It may be 11pm Central Time, but it’s still Wednesday, damnit, and I’m here with my usual Wednesday offering. The 2021 Overflow reaches the finale. OR DOES IT! Methinks I’ll have a grand finale next week, but until then here are the final three full-scale feature reviews of 2021 and then I’m moving on to fresher merchandise. Read on for my dumb words about last year’s albums from Amyl and the Sniffers, Diablo Swing Orchestra, and Colleen Green.

Amyl and the Sniffers – Comfort to Me
(September 10, 2021)

Lead singer Amy Taylor describes the band’s music as something one gets incredibly high on for 30 seconds and then it’s just a massive headache. I think that’s fair. Named after the Australian slang for poppers, the confrontationally loud pub rock band makes a grandiose statement of…loud rock music for the sake of loud rock music. Like a long lost kindred spirit of the Metro Detroit hard rock groups of the late ’60s (you know the ones), the band plays the kind of rock and roll that can ONLY be pulled off by the true believers. They released their sophomore album Comfort to Me last September and, indeed, it was #15 on my 2021 Top 25.

What can I say to really do it justice? These words will not suffice! From the urgent melodic guitar licks on “Guided by Angels” to the thumping momentum of “Snakes”; from the hardcore punk aggression of “Freaks to the Front” to the in-your-face and self-actualized feminist anger of “Laughing”; from the throbbing bass lament of “Knifey” to the blistering guitar solo in “Security”; everything front to back, up to down, side-to-side and in between, oozes credible intensity, heart, spirit, soul, and any other kind of clichéd honorific of tenderness you want to assign the the ethos of rock and roll as a mission statement. This band is the real fucking deal. You won’t find anything else from 2021 that even comes close.

Early Verdict:

Diablo Swing Orchestra – Swagger & Stroll Down the Rabbit Hole
(November 2, 2021)

Ahhh, Diablo Swing Orchestra. One of the many relics of my Mike Patton-obsessed early adulthood. I all but fell out of love with this band in the early ’10s as I branched out from the glut of circus-themed alternative avant-prog Bungle-core that filled most of my listening hours at the time. Their first two albums are stellar, and I haven’t really given them much attention since. A love rekindled with their fifth album, verily! But ’tis a bittersweet love. I am reminded that one can never truly turn back time…

OK, enough of that happy horsefuck. Bottom line: I used to love this band, but I grew up! As such, 20-year-old me would’ve been leaking genital fluid over this, but 34-year-old me enjoys it purely for the nostalgia factor. I just can’t get too excited for purposefully genre-defying twists and turns anymore, no matter how technically proficient and talented the band might be. Part of the problem too is that 60 minutes of this kind of music is far too much to handle in one sitting. The ear gets bored, man!

Enough negativity. Here are the highlights: “Sightseeing in the Apocalypse”, the intro track, is a pleasant, albeit inessential lead-in, as intros often are. But it’s a jaunty march to be sure! Some lush strings, some theatrical singing, really setting the mood, painting a picture for the listening audience and all that. But, certainly, since this is Diablo Swing Orchestra, forget what you just heard, because they’ll get weird with it quickly enough. “Celebremos lo Inevitable” shows off some cozy traditional Mexican dance music interspersed with speed metal riffage, fusing these two disparate elements into a natural combination. They even hired a coach to ensure all the Spanish pronunciations and inflections were as authentic as possible.

The only other track that really grabbed me was “Snake Oil Baptism”, which has an incredible brass arrangement with songwriting that sounds like Zeppelin or Aerosmith at their funkiest.

That’s about it, though. Not a bad album by any means, but definitely a challenge. Lots of reviews bitch about the production, but I don’t know what the HELL any of them are talking about. The sound is crisp and lively, son.

Early Verdict:

Colleen Green – Cool
(September 10, 2021)

Colleen Green is cool! Just Google her and you’ll see. She’s wearing sunglasses in almost every photo. Can’t get cooler than that.

Know what else is cool? Her fifth album’s pretty cool. It’s not as cool as it thinks it is, but as an insufferable millennial whose drive for media consumption is fueled by a gas tank brimming with pure nostalgia, I’m charmed by how absolutely ’90s this is from head to toe. When I was a little sprat, my teenage sister was cool. All her albums from bored and snarky slacker proto-hipsters that exemplified the Gen X slacker persona were cool.

Colleen Green really tries to lean into it, but she doesn’t incorporate enough rocking grunginess to make this a real Gen X pastiche. She had the perfect chance with “I Wanna Be a Dog”, which is a take on one of the sleazier Stooges songs, but instead it’s kind of cutesy and clean using all those dog metaphors to show that she’s just doing all that dog stuff anyway! Barking at a closed door. Communicating from her tail end. That kind of thing.

What works for me is that the music is earnestly quirky. The krautrock progression of “Natural Chorus”, the attempts at self-forgiveness with “It’s Nice to Be Nice”, the bold title of “Pressure to Cum”, which is a fanciful instrumental closer. None of it gets on my nerves; it’s actually quite pleasant and fun.

Not a desert island album by any means, but it was a pretty good late summer album. Assuredly, I might have the itch to spin it again in 2022 at around the same time, a few weeks before the autumn chill sets in.

Early Verdict: