#then the brief but HEAVY 5-6 drum hits before the second verse

[daenerys-targaryen]

see i don’t dislike slower / acoustic albums they’re just not my taste

[thekillerssluts]

The Story Behind Every Song On Will Butler’s New Album Generations

Will Butler has a lot on his mind. It has, after all, been five years since his solo debut, Policy. A lot can happen in half a decade, and a lot has happened in this past half-decade — much of it quite dire. Butler was in his early 30s when Policy came out, and now he’s closing in on 40. He’s a husband and father. And he’s shaken by the state of the world, the idea of being an artist and a soon-to-be middle-aged man striving to guide his family through the chaos.

At least, that’s how it comes across through much of Generations, his sophomore outing that arrives today. Generations is a big, sprawling title by nature, and the album in turn grapples with all kinds of big picture anxieties. Mass shootings, the overarching darkness and anxiety of our time, trying to reckon with our surroundings but the system overload that occurs all too easily in the wake of it. Then there are more intimate songs, too, tales drawn from personal lives as people plug along just trying to navigate a tumultuous era.

Butler is, of course, no stranger to crafting music that seeks to parse the cultural moment and how it impacts in our daily lives. Ever since Arcade Fire ascended to true arena-rock status on The Suburbs 10 years ago, they have embarked on projects that explicitly try to make sense of our surroundings. (Not that their earlier work was bereft of heavy concepts — far from it — but Reflektor and Everything Now turned more of a specific eye towards contemporary ills and trials.) But as one voice amongst many in Arcade Fire, there is a cinematic scope to whatever Butler’s playing into there.

On Generations, he engages with a lot of similar concerns but all in his own voice — often yelping, desperate, frustrated then just trying to catch a breath. Butler leans on his trusty Korg MS-20 throughout Generations, often giving the album a synth-y indie backdrop that allows him to try on a few different selves. There are a handful of surging choruses, “la-la” refrains batting back against the darkness, slinking grooves maybe allowing someone the idea of brief physical release amidst ongoing strife.

Ahead of Generations’ arrival, Butler sent us some thoughts on the album, running from inspiration between the individual tracks to little details about the arrangement and composition of different songs. Now that you can hear the album for yourself, check it out and read along with Butler’s comments below.

1. “Outta Here”

I think this is the simplest song on the record. Just, like, get me out of here. Get me fucking out of here. I’m so tired of being here. No, I don’t have another answer, and I don’t expect anything to be better anywhere else. But, please, I would like to leave here.

I can play plenty of instruments, and can make interesting sounds on them, but kinda the only instrument I’m good at is a synth called the Korg MS-20. That’s the first sound on the record. It makes most of the bass you hear on the record. It’s a very aggressive, loud, versatile machine, and I wanted to start the record with it cause I’m good at playing it and it makes me happy.

2. “Bethlehem”

This song partly springs from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats:​ “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Like a lot of folks, I woke up after the election in 2016 mad and sad and scared and exhausted. This song is born of that emotion.

My bandmates Jenny Shore, Julie Shore, and Sara Dobbs sing the bridge, and it’s a corrective to my (appropriate?) freaking out — this isn’t the apocalypse. You’re misquoting Yeats. Get your fucking head on straight. History has not ruptured — this shit we’re in is contiguous with the shit we’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But still, we sometimes do need an apocalyptic vision to make change. Even if it’s technically wrong. I dunno. It’s an ongoing conversation.

There’s a lot of interplay with backing vocals on this record — sometimes the narrator is the asshole, sometimes the backing vocals are the asshole. Sometimes they’re just trying their best to figure out the world. This song starts that conversation.

3. “Close My Eyes”

I tried to make these lyrics a straightforward and honest description of an emotion I feel often: “I’m tired of waiting for a better day. But I’m scared and I’m lazy and nothing’s gonna change.” Kind of a sad song. Trying to tap into some Smokey Robinson/Motown feeling — “I’ve got to dance to keep from crying.”

There’s a lot of Mellotron on this record, and a lot of MS-20. This song has a bunch of Mellotron strings/choirs processed through the MS-20. It’s a trick I started doing on the Arcade Fire song “Sprawl II,” and I love how it sounds and I try to do it on every song if I can.

4. “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know”

This makes a pair with “Close My Eyes” — shit is obviously fucked, but “I don’t know what I don’t know what I don’t know what I can do.” I’m not a proponent of the attitude! Just trying to describe it, as I often feel it. In my head, I know some things that I can do — my wife Jenny, for instance, works really hard to get state legislatures out of Republican control. Cause it’s all these weirdo state legislative chambers that have enormous power over law enforcement, and civil rights, and Medicaid, and everything.

The image in the last verse was drawn from the protests in Ferguson in 2015: “Watch the bullets and the beaters as they move through the streets — grab your sister’s kids — hide next to the fire station…” It’s been horrifically disheartening to see the police riot across America as their power has been challenged. I’ve got a little seed of hope that we might change things, but, man, dark times.

More MS-20 bass on this one, chained to the drum machine. This one is supposed to be insanely bass heavy — if it comes on in a car, the windows should be rattling, and you should be asking, “What the heck is going on here?” Trying for a contemporary hip-hop bass sound but in a way less spare context. First song with woodwinds — rhythmic stuff and freaky squeals by Stuart Bogie and Matt Bauder.

5. “Surrender”

This song is masquerading as a love song, but it’s more about friendship. About the confusion that comes as people change: Didn’t you use to have a different ideal? Didn’t we have the same ideal at some point? Which of us changed? How did the world change? Relationships that we sometimes wish we could let go of, but that are stuck within us forever.

It’s also about trying to break from the first-person view of the world. “What can I do? What difference can I make?” It’s not about some singular effort — you have to give yourself over to another power. Give over to people who have gone before who’ve already built something — you don’t have to build something new! The world doesn’t always need a new idea, it doesn’t always need a new personality. What can you do with whatever power and money you’ve got? Surrender it over to something that’s already made. And then the song ends with an apology: I’m sorry I’ve been talking all night. Just talk talk talking, all night. Shut up, Will.

Going for “wall of sound” on this one — bass guitar and bass synth and double tracked piano bass plus another piano plus Mellotron piano. The “orchestra” is about a dozen different synth and Mellotron tracks individually detuned. And then run through additional processing.

6. “Hide It Away”

This song is about secrets. Both on an intimate, heartbreaking level — friends’ miscarriages, friends’ immigration status, shitty affairs coming to light — and on a grand, horrible level: New York lifting the statute of limitations on child abuse prosecutions, all the #MeToo reporting. There’s nothing you can do when your secret is revealed. Like, what can you do? You just have to let the response wash over you. If you’ve done something horrible, god-willing, you’ll have to pay for it in some way. If it’s something not horrible, but people will hate you anyway, goddammit, I wish there were some way to protect you.

This song has the least poetic line on the record, a real clunker: “It’s just money and power, money and power might set them free.” But it’s a clunky, shitty concept — the most surefire protection is being rich and knowing powerful people. But even then, shit just might come out. Even after you’re long dead.

Came from a 30-second guitar sample I recorded while messing around at the end of trying to track a different song. I liked the chords, looped them to make a demo. And the song was born from there. This is the one song I play drums on. Snare is chained to the MS-20, trying to play every frequency the ear can hear at the same time on some of those big hits.

7. “Hard Times”

[Laughs] I sat down and tried to write a Spotify charting electro-hit, and this is what came out: “Kill the rich, salt the earth.” Oh well. Written way before COVID-19, but my 8-year-old son turned to me this spring and asked, “Did you write the song ‘Hard Times’ about now, because we’re living through hard times?” No, I didn’t.

In Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, the narrator is a real son-of-a-bitch—contrarian, useless. Mad at the strong confident people who think they’ve got it figured out. And they don’t! And neither does the narrator — but he knows he doesn’t, and he at times yearns for some higher answer, and he’s funny, and too clever, but still knows he’s a piece of shit. I read Notes From Underground in high school and kinda forgot how it shaped my worldview until I sat down with it a couple years ago. The bridge on this song is basically smushed up quotes from Notes From Underground.

I was asking Shiftee, who mixed the record, if there are any vocal plug-ins I should be playing around with. He pointed me toward Little AlterBoy, which is basically a digital recreation of the kind of pedal the Knife use, for instance, on their vocal sound. It can shift the timbre/character of a voice without changing the pitch. Or change pitch without changing character. Very fun! Very much all over this track. Tried to make the bridge sound like a Sylvester song.

8. “Promised”

Another friend song masquerading as a love song. I’ve met a handful of extraordinary people in my life, who stopped doing extraordinary work because life is hard and it sucks. People who — I mean, it’s a lottery and random and who cares — could be great writers or artists, who kind of just disappeared. And it’s heartbreaking and frustrating. I don’t blame them. Maybe they weren’t made for this world. Maybe it’s just random. Maybe they’ll do amazing work in their 60s!

We tracked this song before it was written. Julie and Miles came over and we made up a structure and did a bunch of takes, found a groove. Which I then hacked up into what it is now! The bed tracks are lovely and loose. Maybe I’ll put out a jammier version of this song at some point. The other big synth on this record is the Oberheim OB-8, and that’s the bass on this one (triple tracked along with some MS-20).

9. “Not Gonna Die”

This song is about terrorism, and the response to terrorism. I wrote it a couple weeks after the Bataclan shooting in Paris in 2015. For some reason, a couple weeks after the shooting, I was in midtown Manhattan. I must have been Christmas shopping. I had to pop into the Sephora on 5th Avenue to pick up something specific — I think for my wife or her sister. I don’t remember. But I remember walking in, and the store was really crowded, and for just a split second I got really scared about what would happen if someone brought out a gun and started shooting up the crowd. And then I got so fucking mad at the people that made me feel that emotion. Like, I’m not gonna fucking die in the midtown Sephora, you fucking pieces of shit. Thanks for putting that thought in my head.

BUT ALSO, fuck all the fucking pieces of shit who are like, “We can’t accept refugees — what if they’re terrorists?” FUCK OFF. Some fucking terrified family driven from their home by a war isn’t going to kill me. Or anyone. Fuck off. Some woman from Central America fleeing from her husband who threatened to kill her isn’t going to fucking bomb Times Square. You fucking pieces of shit.

In November/December 2015, the Republican primary had already started — Trump had announced in June. And every single one of those pieces of shit running for president were talking about securing our borders, and keeping poor people out, and trying to justify it by security talk. FUCK OFF. You pieces of shit. Fuck right off. Anyway. Sorry for cursing.

I kind of think of the outro of this song as an angry “Everyday People.” Everyday people aren’t going to kill me. Lots of great saxes on this track from Matt Bauder and Stuart Bogie.

The intro of the song we recorded loud, full band, which I then ran through the MS-20 and filtered down till it was just a bass heart-pulse, and re-recorded solo piano and voice over that.

10. “Fine”

I kind of think that “Outta Here” to “Not Gonna Die” comprise the record, and “Fine” operates as the afterword and the prologue rolled into one. An author’s note, maybe. It was kind of inspired by high-period Kanye: I wanted to talk about something important in a profane, sometimes horribly stupid way, but have it be honest and ultimately transcendent.

In the song, I talk semi-accurately about where I come from. My mom’s dad was a guitar player who led bands throughout the ’30s and ’40s. In post-war LA, he had a band with Charles Mingus as the bass player. Charles Mingus! One of the greatest geniuses in all of American history. But this was the ’40s, and in order to travel with the band, to go in the same entrances, to eat dinner at the same table, he had to wear a Hawaiian shirt and everybody had to pretend he was Hawaiian. Because nobody was sure how racist they were supposed to be against Hawaiians.

Part of the reason I’m a musician is that my great-grandfather was a musician, and his kids were musicians, and their kids were musicians, and their kids are musicians. Part of the reason is vast generations of people working to make their kids’ lives better, down to my life. Part of the reason is that neither government nor mob has decided to destroy my family’s lives, wealth, and property for the last couple hundred years. I tried to write a song about that?

Generations is out now via Merge. Purchase it here.

https://www.stereogum.com/2098946/will-butler-generations-song-meanings/franchises/interview/footnotes-interview/

[tassium]

#TAYLOR SWIFT APPRECIATION LIFE

PART 3 - Speak Now

(part 1, part 2)

Hello and again, welcome to the Taylor Swift Appreciation Life. We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault-- wait, wrong fandom.

This is probably getting posted in the middle of the night, which doesn’t bode well for anyone actually seeing it, but oh well. It’s time to hop in and see a little more from the amazing @taylorswift by taking the ride through her third album, Speak Now.

1. Mine

I really like this track, but I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. The storytelling in the lyrics is probably my favorite thing about it, and the way the instrumentation propels the song along. And.... I’ve heard varying opinions on the way it turns around and she’s “quoting” the love interest of the story. Personally, I like it. I like thinking of it as if he said that and it’s what inspired her to use the line as such a key part of the song.

And I’ve gotta be honest here, the POP mix bonus track version doesn’t really hit me that hard. I can’t pick out enough of a difference between the two that I really care all that much about that version.

2. Sparks Fly

This is one of my favorite tracks on this album. I like the understated instrumentation behind the verses and the way it just drops into the chorus in a way that feels like going over the first rise on a roller coaster - the way there’s nothing behind her voice for “Drop everything now” feels like that moment where you know it’s coming and you kind of pull in a breath and then you’re irrevocably In The Moment. 

She does a lot of really cool vocal things - in the second verse I love the way she does that warble on “really wish you wo-ould”. Another favorite is the vocalization in the background of the last chorus. Instrumentally speaking, the solo before the bridge is one of my favorites because of how it’s just a little different from the main motif of the song, and I adore the strident guitar and drums behind the bridge itself.

This song also has the first of several mentions throughout her songs of green eyes! Same, Taylor, same.

3. Back to December

I’m just gonna jump ahead and talk about the acoustic version of this song that’s on the target deluxe version, because if given the choice, I’d pick that one to listen to any day. The strings are my favorite part of the original version, and so the fact that the acoustic version lets them shine just that much more is excellent in my opinion. I also like the way that the harmonies stand out a little bit more - usually I prefer the ones where it’s Taylor overdubbing her own harmonies, but in this one I really like how it sounds with that male voice in the background - it actually makes me think that this song has a lot of potential for being made into a duet song with that delicious aching kind of mutual regret feeling.

4. Speak Now

I don’t know about anyone else, but I really like this song. There’s a lot of really smart choices made, both vocally and in the instrumentals (like the way the drums don’t drop in until the second half of the first verse) and overall I think it’s a solid track.

Over the course of relistening to this early work of Taylor’s for these reviews, though, I’ve also had a thought - Speak Now is the culmination of an escalating pattern of Standing Up And Stealing Other Girls’ Guys that’s been going on through both of the other albums. You have Teardrops on my Guitar, where she just pines herself into oblivion over the boy - then you have You Belong With Me, where she actually does something about it, and now we have this, where she literally breaks up an engagement IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WEDDING in order to get her chance at the boy she’s been daydreaming about.

5. Dear John

Easily my favorite track on this album. This is an optimal example of Taylor’s ability to take a song and build it up until it just explodes, even beyond the chorus. The way the song just soars in the bridge, complete with the way her voice just goes a little ragged on "burned them out”.... man. I love it. I love it so much. Another of my favorite moments is when the harmonies slide in with “run as fast as you can” as if that’s the ‘they’ who said that to her.

I think Taylor’s voice really shines in this track in a way that was really foreshadowing of her current vocal talents.

I’ll also never be over the fact that John Mayer claimed this song for being about him. He could have just been like ‘oh yeah I dunno, a dear john letter is a breakup letter right’ but no. He brought it down on himself. “You should’ve known.”

6. Mean

Mean is a jam, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. I’ll bop to this song anytime. I love the bending fiddle between the chorus and the second verse, probably my favorite musical choice in the song overall. The mandolin and the banjo are way up there as well, just in general. There’s something so delightfully vindictive about this track, such a clap back at the haters - and I get Taylor singing her own harmonies, which you already know I love to pieces. (Is it just me, or could Mean be the little sister of Calm Down?)

“Someday, I’ll be, singing this at the grammy’s…. and all you’re gonna be is mean”

7. The Story of Us

THE STORY OF US IS A BANGER, END OF DISCUSSION

…..

ok not really, because I have more feelings to express first.

Taylor’s vocals soar at the end of this track, and I honestly cannot get over the sheer improvement from Fearless to Speak Now when it comes to that. Those belted notes give me life. I love the ‘next chapter’ and ‘the end’ spoken lines, they’re the best for when I’m singing along and dancing around my kitchen. This song is nearer and dearer to my heart than I even realized coming into this review, and I will go to bat for it anytime anyplace any day.

8. Never Grow Up

It sure is a song, alright. It’s a pretty arrangement, and I like the harmonies, but I... don’t have much for strong feelings about this one.

9. Enchanted

Mmmmm, this one’s so pretty. The opening, I love whatever that is in the background, maybe it’s a keyboard? It’s beautiful and ethereal, at any rate, and I love it. The track builds so beautifully to an absolute monster of a chorus - the lead guitar up into that drum hit is a classic and I love it to pieces.

And don’t even get me started on the ending “please don’t be....” etc bit and the use of stereo - listening to this track in headphones is a treat and I love the high in one side and low in the other, accompanied by that soft vocalizing centralized that leads into the belting before we hit another chorus.

It wasn’t until I was listening to this song to write this post up that I noticed that if you really focus you can hear her singing that repetition behind the second half of the last chorus, but I think it’s only on the left. It’s a really nice touch.

10. Better Than Revenge

I’m just gonna go ahead and quote you a conversation my friend @defiantlywhole had about this track to explain my feelings:

Me:  listen. listen. i fully agree with "Better than revenge? we don't know her" but. it's such a banger. i hate it. i love it. why 

Her:  SAME! Dude esp with the whole sb-squared issue. If we could just. Recognize that better than revenge is problematic and love her anyway?? Can you imagine the kind of cool shit the fandom coulda churned out last month? I just want graphics that yell THERE IS NOTHING I DO BETTER THAN REVENGE at them for trying to force Taylor to stay and then punishing her for leaving

So if you wanna know my opinions, there you go. there they are. 

Also i’m never going to be able to unhear “she’s full of springs and she’s not what you think, she’s a mattress” from @stateofswiftpod​ (have you gotten the message to listen to their podcast yet? this is the last of her main albums they’ve talked about so. now’s the time.)

11. Innocent

This isn’t a track I seek out to listen to, like, ever... but it’s a pretty piece of music, and her voice is lovely. Honestly, there’s something about it that just makes me sad, which is probably why I don’t seek it out. Listening to it to write this, thought, I am noticing a lot of things about it that I’d forgotten or maybe not even noticed in the first place - like the haunting background vocalizations that I’d missed previously, and the choices in the instrumentals. There something about this song that just feels heavy, if that makes sense. It just sits right on my chest, and I’m not sure if I like it.

12. Haunted

Speaking of liking acoustic versions of songs better, this is definitely one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love the original version, but...The piano just hits so much harder for some reason than anything about the original manages, and her vocal delivery is so aching and beautiful and just. Shivers, every time.

The backing vocals come across as very dark, almost, fittingly so to go with a song with the topic and title this one has. Her soaring vocalization in the bridge, and the way her voice breaks when she drops into the low note... man, I can’t even. I don’t have words for what this acoustic track does to me. The note after the last chorus is what gets me the most thought, the almost mourning wavering she sneaks into it and just... I love this song, okay.

13. Last Kiss

This track is so beautiful, but speaking of songs that make me sad. Good heavens. I hadn’t listened to this one in a while prior to this listen through the album and it hit me so hard. Legitimate tears.

I can’t even put it into words - this song is a masterpiece of emotion.

14. Long Live

This song also makes me cry, but for entirely different reasons. Somehow it has even more of an impact now, after seeing everything that’s happened for her and after having been privileged enough to see her live with one of my best friends. This song takes that weight still hanging on my chest from the last few tracks and pushes it aside, replaces it with a bursting pride for this woman who I’ve never met and probably never will. She’s done so well.

To be more specific - there’s some incredible guitar work on this song, and I adore the “THIS IS ABSURD” part - and “tell them how I hope they shine” will always make me cry. I love that she wrote this song, and I love that things have only kept going. That belted “fall” at the end of that post-chorus or whatever it is that then also fades and falls away. The ethereal Aaahs in the background of the bridge. The way she leans into the last “all the mountains we moved”. Gosh. It’s all too much.

Proper full bonus track time!

15. Ours

This is definitely my favorite of the bonus tracks. I’m a little sad it got relegated to a bonus track, since there’s definitely songs that I’d cut in favor of letting this one onto the list, but I’m just glad we have it in the first place.

I’m extremely fond of this song - it’s connected to playing music with my dad (who bought me my first guitar - well, him and my mom both) because we’ve teamed up to do this song, and so that gives me all kinds of happy feelings when I listen to this one.

I don’t have much for specific comments on this one, but it’s a Good.

