Oh hey, I gotta do another one of these! Here are some relatively new albums from !!!, Deathspell Omega, and Spiritualized.

!!! – Let It Be Blue
(May 6, 2022)

I have always been on the cusp of liking !!!, which rubs me the wrong way. I don’t like listening to and being familiar with a band for years and not really knowing where I stand with them. My relationship begins and ends with their first four albums between 2000 and 2010. I know each one pretty well, and every time I listen to any of them (which is not very often at all), I always feel like something is lacking. It’s like they were always sitting on the fence between dance and punk, not really adequate enough in either direction to be satisfying.

Granted, an additional four albums dropped during the ’10s decade that I never listened to. For all I know the progression to Let It Be Blue is gradual and logical. But MAN was I thrown for a loop here. This is nothing like the band I’m familiar with, and I’m pleased to say that this feels like a more natural groove for !!! than anything I’ve ever heard before.

To bury the lede, this is not a punk album. This is a dance album. And it’s a sleazy, tasteless dance album at that, saturated with gooey autotune and guilty-pleasure club beats. I like this, and I think they’re good at it, and maybe they should’ve been doing this the entire time? The punk part always seemed a little flimsy to me, but the dance stuff feels right in their wheelhouse. But that being said, on a unexpected note, “Normal People” kicks off the record with a completely acoustic piece of business that has nothing to do with punk or dance anyway, and it’s also good, and it’s nice to hear them display their usual sardonicism. “Normal people get up in the afternoon/Normal people like me“.

And then it’s just one slick banger after another. Highlights include “Un Puente”‘s Latin flavor and female Spanish language chorus, the synth pop-happy “It’s Grey, It’s Grey (It’s Grey)” (try getting that one out of your head), and, OBVIOUSLY, the cover of R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon”. That one works a lot better than you’d think. I can’t help but laugh at the “Hey Andy are you goofin’ on Elvis/Hey Baby” line played straight with the techno beat. It completely undercuts the emotional impact of the original song in a hilarious way.

All said and told, this record is just a fun, cheesy novelty. Hey, if an album can make me laugh in this hellhole of 2022, and likely beyond, I’ll take it as a win.

Early Verdict:

Deathspell Omega – The Long Defeat
(March 23, 2022)

If you’re like me and you came to harsh vocals through the classic rock -> prog rock -> Porcupine Tree -> Opeth route (I know you’re out there), I can think of no better entry into black metal than Deathspell Omega. Maybe Enslaved, but Deathspell Omega is able to bend and twist sound and music into something spectral and unearthly with only a traditional four-piece rock band setup. No synths, no electronic effects, no bells and whistles…literally and figuratively. Vocals, guitar, bass, and drums. Extra bonus if you’re a giant insufferable hipster, because the lyrical content focuses primarily on metaphysics, philosophy, and other nebulous existential shit. Stuff that sounds smarter than it actually is. You’ll be all over it.

I digress. I’ll get right to the point: this is Deathspell Omega’s first miss since their shift to wildly experimental music in 2004 with Si monvmentvm reqvires, circvmspice. Five albums is a great run, but The Long Defeat feels unforgivably prosaic and lethargic. Even at the beginning with “Enantiodromia”, which starts with some slightly unsettling (and fake) Tuvan throat singing and launches into some mild, tame post-metal noodling, feels like an underwhelming slog. Throughout the album you get snippets of fuck-yeah unbridled chaotic insanity, such as the squealing guitar solo while the bass and drums go haywire in the middle of “Eadem, sed aliter”, but then it just becomes a disappointment when it reverts back to feeble, earthly post-metal. The title track is an exercise of by-the-book second wave black metal. I expect better.

The final track ends on a melodic note, which brings to mind Amon Amarth more than anything else. It just seems strange and out of place from a band that usually digs deep into unimaginably complex philosophical ideologies and makes the music to match. This isn’t the avantgarde band I know and love. Hopefully it’s just a phase.

Of course, even if this can be considered “safer” music, I wouldn’t recommend playing this while Aunt Becky is in the car…UNLESS your Aunt Becky hardened up a little bit after two months in the clink following that college admissions scandal! She might be ready for anything after that.

Early Verdict:

Spiritualized – Everything Was Beautiful
(April 22, 2022)

I love Spiritualized and their multi-layered, hypnotic, ever-progressing song structures. Even at their worst they are remarkably consistent, but they are unmatched when they get really locked into something special. Fronted by Jason Pierce, or J. Spaceman as he likes to be called (which you need to pronounce like Chris Parnell’s 30 Rock character or get the fuck out), the band’s peak was arguably their 1997 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. Diverse and cathartic, that album is a quintessential representation of all their strengths: hard-hitting blues rock, mesmerizing psychedelic loops that build into noisy crescendos, and soulful and emotional gospel ballads, among others. It’s a rare example of a 70-minute album that doesn’t feel bloated and overlong, EVEN in spite of its 17-minute closing track.

Everything Was Beautiful feels like Ladies and Gentlemen…‘s spiritual successor, 25 years later. Even the intro tracks are strikingly similar to each other: spacey builds with robotic beeps. This whole effort seems to exude way more confidence, the hallmark of a seasoned band with a discography completely free of duds. Once “Best Thing You Never Had (The D Song)”, the second track, kicks in proper, you’ll wonder how such strong melodies haven’t been mined long ago. It sounds like the Rolling Stones at their peak.

Another highlight is “The Mainline Song” which brims with beautifully romantic positivity (“Sweet heart, sweet light/Oh babe, it’s a beautiful night/And I wanted to know if you wanted to go/To the city tonight“) as train noises and chugging synthesizer weaves in and out. It certainly could be a song about drugs, but you can play this one for your grandma all the same and she’ll fucking love the shit out of it.

I also really like the instrumental choruses of “The A Song (Laid in Your Arms)”. Just a perfect combination of soaring, impassioned notes that’ll you’ll be humming in your sleep.

There’s not one bad track on here. Everything Was Beautiful sounds like something right out of the glory days of the classic rock era. If it came out in 1970, people still be talking about it today. But it came out a month ago and no one is talking about it anymore! Them’s the breaks. Cream of the crop of 2022 so far in my book. Once you finish listening through, you’ll surely think “yeah, everything was beautiful”. How’s that for cognitive consonance??

Early Verdict: