List season, list season, it’s list season again my friends! But who cares about that? I have three albums that are on nobody’s lists this year. Put that in your pipe and suck on that shit.

Aborym – Hostile
(February 12, 2021)

It’s hard to explain. About 500 years ago, around the year 2001 or so, Aborym played a very strange blend of black metal and industrial music. It was like if JG Thirlwell from Foetus was throwing pots and pans against the walls of Scrap Brain Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog. It was like if Ministry eschewed the danceable bits and focused on gritty, macabre, howling atmospherics straight from the desolate, wintery, tip-top of Norway.

Aborym’s from Italy, though, which is warmer and, uh, pleasant. I can’t speak for Aborym’s transition to a straight-up industrial rock outfit since I haven’t heard anything from them since 2006’s Generator, but Hostile presents a rather dull facet of the band’s character. My guess is that each successive album treaded closer and closer to this alternative rock, grunge, industrial rock hybrid sound. I hear a lot, and I do mean a lot, of Nine Inch Nails and Alice in Chains in here. “Stigmatized (Robotripping)” is essentially a KMFDM song. “The End of the World” ends with a soft, smooth jazz finale, the hallmark of an washed-up experimental metal band trying to throw a predictable curve ball.

It’s a weird album, but not in a good way. It’s hard to excuse the flaws of the eighth album from a band when it so blatantly borrows elements from many bands that came before. Especially when they used to be unique. Especially when their attempts are so blatantly half-hearted. Sorry.

Early Verdict:

Courtney Barnett – Things Take Time, Take Time
(August 20, 2021)

When Courtney Barnett dropped one of my favorite albums of last decade, her 2015 debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, it was like I had finally discovered my gay female Australian counterpart. Just a deeply neurotic, insecure, overthinking, humble, completely anxious mess of a person. She’s even just a month younger than I am! So much in common! That album was full of self-deprecating honesty, shrouded with self-aware attempts at projecting that she doesn’t really give a shit even though she definitely gives a shit. She gives a whole LOT of a shit, actually. The grungy melodies, the tired incredulity, the fretful ruminations. It was like a snapshot of my own headspace. I couldn’t get enough; oddly, it has been one of the most personally meaningful albums of of my adult life.

Certainly, that does (and did) set the bar high for the future output. 2017’s collaboration with Kurt Vile, Lotta Sea Lice, wasn’t exactly my bag, but I appreciated their chemistry. 2018’s Tell Me How Your Really Feel was enjoyable, but I got none of the same highs that I did from Album #1. And now there’s this. The nine examples of shades of blue on the cover made me nervous, left me expecting something that dipped further into the Mellow Side of the Moon, but I was pleased to find a lot of this music jaunty and immersive. It splits the differences between the predominate power rock of Sometimes I Sit… and the pop-happiness of Tell Me How You Really Feel in a manner that makes the music feel refined and effortless. My personal favorite bit is the last half of “Turning Green”, which takes a lackadaisically messy and crunchy garage jam template and peps it up with some punctuations of bongo and castanet percussion.

I’ve seen criticisms that this album feels short, but I think it’s just the right length for Barnett to relay exactly what she needs to relay right now. As the album title suggests, she’s moved on from hopelessly lost and she’s slowly on her way to acceptance. It shows her getting a little farther out of her own head, which may not be a boon for her creativity, but at least it’s a boon for her mental health. The music is perfectly fine. It’s not top shelf material, but I’ll take it over many other albums that don’t have a fraction of the sincerity.

Early Verdict:

Wavves – Hideaway
(July 16, 2021)

I tried one Wavves album back in the day, when they were huge for about five minutes, and I wasn’t impressed. I think it was King of the Beach from 2010, but I don’t remember anymore. All I remember was a band which seemed like a watered-down, diet version of psychedelic garage surf rock. I lump them in with Cloud Nothings, No Age, Yuck, and other similar groups of post-Yeah Yeah Yeahs and post-Flaming Lips lo-fi “happy tough wimp” music. The kind that’s supposed to recall memories of early ’90s indie rock, but it misses the mark entirely. That’s Wavves. I don’t like Wavves.

But this is fine enough. It’s not what I remember from ten years ago. I remember fuzzy, distorted bullshit, but this is well-recorded and, like, musical! And, like, wide-ranging. “Thru Hell” is bristling pop punk. “Hideaway” is a brawny Parquet Courts-esque rock number. “Help Is on the Way” is pure, straightforward indie pop with one of the more nettling earworms you can find in 2021 (“HELP IS ON THE WAAAAAAAAY!“). “Sinking Feeling” is familiar surf rock. “The Blame” is countrified cow-punk. And so on, and so forth. And, honestly, all of it is over in 29 minutes. So even if it feels like a waste of time, it’s really not that big of a waste of time. I probably listened to it 15 times all the way through. It’s easy to throw on, turn off your brain, and let the hooks…well, hook you.

There’s just something so sad about a household indie name releasing their seventh album with so little pomp and/or, dare I say, circumstance. But that’s the way it goes, I guess. It’ll stop being sad when they reach Album #15. Then you have a “respectable body of work” even if no one has heard half of it.

Early Verdict: