At the start of each year, like many other gullible people worldwide, I like to set myself some goals and figure out how to hit them. This year one of these was to give one album a week a deep listen. I’ve been hitting that so far. I’ll be reviewing them on this post as a writing warm-up, since they likely won’t be long enough to be worth posts of their own. I’ll also be backdating (backreviewing?) stuff from the early year, so the start of these will be brief and likely a bit aimless. That said, so are most people’s lives when you think about it, so really it’s all a bit postmodern and clever, honest.
Also, not going to go too deep on independent music, as this is just a writing exercise and there’s no point in pissing in someone’s Cornflakes for the sake of a hot take. Anyway!
JANUARY
The Very Best of John Lee Hooker – John Lee Hooker: I enjoyed it. I’m not particularly familiar on oldest-possible-school Detroit blues, so this was interesting. Some good liner notes on the record too if memory serves. That said, there were a fair few cuts that felt a bit throwaway. Again, if I’m recalling right recording at this period of time was fairly limited, so it could be a bit ‘Well, we need so many songs to fill a record’. The good is really good though. Very much in the vein of your Robert Johnsons.
Infernal Love – Therapy?: I don’t generally like grunge-hardcore albums that are mostly about wanting to wanting to do violence to women while tying it all up in Hell/bodily organ metaphors, but in the case of Therapy?’s Infernal Love I don’t like an extended-hardcore album that is mostly about wanting to do violence to a woman while tying it all up in Hell/bodily organ metaphors. It’s mostly just-okay grungey post-hardcore, post-ska rock. My memories might be lying on that last adjective. Maybe you’ll dig it if you like that sort of thing.
Bird Mountain – Laurie Shaw: The horrifyingly prolific Cork indie rock troubadour released this album at the start of the year; since then, he has released three more full-length projects, and is likely to continue to release albums at a disquieting rate until someone makes him stop. I’m not going to be that someone. This album takes a tangent away from Shaw’s conventional conversational lyrics and rockable riffs* in favour of repeating canned-keys and synth lines under lyrics with a focus on place and the way fond memories become mythology: The backing music stands back and sways in place, conjuring thoughts of the wind blowing grass on the album’s namesake, or waves going back and forth on a beach. It initially felt like a lighter album than some of Shaw’s other work, but untangling the turns of description and curious ways the music fits together has kept me coming back to this one. Fun note: The flute(?) interlude in ‘The Half Sword’ sounds quite like ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’, which is a bit odd.
Dublin – Dublin**: I don’t like much ambient music, Gadget And The Cloud aside – When your genre was pioneered by a guy making music to be ‘functional’, you get what’s on the tin. That said, this impulse-buy of an album’s a decent listen. You get your ambient synth wuvvwuvvs, but on tracks like ‘2020 1’ and ‘2021 2’ they get balanced against warped violin notes and taps to add hints of melody and percussion, intruding on the cosy synth pads like gravel thrown against the outside of a window. There’s a pleasant tension to it.
Honey Trap – Pixie and the Gypsies: I don’t remember too much about this one, to be honest. Reasonably nice upbeat countryesque/double bass-swingin’ of the kind found in a Metropole backroom over Jazz (which is how I grabbed this album).
FEBRUARY
Lungs – Florence and the Machine: Usually I listen to the album while I type these. At the moment I’m listening to the English Platinum Jubilee. Apologies to Florence but, king or queen, all monarchs must to the guillotines go. ****
Fixity 7 – Fixity: There is a fair chance that Fixity [nom de plume of Corkman Dan Walsh] is the best jazz (or is it experimental? I’m not sure) music coming out of Ireland right now. Each release brings the listener into a new sonic universe under Walsh’s control, moving between chaotic improvisation and hooky motifs. Walsh thrives in the spectrum between chaos and order, the moment where a musical pattern reappears out of the blue and takes you by surprise, and this release is no different. Fixity 7 begins with four tracks of classic Fixity goodness and ends with three interesting offshoots: A more slow-paced piano-focused piece with The Bonk’s Philip Christie, a freaky collaboration with ICEBEAR that starts with synths-and-drums and gets odder from there, and a brief rock piece that reminds this listener of The Bonk’s Songs for the Mean Time vol. 2 (in a good way; there’s gold in those waters). Any place to follow Dan Walsh’s musical journey is worth your money.
Songs for the Mean Time vol. 2 – The Bonk: Really good quick hit of (possibly improvised?) weird indie rock that goes varying lengths off the beaten path from the brain of former O Emperor member Philip Christie. The final song, ‘Ten Thousand Steps’, takes a different tack, a twelve-minute psychedelic pop piece painting Christie’s vocal stabs over a rolling landscape of synth arpeggio, a bluesy riff and steady synth bass/drum machine noises.
Praxis – Jonathan Deasy: Not as much to my taste as Dublin’s release, Praxis is some solid Flow State-type ambient music. If ambient’s your thing, you might get more out of this than I did.
MARCH
Measurements – Yeah Holland: Part of the first wave of pseudonym-based indie label Important Audio, Yeah Holland’s three-track EP is both my favourite of the initial wave and the most difficult to discuss without spoiling the artist(s) behind the pseudonym – It’s fairly easy to guess the artist(s) for longtime followers of Cork’s music scene. Whoever it is, this is a fine indie rock release steeped in existential ennui: YH’s vocals are coated in echo and mild fuzz throughout, putting a ‘barrier’ in the mix between the thoughts expressed by the lyrics and the clearer instrumentation sounds. ‘Rumour’, in particular, is the EP’s high point, recounting the different stages of its narrator’s existential crisis through bad nights out, uncomfortable flings and substance abuse. The track is made particularly danceable by a driving-forward rhythm guitar/bass-line that immediately recalls Peter Hook and a few choice pop slogans (‘Talk to the bossman – And give me your IBAN, nothing ever comes for free’). The vocal production might be a bit too strong on the album’s opener, ‘Clean Skin’, but for the steep price of free on Bandcamp this is well worth a look.
Tetsuo_2004 – Gold Plastic Syndrome: On a completely different note from Important Audio, here’s a ‘deconstructed club’ two-track EP of which I have no idea who created it. Tetsuo_2004 most reminds me of both the hard dance-bangers-and-beatdowns of Cork deconstructed club artist Lighght’s oeuvre and (most particularly in side A) the waterfall-like builds of ascending runs of descending notes in Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy soundtrack. Give it a look if you fancy those. More from Gold Plastic Syndrome would be welcome.
Jungle – Jungle: A re-listen of a teenage synth-pop favourite in PVC format. Lots of fond memories of the summer sun refreacting heat through the skylight in my attic, squinting out sniper battles in Star Wars: Battlefront II‘s blurry visuals, sitting on plastic boxes, listening to this album. And… It’s a little disappointing. What I remember as a no-filler album does, in fact, have filler: ‘Crumbler’ is a bit of a nothing song, laying down a vibe and coasting for twoplus minutes. It’s also hard not to notice how thin much of the lyrics are, at times in the pop sense of ‘The imagery only needs to reflect the instrumentation’s atmosphere’ but quite often in an ‘Any pressure causes it to tear like tinfoil’ sense (not helped by the vinyl coming in an uncopyedited and, in one instance, incorrect lyrics sheet). Jungle’s tracks have often been dismissed as car ad music, and it was hard not to see why.
But the things that I liked as a teen are still there: Tracks like ‘The Heat’, ‘Busy Earnin” and ‘Time’ are slickly designed songs of the summer, using the modern clicks and snaps of pop percussion to drive the song’s funk-pop slap basslines forward. The synths are the star of the show, sometimes providing more bass and a hazy sun-scorched sensation, and other times loudly flourishing in the bouncy melodrama of tracks like ‘Julia’ and ‘Busy Earnin”. The vocals often compliment the synths through a combination of pretty decent falsetto and production trickery; even though the focus is often on melody over lyrics like in the eyebrow-raising ‘Son of a Gun’ (stormtrooper sniper anthem 2014), the hooks are catchy enough to stay in your head for hours after. Nostalgia’s a cruel exaggerator, but there’s enough in Jungle’s debut not to crush my happy teenage memories. ‘Busy Earnin” is the Rorschach test of whether or not you’ll like the whole album.
Mantua – Mantua: The first Mantua EP (also self-titled, albeit capitalised) might have been the best Cork release of 2019 (and thus probably the best Irish release of 2019 too). A jagged combination of trad lament from Niamh Dalton and harmonium-drone menace from Elaine Malone, listening to the piece felt like being thrown onto the green-but-barren landscape of a karst hill, watching black stormclouds rip across the curve of the horizon, constantly bracing for the doom to come. I’d been eagerly anticipating the follow-up for two years.
Mantua isn’t the same as MANTUA: Two tumultuous years change an artist’s interests. If the first EP was a culchie horror tale this feels like a more urban (but far from urbane) affair. The production feels more claustrophobic; Dalton’s fiddle is absent, with Malone dropping in electric guitar, bass and harsh percussive clicks on ‘Ship’ and ‘Leave It’; the imagery is less of karst and more high walls of oppressive concrete. The immediate comparison is the Malone-led ‘I’m In A Cult That I Can’t Get Out Of’ from MANTUA the first and there are hints of that approach in tracks like ‘Despite My Best Efforts’, but the album feels like its own discrete unit of musical storytelling.
With more and shorter tracks there’s a sense of ebb and flow to the album, tension building gradually up and up, tracks longer and longer until it’s released in the intense ‘Leave It’, a ten-minute psychological horror climax that sends you running through a dim and damp labyrinth of sound, the repetition of each ever-fuzzier snap and click implying another false exit, the melodium sounding like something slithering its way towards you uttering Malone’s distorted singsong chants. St Kevin’s Hospital, Cork’s very own quoth-the-Examiner ‘chapter of horrors’ kept coming to mind over this burnt-souled hell of a track, all towering dilapidated Georgian horrors. The track ends with the chants warping even further, sometimes almost like Malone, sometimes almost like a baby’s cry – adding another layer of horror considering the melodium’s sonic similarity to organs played in Catholic churches up and down the country – and further into complete distortion and gales, the storm in the mind ripping the music apart. Following that up, ‘Despite My Best Efforts’ becomes its own thing: A moment of uneasy decompression which never quite lets you forget the pulse of pain underneath.
Er. I’d meant to write four lines for this one. MANTUA was great, long live Mantua. Listen to it on full with your best headphones and get obsessed with this horror-story of an album.
APRIL
Black to the Future – Sons of Kemet: Jazz that’s as melodic as it is modern, the London quartet continue to be the UK’s jazz superstars in what looks to be their final album. At times exceptionally angry but never staid or stoic, this album constantly commands the listener: To rage on the spoken-word opener and closer, and to throw serious shapes on tracks like ‘Think of Home’ and ‘Never Forget the Source’. There’s a lot of Carribean music here, there’s a lot of afrobeat, it’s super accessible, it’ll make you think and make you dance and The Quietus gave it an A+ writeup – Go buy it already!
Outskirts – The Altered Hours: No hate on the band – They’re one of the best rocks bands to come out of Cork and the LPs on either side of this are killer – but this EP is a bit light. It’s mostly a relaxed instrumental piece, which is fine, but not to my taste – Just can’t make it stick in my brain. Good sense of atmosphere off ‘I’m On A High’ though.
Signs of Life: Part 1 – Howlbux/Muireann Lewis: A short split EP of experimental music that leans towards ambient. ‘Nightfall’, the first Howlbux track is particularly good, with some pitched-up spoken-word and fuzz distorting the pleasant ambient beats, adding a sly sense of eery tension to the proceedings.
Muireann Lewis was a new one on me and really took me aback: ‘Elsewhere’ uses these string sounds that constantly glide and swoop along high notes. Really crisp and clear. With nary a bassy tone in earshot to bring the track down to earth, I couldn’t get an image out of my head of an Arctic glacier peak, cold, noble and slightly lonely over an ocean stretching into the horizon. The three tracks here are well worth the €4.
Banshee EP – NewDad: I am just not a man for the shoegaze. There’s been good words written by people of good taste on NewDad (Check out Julie Lander’s quite good feature in District), but I can’t get into what they’re doing here. And it’s not the band’s fault, I think – it’s the genre. The pedal-feedback haze of shoegaze is impressive, so much atmosphere with just pedal and guitars!, but it just doesn’t make me feel anything. Tie it into another genre (post-punk, glam, Velvet Underground-flavour indie) and it works as a kind of sonic base to play in, but the closer it comes to the core text of Loveless and the less I like it. Dunno why it doesn’t work for guitars but it does for similar heavy synth waves. Maybe it’s the softer edge of the sound.
All that said! When the group moves puts one foot into more traditional indie rock territory they do well: The chorus of ‘Thinking Too Much’ and the excellent ‘Ladybird’ recall Bloc Party’s early stuff, that huge-sounding sentimentality; the chorus in the latter song is an instant belter, collecting chiming guitar with that heavy shoegaze bass and a straight-ahead pop chorus: Instant skip back to listen to it again. Can’t say I’m a fan but there’s some strong stuff here.
MAY
‘(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up’/’Love is the Drug’ – Roni Griffith: A cheap cop from the ever-reliable Plugd Records, this is a vinyl single covering The Ronnettes’ ‘(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up’ in a disco style. It’s very reminiscent of Kylie’s later cover of ‘Locomotion’, that hi-NRG funkless synthbass disco sound, but that’s not a flattering comparison: Kylie replaces the funk with pop drive while this doesn’t, leading to the song sounding quite dated and flat. Also unflattering is the comparison to the original, which is just what happens when you’re covering a Ronettes song: It’s B-game performance for a band that requires A-game. Replacing those drums with a cowbell? Might as well trace ‘live laugh love’ on the Mona Lisa while you’re at it.
The B-side ‘Your Love Is The Drug’ stole the show in comparison: The heavy synth bass octaves have a bit more funk to them (opening on them was a smart move), a slightly darker Giorgio Moroder sound. Griffith’s vocals still date it, but there’s a catchy little arpeggio synth flick and a properly groovy guitar lick in the post-chorus to make this quite danceable. Putting that lick up against a piano and a thumping four-to-the-floor in the bridge is another wisely calculated move, a pull to the dancefloor that’s hard to resist.
Skip the A-side, check out the B-side.
The Black Parade – My Chemical Romance: I’ve tried to get into My Chemical Romance twice now, with no luck. I love ‘Na Na Na [etc.]’ and ‘Summertime’ and think Gerard Way writes good comics, but their broader oeuvre completely eluded me. I knew it was good, but the hook wasn’t there.
Set rolling by the offer of a free ticket to their sold-out Dublin show and further catalysed by a few fairly rough years of personal life, it turns out third time was the charm.
The question: What differs The Black Parade from pop-punk (which is largely bad and embarassing)? What caused this album to create fervour that previous emo bands like Blink-182 could only hope for?
First off, G. Way can write a hell of a lyric when not constrained by the self-pity of pop-punk. The album’s hard focus on concept provides him with a wider palette of themes to play off of: fear of death, reflection on life’s losses beyond tfw no gf and mountainous scoops of Catholic guilt*****. The album’s irony-free pulling from glam and ’80s stadium rock (yer Queens, GnRs, AC/DC) provides a glorious thrill.
The instrumentalists are also just working on a different level to their contemporaries – bassist Mikey Way and drummer Bob Bryar make ‘House of Wolves’ a rolling storm while Iero and Toro, fuck, they shred. When they’re called on to kill you can hear them bent double over the guitars in the studio, twisting the guitars into engines, into knives. That breakdown near the end of ‘Mama’ is up there with AC/DC’s best and could only accomplished by a band incapable of a shred of embarassment. And considering the rock landscape of the ’00s (or fuck, the new ’20s), how can you hate a band like that?
Still, there’s a decent amount of stuff I’m not hugely fond of. The pop-punk stuff still sucks (‘This Is How I Disappear’ and ‘I Don’t Love You’ just are not great). ‘Cancer’ is weak, a plain horrorcore ballad with a backing that just fucking Beatles it up to a Britpop extent, coasting on G. Way’s ability to do a really fucked-up croon (which, to be fair, he pulls off at the end of the chorus).
‘Teenagers’ doesn’t fit – The album’s often angry and spiteful but its inspirations don’t have the cruelty needed to pull off a school shooter anthem. At times it sounds like a Queen song, especially in Toro’s May-like guitars and the ending middle-8. Freddie Mercury sure could hit a lot of notes, but not that particular one******.
The Black Parade‘s willingness to paint every one of its feelings with the broadest possible brushes is infectious and the band’s willingness to pull from anything they feel will form a connection with people is admirable. It’s an easy album to sniff at and, once its under your skin, a near-impossible album to hate. It’s a genuinely good rock album (albeit one squarely aimed at teens and raised-Catholics), one worth giving an open-minded try if you dismissed it before. *******
May Death Never Stop You – My Chemical Romance: That last one was a bit long, wasn’t it? Let’s make this greatest hits compilation simple: One liners for each album’s songs, sans space needed for the title.
‘May Death Never Stop You’: Rules. Combines Parade‘s piano balladry with Danger Days‘s warmth.
I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love: Doesn’t have the MCR X-factor but still enjoyable screamy quasi-hardcore.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge: Mostly pop-punk (thus: sucks), but the phrasing of ‘Helena”s chorus is admittedly immense.
The Black Parade: 60% good ones, 40% bad.
Danger Days: Danger Days rules! ‘Planetary (GO!)’ is a little weak but the rest are songs to be screamed.
Demos: ‘Turnstiles and Skylines’ is the clear star. The others are fine.
Pretty good introduction to the distinct sounds of the band’s eras.
a hAon – Telefís: The frontman of MicroDisney and Fatima Mansions (which I need to listen to), Cathal Coughlan’s Scott Walker-inspired cadence and striking lyrics made him an artistic touchstone to those who dug into his catalogue. His final collaboration with big pop producer Jacknife Lee (he has a song on Red (Taylor’s Version)!) is an ace indie pop album that carves its own space in Coughlan’s catalogue. There’s a fair chance it’s my favourite Irish release of the year so far and you should listen to it and buy it if you have the scratch.
The immediate comparison is HousePlants, the quite good combination of Bell X1 frontman Paul Noonan and DJ Daithí and a similar match of rock frontman and electropop production. Devil in the details is that Lee leans towards traditional pop sounds more than Daithí and Coughlan’s lyrics towards imperative-statement alternative demagoguery than Noonan. Not that one approach is necessarily better than the other, but there’s a unique tension between the broadening and tightening tonal space of Lee’s funky synth-pop pulses/handclaps and the Kerouac-meets-Grant Morrison pulp madness of Coughlan.
This would’ve been incredible to see live and it’s sad that it’ll never happen. A reminder to always dive into that new act you hear is good and never assume they’ll play again. Go read Zachary Lipez’s excellent memorial for Coughlan’s work here.
JUNE
‘Salami’ – Pretty Happy: This rework of the Cork art-punk trio’s 2021 single is the first release of a few presaging their first LP, and it’s got me excited. The big changes from the original mix: Andy Killian’s drums and Abbey Blake’s guitar are cleaner and lighter in the verses, and Abbey blake’s vocals are much clearer (along with Andy’s backing vocals). There’s a bit of a tradeoff there as you could say the original had a darker/sludgier tone to it, but I prefer the rework; when seen live Abbey’s absolutely the co-lead of this song and giving her more of a contrapunctual grounding presence to Arann Blake’s funny freewheeling repartee. The slicker production suits the song.
(There’s also a B-side to the Bandcamp release, ‘Angelus’, which features some spoken-word small-town gossip-mongering from Abbey setting the scene before a post-punky breakdown. Not sure if it’ll be on the LP but well worth a listen.)
Archive Materials – Silverbacks: Really enjoyed this piece of Irish alternative rock. Reminds me of a few other bands – The guitar is often a bit Television (and thus sometimes a bit Strokesy, which I’m not fond of), the swinging pub-sounding overdubs of ‘They Were Never Our People’ reminds of Bell X1. My favourite bits are where Gary Wickham’s drums begin to get loose and tambouriney, vocalist Daniel O’Kelly gets more conversational and the guitars begin to wander around – At times tracks like ‘Recycle Culture’ remind me of the ramshackle charisma of Minutemen, and I like Minutemen a lot. Worth a look for the rockheads.
Variations On A Sewing Machine – Natalia Beylis: Wasn’t for me.
Signs of Life: Part Two – Irene Buckley/Neil Quigley: Buckley’s ‘Lost Lake’ is a nice tune, really like the strings-esque bits at the start. Quigley’s track, ‘Nightshifts’, took me by surprise at first listen – Unlike the other three tracks in this project, it’s a classic-jazz piece with seemingly no electronic/ambient side. On repeated listens, however, it really grew on me: It’s a quiet, contemplative piece with an atmosphere suiting the title, and opens up future Signs of Life releases to a wider genre pool. If you enjoyed the first Signs of Life or want some cool jazz, this is well worth a look.
* I could be completely off-base with this description of Shaw’s fare. Shit, I haven’t heard all of his stuff. His most recent release, KAREN, purports to be his hundredth release. I am only one man. I am only one man.
** This EP was also recorded in Dublin, and was mixed and mastered John Dublin***.
*** That last Dub-part isn’t true-lin.
**** Lungs and Hozier’s debut album represented a brief interlude in staid pop between the X-Factor rejects and Ed Sheeran wannabes. Both artists wrote (and continue to write) huge hooks without needing to fake at being soft, quiver-voiced ‘celebrities just like us!’ Both are phenomenal lyricists, with an ability to blend romance, occult imagery and horniness and make it seem effortless. Enough about Hozier though – Lungs is great, Florence and her band composing intricate melodies that recall folk songs without losing their full-force sturm und drang. Dips into other genres are successful (a blues-rock cover of ‘Girl with One Eye’ and landfill indie ‘Kiss With a Fist’) but the core of driving with Kate Bush-esque old English occult imagery, stuffing trad folk instruments in the boot with indie rock guitar-and-drums, and cutting the brakes rarely leads to a boring place. There’s some filler around the middle – The title track is weak – but overall it’s one of the best pop debuts in my living memory. Even the car advert single is genuinely good. Apologies for this review being rough, blame the English monarch.
***** My favourite song on the album, ‘Mama’, is one of the most Catholic rock songs imaginable.
****** The live setting does a lot of favours towards ‘Teenagers’, with Iero in particular giving the song the blues-rock anger it needed. Wouldn’t have fit in with the album’s aesthetic, but a real treat to see live.
******* The problems of the ‘just fucking write’ approach on display here: Effectively two intros, then a very basic all-the-good-all-the-bad and a conclusion that almost implies an ‘All in all,’ at the start. Begs for a second draft but hey, it’s running very long as it is. This page needs a retitling at some point. I’m writing reviews of my own reviews now, chrissakes.