which strikes me as an excellent description for Doomsdayer's Holiday. Still, it is in the spaces between noises that I have learned to enjoy Grails - a sort of Zen-like self-abnegation, anticipating the heaviest of riffs in the most minimal of sounds, and finally creating the 'post' somewhat apart from the 'rock', while also merging them together in an extraordinary level of cultural complexity. There's no spoon, either.

6. Human Bell, 'Ephaphatha (Be Opened)' from Human Bell.

(Category: Post-Rock/Post-Hardcore Variation Album of the Year - Runners Up, Zomes - s/t, Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness, Young Widows - Old Wounds)

With this album I've taken the opposite approach to Grails, and selected the shortest, brashest track from Human Bell's exquisitely crafted LP of minimalist, instrumental post-rock, a coming together of Andy Heumann (Arboretuem) and Nathan Bell (Lungfish). 'Hanging from the Rafters', from the original mix in April, is probably more representative of the full record. Here, the rhythmic composition of guitars, which defines the whole album, is here swathed in simultaneously ethereal and abrasive trumpet sounds. For fans of the Boom or Abilene - you'll like this.

Best of 2008: Year End November - Rhythm and Blues

Miles Davis Quintet - 'If I Were A Bell' from Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet (1956)

Hardcore for Nerds (Best of) 2008: Year End November - Rhythm and Blues

1. Cold War Kids - 'Welcome to the Occupation' from Loyalty to Loyalty.

2. The Gaslight Anthem - 'Miles Davis and the Cool' from The '59 Sound.

3. Rarely Seen Above Ground - 'The Climb' from Organic Sampler.

6. Jape - 'Phil Lynott' from Ritual.

5. The New Year - 'Folios' from The New Year.

6. Grails - 'Acid Rain' from Doomsdayer's Holiday.

7. Mogwai - 'The Precipice' from The Hawk Is Howling.

(Download)

This is the last instalment in my pre-end of year list, collecting together some albums that have caught my attention in the last few months. I've already discussed directly and indirectly the first and last pairs of albums, so I wasn't sure how to best construct a mixtape or post from the seven here. As it happened though, taking some less obvious tracks from those albums and an placing them around the newer additions, a theme seemed to appear. It's not rhythm and blues in the sense of "r'n'b" as such, but rather jazz/blues and the more primal origins of rock. The rhythm is in the brash, assertive first two bands and the two beat-driven, experimental Irish artists; the blues are more in the lusher, post-rock tracks of the final three - although within them there is a great variety of style.

Two features have been lifted from Geek Down - first, the genre-paralleling streaming track at top (I probably could have found a Miles Davis track from 1959 and the true 'cool' period instead, but I like that song and it's around the birth of the sound, anyway) and second, the longlist at the bottom of 2008 albums that I've listened to in full, all of which have been covered in this post or previous posts (with two exceptions - God Is An Astronaut and Loma Prieta). It's not perhaps that long - about thirty/thirty-five in total - but it should be the basis for a proper top ten-fifteen of the year in a few weeks.

Cold War Kids and The Gaslight Anthem are part of my loosely-conceived 'alt-Americana' typology of not-quite-indie, not-quite-punk, alternative rock bands that express something very strongly (and critically) American in their music. In the Cold War Kids' case, it's the jazz-rock angst of ordinary life; in that of the Gaslight Anthem, the Springsteen-esque musings. With one, theres's anxiety and fear; with the other, hope and wistfulness. Both are brash, somewhat derivative bands but with enough underlying complexity and creativity to fulfil their cultural role; to infiltrate the mainstream with sufficiently thoughtful and discordant music...

Rarely Seen Above Ground and Jape are both alter egos for Irish rhythm artists: Jeremy Hickey, a drummer and all-round instrumentalist and producer; Richie Egan, the bass player with Dublin instrumental post-rock heroes The Redneck Manifesto. Rarely Seen Above Ground is consequently a groovy, catchy, drum-based but richly coloured blend of pop, post-punk and funk constructed into a nebulous, Talking Heads-resonant feel of music. The song comes in two parts, by the way, so that's why it slows down in the middle. Jape, in general, is more heavily electro - check out this version of 'I Was a Man' or the popular video for the older song, 'Floating' - but this track, for all its minimalism, is an almost perfect encapsulation of his sound and direction. I'm no great fan, musically, of Thin Lizzy, but the sentiment of 'Phil Lynott' is hard to argue against. Pure Dub (as in Dublin, not Kingston).

The New Year is a find directly from Lex Dexter of Organizing Grievances/The Prisonship. The full self-titled album is very good, but I stuck with the same representative choice, the opening track 'Folios', a good deal like a mostly acoustic, jangly, upbeat version of Slint's 'Good Morning, Captain'. Grails and Mogwai are the combined object of josephlovesit's half-finished discussion as well, but in a case of parallel evolution of taste more than anything else: these really are the two most vital post-rock releases of the year, and from which I have chosen their respective closing tracks. Grails 'Acid Rain' is my favourite song on the album, out of a selection of many great ones; though opening with a familiar swipe of Eastern melody, in reality it is far different, a "lush, pacific world of surf melodies and jazzy rhythms, disintegrating into pulsing electronics and re-emerging cyclically into tender clarity". Mogwai may be underwhelming or irritating some critics with their latest album, but I'm in the ideal situation of never really appreciating anything else they did beforehand; and while 'Batcat' and 'The Sun Smells Too Loud' might be atypical Mogwai songs, 'The Precipice' is a straightforward but perfectly executed epic, a descent into sheer post-rock crescendo that identifies why Mogwai still really are, for me, the originals.

2008 Longlist:

(all Irish bands have a Myspace link; other albums have a link to review/download on Worship and Tribute where available)

Bats - Cruel Sea Scientist

The Black Keys, Attack and Release

Chequerboard, Penny Black

Cold War Kids, Loyalty to Loyalty

Envy/Jesu - Split EP

Envy/Thursday - Split EP

Fight Like Apes, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

God Is An Astronaut, God Is An Astronaut

Foals, Antidotes

Fucked Up, The Chemistry of Common Life

The Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound

Grails, Take Refuge from Clean Living

Grails, Doomsdayer's Holiday

Halves, Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy

Ham Sandwich, Carry the Meek

Have a Nice Life, Deathconsciousness

Heathers, Here, Not There

Human Bell, Human Bell

Jape, Ritual

The Jimmy Cake, Spectre and Crown

Loma Prieta, Last City

Matmos, Supreme Balloon

Mogwai, The Hawk Is Howling

The New Year, The New Year

Patti Smith & Kevin Shields, The Coral Sea

Rarely Seen Above Ground, Organic Sampler

Shooting at Unarmed Men, Triptych

Sinaloa, Oceans and Islands

So Cow, I'm Siding With My Captors

Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend

...Who Calls So Loud, ...Who Calls So Loud

Zomes, Zomes

... Hook - A Mixtape

1. Fucked Up - 'No Epiphany', The Chemistry of Common Life

2. Mogwai - 'The Sun Smells Too Loud', The Hawk is Howling

3. Grails - 'Take Refuge', Take Refuge In Clean Living

4. Envy - 'Life Caught In The Rain', Envy/Jesu Split EP

5. Fight Like Apes, 'Something Global' (Edit), Something Global EP (Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion LP)

Download

The title comes indirectly from a line in the Ramones song 'Chinese Rock', "all my best things are in hock" from End of the Century.

This mixtape comes from a selection of songs that have grabbed my attention in the last while, some on albums and in contexts where you'd expect a pop hook, and some that are more unexpected. The first two are from records (and artists) that are new to the blog, the latest releases from Fucked Up and Mogwai. The next two tracks from Grails and Envy have been mentioned, in some detail, before; and the particular records have both been superseded, though not necessarily surpassed, by newer releases. The final song - an obvious choice from an Irish perspective - has been knocking around for quite a few months now, with an EP/single and an album release behind it, plus a lot of local alternative radio play.

It took a couple of specific recommendations and a few weeks of procrastination before I went and checked out Fucked Up's latest album. I'm not too familiar with the band - who played Dublin a few weeks ago without my attendance - but I've always been vaguely aware of their experimental punk/hardcore aims. The Chemistry of Common Life is a good punk albums with plenty interesting flourishes, and although the singer's voice keeps reminding me of the Dropkick Murphys and other traditional hardcore bands that I stopped listening to years ago, it does seem like quality stuff. 'No Epiphany' is the track featured on the A.V. Club review (Grade: A), and the choice is clear to me as it was one of the songs in particular that caught my attention while walking around with this album. A stretching, soaring guitar hook and female backing vocals that extend quite naturally from a relatively orthodox melodic hardcore song, 'No Epiphany' is accessible and evocative. Experimental maybe, but there is a Bad Religion song of almost the same name, and essentially the same subject matter, that is just as good to listen to...

The new Mogwai album was introduced with this song as a taster, and as a non-Mogwai fan it was enough to get me interested or even excited about its release. Well, I have nothing in particular against the band, but an experimentation with their early work - yes, Young Team - left me cold. 'The Sun Smells Too Loud', on the other hand, is fascinating. It's a pop hook for the rest of the album that isn't in fact too similar to it, but it stands up on its own as well. There's that understated riff that lulls it way through all the song, and a constellation of other melodies and rhythms occuring alongside it. This is instrumental post-rock as it should be - exciting.

I've been banging on about this song for a while, and for that I make no apologies. 'Take Refuge' is Grails at their monumental, subtly crafted best. Every moment of this song swings, and its progression through climb-up, crescendo, climb-down, "Enrico Morriconi-esque" interlude, and reprise is a beautiful arc of musical composition. At its centre is a trademark Eastern/surf-rock riff, shaped and layered to perfection - though the Grails trademark has never been particulary static. The latest album (expect another post on it soon) Doomsdayer's Holiday continues with the surf-rock style, bearing down on it with even more spaghetti Easternness, but with a tighter and more focused sound overall than that of Burning Off Impurities.

Envy's split with Jesu is probably the more interesting piece of work of the two that they have produced this year, not least because the songs they have paired with Jesu have been particularly diverse. 'Life Caught In The Rain' is the poppiest song the band have ever written, but it's mostly an accent that the band applies to the ordinary post-rock structure of their songs. The unlikely hook comes from a guitar riff inserted in the space of the scream-your-head-off crescendo, but instead of deadening the song it gives it a new sense of energy and emphasises the melodic vibrancy of Envy's sound. Nothing I've heard this year, on their split with Jesu or with Thursday (the jury's still out on the whole idea of that one...), is going to fully satisfy the traditionalists amongst the Envy fans, but they're all still great songs.

"Hooks are for wimps/and choruses are for gays"

'Something Global' ("/...something real") is the rocking lead single from the Fight Like Apes debut album, and it really had to be included here for its apt subject matter, and because it's rather obviously meant to be a catchy pop song - of sorts. At one stage I had the full post-modern irony of the lyrics and the song structure all worked out but I've forgotten it now, so all I'll say is that it makes for a good encore.

Best of 2008: Now It's August - Pt. 3 (Irish)

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The Shape of Punk To Come: 2001-2007 (A Mixtape)

As introduced in the previous post, this is my idea of what the best punk and hardcore records of the new millenium have been; what has measured up to Refused's The Shape of Punk to Come (1998); or, indeed, to the many other seminal records of the 1990s. I said there that I would try to justify my criteria, because there are some. These aren't just my favourite albums of recent time - though these are of course some of those - but instead something slightly more specific. These are albums which have, in my estimation, provided something new to the sound of punk and hardcore, and kept it from becoming a stale and shallow genre. These are albums which in my own experience I can claim to have changed how I viewed music, the expression of ideas through music, and the creation of art via music.

As to what's punk and what's not, it goes to the very heart of this list. The shape of punk to come, almost by definition, has to incorporate change and diversity in styles. It's difficult to judge whether people will regard this selection as too broad or too narrow for their understanding of the central term. For the most part, I've kept to a simple ear test for the definition of punk/not punk - you'll know it if you hear it. Roughly speaking, I think the first three choices fit into a definition of 'post-hardcore', and the last three 'screamo'. The fact that the division falls chronologically - the order in which the bands appear - is not entirely coincidental, as I'll explain further on.

(The picture above is a composite of two elements - my own photograph of the A Flight and A Crash LP, and an inset from the cover of Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come.)

Side One:

1. Hot Water Music - 'A Flight and A Crash' (A Flight and A Crash, Epitaph, 2001)

2. American Steel - 'Shrapnel' (Jagged Thoughts, Lookout!, 2001)

3. Mclusky - 'To Hell With Good Intentions' (Mclusky Do Dallas, Too Pure, 2002)

4. Envy - 'Unrepairable Gentleness' (A Dead Sinking Story, Level Plane, 2003)

5. La Quiete - 'Raid Aereo Sul Paese Delle Farfalle' (La Fine non é la Fine, React With Protest/Heroine, 2004)

6. Ampere - 'In Antiquity' (Split Recording, Ebullition, 2006)

Side Two:

7. American Steel - 'Rainy Day' (Jagged Thoughts, Lookout!, 2001)

8. Hot Water Music - 'A Clear Line' (A Flight and A Crash, Epitaph, 2001)

9. Mclusky - 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues' (Mclusky Do Dallas, Too Pure, 2002)

10. Envy - 'Go Mad and Mark' (A Dead Sinking Story, Level Plane, 2003)

11. La Quiete - 'La Fine non é la Fine' (La Fine non é la Fine, React With Protest/Heroine, 2004)

12. Sinaloa - 'The Earth is On Fire' (Split Recording, Ebullition, 2006)

The Shape of Punk To Come: 2001-2007

Hot Water Music, A Flight and a Crash

This is my favourite record of all time. It's also the first album on the list because (as well as having a great opening track) it's one of the earliest. Hot Water Music have been releasing great albums from the mid-90s, with their generally agreed masterpiece Fuel For The Hate Game coming out in 1997. A Flight and A Crash, however, marked their first release for punk behemoth Epitaph Records and a major creative juncture in their career.

A Flight and a Crash takes the anthemicism of 1999's No Division, the meditative depth of 1997's Forever and Counting, and just enough of the original hardcore edge of Fuel For The Hate Game to combine it all into a truly remarkable record. Some very subtle electronic ambience and always superb songwriting make this Hot Water Music's crowning achievement, for me, as the most important and most creative punk band in my life. Even if took me a long while to get into this album at first, beyond the attraction of its post-Fugazi guitar sound and deep melody, when it hit it hit hard.

'A Flight and a Crash' is on the mixtape for its immediate sucker punch of melodic post-hardcore; "heart pounding/from the screaming/heart racing now"; and for it's introduction to HWM's gravelly vocals and searing emotional content. Even though it is several strands removed in many ways, this was my original introduction (pre-Swing Kids/Moss Icon) to the world of emo. 'A Clear Line', on the second side of the mixtape although still within the first side of the album, is there because it has a deeper effect. Just as mesmerising musically, if a little more sedate by comparison, it has just the most amazing lyrics and message: philosophical, personal, political... every line of it is meaningful to me, and it's difficult to sum it up except as a very human, very progressive attitude to living life in any sort of reasonable, sustainable way (read the lyrics here.)

(I haven't covered this band on the blog in any extent proportional to how important they are to me, but the video for the song immediately following the opener 'A Flight and a Crash', 'Paper Thin', was posted here.)

American Steel - Jagged Thoughts

This particular band has been mentioned even less on the blog, which is probably why they didn't initially come to mind when I answered urbanology's comment. However, when I think of bands that have done something different and very special with punk in the last decade of music, this band, and this album, definitely crop up. American Steel are/were a band from the San Francisco East Bay area, like Green Day, and hence their signing to Lookout! Records. They always had a big punk sound, fast and sort of punk-pop (and ska) influenced, but just as much on the hardcore punk rock side of things. Two initial albums, a breakneck speed self-titled effort and the viscerally mournful yet positive, far more developed, Rogue's March led to this 2001 record.

Jagged Thoughts is a creative masterpiece, blending artistic expression with punk fury in a way that goes back to the early Clash records. Around the time of the recording of Rogue's March, the guitarist Ryan battled with leukemia, an experience which informed a lot of the spirit of that album and further transferred on to Jagged Thoughts. In essence, it is a beautiful piece of music, but also an utterly powerful, explosive punk record.

Since the album came out in the same year as A Flight and A Crash, as well as both bands combining a strong emotional sense and post-hardcore styles, I thought I would switch the order of the songs from those albums around between the two sides of the mix. Hence the first side features the slow, building 'Rainy Day', which turns instantaneously between gentle near-silence and thunderously loud guitar chords, while the second side opens right off the start with 'Shrapnel', the bewitching, hook-laden album opener of "jagged words are all I've heard, spitting shards of vitriol/jagged thoughts are all that I've got, shredding my soul".

Mclusky, Mclusky Do Dallas

A step away, but not too far, from the US is this band from Cardiff, Wales. Mclusky Do Dallas - named after the porn film of the similar name - was the middle of Mclusky's three albums and the seminal one in terms of their Pixie-ish, lyrically demented noise attack on rock music. I posted the album a long time ago, and have spoken about them many times since - partly because of the rise of the slightly influenced Fight Like Apes in the Irish music scene, partly because of the output of the post-break up bands Future of the Left and Shooting at Unarmed Men (more on which later) and partly because they are a hugely important UK punk/post-punk band that deserves to be heard.

Mclusky Do Dallas, released in 2002, was recorded by Steve Albini and bears the imprint of a viscerally noisy, hard-edged production. Nevertheless the album is amazingly tuneful, catchy and almost inspiringly enjoyable to listen to. 'To Hell With Good Intentions' was the key single release from the album, and as a heavy, ironic piece of 21st-century post-hardcore ferocity, it caught the imagination - I still hear it on the radio now and then. This was not least because of the clever, repetitive lyrics ("we take more drugs than a touring funk band"), the infectious rhythm and the incessant tension yearning to flip out into sheer sonic destruction.

Punk, especially in the UK context, was probably too narrow a genre to confine Mclusky to. Sex Pistols this ain't. Or rather, it is, but reborn in a truly frenetic, revolutionary fashion. 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues' affected me thus: "That white-hot sonic anarchy, the complete abandon of scatological lyrics and eye-popping vocals, it took me out of any disillusionment I may have been having about the ability of punk rock to physically and musically move me" (from this post).

Envy, A Dead Sinking Story

Another band I've mentioned frequently, and presumably most of you have already heard. However, this album was revelatory, pure and simple, for me on first listen. If Hot Water Music was my introduction to post-hardcore with an emo dimension, this was my introduction to the no less complex world of 'screamo'. People scream for all sorts of reasons in all sorts of genres, and often to no greater effect than explosions in an ordinary Hollywood film. But here, like this, screaming is the most beautiful, intense expression of punk rock music you will possibly ever hear. Undeniably the songs are epic, and much of the beauty in fact comes from the slowed down, very quiet interludes of guitar and drums with a bit of spoken word, but the full crescendo provides an immediate, inescapably loud statement of hardcore only half-mixed with the stirring sounds of post-rock.

'Unrepairable Gentleness' I chose in a part as a double-take on the ferocious ending of the Mclusky track, launching straight into the loudness of the Envy album, but it shortly develops into a much more complex, layered song, full of twists and turns and an ever-ascending journey towards the heights of emotional expression. 'Go Mad and Mark' is broadly similar, but opens right on the melody line of the song and introduces that key balance of delicate mournfulness and harsh fury that characterises the Envy songs of this period. In short, these songs are throughout their epic lengths fascinating exhibitions of how hardcore/'screamo' can be such an emotionally affecting genre.

In terms of influence on the genre as a whole, this album may be the most important of the lot (bearing in mind the stream of developing Envy releases before this.) Epic screamo became a new artistic achievement of punk, and a new facet of the general post-hardcore spread that resulted from the need to do something new with the sounds of the 90s generation. Whereas Hot Water Music, American Steel and Mclusky all took punk and hardcore outwards into a redefining of punk-pop and post-punk music, Envy and the other modern screamo bands took the sound deeper within the genre, and came up with something even stranger and more beautiful.

La Quiete, La Fine non é la Fine

Very soon into this screamo renaissance, La Quiete came up with probably the most beautiful creation of the genre yet. This gorgeous album actually falls a little short of the melodic exactitude and perfection of the Italian band's 2006 self-titled 7", but as an overall statement of their style it still stands proud. Perhaps stemming from the combination of their Italian lyricism and their technical astuteness, it is marvellous, chaotic, indescribable assault of punk rock.

'Raid Aereo Sul Paese Delle Farfalle' - meaning 'Air Raid on the Butterfly Country' is the relatively brief opening gambit of the album: initially a dense, seemingly inpenetrable mess of drums and shouting; but also a rapidly developing creation of melody, rhythm, hooks and joyful excess - what could, again in the 21st century, be more punk rock? 'La Fine non é la Fine', the final, title track is a more epic expansion of the method that all the album's songs are based on. While similar, it is still far more compact than Envy's style of screamo, and tries at almost every moment to squeeze more melody and more emotion out of its sound. It has a central riff which is viewed from various vantage points, clear and open or closed, dense and furious. It is the openness which wins out in the end, rolling out the album in quite classic emo style (think Indian Summer) but in a subtly new, joyous sense.

Ampere/Sinaloa, Split Recording

Finally, I covered this very record only a few short months ago, so I'm not sure what to add on this occasion. On so many levels, this is a great record. It brings together two groups. whose styles are very noticeably different - Ampere, harsh and abrasive; Sinaloa, slower and more melodic - yet fit together brilliantly. It is packaged superbly, and the artistic, lyrical and political content does credit to the bands and the label, Ebullition.

The importance of the record as a punk album, however, lies partly in the context of the success of the two bands mentioned above. Outside of the US, the screamo genre seemed to have reached greater creative heights in terms of emotion, while the genre within turned more towards a more technical kind of creativity (I'm thinking of Off Minor, Kidcrash here). A subjective assessment, admittedly, but I often found American screamo lacked soul when compared with the best of what countries outside the US had to offer. Sinaloa in particular changed that for me. Ampere too, although their creativity is especially on the technical, quasi-grind side - the connected Bucket Full of Teeth project being the ultimate fulfilment of that trend, and would be on this list if it wasn't too far outside the self-imposed (ad hoc) bounds of punk/hardcore of this list.

So there it is, my top six records that changed punk rock since Refused. Feel free to disagree. In fact, please do.

Wash Behind Yr Ears - An Alternative Irish Mixtape

(Photograph: Dublin at the foot of the mountains)

Tracklisting:

1. Future Kings of Spain – ‘A Place For Everything’ from Future Kings of Spain.

2. Bats – ‘These Ones Lay Eggs’ from the Cruel Sea Scientist EP.

3. Ten Past Seven – ‘No Bother’ from Shut Up Your Face.

4. Taste – ‘Blister On The Moon’ from Taste.

5. My Bloody Valentine – ‘Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)’ from Isn’t Anything.

6. Whipping Boy – ‘We Don’t Need Nobody Else’ from Heartworm.

7. El Diablo – ‘I Still Love You, You Know’ from The Crooked Straight.

8. Terrordactyl – ‘Calabunga’ from the Terrordactyl EP.

9. Adebisi Shank – ‘Horse’ from This is the EP of a Band called Adebisi Shank.

10. NPB – ‘Kim Novak’ from The Sociables Prefer Pop Music.

11. Estel – ‘Regardez Moi (I’m Up To My Neck In Shit)(Again)’ from The Bones of Something.

12. The Redneck Manifesto – ‘The Dillon Family Dancers’ from Cut Your Heart Off from Your Head.

checkitout

Words (and selection) by mr. x indeed:

The first track of Future Kings of Spain’s first album; still a classic that they’ve yet to top.

I first saw BATS supporting the Locust in Whelan’s, I was impressed but it’s hard not to be by a band screaming in unison that they will "destroy you" (I later found out that the threat was actually aimed at the Creationist Kent Hovind). Since then I’ve seen them a few times and I think it’s safe to say that they are one of the most exciting Irish bands at the moment. Their music lurches spastically from disco to metal, stopping in a few places in between. Last I spoke to the lads they say they’re working on an album to follow up the Cruel Sea Scientist EP, and if the 5 tracks on the EP are anything to go by, it should be quite astonishing. ‘These Ones Lay Eggs’ shows a broad spectrum of what they are capable of.

Ten Past Seven are an instrumental three-piece from Kerry. They appeared, released an amazing album Shut Up Your Face, and then seemed to disappear from the Dublin gig circuit for a year or two. They are probably one of the most musically adept bands I’ve seen in years. Time-signatures pass in the blink of an eye, songs come to shuddering halts before breaking into passages of free-jazz style playing.

Taste - nothing new here but it is always important to salute the masters. I personally am of the opinion that if a person prefers Phil Lynott to Rory Gallagher they should not be allowed to posses an Irish passport. Sure Lynott has a statue in the city centre of Dublin but it looks like Willy Wonka. And I could never see a big Lynott festival really taking off (http://www.goingtomyhometown.com/).

My Bloody Valentine

‘Nuff said.

Whipping Boy evokes something that seems very unique to Dublin, some sort of playful but resentful grudge against the world around oneself. The band manages to flourish under an intensely constricting atmosphere. This is something that indie music in Ireland lost many years ago. Great art in Ireland often came from oppressive surroundings, from the oppression from Britain that created purpose for Yeats’ art, to the oppression of terrorism that brought the spark for Stiff Little Fingers, to the economic oppression that created the bleak atmosphere of Whipping Boy’s Heartworm album.

Ireland now seems more comfortable and there is no spark in a lot of the music today. Musicians begin to worry about their style more than where their next meal is coming from. And although this is great for the artist in question, the art suffers because there is no drive to do something different, something that could allow them to escape.

Country music is often underrated. El Diablo created something unique; something that sounded like it was from somewhere between Tennessee and Galway.

Terrordactyl rock harder than a quarry. Their debut EP is an astoundingly diverse record. Calabunga, the track I’ve chosen here, sounds like a cross between straight up driving rock, The Locust and Primus (if Claypool would stop doing Residents impressions and just focus on rocking).

Adebisi Shank (Oz reference, anyone?) released the This Is The EP Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank EP last year and was the readers’ choice of Best Irish EP of 2007 on nialler9’s hugely influential blog. I’ve been told that they are currently recording their debut album with the guy who engineered Faraquet’s The View From This Tower. Oh, and they’re getting big in Japan.

Keep an eye on these ones.

The NPB, or National Prayer Breakfast as they were sometimes known, strayed along a strange path. Starting off a humorous group fixated as much with Karl Marx as they were with James Dean; they somehow became a weird grimy blues rock band stuck in the 1960s over the course of two and a half albums. A bizarre blip on the radar maybe, but they never had a bad song.

Estel are usually an instrumental band, but when Mike Watt asks if he can do vocals on a track you best not say "no". Estel combine the repetitiveness of Krautrock bands like Can with the bluntness of post-punk bands like The Fall, as you can imagine in a live situation they are something quite elemental. This comes off of their most recent, and strongest to date, album The Bones of Something.

They actually have completed a full record with Mike Watt and Steve MacKay of the Stooges, but accordingly there are no plans to release it anytime soon, (one annoying thing about Irish bands is that they seem to be inherently disorganized).

The Redneck Manifesto are great.

Here’s a favourite of theirs.

And finally, The Richter Collective are a new conglomerate of different Irish independent labels and promoters. They’ve got a pretty good catalogue here where you can get many of the best Irish albums and EPs of recent days.