Did you know I write about music on this blog? I know shocker. Here are a couple short reviews of songs, an ep, and an album. Most of these projects came out this month. One ep is two years old and I finally figured out how to write about it. Let’s start with that one!
part time artist, bad close friend by One Hour Photo
Craft is under appreciated in emo song writing, the perception of a raw nerve is valued far more by the hormonal teens and trans girls who adore the genre than in recognizing how hard it is to present a raw nerve compellingly. One Hour Photo front woman Sean Kovac puts her craft at the forefront on part time artist, bad close friend, a collection of perfect, poppy and post-hardcore inflicted emo. “no fun at…” moves deftly from a massive breakdown—the kind that would get you sent to electroshock therapy if we were in the 50s— to an equally massive chorus all in the service of expressing a total ambivalence towards the conventions of life while equally stirring rapture. “idky”starts in the stratosphere and plummets back down to Earth on the bridge before impacting with the ferocity of an H-Bomb while the following “wiseguy” builds slowly to a vision of catharsis. It’s “hardcore heart” I love the most though. The chorus, a simple, desperate, declaration of adoration in a litany of chores. Who else is doing it like that?
Other Hells by Ceremony
I don’t know what Ceremony is doing and I don’t think they do either. Ceremony have built a career out of songs with direction, be they post-punk or powerviolence, the songs had a point. They’ve only sounded this aimless on Zoo.
Layaway Plot by Pretty Baby
This record opens like the hour before a tornado rips through a small town in Kansas. The wind chimes clinking are the first indication something’s wrong, but it’s when the guitars plunk out that progression that you realize you’re in the path of impending doom, like when the sky starts turning green. Soon enough the synths are swirling faster and louder than you ever felt wind before. The five minutes of “Late Antique Little Ice Age” is all the warning you get before Layaway Plot batters you into annihilation. That’s all you should know going into this record, let Pretty Baby’s blend of post-hardcore, post-rock, post-punk, et-al rip you from the ground.
My Own Beauty by Pouty
It has been plainly stated, many, many times how tragic the impact of American Beauty standards has been on women’s psyche. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still fertile ground for art, as Pouty proves on “My Own Beauty,” a blazing alt-rock number with one of the best choruses I’ve heard all year. Each chorus starts near triumphant as Rachel Gagliardi sings “I’m reclaiming / my own beauty.” But what makes the chorus so powerful is the subversion that comes right after, when she crashes back down into the lines “I wish I was 20 again” and “I wish I was skinny again.” What makes “My Own Beauty” so refreshing is that Gagliardi is struggling right alongside all of us to internalize the things we know to be true.
Fung Wah Bus by Bellows
This is the first Bellows song I’ve ever heard so pardon me for asking but, are they all this fucking good? Are they all this melancholically gorgeous? Do they all seep into your head on first listen? Are all the choruses this sticky, that you’ll be humming the melody for hours after? Has nostalgia ever sounded so good? This song is a perfect ode to times gone. It just really is that good.
Oki till the next time I decide to write about music! Buh Bye!