Hey, it’s been a while! Now that the last quarter of 2022 is upon us, I want to try scooping up whatever releases from this year that I can while I still have time. That’ll work wonders, I’m sure of it!

For now, here are 2022 releases from PUP, Rosalie Cunningham, and black midi. I hope to keep this going on a weekly basis again for the rest of the year, but I’ve never been an optimist in my life and I’m certainly not going to start now.

PUP – THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND
(April 1, 2022)

This is assuredly not as chaotic as the STUCK CAPS LOCK BUTTON TITLE and the complete ugly mess of the album cover might lead you to believe! That in of itself is kinda disappointing, but the music is good and you should listen to this good music.

I don’t know much about PUP. I get Modern Baseball or Joyce Manor vibes from them (somewhere in between, maybe); pop punk that’s not emo enough to make me hate them immediately, which is already a feather in their cap. Plus, the band seems to be making a career out of self-aware meta-punk, which I can get behind wholeheartedly. If this is considered “unravelling”, then they still have far to unravel. At least musically. Lyrically, I suppose that’s another story.

The record begins with a spoken-word piano ballad intro “Four Chords” (with reprises popping up a couple more times throughout) where the PROTAGONIST, lead singer Stefan Babcock, is annoyed with dealing with his record label board of directors. Later, Babcock tells the board that he’s not tuning the fucking vocals. Later, conceding in the nine-second third installment of “Four Chords”, he says the board of directors are almost finished making the record. I think the band has earned this weariness with the music industry by now, twelve years and four albums into their career. This weariness is lifted up by music that isn’t weary at all, though. Babcock sings “Lately, I’ve started to feel like I’m slowly dying” on the noisy, riff-heavy and melodic “Totally Fine”. He sings “My system’s crashing now/My drive is shutting down” on the not-so-robotic “Robot Writes a Love Song”. From the point of view of his own forgotten guitar, he sings “Thought I was everything you need/Thought at least you’d want to see it through” over the pleasing pop punk melody and slightly screechy guitars on “Matilda”. The album is one big therapy session, expressing all the little anxieties, fears, and insecurities clawing at Babcock through the lens of powerful, jangly pop punk!

And like I said before, I’m just relieved that it’s not all emo lyrics over completely emo music. Who cares, right? It would be pathetic. “Cutting Off the Corners” is a total Broken Social Scene-esque indie rock tune. And then, FINALLY, at the very end in “PUPTheBand Inc. Is Filing for Bankruptcy”, I get some sexy squealing saxophone that I adore oh so very much. I would’ve loved more, but beggars can’t be choosers as I always say. Always. I always say that.

PUP stands for “Pathetic Use of Potential”. They get extra points for this too.

Early Verdict:

Rosalie Cunningham – Two Piece Puzzle
(February 22, 2022)

I didn’t know what to expect with Rosalie Cunningham. Indie rock? Alternative rock? Country? Pop? She’s conventionally pretty enough to be an an accessible American Idol-type mainstream act. She’s only had a solo career since 2017. She’s flying under radars. The album title is humorous. What am I gonna get?

Ah! Prog! That’s interesting, I definitely didn’t expect that. “Start with the Corners” kicks off the album with heavy folky synthesizer melodies; something I’d entirely expect from classic prog rock acts. Yes meets Renaissance with some Jethro Tull sprinkled on like Parmesan cheese. This is a good start.

Well, by the time I got to “The War”, I was sold. There is humor here! It’s merely a soliloquy (“The atom bomb was not enough/Quantum physics had just done it up/So peace was made by one o’clock/And we made fantastic lunch“) before sliding into the aptly named “Duet”. Now this one I really like! Cunningham sings with some dude who sounds like Jack White at his most Jack Whiteness over some oompah blues. It’s like the male/female vocal interplay Paul McCartney’s “Monkberry Moon Delight”. I dig! And then the star track is “Tristeria”, which melds Eastern scales with some of Cunningham’s best singing on the album, showcasing a couple really crunchy, raw blues solos.

By now I’m just happy that the trap of prog rock sterility has largely been avoided, although there are some moments where this creeps in. It’s unfortunately amplified with Cunningham’s immaculately crisp singing. She at least has the humor and edge to rise above needless indulgence, and she obviously doesn’t take herself too seriously. Some of the turns of phrase in the lyrics are clever. And the guitar solos are fairly rough around the edges.

It’s too bad there’s about half of the record left, because nothing new is brought to the table at this point. “Scared of the Dark”, “God Is a Verb”, “Suck Push Bang Blow”, these don’t contain any musical ideas that you haven’t heard already. The album is noticeably top-heavy. Like she ran out of creativity and packed the front half with the best stuff to compensate.

That being said, it’s a net positive. Prog is at its best when you’re not even sure if you should call it prog or not. Extra points.

Early Verdict:

black midi – Hellfire
(July 15, 2022)

I’ve liked the idea of black midi’s existence since their 2019 debut Schlagenheim. Lead vocalist Geordie Greep has a distinct, nasally, weird voice (and a weird name, honestly). Drummer Morgan Simpson is, like, a child prodigy or something, having been playing the drums extensively since he was two years old. They have a unique take on post-punk music that has certainly evolved over time into a slurry of aggressive avant-prog and sprechgesang-laden diatribes.

I liked Schlagenheim well enough as a fun combination of Steve Albini-style ramblings and David Yow-style raving, but I was never totally hooked. As you might remember, since you follow this blog religiously and re-read my entire body of work on a weekly basis, I wasn’t bowled over by their sophomore effort Cavalcade. Too many slogs to make up for the moments of brilliance, in my opinion, and not nearly enough of what I liked about the debut.

Third time’s the charm, right? Hellfire moves in yet another direction. Crisp virtuosity! Crunchy hooks! Gifts that keep on giving with every listen! Greep is in rare form with his vocals. The first track — the title track — is a short and sweet, nervous symphonic build with Simpson’s military cadence chugging throughout. And Greep is a spitfire here, presenting a laundry list of hypochondria and existential futility, cramming about 300 words into a minute and a half (and “Hellfire” isn’t even the most impressive example of this happening). Track 2, “Sugar/Tzu”, showcases the other side, the antithesis, of the Greep coin: syrupy crooning. OK, “syrupy” is a poor word to describe Greep’s weird-ass voice, but he does a lot of this lounge-jazz stuff throughout Hellfire too. And it’s always over music that doesn’t quite fit; these herky jerky guitar exercises and avant-prog polyrhythms and odd time signatures. Sinatra over a flurry of arpeggios and Henry Mancini crescendos. But it works! It works so well! And Simpson gets to beat his kit to death in the meantime, which I’m sure he loves to do.

Tracks like “Welcome to Hell” and “The Race Is About to Begin” flexes some of that cartoon circus prog, which is one of my own personal weaknesses. The latter contains the single most impressive part of the album: two minutes of rapid-fire spoken word that could put most seasoned rappers to shame. If you think I’m exaggerating, fucking listen to it. I don’t know what any of it is about. At all. I couldn’t even guess. But it’s highly thrilling all the same.

More to say? Hell yeah, more to say. Well, one more thing to say. “Still” is my favorite track, blending tightly arranged passages of cinematic tension with pretty ukelele/piano conversations, Ennio Morricone trumpets, Zappa-esque moods that shift on a dime, and Greep dialing it down completely. He sings like that dork from Yo La Tengo!

Album of the Year material? You better believe it. This will be the one to beat.

Early Verdict: