Welcome to Wacky Newer Release Roundup Wednesday! Bhabhabhala! balasbasnja2! We keep things wacky here at all times, guaranteed! And now I’m going to be serious for moment. No time for wackiness now, please. This week we have the Nick Cave / Warren Ellis collaboration, as well as albums by Deafheaven and Sleighbells. Now get back to work. Wacky Time is over.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – Carnage
(February 25, 2021)

So I, in my grandiose ignorance, thought that Carnage was just yet another Nick Cave / Warren Ellis soundtrack or theatre score album. The two of them have a collaborative body of work that I haven’t had much interest in delving into whatsoever. Color me delighted, DELIGHTED, when I learned only two weeks ago that Carnage is, in fact, an actual studio album of songs and music and words and singing and songs! Their first effort of its kind, as it happens to be, and I certainly hope for many, many more. I spent almost seven months in the dark, and now the light is bright and uncomfortable! Hallelujah!

This will be rather blasphemous, I know, but I haven’t been the world’s biggest fan of the ’10s-era Nick Cave output. Yes, the man has been through quite a bit in the last ten years, I know his son fell off a fucking cliff and all that, I know he’s in his sixties now and he can’t be the strung-out heroin-embalmed art school dropout kinda guy he used to be anymore, FINE, I KNOW. I can always dream, can’t I?

On the Nick Cave side of things, Carnage is more of the same pensive energy that is all over Ghosteen, or Skeleton Tree, or Push the Sky Away. It’s even sometimes aggressively pensive, which is the way I can describe the album’s centerpiece track “White Elephant” perfectly. It’s never aggressively aggressive, that’s for sure, and Cave’s aggression (if you could even call it that at all) comes out in different ways now. It’s like he transcends the violent spectrum of negative emotion into something more…transcendent. Look, I’m not a poet. Listen to Nick Cave for poetry.

I’m not familiar with Warren Ellis at all beyond his penchant for ambiance and mood music, but if I’m not mistaken based on what I also already know about Cave, Ellis contributes a great deal of the little synthesizer flourishes, the rich multi-instrumental arrangements, the bells and whistles as it were. And there are plenty! Carnage is a real treat for the ears, man.

I’m going to need much more time with this, obviously, in order to really unpack the moods, imagery, and allusions that this album is so readily dense with. My personal favorite track right now is “Old Time”. It unfolds slowly and masterfully, keeping the listener rapt with attention as an endless build of interesting instrumental patterns punctuate Cave’s delivery. That rumbling cello solo (or is there more than one cello there?) gives me goosebumps every time it kicks in during the middle of the song. It’s mixed in a way that it sounds like Yo-Yo Ma is right behind you, for chrissake! It’s incredible.

The latter half peters off into slower, more passive arrangements, which isn’t entirely my cup of tea, so this will not be my album of the year. But, like any other Cave project, new pockets of intrigue are brought to light with every listen, and I’m looking forward to taking all this in over time.

Early Verdict:

Deafheaven – Infinite Granite
(August 20, 2021)

There are a lot of bands out there who started out heavy and/or extreme and then mellow out, go soft, sometimes even switching genres altogether over time. Opeth started out as a progressive death metal band who eventually swapped out their guttural growls completely in favor of clean singing. Anathema started out as a doom metal band who became a neo-progressive rock band and then almost like a Radiohead art-rock outfit. Ulver went from black metal to some sort of ambient/electronic/synthpop hybrid. It happens all the time, I could name a bunch of others. Deafheaven has started as an atmospheric black metal band (coined as “blackgaze” by hipsters who don’t listen to any other atmospheric black metal), and now they’re suddenly a straight-up shoegaze band? Post-rock? It’s not metal anymore, that’s for sure. And I’m not sure I like it.

I’m not in love with Deafheaven in the first place. The band’s status as a darling of its genre in the indiesphere baffles me, considering that there are literally thousands of bands all over the world that make atmospheric black metal just like Deafheaven, and many of them are far more interesting. Now they go and make a full album of generic throwback shoegaze songs, most of them with forgettable melodies and no real inventiveness to be heard anywhere that propels the genre forward that I can observe. So, congrats Deafheaven, you turned your sound from something thousands of bands are doing into something dozens of bands already did 30 years ago.

I suppose I expect a little more from a band with such a cult following. Perhaps if they had done literally anything unique whatsoever I would’ve given them a pass for the effort. Go listen to the first Stone Roses album instead.

Early Verdict:

Sleigh Bells – Texis
(September 10, 2021)

Sleigh Bells were ahead of their time when they released their debut Treats in 2010. Back then, there was either energetic, pure power pop or there was hyperactive, noisy, emo post-hardcore. Alexis Krauss and Derek E. Miller were among the front runners of meeting in the middle of these two ends of the spectrum and making catchy, hooky, aggressive, distorted, heavy metal pop music, paving the way for even more well-known artists like Grimes, Charli XCX, and 100 gecs. Is 100 gecs well known? Probably more than Sleigh Bells nowadays!

That is to say, Sleigh Bells fell off almost completely over the last 10 years. By the time they released their third album in 2013, Bitter Rivals, they had soften their sound to sterile cleanliness that no one really cared for. And now, with Texis, they have successfully made the same album three times in a row.

And I’m ok with that. I still like Sleigh Bells, even if their abrasive, blown-speaker beats have been mostly traded in for smoother synthwave rhythms. It still hits hard enough, the songwriting is still spirited, and while not every song has the most memorable melody, there’s always something to uncover with each successive listen. I can say that about all Sleigh Bells albums with scout’s honor! And I was never any kind of scout, so that really means something!

Texis is a decent album. I personally enjoy the nervous-energy cuts like “Red Flag Flies” and the closer “Hummingbird Bomb”, with both exemplify the duo’s wide range of moods. Also, I wish I could’ve thought of something as clever as the repeated “I feel like dynamite/I feel like dying tonight” chorus on “Locust Laced”. It took me a while to pick up on that.

Early Verdict: