on the pulse - 2020 - week 5: supervision of western fathers

There’s a lot on the docket today, although I do get the impression it’s not going to grab a ton of attention outside of our final entry here… but hey, you’re all on for this ride, right? Whatever, this is On The Pulse!

Spanish Love Songs - Brave Faces Everyone - So, as some of you already know, I covered this is a solo review, which I encourage you to check out as soon as you can… but I’ll add that you might want to get familiar with this fast, because this could well be my album of the year regardless of genre. A landmark in pop punk and emo, a generational gutpunch, it’s a band leaping from greatness into making an undoubtable mark. 10/10 - hear this. But while I’m on the topic of albums that are fantastic and I reviewed outside of On The Pulse…

Destroyer - Have We Met - This review has been out longer, but I figured it deserved a quick shout-out all the same, as Dan Bejar built on the icy synth tones and dark themes of ken for a more accessible - well, by modern Destroyer standards - album. It’s also goddamn fantastic, but every other critic has also said that already; just worth a good reminder. light 9/10, highly recommended.

Caspian - On Circles - You know, I’ll say one great thing for this format: it makes talking about instrumental post-rock albums a hell of a lot easier than trying to stretch out everything for a full review. Especially when they’re as generally underwhelming as Caspian is, who at their best had a sparkling heaviness that could be modestly appealing, but for the most part have been pretty derivative and wallowed in fuzzy layers, underweight off-key crescendos, and a general lack of payoff. So if you’re a band stuck in an endless circle, why not it make that the center point of most of your melodic cycles and the tacked on lyrics, surely that’ll redeem something, right? Well, no - Caspian remains a band that’ll lock into hazy, cyclical progressions and then forget to pay any of them off; it’s genuinely alarming how many potential crescendos flutter out or lose steam as the melodic motifs are driven into the ground, not helped by mixing that leaves many of the guitars weedy and tinny around the edges even when they pick up tremolo swell, along with rote drumwork, underwhelming grooves, and extraneous instrumental passages that rarely shine they way they should, especially that ugly strings section on ‘Ishmael’. And after listening to five Caspian albums… look, none of it is outright bad, but when a project like this is spinning its wheels, it just becomes heavier than average nap music. light 5/10

Thematic - Skyrunner - Oh god… so on the one hand, it tends to be bad form as a music critic to come down really hard on a relatively unknown band that doesn’t seem to have a lot of attention outside of a specific scene. On the other hand, I checked out Thematic’s 2014 debut album and they sounded like everything I can’t stand about modern progressive metal: too long, really slapdash mixing, questionable songwriting, and some of the most ill-conceived song construction I’ve heard in months - I’ll say it again, calling your music ‘progressive’ is not an excuse to ignore any sort of hook or transition. To be blunt, it was pretty bad, but I was reassured that their followup six years later was considerably better… and look, it’s better on production quality alone along with embracing more melodies, but if you’re expecting their compositional instincts to have improved, I’ve got bad news for you. If anything, the presence of actual hooks actually makes this even more frustrating, because against those liquid and bright gutiar melodies, you have groove sections that will often drop into math-rock cadences and patterns that actively disrupt workable melodic patterns rather than compliment them, and an utterly inability to construct transitions leaves fragmented pieces of songs thrown piecemeal against each other with no blending or sense of consistent internal logic. Yeah, a few impressive solos and anthemic passages are here - shame there’s nothing around them that creates a crescendo or melodic build-up, and good luck having it feed into the next passage! And without that rise and fall or sense of dramatic arc, you have a project where none of the standout moments are highlighted well, which flattens the experience and is the last thing you want on a prog metal album that’s going to run long! Coupled with frustrating synth choices - yeah, that hasn’t gone away - and a lyrical arc that’s trying to split the difference between the cosmic and a more flowery brand of murky emo that doesn’t come close to coming together or feeling consistent thematically - irony - yeah, I’m not going to say Thematic is the worst example of all these issues in progressive metal, but it certainly gives me no desire to come back to it… just winds up bland. The sax was nice, though. extremely light 5/10

Damone Tyrell - NUMBERS DON’T LIE - So one thing that’ll happen with On The Pulse you might as well get used to is me hijacking the schedule to insert an album or two I want to talk about, and given this project clocks under twenty minutes and Patrons have not been requesting enough hip-hop - get the hint - here’s the newest album from Damone Tyrell, who, full disclaimer, I met in person in Atlanta back in 2017 at a show and may have gotten a little sloppier than I’d like to in our brief conversations - sorry dude. Anyway, this is his follow-up to his 2016 project and it’s actually a pretty solid improvement. For one, the production is considerably more vibrant, leaning into watery guitars with traces of deeper soul samples and slightly rougher and better blended percussion that prioritizes melodies - to the point where the trap cadences that slip in barely feel out of place - and his rapped hooks actually do have a decent amount of punch. And for the most part I like the content as well, where there’s been a shift from the more indecisive streak running through his debut to something leaner, a little more assertive and celebratory but also wiser and embracing some hard truths along the way, mostly in terms of balancing his creativity that’s not quite profitable in rap yet, especially in a story that might feel more regular, and the drudgery of the career he needs to feed his family but saps that same energy. That maturity leans into a bit of a Little Brother vibe, and while Tyrell is a little more brash with his punchlines because he’s still competing, it’s naturalistic in a pretty good way, while being short enough to not wear out his welcome. I do have issues - while I criticized the conceptual storytelling on his debut it was more because it made the album’s arc a little unfocused, not that I wanted it gone altogether, and it’s not hard to hear the influences in flow, delivery and production from Damone Tyrell that make me wish he could continue to craft a more unique identity for himself. But as it is, it’s a nice improvement and sets a pretty good vibe. 7/10

Elay Arson - Dusk Incarnate - So I actually talked briefly about this production duo in my song review series on IGTV, where they’re working to fuse together some fuzzed out industrial metal with synthwave electronics, and while I thought the sonic fusion had style and some occasional punch, I got the feeling I had to wait for the album for things to fully come together. And now that it has… well, ‘come together’ is a misnomer, because while there’s a larger concept surrounding a superweapon implanted into a woman on the run in an 80s goth cyberpunk world, the fine details and story are not really important compared to the splashy retro synths, blasts of chugging guitars, and the lingering feeling that this album is missing a firmer low-end or driving bass groove to really back up the metal textures. It’s more of an issue of mix balance - a lot of tonal saturating in the highs and mid-range, but the percussion and low-end just doesn’t have the same presence outside of the occasional gurgle and drum machine that tends to feel a little slow and not blended fully. Which is kind of a shame, because Megan McDuffee playing the ‘Dusk Incarnate’ character on ‘Killer Intent’ does work better on the album, especially given she’s got real bass presence and textured percussion to play off. I’d certainly prefer that to when this album splashes into blaring tones or a thicker synth texture that oversaturates the mix to where any guitar line sounds airless and smothered and most of the other vocals are shoved deeper in. It leaves me grasping for the brighter melodies on ‘Cocaine Nightmare’, at least they have a slightly stickier tone and some sense of dynamics! But as it is… if I say ‘mostly instrumental industrial metal about an 80s synthwave cyberpunk dystopia’, you can probably already imagine the tone and sound of the project, so it’s not really revolutionary - I just wish the mix balance was more filled out and there was any sense of distinct atmosphere beyond the broad splashy basics. Honestly you’ll probably dig it if you just want more of these tones, but I’d struggle to go back to it. strong 5/10

HMLTD - West Of Eden - Alright, so we’ve got a debut act out of the U.K., leaning into a synth funk / art pop sound, so I was gearing up for some killer grooves and flair, even though the buzz was suggesting that all of their best songs had been singles already released. But I hadn’t heard any of those, so going in blind… and how to describe this? Imagine a frontman working his best 90s Nick Cave or Marilyn Manson impression but against softer and high-budget production that’s splitting the difference between Kirin J. Callinan going full pop and entirely too much splashy genre experimentation cribbed from territories as varied as j-pop, psychedelic desert rock in the vein of Tropical Fuck Storm, and trap all framed with the pompous artificiality to make you think it’s all ironic… and raises all the more eyebrows when the band says it’s not. It’s absolutely camp and kind of makes me want to slide them in the same category as acts like Electric Six… which makes it all the more bizarre that they have a major record deal and reportedly come from a lot more money than they prefer to admit, which might explain why there’s a serious lack of truly subversive punk rawness and punch here. Now all of this leads to an experience that can best be described as kind of patchy and way more impressed with its style than any sort of substance - which can be fine when the album is splashing into synthpop like ‘Mikey’s Song’ or going for gothic vaudeville melodrama like on ‘Nobody Stays In Love’ and ‘Satan, Luella & I’, or even the wonky elegance of ‘Why’ - but it gets actively annoying when this album mostly fails to say anything outside of a clumsy update of Antichrist Superstar twenty-five years late with less groove and has the approach of spraying apocalyptic imagery at the wall and assuming that’s depth, beyond an obvious camoflage for post-breakup nihilism. And all of that mess… just winds up kind of decent. Enjoy the flash, because it likely won’t stick long. 6/10

