Revisionist Western

A lot of our understandings of decades or generations are deeply filtered through media. So how we represent and remember the 1980s, for example, is as much about how the 80s looked via Blade Runner as it is about actual representations of that decade. The 80s was ringer t-shirts, acid washed jeans, and moppy hair as much as it was synths and neon, and yet those sounds and images have become indelibly imprinted on our understanding of that time period because of the media we associate with the 80s.  I'm actually old enough to remember the 1990s. As such, I’m fully authorized to say that Djunah is a band that fully captures what I remember as being exciting about that time of period of music more than almost any current band.  Let me explain.  Djunah are a sludgy, two-piece post-metal band from Chicago whose new album, Femina Furens, is an early contender for my favorite album of the year. The songs are a mixture of fist pumping, driving, anthemic rock (Seven Winds of Sekh...

I keep meaning to write a post on the occasional flirtations metal has had with what might be called "western music" (not country music, more like the kind of music that scores western films) and, were I to do that, T.G. Olson's band Across Tundras would, no doubt, be front and center in that conversation. However, he's gone ahead and released a solo album called "Revisionist Western" so I guess I have  to write something about it before I get to that, huh? Olson is, as mentioned, the main performer in the long-running and criminally  underrated psychedelic-western-post-metal-rock-whatever band Across Tundras. Their output over the last two decades has been consistently incredible and it's baffling to me that they haven't been given their critical due for such a remarkable, ongoing body of work. Olson was also in some pretty good hardcore bands back in the day, most notably The Spirit of Versailles, who I saw absolutely crush a set at a venue called ...

LUME's 2018 album Wrung Out was a solid dose of heavy post-grunge, sort of like an amalgam of Floor and Hum. They delivered on that nice combination of big guitars, hooky songs, and sleepy vocals that feels like the best of the 90s with a contemporary sheen to it. False Calm, their new album, takes that basic formula and adds a whole lot more space . The album is full of sprawling sparse, ambient, soundscapes which make it feel less like a collection of individual heavy songs and more like a single, rolling, sonic ocean of soft-loud-soft dynamics. It's a really rewarding listen, and manages to be engaging and throughout, whether the band is presenting you with crushing noise or barely audible, droning whispers. It's a nice step forward for LUME and represents an impressive evolution of their sound. Head over to Bandcamp and give it a listen. False Calm by LUME

Colorado-based sludge outfit Matriarch have dropped one ambitious slab of ugly, turgid doom here. I would compare this band to something like Primitive Man, Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean, or Thou, but with a bit more atmosphere than any of those bands. In fact, part of what I really love about this record are the long stretches on it of dreamy, trippy soundscape-like ambience before they go back to pummeling you in the face with the heavy. They manage to make the various sounds hang together really well on this album, and that's no easy feat. I first heard this one back when it came out but didn't actually sit down to digest it until this past weekend but, truth be told, if I had taken the time to when it came out, this would have easily been on my best of 2020 list.   Also, this band legit has a shirt that says 420 666 24/7 365 so if you're looking for a late Xmas gift for that special someone, I think you've found the best way I can think of to say "I love y...

I’ve spent a not insignificant part of my life wonder what makes a song sad. Is it... Wait, hold on. Real quick, before I go wandering down this "sad song" rabbit hole: this record is one of the best things I’ve heard all year.  Okay, back to the sad song question.  The obvious answer is that lyrics set the emotional tone for a song. Writing about something sad makes a song sad. But Sammy Hagar has written songs about breakups and when I hear them I don’t think “hey, this breakup song makes me sad,” I think “oh good, whoever this song is about doesn’t have to be around Sammy Hagar anymore.” Most sad lyrics don’t feel like they’re about a specific person or incident or experience. They feel like generic platitudes that could be written by anyone about anything. Put more bluntly, Sammy Hagar lyrics aren’t sad because even when Sammy Hagar writes about something sad, his lyrics lack any sort of specifics or details that would suggest the vulnerability necessary t...