This week I have new releases from Pom Pom Squad, black midi, and Seputus. A barrage of “oh well” emojis today, I wasn’t feeling it on all three. Maybe I’m getting old and jaded? Maybe I actually hate music! Read on as a fumble my way through justifying my shitty opinions.

Pom Pom Squad – Death of a Cheerleader
(June 25, 2021)

Tacky cover? Check. Angsty riot-grrrl vocals? Check. Mid-tempo pop punk? Check. Frivolous first-world teenage problems? Check. It’s a perfect formula of the kind of music and the matter of presentation that I strongly disliked about what my peers were into back in high school, and I still struggle to keep an open mind about it.

Why am I even reviewing this, then, if I’m already biased against it? Because I enjoyed Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album, and I feel like Pom Pom Squad is cut from the same thematic cloth. Keep the mind open! I’m only human! All I can do is try!

Here’s my sticking point: Rodrigo’s angst comes through in genuine display of seething bitterness, and Mia Berrin’s angst seems whiny, manufactured, and rooted in character exaggeration. That is to say, most of what I hear sounds like what I used to hear from the likes of Avril Lavigne or Kelly Osborne, which is not the problem. The problem is that Rodrigo, Lavigne, and Osborne were all 17 when they recorded their first album. Berrin is 23.

Ageism aside, I do understand that this album is based entirely around Berrin shedding her conflicted sense of self from her teenage years and surging forward with a more honest version of her personal identity. I’m all for that like crazy. Good for her! This music is very faithful to the type of raw emotion that only an emo, coming-of-age, pop-punk aesthetic can convey properly. There, she succeeds fantastically.

As it stands, though, I have my own conflicted sense of self from my own teenage years, and revisiting the music that was huge in the early ’00s is not my personal idea of good time. I look to change that some day, and I won’t stop listening to albums like Death of a Cheerleader. Things have a way of just clicking when you least suspect it. Yeah, I’m a shithead. Sorry.

Early Verdict:

black midi – Cavalcade
(May 26, 2021)

I wanted to like this album more than I did. I mean it. I’m not in love with black midi’s debut Schlagenheim, but I like it! The reviews for Cavalcade are superlative! The first song “John L” really gets those juices flowing! But I’m disappointed!

black midi defies easy categorization, but they fall into the modern experimental rock camp that also contains British contemporaries Black Country, New Road, Squid, and maybe IDLES or Shame or Heavy Lungs. I consider black midi to be more of a current-day Rock in Opposition avant-prog band, like a Henry Cow, an Art Zoyd, or a Samla Mammas Manna. I’d lump them in with niche contemporary RIO/avant-prog artists like miRthkon, Chromb!, poiL, Secret Chiefs 3, Jono el Grande, Panzerpappa, Univerz Zero, French TV, and oh my god I could keep going forever with bands barely anyone has ever heard of. That’s how many of them there are.

So here’s my dumbass unwarranted personal issue: this album is incredible if you’re not well-acquainted with avantgarde anti-prog. Some of these tracks are fucking EXCELLENT, like the already-mentioned “John L”. Exciting technicality, surprising stops and starts, cool free jazz piano and sax squealing away in the background under the vocals, astonishing layered time signatures, it’s great stuff!

If you’re like me, and you’ve both heard a ton of avant-prog and aren’t the most apologetic avant-prog fan in the first place, then you’ll know that you’ve heard most of this kind of thing before. black midi are not breaking new ground whatsoever, no matter what some publications might say. People have been making this kind of jagged rock music since the late ’60s. Because it’s avant-prog, a lot of this music just meanders and there’s nothing that can really be done, like “Diamond Stuff” and “Ascending Forth”, which aren’t dynamic enough for their respective runtimes. Some of these slow bits are suuuuper slow, with not enough real tension forming out of Georgie Greep’s thickly-accented vocals. Try as they might.

For every point I could make for genius, there’s another musical decision here that falls flat. It’s a tough album for me, but not in the way that it is for most people. The real star here is Morgan Simpson and his crisp, calculated virtuosic drumming style, but he alone can’t carry the weight of the whole band. Maybe he will some day. Come see me again in a year and see what I think about Cavalcade then. Sorry.

Early Verdict:

Seputus – Phantom Indigo
(June 4, 2021)

“Phantom Indigo is a window into the kind of mental loops that can occur from repeated fixation, meaningless daily routine and negative mental thought patterns.” I think it’s funny how all these metal bands can cite the psychological, the metaphysical, and the mythological as themes and direct artistic influences, and then all of them are like *RATATATATATATATATAT* “BLREERERRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!” anyway.

And Seputus’ sophomore effort is no different. The band is basically a side project of Pyrrhon, an ever-so-slightly industrial-tinged, noisy, mathy death metal band that saw a glimmer of recognition for their 2020 album Abscess Time. Seputus is incredibly similar, featuring deluges of frantic drumming and twisty, suffocating musical progression. Most accounts categorize the album in the “technical death metal” bin, but the hazy, swirling humidity of the atmosphere evokes more of the avantgarde black metal of Deathspell Omega or Blut aus Nord. The lack of crystal-clear technical riffing works for them and their “negative mental thought patterns” motif, though, I think.

I find it difficult to describe thick, punishing extreme metal with any sort of lucidity. In a nutshell, this is challenging stuff! Tracks are pretty long, though, making the fogginess seem aimless even after attempting to gel it all together with multiple listens, which is where I have to dock it points. If I can’t find anything to cling onto after my sixth run-through, it’s unlikely that I’m going to attempt a seventh. Sorry.

Early Verdict:

There, that’s three Sorry’s in a row. Don’t shoot the messenger, especially if the messenger wrote the message and also the message contains all the opinions of the messenger!