16. If This Was a Movie

I love the guitar opening for this song, it’s on my list of songs to learn to play one of these days. The first few times I heard the song, I definitely didn’t hear “to me-e like” properly, but now that I know what it’s supposed to be, I don’t struggle too much, thankfully. Overall, I like the song - there are things about it that I’m not super fond of, but there are more things that I do like (the drop after the bridge is definitely one of them).

17. Superman

This one’s a bop. She’s a cute little number. Optimal dancing around my room (a la the you belong with me video) material. I won’t say this track is any work of genius or anything, but it’s a solid danceable pop song, and sometimes that’s all you need.

Whew! We’ve done it again. It’s 3am where I am at the time of writing this, so I’m going to go to bed now, but tomorrow we’ll start our transition into New Taylor. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited.

Next up: Red

[albumtalks]

Review: Bearpark - What Goes On In Our Souffles

Artist: Bearpark Album: What Goes On In Our Souffles Release: Jul 14, 2017 (UK) / Jul 17, 2017 (International) Label: Independent Genre: Garage/Indie Rock Length: 42:20 Track Listing:

Household Appliances Are Of Poor Quality (2:19)

What Goes On (Inside Our Souffles) (5:20)

Various Colored Threads (3:15)

Choke Them Out With Virtues (2:21)

Helpin' My Uncle Like a Bastard (6:01)

Clever Librarian (feat. Tupac) (4:47)

Looking For Snacks (0:43)

NATO - No Action, Talk Only (8:26)

Exclamation of Disappointed Surprise (4:10)

Outbreak of Salmonella Every Five Minutes (6:08)

When talking about the new renaissance of Garage Rock-inspired Indie Pop, pioneer trio Bearpark is always one of the first names on anyone's lips, and that's why it shouldn't be surprising that their first full-length album in nearly 16 years has been a hot topic lately. After their constant streams of EPs and singles stopped in 2005 they hadn't been heard from, aside from a brief stint touring with Florence + The Machine and Garbage in 2013. Yet suddenly, fans got a tantalizing social media post announcing a tentative "July 2017" release date, it quickly hit "Trending Worldwide" on Twitter and was the talk of music media for weeks. But without a single word of update from the band or label fan enthusiasm quickly turned to confusion. Was the long-awaited new Bearpark album some kind of bizarre prank? Well, sixteen long months of waiting later, and we finally have an answer. But the question still hanging in the air is a big one: Is it worth the wait?

The answer is a resounding "ehh" sound, and utter befuddlement. Bearpark have chosen to eschew all labels and make something so vastly unlike their previous material that it's hard to even feel right calling it a Bearpark album at all. Especially confusing is how all the elements are present in spades (in particular the raspy, desperate yells of lead singer Brian Humphreys and the unhinged solos of guitarist Reynolds Johansson) but somehow it sounds like another band altogether composed these songs and Bearpark is simply covering them.

Household Appliances kicks the album off with a promising garage-rock riff that sounds like an outtake from Bearpark's debut album, and a vocal line that kicks off almost immediately with a direct delivery reminiscent of They Might Be Giants. But in its short 2-minute runtime it doesn't express much of an idea and sputters to a stop before going anywhere interesting, leading directly into the fast-paced drums that open title track What Goes On. Of course by now this song (and album's only single to date) has seen its fair share of radio play, and it isn't a bit surprising considering the generally infectious rhythm and some of the most coherent and memorable lyrics of the band's catalogue. The deviation from the band's less radio-friendly roots is actually welcome, although the addition of an (uncredited) keyboardist feels entirely forced.

The album lumbers on after that with three completely forgettable songs, the mid-tempo rocker Various Colored Threads and the slow, sappy acoustic duo of Choke Them Out With Virtues and Helpin' My Uncle Like a Bastard, which are so unnecessarily similar in tempo and composition that I was, on first listen, completely unaware they weren't a single, overlong track. Luckily the last minute of Helpin' picks up the tempo and adds some layered synths to liven things up, but it's much too little too late, not to mention completely out of place.

Clever Librarian (feat. Tupac) comes plodding in after as a solid example of the cover-band sound the band has taken for this album, with a composition that weaves back and forth between sounding like a folksy new Mumford & Sons track and a swaggering-but-forgettable Rolling Stones B-side. It's not a bad track but you'll probably find yourself reaching for a copy of Sticky Fingers to play instead. Showing the band's bizarre sense of humor, rapper Tupac is entirely absent from the track despite its name, but short interlude/skit Looking For Snacks makes a note of this discrepancy as the track features the sound of drummer Phil Veer seemingly rummaging through a refrigerator while talking to his agent on the phone, asking "Can we get Tupac to guest on the album?" before learning, to his dismay, that the artist in question is long dead.

The first and only genuinely guitar-driven track on the album, NATO - No Action, Talk Only, launches into gear immediately with a rare instance of the band utilizing multiple guitars as guest axeman Tommy Filbilt (from sister band Wisconsin & Southern and Post-Grunge supergroup Bottom Rock) starts the track by rampaging a searing solo atop a beating drum line and driving arena-rock riff. It could be either a lost Scorpions or KISS classic for the first 45 seconds but NATO instead slows into a middle-fast-paced rhythm and starts to take on more of that depression-laden Bearpark sound just in time for the vocals to kick in. The song doesn't let a traditional structure hold it down, instead ditching “verse-chorus-repeat” in favor of a campfire-story-esque lyrical structure as Humphreys aggressively belts out a tale of a soldier's love that blossoms and tragically withers. A true highlight of the album, but its extended length sometimes feels unnecessary as Johansson and Filbilt's dueling guitar interplay drags on solely for the sake of time without leaving behind any memorable moments. NATO winds up being a high point for the album that could really shine with a producer who knows when to cut a track to size.

The last two tracks of the album immediately put the brakes on any hopes you might have had about the band's return to their rock-heavy style, however, as they instead present a muddy synth-heavy sound that strays much farther from the Bearpark we know than ever before. Instrumental track Exclamation of Disappointed Surprise starts with a heartbeat sound that maintains to the finish, gradually being smothered under increasingly dense electronic orchestration and a winding guitar line that doesn't seem to know where it wants to go. Under other circumstances this might be a fascinating experimental jam session but it leads seamlessly into the overly-synthetic Outbreak of Salmonella Every Five Minutes, which adds auto-tune (yikes) and a drum machine to the mix to fully push the album out of a rock mindset.

If you came into the album looking for a sequel Bearpark's last few albums you'll probably be disappointed, but for new fans or a music aficionado looking for something unique it might just scratch an itch. Unfortunately it just couldn't capture me the way their older music did, and I see myself skipping all of Souffles the next time I spin their discography.

~Richard M.

[nihilhumani-blog]

The one where they raise the red flag over the Reichstag (summer mix 2017)

LINK HERE

1. Jorge Ben, “Meus Filhos, Meus Tesouro”, África Brasil (1976). A pretty simple song. Jorge Ben has this knack for investing the quotidian with a kind of profundity, and I just love it. The gist of the song is an imagined conversation with his children in which he asks them what they want to be when they grow up. The most poignant, beautifully-sung line in this song translates literally to “I want to be a soccer player!”

2. Philip Cohran, “The Minstrel”, On The Beach (1967). Massive Afrofuturist groove from ex-Sun Ra sideman. According to Allmusic, some of the people playing on this went on to gigs as diverse as the Agharta band (Pete Cosey) and Earth, Wind and Fire (Don Myrick). The thumb piano that anchors the groove is a creation of Cohran’s that he calls the frankiphone.

3. Gene McDaniels, “Tower of Strength”, Tower of Strength (1961). Great performance of a classic Bacharach and Hilliard tune. That falsetto is to die for.

4. Broadcast, “Goodbye Girls”, Tender Buttons (2005). Never got into this band when they were more popular (even though I probably should have). Those goofy antique synths are so joyously raucous, just barely in time, and Trish Keenan’s vocals are as delicately celestial as they’re cracked up to be. This flows nicely from the McDaniels tune — it falls somewhere between a Northern soul stomper and Young Marble Giants.

5. Amps for Christ, “Colors”, Circuits (1999). Glorious rendition of an ancient Scottish folksong. I have a real special spot in my heart for AfC — they got a good deal of attention in the indie rock press in the mid-oughts but, fairly unique among bands that won Pitchfork’s heart, they came not ought of the basement of some Chicagoland suburb but from the late 80s/early 90s SoCal powerviolence scene, a heterogenous outgrowth of US hardcore punk that took inspiration from British grindcore, Bay Area thrash, Sabbathian sludge and injected a much needed dose of good politics into the scene at a time when hardcore’s leading lights were sporting Fred Perry and Freikorps haircuts. Main dude Henry Barnes handled circuits for Man is the Bastard, who are simply one of the greatest bands the United States has ever produced: a heady mix of prog rock, US hardcore, the burgeoning “noise scene” (which was more-or-less in its infancy), thrash metal and god knows what else. As Barnes got older, his music got mellower in some ways, more intense in others, and remained fiercely committed to a better world (with a sardonic sense of humor to boot). It’s hard to say enough good things about them.

6. The Roches, “Runs in the Family”, The Roches (1979). Turns out that that all-women, multipart-harmony-heavy, Dustbowl-folk revival thing started not with Mountain Man’s terrific Made The Harbor (2010) but about three decades earlier with the Roches. This is a weird little record, kind of a mixed bag (and produced, bizarrely, by Robert Fripp, whose unmistakable Frippertronics fit surprisingly well). But some of the tunes are just stunningly beautiful, and this is one of them. The harmonies are heartbreaking and just unconventional enough to keep from turning into saccharine mush. Also I’m a big fan of any folk song that can organically work in a line as tearjerking but nerdy as “I can’t change the law of averages”.

7. Roscoe Holcomb, “I’m a Free Little Bird”, The High Lonesome Sound (1965). Listen, I know we’ve all had enough of that “white working class” mythology so beloved of both wings of capital, Trumpers and liberal imperialists alike. Think of this not in terms of “authenticity” or as a paean halcyon days of (white) class collaboration in America but as a virtuosic and joyous celebration of life that draws its strength from the well of the multinational US working class.

8. The Vibrators, “Whips and Furs”, Pure Mania (1977). From that corner of early punk that was self-consciously retrograde, a mud-caked revival of rock’n’roll, comes this nugget. It opens by quoting a Sly and the Family Stone classic — at that point already a decade old — and hits the heights of harmony with a line about a lothario who “drives a black Cadillac [with] whips and furs in the back”. Real fun pulp mag vibe here. Those ambitious little bass runs top off an already perfect song.

9. Godley and Creme, “Sandwiches of You”, L (1978). Restless, complex, delicate, sophisti-pop from the weirder half of 10cc. I really don’t even know what to say about this: it’s so accessible, funny and bizarre but it also sounds like Gentle Giant playing the Looney Tunes soundtrack. Amazing record. This will forever remind me of driving to rural Kernersville, NC in the middle of the night for work at the massive FedEx warehouse there.  

10. Todd Rundgren, “Long Flowing Robe”, Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971). For a guy who’s done some of the weirdest records in the pop music canon, his more straightforward tracks are remarkably approachable and familiar. Although even this song is, all things considered, pretty weird: it kicks off with a clavinet (more associated with Stevie Wonder than power pop), and it includes prominent bongos and cowbell, Rundgren’s infinitely-multitracked falsettos, and a strange combination of thudding proto-metal drumming and delicate fingerpicking. But it’s also simultaneously a perfect pop song about being lonely whose chorus you can memorize before you’ve heard the full song for the first time. My dad reports that this remained a huge jam at Southeast High in Wichita in the late 70s.

11. Jefferson Airplane, “Watch Her Ride”, After Bathing at Baxter’s (1967). The sound of the Summer of Love becoming heavy metal. A paranoid but tender freakout that clearly points ahead to NWBOHM-style metal while remaining somehow heavier than metal — there’s hardly any distortion on the guitars, but they’re so resonant, their jazzy chords seeming to linger in the air forever, that they end up sounding more powerful than the filthiest drop-tune. Spencer Dryden (nephew of antifascist film star Charlie Chaplin) turns in a great drum performance.

12. Squeeze, “Hard to Find”, Cool for Cats (1979). Underrated gem from Squeeze’s second record. There’s a marvelous contrast between the white-knuckle new wave of the verse and the brief intrusion of good vibes in the chorus with handclaps, lovelorn vox, Glenn Tillbrook’s throaty cry, and bluesy arpeggios that sound like nothing so much as King Crimson (!).

13. The dBs, “Love is for Lovers”, Like This (1984). Stellar, weird powerpop (from Winston-Salem!). This is from their third record, after one half of their great songwriting duo (Chris Stamey, who pops up later on the list) had left. Still, Peter Holsapple could write a mean tune on his own. His yelp in the chorus is magnificent, so full of boyish charm — even in recent live performances, he sounds exactly the same when he sings it. True story, he came into the restaurant that I used to be a cashier at (he still lives in the Triangle, if I’m not mistaken), and I immediately said “holy shit, you’re Peter Holsapple!”, and he goes “this literally never happens”. My dad has some good stories about seeing them live when he lived in Raleigh in the 80s.

14. Orange Juice, “Holiday Hymn”, The Glasgow School (compilation 2005, originally recorded live 1981). My favorite “indie-pop” group of all time. My listening diet when I was 15 was about 80 percent grindcore, 20 percent jazz and it became about 75 percent indie pop after my dad bought me this comp. on a whim. This isn’t actually a “signature OJ” song; it was unreleased for a long time (as far as I can tell), and it’s actually a cover of a Vic Godard song (member of the class of ‘77 punk group Subway Sect before he became a noted soul revivalist). But it’s a perfect song for them to cover; that needling soul bass and the angular Byrds-playing-funk guitars work so well. “Today all the girls / will see our fire begin to glow / today all the girls / will recite Jean-Jacques Rousseau” is a very pretty, if mysterious, little line.

15. Captain Beefheart, “My Head is my Only House Unless It Rains”, Clear Spot (1972). It’s a little unfair that Don van Vliet could be one of the most influential, pioneering rock musicians of all time (Trout Mask Replica 100 percent deserves its reputation) and also have penned a Van Morrison-style soul ballad so deep it makes Van Morrison look like the Bee Gees. This sounds like a slightly offbeat, if dark and powerful, ballad, until about a minute in, and then suddenly the tension that the verse and the pre-chorus bridge build...just goes awry, in the prettiest way. The chorus turns out to be not only not-a-chorus — it only occurs once! — but one of the most subtle, propulsive riffs ever crafted.

16. Kim Fowley, “Mom and Dad”, Automatic (1974). This guy is such a Hollywood sleazebag that his Wikipedia page literally lists his occupation as “impresario”. And yet, this gorgeous fingerpicked Lou Reed-ripoff is one of the most straightforwardly-affecting records I’ve heard in my life. I barely knew who this guy was when Jonathan Woollen announced his death via Facebook and posted this track, and I swear I could barely hold back the tears after the second playback. As much as I hated Lou Reed, I deeply loved Lou Reed, and this is maybe the most Lou Reed thing ever written by someone other than Lou Reed.

17 Kyu Sakamoto, “Sukiyaki” (single, 1961). According to Wikipedia, one of the few “non-Indo-European language songs” to ever crack the Billboard top 100. Even if you don’t speak a word of Japanese — I don’t — its virtues are manifest — an effervescent tune that apparently takes the generic form of a lovelorn pop song but was composed as an anti-fascist protest of the post-WWII US-Japan alliance.

18. Sneakers, “Like a Cuban Crisis”, Racket (1992, originally recorded mid-70s?). It’s hard to imagine something that appeals to me more in descriptive terms than an angular, punchy power-pop group from NC featuring Chris Stamey (dB’s, whom we heard earlier) and Mitch Easter (Let’s Active, feature on previous mixes). And they really live up to the description, from the sparkling twin guitars of the opening riff to the perfect (non-)chorus, and bonus for the genuinely funny satire.

19. Witchfynde, “Leaving Nadir”, Give ‘Em Hell (1980). A jammer from that brief period of the NWOBHM during which a gorgeously-arpeggiated, powerpop-ish intro like the one this cut sports and a pounding, palm-muted verse could comfortably co-exist.

20. Linda Ronstadt, “Heart Like a Wheel”, Heart Like a Wheel (1974). A classic country-rock record — the country-rock record?! — that was once immensely popular, even winning a grammy, but which has so fallen by the wayside amongst the cognoscenti that I don’t feel bad about putting it on a mixtape. It’s a subtly-weird track. After a vertiginous piano opening reminiscent of a solo Bill Evans date, Ronstadt begins the song by detailing, then abruptly disavowing, a simile for the human heart. The song never quite coheres….there’s a beautiful chorus, but one that’s cut short by an extended instrumental break featuring heart-rending cello (?) — but that makes it all the more addictive — how can you hear that (much-delayed) chorus just twice?! Another record that inexplicably reminds me of North Carolina, even though Ronstadt was the scion of a wealthy manufacturing family from Arizona who had, far as I can tell, no special connection to NC.

21. DJ Screw, “Every Day, All Day [South Circle]”, Chapter 226: Million Dollar Hands (1995). A change-of-pace superficially, but that melancholy melody line forms a natural transition from the Ronstadt track in my mind. Absolutely classic, unrelentingly-bleak mid-90s chopping and screwing. The South Circle track is a merciless g-funk cut to begin with, but the Screw remix is a monolithic thing of beauty.

22. The Brides of Funkenstein, “Disco to Go”, Funk or Walk (1978). Hilarious yet deadly-serious, powerful yet loose P-Funk spinoff. This reminds me of swimming at the apartment pool when my parents divorced dad moved to the heart of downtown Kansas City to be near his work; this record was one of the few that we could all agree on as a family to put on the boombox during afternooon swims. This was back when downtown was inhabited by the kind of straight-up phreaks who stuffed hardcore guy-on-guy pornography into their neighbor’s mailboxes apparently just for the hell of it (finding this sort of thing in the mail among the form responses from fan mail I’d sent to Vinny Testaverde is one of my first memories). E-I-O-diss-CO-to-GO!

23. Trinity and U-Brown, “Nice Up the Yard”, (single, 1982). My favorite riff on the “Boxing” rhythm ever released. Something about this just crackles with youthful energy and energy. Almost totally-unknown — this is off a comp I pulled off the internet called DUB HOT DUBS several years back, and I can’t find a single thing about either of the artists, but still, totally classic.

24. Linton Kwesi Johnson, “Fight Dem Back”, Forces of Victory (1979). Militantly progressive Black British reggae. One of the funniest and, yet, most deadly-serious songs ever recorded. 

25. The Dils, “Sound of the Rain”, Made in Canada (1980). Marxist-Leninist powerpop — nuff said. Name a catchier tune whose chorus begins “I don’t listen to the cops / I wish they all were dead”.

26. Fairport Convention, “Cajun Woman”, Unhalfbricking (1969). One of the slighter — but catchier — tracks from a top-10 record for me. Fairport, at that point featuring two of my favorite artists of all time (Linda Thompson and her husband Richard), turned in a massive, spiritual brit-folk-revival LP that was also stuffed with oddities like this zydeco-jammer. Like many Fairport tunes, the rapturous boogie is cut with a surprising gravitas. That slightly discordant note in the chorus is perfect.

27. Magma, “Üdü Ẁüdü”, Üdü Ẁüdü (1976). There are some of those “underground canon” records that are fun to listen to, that tickle your brain, that are intellectually exciting. And then there are some that, even though they’re sung in a made-up language and performed by a French band 32 years before you first heard it, feel so familiar that it’s as if they were written by dear friends. That joyous background whoop at 1:51 is one of my favorite moments in recorded music. A pulsating, polyrhythmic, deliriously joyous mass of music that seems to prefigure “Brothersport” down to the details.

28. The Fans, “Giving Me That Look In Your Eyes”, Giving Me that Look In Your Eyes EP (1979). Feckless, extremely-active Bristol new-wave-cum-powerpop. This reminds me of Vampy Weekend a little bit, actually, just in terms of how dizzily sucrotic this is. Unfortunately they didn’t realize very much other stuff but most “throwaway bands” manage only one great lost single — the Fans had several. If you dig this, have a listen to the equally-great “You Don’t Live Here Anymore”.

29. Alice Coltrane, “Sivaya”, Transcendence (1977). How are hipsters not all over this? Immediately accessible, burning-with-soul, post-apocalyptic prayers to god from one of the most respected jazz musicians of all time. It’s really hard to express how simultaneously and simple and deep this is; there’s something especially beautiful about this ragged, loose beauty when you know exactly how complex and brutal her music could be.

30. DJ Screw, “It Was All a Dream [Shaq]”, Chapter 11: Headed 2 Da Classic (1996?). Mention of the original Shaq record is something of a snarky in-joke amongst people that know anything about basketball or music, but this cut — while manifestly unoriginal — is genuinely beautiful and the Screw mix accentuates the deep vibes. Shaq’s not a great rapper but there is some real solid production on this and the big-workin-class-dreams-come-true bit tugs at the heartstrings.