Music Shilling Thursday

Thursday has long been my favourite day of the week. There was a time when I’d justify this arbitrary selection with a well-rehearsed filibuster pertaining to how Thursday serves as the penultimate day of the week, gateway to Friday, itself a gateway to the weekend, and then segue into a blustery and largely half-cocked explanation as to how anticipation is the sweetest sensation in life. Most of this was cribbed wholesale from various cartoons that I liked at the time.

I offer up this story in lieu of justification for my decision to crow about the music I’m listening to lately. I hope to offer a more readily digestible format so as to actually draw thine interest, and keep the arcana to a minimum wherever possible.  Links to actual songs will be provided for the adventurous, and to affect that you-actually-know-what-I’m-talking-about legitimacy to the proceedings. But there will be hip hop.  Buckle up.

It sucks trying to explain to the average human being how a band with an expletive for a name can, in all sincerity, be worth their time.  Even once past that considerable obstacle, attempting to hold an audience’s attention while terms like “melodic noise rock” or “post-death rock” becomes an exercise worthy of great men and silver tongues. Still. Fuck Buttons build long, powerful songs out of the same crescendo-and-release blueprint perfected by much more polite post-rock acts like Explosions in the Sky and (Fuck Buttons tour mates) Mogwai, and pour in a hell of a lot of distortion laden muscle. Album opener Sweet Love for Planet Earth kicks off with a glittering synthesizer melody and gradually layers enormous swaths of drone guitar strums, a maelstrom that never fully envelops its first whimsical sound.  The effect is like a hurricane building over a playground.  At about 5:30 minutes in, indecipherable vocals begin to pulse through an incredibly distorted microphone, animalistic tones that would be a deal-breaker if they didn’t act as such perfect counter-point to the melody and unwavering rhythm of the music.  The tone is much closer to punk’s urgency than metallic death-vox cheese, expressive and cathartic while at the same time revealing something very close to naivety.  6:50 minutes in, the whole cloth ignites.  It’s a spine-tingling ordeal, an exhausting and triumphant moment that ranks amongst the most powerful crescendos of sound I’ve ever been exposed to.  And it was made by a band called Fuck Buttons, I know.
Fuck Buttons – Sweet Love for Planet Earth

I’ve been a fan of Why? for years now, but my admiration has always been a sort of recognition of talent and novelty perforated by never really wanting to listen to their songs.  Yoni Wolf has always poured all his thoughts, emotions, and passing fancies into each and every track he’s made, pairing hip hop with pop rock, piano with steel drum, accordion and the kitchen sink all in songs too fragile and sensitive to bear such weight.  New album Alopecia is far and away his most successful and awe-inspiring output to date, and he did it all by stripping out everything he didn’t need.  His focus is right where it ought to be, refining his indie pop/hip hop hybrid to near perfection and pushing his tongue-twisting, grin-inspiring, perpetual quarter-life crisis lyrics to the forefront.  This is a man who’ll croon darkly that “Never in the night / when the knot grows tighter / than fingers can untie” only to launch into an equally brooding chorus about how “That’s what the ghost of / someone’s dad might say.” Bathos without self-consciousness or apologies.  The swells of music which Wolf plays upon this time around rarely consist of more than drums, guitar, bass, and his own erratic piano playing, though he benefits greatly from the added je-ne-sais-quoi of turntablist and producer Andrew Broder.  These flourishes are kept well in check, however, and what’s left are perfect, to the point indie rock songs turned on their head by one of the most charismatic and idiosyncratic white boy emcees making music today.
Why? – The Vowels Pt. 2

Subtle’s new album finally came out.  I haven’t anticipated the release of an album, at all, since the year 2001, so you should know that I reserve only very, very special albums for such rampant abuses of fanboyism.  I finally have it, and I’ve listened to it in its entirety many times now.  The verdict?  Eh.  The post-everything genrenauts made it clear for months that this was intended to be the band’s pop opus, a term that sent stabbing pains straight through my abdomen the moment it struck my mind.  The problem isn’t what Doseone and company are doing wrong, these are skilled musicians and they’ve made good songs here, but it’s what they’ve so obviously taken away.  The quest to craft a – blech – pop opus didn’t seem to mean so much what the band meant to be doing, but what they meant to curb and restrict in hopes of reaching a wider audience.  Doseone still writes like the impeccable madhouse emcee he is, but his song structures seem jury-rigged into a verse-chorus-verse template he never gave credence on previous outings.  Rhythm master Jel has toned the complexity of his programming way, way down and seems much less willing to take a leading role in the proceedings, something which defined some of the best work the band has ever done.  Cellist Alexander Kort is absent or else drowned out on nearly all eleven tracks, and guitarist/drummer/omni-instrumentalist Daryll Dalrymple seems over taxed and underwhelming now that the band’s decided to give unimaginative guitar riffs greater play.  The results are still creative as hell, and certainly rife with moments that will blow minds and rock worlds, but this is a palpable step down for such a powerful band.
Subtle – Unlikely Rock Shock