Envy - Abyssal

I'll lay my cards on the table - I prefer Envy's later stuff. Generally, given the choice between screamo and post-rock, I'd opt for the former. GY!BE, EITS, etc, are great and all, but give me a list that starts with Indian Summer and Saetia and then works through the last ten years of obscure emo bands, and I'll probably be happier. Though of course Envy, as a band that lies on the cusp of screamo and post-rock, still retains a wide appeal.

The thing is, I came into the band in their mid-to-late stage - A Dead Sinking Story to be precise - and while I really like some of the mid-to-early stuff (All the Footprints You've Ever Left and the Fear Expecting Ahead is more than a fine album, if a little confusingly titled) anything before that doesn't do much for me. What happened to me was that I got caught up in Envy's extraordinally creative stage, and the momentum has kept me going since. I'm not one of those people who think Envy were better "in their old days" before "they went slightly post-rock but still a great band"; Envy still are, and have been for a long time, even more than a great band.

(The person who said that, incidentally, has been bigging up a couple of Malaysian and Japanese screamo bands recently on his blog - haven't actually checked them out as of yet, but will do! Man, this blog has more plugs in it than a box full of 3-1 extension leads)

That personal explanation was by way of introduction to Envy's new EP, Abyssal; because if you didn't particularly like the Insomniac Doze album, you're unlikely to like this much either. The four songs pick up where that gentle, ponderous epic left off, with more long songs and considerably less screaming. Not that there's really all that much wrong with that, in my opinion, but bewarned. It still sounds "mild enough for the dentist's office" - as Pitchfork said about their last effort; "Your interest may well depend on your attention span".

The first track, 'A road of winds the water builds', breaks the ten-minute mark and contains within it most of the disparate elements to be found in Insomniac Doze's cinematic, slow-building and shifting soundscapes. Martial drumming, shifting arpeggios that move so slowly between pitches that they sound like string arrangements, drawn-out spoken word overlays, and of course, long, long climaxes. Not only does 'A road of winds' begin with a soft intro that is barely audible outside of a quiet room (warm or otherwise), it slides into near-silence halfway through - a bit reminiscent of the half-cacophony, half-catatonic nature of A Dead Sinking Story there - and end s with what appears to the ears as soft angelic singing. In sum, it's a very good song; I'm not exactly sure whether it does anything different, and I'm not sure if that's important.

'All that's left has gone to sleep', actually, offers something for the old-school Envy fan if he has managed to stay awake. Kicking off with a very recognizable 'ka-ka, kaka chuh' of stuttery, distorted guitar, it keeps the arpeggiated quiet bits and spoken-word interludes to a minimum. It rides, like its audible cymbals, from swell to swell of guitar noise. Unlike the last album, where "Tetsuya Fukagawa's tortured howl-- as if the band hadn't told him that they're no longer constantly aiming for red-- sits on top like an oil slick", now he has to strive to keep up with the song's energy. It even has a guitar solo in it which sounds like a guitar solo, and not like pure gold transmuted into sound waves. In a word, it rocks. However, I think I still yearn for the attractive glisten of the oil slick.

By contrast, 'Thousand Scars' is very much for the Insomniac Doze fan. Trilling, vibratory emo-peggio sustained over some six minutes, with a few loud steps into hyper-Spectorian, wall-of-sound screamo which really just amps up the arpeggio behind it. All very post-rock, and with the long, drawn-out chord progressions pinned to the quiet vocals and building crescendos, at some point you've got to stop trying to describe or categorize it, and just lie back and let it wash over you.

Finally, if 'Thousand Scars' connects firmly with Insomniac Doze, the last track, 'Fading Vision', stretches the connection back to A Dead Sinking Story. More electronic than electric, it is full of empty spaces, percussive sounds and fuzzy, quiet vocals - like 'A Color in Fetters' from the previous album; although running through it is a rhythm and a melody which seems more akin to the obvious softnesses of Doze.

Abyssal is a good EP; I'm not sure what its message is meant to be. It seems, roughly, that the first two tracks are songs of action, and the last two tracks more contemplative, but all the songs have something to offer; 'A road of winds' being the most encompassing, a kind of Envy for Dummies or, Learn Envy in (just over) 10 Mins. Seriously though, this is another significant step for a significant band. You can place your analytical knife where you wish (an image borrowed from Pirsig), or you could just listen to it...

'A road of waters the wind builds' (Just the first track, since it's a new release - there are plenty of other places to find the full thing to download if you want to.)

(For the intellectuals among us, it might be of interest to consider Envy as a creature of art from the East; according to Edward Said's Orientalism and its Foucault-inspired view of language, the Western critical tradition does not allow the East to speak for itself, to define itself. Envy obviously owe a great debt to the US hardcore community (and probably by now the charges have been reversed, not to mention the equal challenge from Europe) but is there something about the Japanese music scene whereby, as one blogger puts it, 'everything rock they touch turns to gold'? Pitchfork said that "with Insomniac Doze-- gone is the furious band that once expanded rock palettes with tricky arpeggios and lots of air. Instead, Envy have given themselves completely to their once dormant spacey impulses and time-lapse songwriting." Is that, not just a fair, but a valid critique of Envy? Or do we have to be bound by the idea that Envy still falls somehow between the cracks of hardcore and post-rock?)

Chisel - Set You Free / The A.V. Club

I

This post isn't so much about this album as it as about a particular review of it; Set You Free is this week's Permanent Record at the Onion A.V. Club, so it is about that site that I wish mainly to discuss. However, Set You Free is a wonderful, amazing album which I can't exactly just ignore.

Fortunately, 'j bubblegum' over at Burning Down Dreams has already done a beautiful post about Chisel here. sbj of that site is where the description (ode to the 'steady soundtrack of discordant suburban whiteboy blues') of this blog comes from, but bubblegum is obviously a kindred literary spirit because he comes out with some pretty fantastic turns of phrase too:

"We make the art art. We try hard to identify the particles that relate. We look at the little picture until the pixels spin. We fool ourselves. We ruin it for our lovers. We ruin it for ourselves. We play track six and track seven again and again."

Or this succinct guide to the Chisel catalogue:

"Nothing New inflames, 8 a.m. All Day entices, Set You Free inspires"

Which is actually quite true, at least how I understand it, because Set You Free has always been by favourite of the two Chisel full-lengths, always the more meaningful and affecting album. It's been several years since I first heard it, exploring the Lookout! and Gern Blandsten catalogues on eMusic; and while it took me a while to get into an album of that length (17 three-minute pop songs) I could always count on the opener, 'On Warmer Music', to reaffirm my respect for this obscure rocker, Ted Leo.

II

From the amateur to the professional, the review by the A.V. Club's Scott Gordon hones in on the opening song as the key to the album:

"The 17-song Free sounds more focused and patient, oddly enough, than its 14-song predecessor, 1996's 8 A.M. All Day. In contrast to 8 A.M.'s hook-at-will impulses, Free takes a little more time to build the tension on its opener, "On Warmer Music." Leo, often the man with punk's prettiest falsetto, starts out singing in a low register over mute but hotly distorted chords. Then the band kicks into the album's only super-earnest chorus: "Get ready for the invasion, self-satisfied smug-rock nation / cheers for the young idea, so glad you're all here." Wisely, Free never tries to return to that climax."

'Permanent Records: Albums from The A.V. Club's Hall of Fame is a popular feature item on the A.V. Club, picking a usually lesser-known, but intrinsically significant album from anywhere in the last thirty or so years (somewhat like Stylus Magazine's 'On Second Thought' series). Both of those series perform a function similar to music blogs like this one (and others); looking back at records not because they are new, or hip, or even canonical, but on the basis of some vaguely defined desire to reassess. Or as Stylus describe it:

For better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

To be honest, Hardcore for Nerds is fundamentally an uncritical work; I post, almost exclusively, albums I already love and rarely bother with any kind of objective dissection. It's because it is the only way for me to be sincere, to leave off on the judgement and focus on aesthetics and emotion. It is also in a sense leaving the criticism to the critics, with all the defiance of amateurism.

III

The most critical of the critics in music on the internet these days are of course the demons of Pitchfork, whom I have to admit drawing on for some of the hipper stuff I listen to (Dan Deacon, Battles), but I think I also speak for most people when I refer to them with disdain and distaste. The A.V. Club is less self-consciously and more self-deprecatingly 'hip'; they combine a genuine eclecticism with a consistent satirical touch; while also having a strange symbiotic relationship between their writers and commenters, the latter group of which tend to throw around the term 'hipster douchebag' a lot in a semi-ironic way. In its coverage of popular and alternative culture, the A.V. Club manages to be cynical without being snide, and provocative without seeming overly pretentious.

A lot of the sensibility of the A.V. Club, both in its writers and its less sarcastic commenters, reflects the generosity and taste of the blogging community. People who are willing to appreciate art (in the broad sense) without feeling the need to overload it with humour or posturing, but who are flexible enough to approach it outside of the rigidly objective, canonical 'critical' standpoint.

Hence, here are a few links to some of the more interesting music articles from the A.V. Club recently:

Camels, Spilled Corona and the Sound of Mariachi Bands - J Church's entry into the Permanent Records: Hall of Fame.

Lance Hahn - 1967-2007 Article commemorating the J Church singer's very recent death.

So this is permanence... General discussion by Jason Heller on the concept of the Permanent Records Hall of Fame, and why he thinks he should definitely do Operation Ivy's Energy at some stage. I wholeheartedly agree.

Never Can Say Goodbye: Me and My CDs (1988-2007) Blog article on the ubiquitous music format; a chronological account of the steps between the cassette and the iPod.

Def Leppard taking a bubblebath with Daft Punk in Brian Eno's jizz Article on the role of fatuous band comparisons in record reviews.

A.V. Club Interview with Ted Leo Interview with the man himself from earlier on this year. Mostly about his solo stuff, although he does start talking politics and 'neoconservatives', and has to explain himself further on down in the comments. Unusual to say the least.

Dan Deacon - Live @ Whelan's, Dublin

Hardcore for Nerds: Dan Deacon - 'Crystal Cat'

Arpeggi, A Music Blog - post on Spiderman of the Rings

www.myspace.com/dandeacon

Dan Deacon on eMusic - Spiderman of the Rings and Acorn Master EP

______________________________

"I don't usually play with my back to the crowd

but the last time I played in, uh, Dublin, I got the shit beaten out of me..."

Man, this was some gig. More of an experience, really. So many good points it would be impossible to list them all here, so I'll just mention a few important things.

First of all, Dan Deacon eschews the use of a stage, instead setting up his table of electronic stuff literally on the dancefloor. Its not like it hasn't been done before - but its done with a particular purpose in mind. The only lights he uses are a small wall-lamp kind of bulb wrapped in a piece of torn red gel, and a bare 100-watt ordinary bulb.(Those and a glowing plastic skull, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here). This is a bit pretentious, but what the whole scene brought to mind was the painting An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump:

Of course, we weren't cruelly asphyxiating a small bird, but instead celebrating our own kind of enlightenment. It was the harsh sodium lighting effect of the single bare bulb which brought the image to mind originally (alternating with the Red October gloom of the other bulb), but another similarity becomes apparent now. At about the same height as the air pump there was, on Dan Deacon's set-up, a glowing green plastic skull which flashed on and off in a kinda strobe-y way. There's a song on his album about it - 'Trippy Green Skull'. Apparently it's a feature of his shows; and it takes on a sort of totemic aspect, as it's the only thing most people can see of the 'stage'. I was only three, maybe four people back but the most I saw of the man himself during most of his set was a few glimpses of his bearded, bespectacled face in the strobe light. Not that it really mattered, because the whole thing was this insane circle-of-firelight rave experience.(Or alternately, a crazy and probably infamous dance circle dripping with Fight Club references... but I'm allowed to talk about it; "Rule 3 - No cowards!")

It might be pointed out that some of the audience were able to get up on what was originally the stage, i.e. above Dan Deacon (and in front of him... I can draw you a diagram if you want). The view must have been pretty good up there... one of my friends somehow ended up in front of the bouncers and was able to high five Deacon from above, so kudos to you. However, down in the crush was pretty cool too.

As for the music, it was just as good as expected. 'Crystal Cat' was amazing in that setting, as was 'Okie Doke' - there's a song that gets you moving! He played 'Jimmy Roche', the album closer, early on (I think) which is a personal favourite of mine. "Gorgously complex composition that keeps slipping under itself, and all that" as a very good friend of mine describes it - he actually knows, unlike me, about music and stuff so I'll have to defer to him on that and on what is the real masterpiece on the album, the "the all-encompassing complexity of the perfect creation" known as 'Wham City':

It's epic, it's fantastic and the lyrics don't make much sense; but it's really the epitome of Dan Deacon's work in relation to Spiderman of the Rings and as an electro-acoustic composer (whatever the hell that is). This, and 'Crystal Cat', show just how he combines weird-ass techno complexity with catchy pop simplicity. The lyric sheet at the top of the post was handed out to the audience so we could all sing along, which just goes to show what a nice guy Dan Deacon is, too.

Fuck This Band (Mclusky singles)

they swear too much

prologue

Last Friday week, I went to see Fight Like Apes in Whelan's, Dublin. Fantastic gig, really good show. I would find it difficult to describe Fight Like Apes; kinda like The Yeah Yeah Yeahs meet Dan Deacon. Throw in a few words like punk, electro, etc., or just click the link above and have a listen. Two minutes of your time.

Yet while Fight Like Apes themselves were phenomenal - that is, their own material, of which there is only 2 EPs or otherwise, 8 songs, of - a real highlight of the gig was their cover of Mclusky's 'Lightsaber Cocksucking Blues'.

I had read, in an interview the band did with the college paper, that some of their influences were 'Mclusky, Pavement and At The Drive In'. Of course, that wasn't meant to be in any way exhaustive or encompassing, and Fight Like Apes probably don't sound like what you would first think of upon combining those three bands. To be pedestrianly accurate, it would be better to pencil in the Pixies before Mclusky, since both they and Fight Like Apes, I reckon, consciously take a lot from their music.

Both my friend and I, who had gone to the gig with me, were pretty stoked to hear this song. It is the first track off Mclusky Do Dallas and, really, it changed the way I thought about music. 'Lightsaber Cocksucking Blues' made noise cool for me. 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. Naturally - and I assume this is the same for most people - my tastes have hardened over time, grown less delicate - but for me Mclusky was a quantum leap, a paradigm shift (perhaps, a la Dilbert, one without a clutch).

Given what the song represents to me, to see it performed live was amazing - and by an excellent band in their own right, in their oh-so-different but reflexive Mcluskyite style; so I am determined to bring this band to Hardcore for Nerds again, because if this isn't hardcore, I don't know what is.

fuck this blog

But before I get to what I am about to post, a few words about this site. Fuck This Band marks the fortieth post on my music blog, and a little over three months of 'discordant suburban whiteboy blues' (thanks, sweetbabyjaysus - jay - for the encouragement, and for all the kind, wise and literate words then and since; thanks of course to blend for showing me that this kind of thing could be done in the first place [and for graciously allowing me to copy his layout and style, pretty much] as well, thanks to everybody who has commented, linked me, hell, anybody and everybody who reads this thing... go raibh maith agaibh, slán agus sláinte). It's been fun; hopefully it will remain so.

Yesterday I found this blog - Jimmy Buttons - which had linked the You Made Me Realise Post from below as part of his weekly round-up of mp3 blogs. Something else this guy wrote caught my eye:

"i'm not going to link to blogs that don't spend time on quality posts. it's one thing to not have any valid info about a band, but to create a blog for posting music without as much as a few words about your posts. that's just lazy!!"

That really connected with me, because that is the ethos of this blog. Quality is something I strive for, but it is an effort I profoundly enjoy. My attempts at writing, creativity, humour (!), description, lyricism and exposition of wonderful music, they form the heart of this blog for me. The artwork, the dl links, the pacing of titles, are like the surrounding body: beautiful to look at - of course - tangible and enjoyable, but unable to survive without the core.

I won't try to drag out the metaphor any further, but you, the readers, fit in that scheme somewhere too. To, consequently, drag in something I've been learning a bit about these days, this blog is a discourse. I make the decision to post a record, not just to satisfy my own likes, but to see perhaps what people think of it. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, so I tend to hop around the various genres and permutations of 'punk' - that ever-mutable term - which I listen to. It's nice, therefore, to know what in particular interests you.

My agenda is neither entirely obvious nor ulterior, and from time to time I do have a clear mental list of what to post (usually reflected in the 'Coming Soon' list at right). Hardcore for Nerds, not suprisingly, has been a process of evolution, as I have discovered and accomodated to what can be done in this space. It still needs input - which is where you come in:

Leave a comment; join the discourse of sounds.

m-c-l-u-s-k-y

Finally, on to the music. Like I said, I'm posting Mclusky again because I think they are fucking hardcore. So I'll keep this loud, fast, and short. Well, Mclusky will provide the loudness and speed; I'll just keep the review brief.

Firstly, 'To Hell With Good Intentions' is probably the best-known of all Mclusky songs. The keynote piece of their classic album, it received a lot of airplay back in the day and still gets the odd spin. It's actually a little slower than the average Mclusky song, even a little staid, but it still rocks. This single has three other songs with it, so plenty of exercise for those ears:

Mclusky - To Hell With Good Intentions

http://www.emusic.com/10756790

Secondly, 'That Man Will Not Hang' is my favourite of all their singles, mainly, as you will see, on account of one of the b-sides. The title song is off their third and final album, The Difference Between You and Me Is That I'm Not On Fire; incidentally, all their b-sides are available in the one disc in their Mcluskyism anthology, along with a first 'best-of' disc. Anyway, because I like this so mcuh I wrote a review for it a long time ago, which I intended to post on eMusic but, for some reason, didn't:

"“That Man Will Not Hang” is an ideal single - one of those typical Mclusky songs which combines humour and heavy guitars. The first B-side, “The All Encompassing Positive”, starts off very Pixies-like with the one heavy drum beat, over and over – and then there’s a sudden halt, and the song erupts into wailing, all-encompassing, high-pitched guitar noise. Just amazing. The second, “The London Whine Company”, a demo, is again quite Pixies-like, starting off slow and then quickly accelerating as the vocals fall apart into frantic shouts. Basically, this is top-notch Mclusky – the band at their musical apex."

Yeah - what I said:

Mclusky - That Man Will Not Hang

http://www.emusic.com/10913087

My Bloody Valentine - You Made Me Realise

My Bloody Valentine are the archetypal shoegaze[1] band. Their ethereal, shimmering sound has not only been imitated countless times, but forms the basis for many comparisons.[2] Loveless,[3] their landmark (and as it turned out, roadblock) album marked a modern masterpiece and the culmination of the band’s distinctive contribution to indie music.

I say culmination because Loveless came with a trail of undoubtedly, but only marginally, lesser releases.[4] Although the stories of the massive expense of the album’s recording are likely apocryphal or at least exaggerated, it was by most accounts a tortuous process: with Kevin Shields playing the role of Torquemada, shaping and fashioning the layered epic of Loveless.[5] It was the apex of their sound, shoegaze taken to its farther extension. Purer and more focused, yet hazier and more impenetrable than that which came before it, it was from at least one artistic dimension an end for My Bloody Valentine, the final coup de grace.

Undeniable though its claim to mastery of the form may be, Loveless does not quite stand alone and the preceding recordings have much to recommend them. Personally, the album in isolation was quite enough to get me hooked on MBV’s sound, but for some shoegaze is a capricious entity.[6] Perhaps, and this is a valid point, listeners prefer the more basic spread of Isn’t Anything to the stratospheric character of Loveless; a relative earthiness to counterpoint the final rarefied sculptings of the 1991 swansong.[7] In any case, the earlier My Bloody Valentine is comparatively more mundane – only comparatively, mind you – than its later transcendent form.

You could hardly call MBV punk, yet their earlier efforts are more straightforwardly rocky, not entirely the blissed-out cloudscapes that they are usually associated with.[8] Hence I present you with the You Made Me Realise EP, whose title track features a heavy melodic breakdown in the midst of the characteristic shoegaze-y elements; indeed it kicks off with the same pounding rhythm, sounding somewhat like something Shotmaker[9] could have written. A little frantic, a little high-strung, a little piece of indie music momentarily washed-up on the shores of hardcore:

My Bloody Valentine - You Made Me Realise (1988)

__________________________________________

[1] Def: "Shoegazing (also known as shoegaze or shoegazer; practitioners referred to as shoegazers) is a genre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. It lasted until the mid 1990s, peaking circa 1990 to 1991... the musicians in these bands often maintained a motionless performing style, standing on stage and staring at the floor while playing their instruments; hence, the idea that they were gazing at their shoes. The shoegazing sound featured extensive use of guitar effects, and indistinguishable vocal melodies that blended into the creative noise of the guitars. Few shoegazers were dynamic performers or interesting interviewees, which prevented them from breaking through into markets in the United States" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shoegaze.
[2] Asobi Seksu and Jesu come to mind, both as examples of conscious imitation and of imposed comparison. Kind of at opposite ends of the ‘nice’ spectrum, though. I haven't listened to Asobi Seksu, although they do get some good radio time; this limited issue 7" is pretty nifty. However, I don't really warm to Jesu (see [6] below).
[3] My Bloody Valentine, Loveless. Creation Records, 1991. (Hey, blend/sbj - Harvard style footnotes!)
[4] Principally the full-length Isn’t Anything, the Feed With Me Kiss and You Made Me Realise EPs, but also the Glider and Tremolo EPs which took songs from Loveless.
[5] For further reading – seriously, this is very detailed and interesting - see this Florida music student’s dissertation on the album: http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04102006-103749/.
[6] Capricious, adj. – from the Italian caprice, lit. ‘hedgehog’; see my previous post on Envy’s Insomniac Doze (Sonzai/Rock Action, 2006) for a discussion of shoegaze and its accessibility.
[7] My Bloody Valentine, Isn’t Anything. Creation Records, 1988; in its time as influential as Loveless but in places lacks the latter’s focus and cohesiveness. Similar artistic style and layout.
[8] A key critical debate on Loveless is whether it is best described as ‘druggy sex’ or ‘sexy drugs’. There is a general consensus, however, that it approximates to the ‘sound of angels fucking in a pink haze’. See here: http://www.punknews.org/review/1630
[9] Shotmaker, Complete Discography 1993-1996. Troubleman Unlimited, 2000; seminal hardcore/emo band from Ottawa. Seriously recommended is their split EP with Maximillian Colby; see also Three Penny Opera 1 2.