Against All Logic - 2017-2019 - And here I thought Nicolas Jaar was only dropping the one project under this name as a house compilation… but something gives me the feeling that he didn’t quite expect 2012-2017 to hit as widely as it did as a slice of gently updated, amazingly well-textured house cuts - seriously, even though it feels more like a scattered compilation, I got tremendous replay value out of it. But now we’ve got a follow-up a few years later, stripping back more of the vintage soulful grooves to lean into the blown out, shuddering distortion that plays a little closer to modern techno than house… which I’ll admit is the exact opposite direction that I’d have liked to see Jaar go as it’s less melodic and explicitly soulful, but not altogether surprising given his increased number of crossover credits in recent years. But it’s not just a pure techno pivot, as there are also plenty of moments that seem to pull from Jaar’s ambient works and experiments with more texture and oblique melodic contrast, which leads to a more spare and dark experience as a whole, where the vocal samples or organic touches are increasingly fractured against hazy synth patches and percussion across a whole scale of blown-out scratchiness. And when you can lock into the headspace of that tension… I’m not saying it’s not weird, but I hear the appeal. Unfortunately, it does feel pulled simultaneously in three different directions, which leads to inconsistencies around its darker mood and a very muted finale. In other words, I do think it’s pretty good and on cuts like ‘If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard’, ‘Faith’, and ‘Penny’ we get great moments, but it does fall a little short. Strong 7/10

La Roux - Supervision - It feels weird that it’s been about six years since we last got a La Roux album, but when you discover that producer Ben Langmaid departed the duo beforeTrouble In Paradise’s release despite having some production credits, it left very open questions surrounding where the hell Elly Jackson would take this reuniting with producer Dan Carey, now on an independent label. And what we got… is not much of anything. Honestly, I’m a little shocked how small and cheap this album sounds, with damn near the same watery rollick of the electric guitar imported from early 80s new wave - and while Elly Jackson still sounds fine enough against it, the grooves are just painfully underweight and the lack of variance in tempo or melodic structure really makes these eight songs run together and run long, and that’s before we get the rinky-dink keys that only really work in the hints of atmosphere around the closing ballad. This is where I have to run to the writing to have something to make this stick out… but unfortunately the somewhat coy push-pull of this album’s relationship flirting seems weirdly less attractive against this production; kind of a shame, as La Roux’s voice is the best part of this album, but a lot of the writing feels oblique enough to attract interest without much in the way of real payoff or punch. Now there’s a part of me that really wants to be generous - it’s still catchy if you can get into these sounds, it’s clearly trying to make the best with a limited budget and resources, and is at least consistent in its tone… but this is a backwards-looking shell of what La Roux used to be, and I have little to no reason to return to an undercooked sound. light 5/10

Green Day - Father Of All Motherfuckers - No, that’s not right, I was very plainly told this is the newest album from Foxboro Hot Tubs, what is this nonsense about a new Green Day album? But setting jokes aside, what immediately struck me surrounding this project besides the cringy marketing was a ‘get off my lawn’ meme that fellow critic Myke C-Town made on Twitter in response to Green Day - ironic because at this point Green Day are so indebted and borderline obsessed with rock’s past that they could double as the person in that meme… and yet while that’s always been somewhat true, that what was once distracting in the 2000s is now starting to get actively draining in 2020. And again, there’s nothing wrong with pulling from the past so much as you can build on it, not feel like a retread or awkward or overloaded with self-congratulations… which is where this album stumbles hard. I’ve made the observation that Billie Joe Armstrong seems to have a bit of a Peter Pan complex going back to the trilogy, but it’s on display in both his groan-inducing falsetto and the hypocrisy here - you want to call out modern acts for sampling while you’re Green Day, who have been lifting riffs from classic rock and punk for decades and even moreso on this project with flagrant retreads, the Joan Jett lift on ‘Oh Yeah’ and from Little Richard on ‘Stab You In The Heart’ most obvious. It comes with a lingering immaturity and lack of subtlety that cements the evidence that Green Day’s not aging well, trying to pick up traces of adulthood but none of the introspection or weight… which gets ugly when you combine that with Butch Walker’s increasingly rubbery, blocky yet blown out production choices, especially in the leaden percussion lines and horrible vocal mixing - all of which coalesce in the hideous clunker ‘Junkies on a High’ - and then follow it with underweight and increasingly slapdash writing trying so hard to relate to the kids and falling so flat with cuts like ‘I Was A Teenage Teenager’. Did you somehow think they were into retro and just get here five years late with this terribly mixed pastiche; hell, in the case of ‘Sugar Youth’ they’re ripping off themselves! The best thing I can say for this are a few really solid guitar lines, like with the solo on ‘Meet Me on the Roof Top’ and the grubby flattened garage tones of ‘Take the Money and Crawl’, but when it juxtaposed opposite the awful backing vocal blending and the utterly self-indulgent choice to add crowd cheers to a few songs… yeah, not good. Not their worst while Dos exists, but it’s close. 4/10