Wolf Alice, Squid, and St. Vincent

This week I have new releases from Wolf Alice, Squid, and St. Vincent. I have to say that in the intro so that Google might someday actually put my blog in their search engine!

We are quite literally, as of today, on the year’s halfway point. Many publications are releasing their half-year best-of lists. I have about 900 more albums from 2021 to listen to and absorb, and I’m sure the best is still yet to come! It’s a good time to be a music fan.

Wolf Alice – Blue Weekend
(June 4, 2021)
Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend

Wolf Alice’s third studio album dropped in early June and was met with immediate critical acclaim. I’ve heard very little Wolf Alice in the past, and I was incredibly wary going into this one. I was expecting a lot of folky noodling and hushed vocals, but Blue Weekend showcases some diverse indie rock styles while maintaining a mildly grungy veneer throughout the record.

Immediate standouts at first listen were “Safe From Heartbreak (If You Never Fall In Love)” and its ethereal folky strumming, the pure pop of “How Can I Make it OK?”, and the fuzzy shoegaze bombast of “Feeling Myself”. On my first album run-through I found the riot grrrl punk anthem “Play the Greatest Hits” a jarring turn, but this one has really grown on me too.

My minor gripe is sequencing. The album is oddly middle-heavy, and “Feeling Myself” is such a sweeping, epic emotional cooldown of a song that it’s crazy to me that it’s not the album closer. There’s a finality to it that makes the remaining tracks feel tacked-on.

Good stuff! Too many bands have “wolf” and “Alice” in their names, they should re-brand. Might I suggest “The Beetles”??

Early Verdict:

Squid – Bright Green Field
(May 7, 2021)
Squid - Bright Green Field

Ahhh, Squid. Among the major post-punk releases in 2021 (along with Dry Cleaning, black midi, and Black Country, New Road), Squid presents a kaleidoscope of post-punk tropes and influences, brought together into an unpredictable display of tense, passive-aggressive arrangements, and finalized with a guy who sounds like the British answer to Mike Watt from Minutemen and fIREHOSE.

The air of Bright Green Field is shaky and uneasy, as if the band is just as unsure as the first-time listener about what will come next. One of my favorite moments comes from “Narrator”, a high-strung song about how the individual will create their own truths and realities that fit their worldview, where vocalist Ollie Judge repeats “I’ll play mine…I’ll play mine…I’ll play mine…“, ebbing and flowing with the music behind it and slowly building to a frenzy. The band is playful with style and tone. It’s a veritable gumball machine of post-punk excitement! How’s that for a shitty metaphor?

They get dinged on points with some instances of ambient go-nowhere codas tacked on at the end of songs (“Boy Racers”, “Documentary Filmmaker”, “Global Groove”). They are excessive, unnecessary, and absolutely could’ve been trimmed. Other than that, this is a great debut in a year with other great post-punk debuts! The direction that this genre is heading is very exciting, can’t wait to see what comes next.

Early Verdict:

St. Vincent – Daddy’s Home
(May 14, 2021)
St. Vincent - Daddy's Home

I’ve been a St. Vincent fan for a long time, and I was very much looking forward to this album’s release since she made the announcement last December. Every album had been different and exciting, oh boy, what will Annie Clark cook up next?

And, man, I wanted to like this album so badly. I spent a lot of time with it, seeing some of the polarizing reviews and trying to listen through the whole thing over and over again with unbiased ears. And I do like some of it, I like “Pay Your Way In Pain” and “Down” for sure, which were both released as singles. Both of these have strong melodies with some groovy elements and memorable ’70s rock pastiches. In fact, this whole album feels like Clark’s ’70s love letter. However, this was done better with Ty Segall’s 2018 release Freedom’s Goblin, And while Clark is an outstanding guitarist (better than Ty Segall, methinks), and the solos and guitar interplay on Daddy’s Home are outstanding, the actual songs themselves ring incredibly hollow. For a record–no, her first record–that’s supposed to be deeply personal, it still feels like she’s playing a character. I mean, look at the cover for goddamn sake. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel listening to Daddy’s Home. I feel a little bored.

I think being open is one of Annie Clark’s weaknesses, unfortunately. We got a hint of it on her fantastic 2017 album Masseduction, but going all-in this time, ironically, created a detached and somewhat emotionally insincere final product. And the ’70s pastiches feel like empty carbon copies of the real thing. I need more time with this.

Early Verdict:


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They Might Be Giants – Lincoln (1988)

They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
Looks like I’m way overdue for a write-up of They Might Be Giant’s second album Lincoln. Just like how Lincoln himself was…way overdue…uh, for…um…not getting, uh, shot? Whoops! Let’s start over.

Lincoln is not named after Mr. Shot-in-the-Head, but rather John Linnell’s and John Flansburgh’s childhood hometown of Lincoln, Massachusetts. The cryptic cover art shows the Johns’ respective grandfathers’ pictures displayed behind lecterns for no real reason that I can tell, but paired with the name Lincoln it always felt ominously political to me. And maybe some the record is political if you poke around deep enough into these lyrics? We as an audience will likely never know.

This album is very similar to the debut. 18 unpredictable songs packed into 39 minutes overflowing with catchy melodies, stylistic experiments, goofy instruments, lyrical shenanigans, dorky wordplay, and nasally voices aplenty. To my ears, this album is less “colorful” and more “mature” than the first, maybe because many of these songs seem to be more realized and constructed into, like, actual songs. I used the term “load-bearing filler” to describe some of the tunes on the debut, where it seemed like a complete mess of ideas were thrown against the wall just to see what could stick; there’s less of those types of tunes on Lincoln for sure. That alone gives this album the edge, but both are essential early TMBG. Both are worth it.

With Lincoln, the Johns have really beefed up the wordplay. Almost every song contains these twisty, mind-bending phrases that are complete nonsense, but they might not be! Fake profoundness! “Lie Still, Little Bottle” is a beatnik, lounge jazz Flansburgh vehicle with a touch of sleaze, here are my favorite lines: “‘There’s no time for metaphors’/Cried the little pill to me/He said ‘Life is a placebo’/Masquerading as a simile’“). I spent a lot of time thinking about that one! It’s like it almost works on several levels, but instead the levels are isolated instead of intertwined. Here’s another one: “The World’s Address”, another Flansburgh song, this time with some samba flavor, has a pun right in the title. Here’s a lyric: “The world’s address/A place that’s worn/A sad pun that reflects a sadder mess“. Self-aware meta wordplay? How about “Shoehorn with Teeth”? “He wants a shoehorn/The kind with teeth/People should get beat up/For stating their beliefs“. More self-aware wordplay! These smarty men just won’t stop.

The consistency of this album is certainly an improvement, as previously mentioned with respect to the debut’s load-bearing filler. Here, though, there are only a couple of songs that do absolutely nothing for me. The first is “Cage and Aquarium”, which is annoyingly bouncy and even more annoyingly sung with a nod to the 5th Dimension’s “Aquarius” (“This is the spawning of the cage and aquarium…“). The other is “I’ve Got a Match”, which is easily the most straightly-played sentimental song here and, therefore, a little dull. It also feels a whole lot longer than it actually is, maybe because there are about three false stops at the end. I used to dislike “You’ll Miss Me”, the bizarre jazz-rap collage with Flansburgh spitting his words like some sort of Louie Armstrong/Fat Albert hybrid, but it’s grown on me over time.

The rest of the album ranges from good to excellent. “Ana Ng”, the opener, is one of the most quintessential (and one of the best) TMBG tunes, featuring an unforgettable melody and some masterfully thoughtful lyrics about a person from Peru who is love with a woman whom he has never met, Ana Ng, on the exact opposite end of the world in Vietnam. I love the creative opening lines that describe this antipode: “Make a hole with gun perpendicular to the name of this town on a desktop globe/Exit wound in a foreign nation, showing the home of the one this was written for“. It’s oddly touching. Other major album highlights (at least in my opinion, there’s a TMBG song for everyone) include the eerie, paranoia-fueled “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go” that even contains “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah” musical quotes played out in creepy staccato, the dreary military march of “Pencil Rain”, woven with snare drum cadences and pencil puns and a cool Morse code section during the instrumental bridge, the previously mention “The World’s Address”, and the musically upbeat but lyrically depressing divorce song “They’ll Need a Crane” (“Lad looks at other gals/Gal thinks Jim Beam is handsomer than Lad“). The couple is so intertwisted in each other’s lives that they need a crane to actually emotionally separate.

I think Lincoln is the best example of TMBG’s ability to combine childlike playfulness with heavy, dark topics. Nearly every song has some disquieting attribute undercutting the positive, jaunty beats, goofy words, and colorful instruments. “Purple Toupee” is a musical synthfest celebration, but it seems to be about how the memories of important societal events, in this case the Civil Rights Movements of the ’60s and the Kennedy assassination, are just a jumbled, incoherent mess for a person who lived through them as a child. “Santa’s Beard” brings to mind both Beastie Boys and the Cars, and it appears to be a more directly blunt take on “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”. The final song, “Kiss Me, Son of God”, addresses class system corruption with some of the Johns’ least cryptic lyrics that you’ll find in the early years (“I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage/Called the blood of the exploited working class“). It also has some pretty violin and cello arrangements that undermine the sincerity of the narrator’s empathy. It’s a great way to do social commentary without appearing preachy or self-indulgent, and shows that John and John can assign real meaning behind what they write when they want to. It’s not all dumb fun, I guess.

In my experience, it’s difficult to find an album jam-packed with musical ideas that are almost all exceptional. Lincoln is overflowing with brilliance, creativity, and humbleness. This is a very good place to start a TMBG discography journey, and it may very well be their best album to date. I’m quite partial to Apollo 18 myself, but like I said, every TMBG fan will have very different opinions about both the good and the bad. In this case, the consensus is fairly clear-cut. This is one Lincoln that won’t be assassinated in fans’ hearts anytime soon!

VERY GOOD


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Site Migration Blues


ADVENTURE! This week I decided to put on my big boy pants and take the plunge into self-hosting my website instead of running it all through WordPress.com, and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s not going as planned!

One of the main things that started to bug me about WordPress.com is that you’re completely locked out of most of the features that would allow you to, you know, have even a little bit of control over your own website. Pesky little stuff like that. I read about a thousand pages for three straight days that guide you, step by step, along the process of transferring your whole website over, and if done right it should be seamless. Well, since I’m a 33-year-old boomer-brain millennial who knows nothing about computers and widgets and databases and feeding the magical microchip fairies to get servers redirected properly, this whole process hasn’t been as seamless as I wanted. And I should’ve expected that.

This is what I get when I Google “computer elf”. His worried expression tells me that he, too, is migrating his website poorly.

There’s all sorts of shit you gotta do! Export databases, make backups, spend money, import databases, tweak settings, reroute domains, reroute servers, clear caches, install plugins, validate SSL certificates, roll 45-sided dice, perform seances, assassinate various ayatollahs, and pray to an assortment of feckless gods. I’ve been putting a lot of my time and energy into trying to sort this all out over the last few days, which would be fine if I didn’t have a job and kids and three Lamborghinis that need waxing!

Right now I feel like it wasn’t worth it, but I’m still in the very early stages, and once it gets all worked out I’ll be fine. But, right now, it’s the pits! I’m mainly peeved because this ordeal has been taking the focus away from what I really want to do with the website, and that’s write! I want to write! I haven’t been writing because I’m too busy making sure my website doesn’t get suddenly redirected to GrannysWithMittens.com or starts tapping into my others accounts, emailing back all these Nigerian princes! I don’t want to maximize my SEO nodules or percolate my PHP Admin or any of that computer nerd shit! Arrghh!

But, in the end, I know all the extra disk space I get from self-hosting will be worth the early headaches. I know having complete control over my page layouts will be something I’ll appreciate as time goes on. Hell, maybe someday I might want to monetize, and now I’ll be able to. So while it’s not all lollipops and shiny dubloons at the moment, I just have to be patient and roll with the punches, as they say.

Stupid Internet.


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Steven Wilson, Shame, and Olivia Rodrigo

This week on Newer Release Roundup we focus on the angsty and the tormented of all ages! That reminds me of a story: never mind, I forgot it!

It’s getting harder and harder to come up with some eye-catching exposition text for this feature. Let’s just move on.

Steven Wilson – THE FUTURE BITES
(January 29, 2021)

Steven Wilson - THE FUTURE BITES

Modern prog rock’s Chief Smiley Boy Steven Wilson returns with his sixth solo studio effort, entitled and stylized in all caps THE FUTURE BITES, complete with his ill-fitting glasses-faced smirking mug and MS Paint album cover. Bring all these components together and I was expecting absolutely nothing. As it turns out, I was shocked, SHOCKED, at how much I enjoyed this album.

Prog lovers have been disappointed with Wilson’s recent forays into non-prog territories. Myself, I’ve been less than excited with the neo-prog cheesiness and happier dad-rock melodies of his last couple of albums and I’ve been expecting more of the same with this one. Not the case. THE FUTURE BITES sees Wilson returning more to his moody Porcupine Tree roots while continuing to alienate his audience with disco, neo-soul, funk, pop, and straightforward rock music. Since I don’t subscribe to prog snobbery, there is a LOT for me to enjoy here. The upbeat dance-rock “EMINENT SLEAZE”, the psychedelic consumerism satire “PERSONAL SHOPPER” (featuring Elton Fucking John?!), the poppy anti-social media earworm “FOLLOWER”, which has some beautiful arpeggio piano painting a futuristic soundscape during the bridge. And, all the while, Wilson’s immaculate production skills make everything sound so off and unnerving, and I’m liking this stuff on a level that I didn’t really feel from either Hand. Cannot. Erase. or To the Bone. And it’s only 42-minutes long, the perfect length for a Steven Wilson venture.

My opinion is an unusual one, and I don’t think you’ll see a similar opinion elsewhere, but this is the best product that Wilson has released in about a decade. If this is the music he wants to make now, I’m all in for the ride.

Early Verdict:

Shame – Drunk Tank Pink
(January 15, 2021)

Shame - Drunk Tank Pink

Let me start by saying that Shame’s debut Songs of Praise was one of my favorites from 2018. I considered it to be a somewhat fresh take on post-punk, combining sulky, plodding riffs with politically sharp commentary delivered in a gruffly bombastic baritone. Drunk Tank Pink, the second album, while entertaining, didn’t hook me as easily.

Perhaps it’s more nuanced and layered? Perhaps it’s a little bit too much more of the same? Perhaps I need more time with it still? HERE’S WHAT I THINK: I think the record starts off with incredible strength on the first two tracks. “Alphabet” is snarky and aggressive, “Nigel Hitter” is playful and bouncy, almost like a Talking Heads song. Then they lose me at “Born in Luton”. “Double locked titanium steel“? That’s not even a thing!

OK, in all seriousness, once we tread near the middle of the record the overall tone starts getting a little same-y, and a lot of the record doesn’t evolve from the debut’s formula. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. The formula works! But when you’re so used to one album, a new album of the same formula is harder to break through. And that’s where I’m at right now.

SO, a lot of this album I really like! My gut tells me, though, that this band is repeating a lot of the same tricks. Either way, this album still needs to penetrate. All the best albums are slow penetrators. Yeah baby.

Early Verdict:

Olivia Rodrigo – SOUR
(May 21, 2021)

Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR

You probably already know more than I do about Olivia Rodrigo’s extremely popular first full length. Every take has already been explored. Why are you even here? Read some other blog if you want “insight” and “smartly worded sentences”.

Here’s my take: SOUR is a genuinely ambitious and a bravely open testimonial from the aspiring teenage Disney Channel star. Rodrigo has one hell of a voice and her expressive singing is impassioned, mournful, and powerful. One would expect some overly fluffed up bullshit, but the opener “brutal” hits you hard with a 2×4 of 17-year-old angst and doesn’t let up. When you get lines like “And I’m so tired that I might/Quit my job, start a new life/And they’d all be so disappointed/’Cause who am I, if not exploited?” it looks like the recipe for burning bridges. I really get a kick out of this kind of transparency in art, and good for Rodrigo for not being afraid to put herself out there like this! The feelings are genuine, and even if they weren’t it’s still a ballsy way to present yourself.

Too bad that “brutal” is the hardest-hitting track. Most of the rest of the album is moody and somewhat hushed and restrained, almost entirely focused on a single break-up. While the album is rooted in the sardonic and the cynical, it’s relatable and sometimes bitterly funny (“I’ll bet that she knows Billy Joel/’Cause you played her ‘Uptown Girl’/You’re singing it together/Now I bet you even tell her how you love her/In between the chorus and the verse“). And in the end, who could fucking blame her for being angsty and cynical at this stage in her life? It’s entirely appropriate. I’m sure she will do better work in the future, but right now this is where she’s at and this is how it all came out. At any rate, I like it.

Early Verdict:


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The Police – Outlandos d’Amour (1978)


Ahh, the Police. New wave’s chief export of white reggae, syncopated drumming, songs about prostitutes, and, uh…Sting. The Police comprises Sting (née Gordon Sumner, which is pretty close to ALF’s real name too!) on vocals and bass, Stewart Copeland on drums and percussion, and Andy Summers on guitar. When you’re the lead guitarist and you get third billed out of three in your band, then take stock of your life. Good thing the Police were extremely successful! But yes, nobody knows Andy Summers and no one cares.

The band’s beginnings were not entirely glamourous. All three members were seasoned musicians; Sting played for jazz fusion band Last Exit, Copeland drummed for prog-folk band Curved Air, and Summers had played with Soft Machine’s Kevin Ayers and the Animals, among many others. As the Police they got gigs here and there, trying desperately to make money to fund their efforts, even bleaching their hair for a Wrigley’s gum commercial that never saw the light of day. Copeland’s brother is Miles Copeland, big-time record producer and, later, founder of I.R.S. Records. I can picture the scene now: the band with no record deal, no manager, no money, Stewart begging his brother to loan him £1,500 (which would be £7,570 or roughly $10,500 in 2021), and only being able to use the recording studio if someone else cancelled. This is how it really happened. Miles would even pop into the studio once in a while and he hated everything that he heard. He even hated Andy Summers and suggested that Sting and Stewart cut him loose. The Police were on the fast track to complete invisibility. Sting would soon have to flip burgers at whatever they had in England at the time. McDonald’s? That’s the one!

But, when Miles Copeland heard “Roxanne” he was finally on board, and he worked to get their record deal secured with A&M Records. The rest is history, and now we as a world have to endure Sting and his face and his spiky receding hairline. The name of the album comes from a very loose French translation, plus a play on words, of “Outlaws of Love”. The band combined “outlaws” and “commandos”, and if that wasn’t dumb enough, Miles Copeland originally proposed the name “Police Brutality”. Imagine an album with “So Lonely” on it called Police Brutality. Go ahead, imagine it…….lol

Outlandos d’Amour is a good debut, replete with reggae, rock, pop, punk, and jazz influences. Being seasoned musicians with varied backgrounds, all three could bring their own strengths to the table and create truly unique blend of styles. Nothing sounded like the Police before, nothing sounds like the Police since, and if that’s not a mark of originality then nothing is. Considering that all these songs were recorded piecemeal over six months in a shitty English studio, the pacing and sequencing are good enough that you’d never even know. Sting remembers personally being blissfully optimistic and not letting all the less-than-ideal circumstances affect his outlook during the whole process, which is ANNOYINGLY inspirational and good for him. It shows in their work.

The album starts with punkiest song the Police ever wrote and it still isn’t that punky: “Next To You” begins Ramones-y enough, sort of, with Copeland’s driving drums and an urgent, memorable punk riff. The call-and-response between the riff and the vocals, though, are more in blues territory, and no one would ever, ever, ever, in a million buttfucking years, confuse Sting’s voice for something that has even glanced at map containing Punk Territory, but people call “Next To You” Police’s punk song so I had better do it too or else Google won’t list my website above Page 300 when searching for “police brutality”. Honest-to-God truth, “Next To You” is a pretty fantastic kickoff, and one of my favorite moments in the ENTIRE POLICE DISCOGRAPHY is the short slide guitar solo with the tense rhythmic accompaniment. Stuff like that is designed to hook you in, I’m glad they bothered! And then the catchy repeated refrain at the end? “All I want is to be next you-ou!” Are these guys actually fun? Who would’ve thought?

Another major highlight includes the famous “Roxanne” with Sting’s shrill and cracking “R-O-O-O-XANNE!“. The band says no other song like “Roxanne” was on the radio at the time, which is probably what made it quite notorious in the first place, but for me I just love the idea of Sting himself falling in love with a sex worker and trying to help her out, and I imagine Roxanne completely disinterested and annoyed. It adds a whole new layer to the song for me. In fact, my painting of Sting as some sort of bumbling loser is probably what makes me appreciate this band so much. It works just as well for the Smiths! Anyway, I’m also a fan of “Peanuts”, a fast-paced song that flexes some of Sting’s jazz background with an experimental cacophonous tapestry at the end. The subject matter revolves around the decline of Rod Stewart, one of Sting’s influences, and the “peanut gallery” of rock journalism that keeps giving Rod Stewart shit. Sting later regrets admitting that the song is about Rowdy Roddy (since he was afraid of the same decline himself), but I think he deserves it anyway. Fuck Rod Stewart. You also get the hits “So Lonely” and “Can’t Stand Losing You” on this record, which serve to prove (to me at least) that the early singles blow the later singles out of the water every time, and showing early on the range and sensibilities of the band minus the late-edition schmaltziness that we get from the likes of Synchronicity.

Most of these songs are excellent; in spite of any early inconsistencies with the band finding their voice and sound, a lot of their music seems to have been established right away. I do, however, have a problem with two songs in particular: the first is “Born in the ’50s”, which is dated and embarrassing, revolving around generational arrogance with a “fuck you, old man! We were born in the ’50s” message. I don’t care when you were born, be it the ’80s or fourteen years ago or 1832, this shit makes me cringe. The second is “Be My Girl – Sally”, which begins deceptively enjoyable and unassuming like a damn Archies song (“Won’t you be my girl?/Won’t you be my girl?/Won’t you be my, be my, be my girl?“) and then shifts suddenly into some Andy Summers spoken word poetry about porking a blowup doll, which would be funny if it didn’t go on so long and actually had, you know, music going on at the same time. This won’t be the last time Summers shares his disturbed sexual proclivity, so look forward to more of that I guess.

The Police would assuredly get better, but even if this was the best they ever got it would still be pretty ok. Some would argue that each successive album improves upon the previous, but I don’t agree with that. I’d rather throw their debut on over Ghost in the Machine or Synchronicity any day, mostly due to the band’s early energy and lack of jerk-me-off balladry. You can take that to the bank. POLICE BRUTALITY! YEAH!

GOOD


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