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Today I have 2021 albums by Descendents, the Telephone Numbers, and Black Dresses! The year’s almost over! Only seven more official Newer Release Roundups left, and you better believe I’m going to try to cram in, like, 20 extras. I’ll find a way.

Descendents – 9th & Walnut
(July 23, 2021)

I hate that I’m woefully ignorant about the Descendents. An influential hardcore punk band that shaped the Los Angeles scene along with Black Flag, Bad Religion, Suicidal Tendencies, Minutemen, Social Distortion, and many others, and I’ve never listened to them before. I’m changing that with 9th & Walnut.

Luckily, 9th & Walnut is a collection of unreleased songs that were written 40 years ago, recorded and assembled 20 years ago, and dubbed with new Milo Aukerman vocals during pandemic lockdown last year. It represents a missing link between their first few years and their debut LP Milo Goes to College. For me, though, it being the first taste of the Descendents, 9th and Walnut represents an aging band indulging in their youth. It’s like they’re revisiting their own coming-of-age story, preserving the adolescent lyrics and subject matter and going all-in with it as farty old men.

You get juvenile songs like “You Make Me Sick” (“You make me sick with your pretty face/Can’t stand you stinkin’ up the whole place“), light PG violence like “Crepe Suzette” (“Give me a chance/I’d shoot you/Give me a chance, baby/You’d see what I could do to you“), and oddly touching, upbeat love songs like “I Need Some” (“A little bit close, a little bit snug/She’s the woman I want to hug“). All 18 songs are melodic as fuck, brimming with youthful energy and passion, and all of them get to the point quickly and move on.

Most reviews call this a good record, essential for fans, but unable to compare to their landmark ’80s work. If this can be considered middle-of-the-road Descendents, then I’m in for a goddamned treat, because I love what I’m hearing here.

Early Verdict:

The Telephone Numbers – The Ballad of Doug
(June 25, 2021)

I should know better than to waste my time digging into some completely unknown album release. I do it just to do it once in a while, thinking “hey, maybe I’ll take a chance on whatever this is and uncover some obscure jewel”. But it never works out, as much as I try to keep an open mind about digging into something that no publication anywhere is talking about. It’s a bad mindset, but there’s something to be said for music staying obscure.

First of all, “The Ballad of Doug“? Is that a reference to “The Ballad of Donkey Doug”, Season 3, Episode 5 of The Good Place, featuring Doug “Donkey Doug” Mendoza, the greatest side-character on any sitcom since Parks and Recreation‘s Jean-Ralphio?! See, I’d much rather talk about that.

Seemingly unoriginal album titles aside, The Telephones Numbers feels like a less-talented carbon copy of The Shins. From the first few notes of “You’re Nowhere” you will know exactly what the expect until the end. Pleasant, but woefully uninspired jangle pop from a era long-gone. The band pulls primary from the Byrds, but they don’t try to do anything new with the sound? Almost identical vocal inflections, acoustic instrumentation, melody patterns, and summertime moods. It sounds like the wealth of ’80s/early-’90s paisley underground acts that time forgot: Game Theory, the Rain Parade, the Dream Syndicate.

I don’t hate this from the standpoint of a pure listening experience, but something about The Ballad of Doug is pitifully caught in the event horizon of the black hole of emptiness. Even when Thomas Rubsenstein sings about the titular character on the titular track, jaunty as it may be, about the “.38 between his teeth“, I don’t care at all. Nothing begs me to care.

I’ll end with a positive: the accordion-tinged melody of “Sunset Town” is glorious and the only track that leaves its lasting impression after the record is over. Other than that, shelve it for use in your ’90s angsty after school special broadcast!

Early Verdict:

Black Dresses – Forever in Your Heart
(February 14, 2021)

The duo known as Black Dresses weren’t long for this world. Forming in 2017, Ada Rook and Devi McCallion released four studio albums before disbanding due to reported harassment and invasion of privacy from their fanbase (specifically toward McCallion). That fucking sucks, and I hope some day they can work together again on the Black Dresses project without dealing with assholes.

The good news is that they released another studio album of new material in early 2021. Whether they had this album already prepared before breaking up, or if they had continued working during a fake breakup, is unclear. Their statement was as follows: “We’re no longer a band unfortunately. Regardless, we’ve decided to keep putting out music.” So make of that what you will, I suppose.

Forever in Your Heart is another installment of the duo’s brand of completely naked and flayed exposure of pain, suffering, and grief. Both deliver their lines with such exasperated, anguished strain that it can be an uncomfortable listen. Lyrics like “I love feeling pain/It makes me feel like I’m going to heaven“, or especially “I never never never never never never should have tried/I never should have tried but it’s not my fault/What does it really take to want to hurt a child?/It seems like it’s not much for a lot of people” really stick with me; makes me think long after the album is finished. And all this with bristling, razor-edged electronics and blown-speaker distorted shrieking. There’s a certain catharsis to it.

Some of it is wryly funny, too. I love “Tiny Ball”, where the intro sounds very much like a The Pod-era Ween with Rook and McCallion’s layered call-and-response, laughing ironically as they declare that “Everything’s inside a tiny little ball of suffering“. There’s a lot of that in Forever in Your Heart, just an incredulous striving for acceptance of how absolutely terrible this planet is.

Nothing impresses me more than brutally honest art that succeeds in stirring up a whole spectrum of feelings, thoughts and emotions. We need more albums like this in this decade. This is an easy Top 5 contender.

Early Verdict: