ALBUM REVIEW: White Lung- Deep Fantasy
Punk as a genre has been dominated by a whole lot of women lately. While I can’t name a whole lot of Post-Hardcore or Punk bands lead by men that have been buzzing lately, I can totally name some women-centric ones. Savages ruled 2013 as one of the few new bands to stick out in a year full of veterans, while Perfect Pussy certainly gained a ton of buzz earlier this year (Even though I’ve yet to meet a single person that actually likes their music in real life…so take that as you will). Perfect Pussy’s debut has a lot in common with White Lung’s third record, except the only difference is that this White Lung record isn’t entirely forgettable, and it’s also one of the best albums of 2014.
Deep Fantasy only lasts about 22 minutes. However, unlike a lot of propulsive and short-lived punk rock, it never sounds remotely messy or haphazard. The opener with the scorching guitar and explosive drumming is heavy, but it never stumbles or feels remotely non-technical. Mish Way’s lead vocals are distinctive and commanding, with her delivery on Drown With the Monster being absolutely terrifying. Not since Sleater-Kinney breaking up has there been a punk vocalist with such a distinctive roar. The entire album is lead by her voice that keeps a steady balance between melodious and carnivorous. This voice delivers lyrics that are just as confrontational as her vocal delivery, which is comforting and kind of scary. Her explorations of feminism, rape culture, and more over the short 22 minutes prove that this band not only wants to rock, but they have something important to say as well.
Not only are all 3 members of the band technically proficient, but they bring an energy to the record that is just flooring. The way they pummel through Snake Jaw after it’s beautifully weird opening is one of the most enthralling moments on the entire record. The production throughout the record keeps all three members of the band at a constant match, making sure none of them ever overpower the others.It’s always tough for punk recordings to really capture the energy of the bands they represent, but Deep Fantasy is one of the few punk albums that truly unleashes an unrelenting and invigorating energy. It’s a record that manages to sound massive and huge without over-killing the reverb. It’s a record that doesn’t allow for any lapse in attention, and a single 22 minute sitting with it can be pretty intense.
Dwelling on songs would be rather pointless, since there’s not a single weak track on the record. It’s meshing of Punk, Post-Hardcore, Noise Rock, and classic 90s Indie Rock is continually fascinating and well executed. The short length almost leaves me wanting more, but luckily there’s a repeat button.
Summary: Deep Fantasy is a short blast of punk fury, with the aftermath of the explosion resulting in one of the best punk records I’ve heard in years. It also shows off all three members of the band incredibly well, particularly proving that lead vocalist Mish Way is a front-woman to be reckoned with.
Choice Cuts: Everything, but particularly Face Down. At least today.
Leftovers: None.
A++
You can stream Drown With the Monster below. Deep Fantasy is out now on Domino Recordings.
ALBUM REVIEW: Swans- To Be Kind
Swans is a rather interesting band. Back in their original run, they were cult hits that made some abrasive and vicious music (their earlier stuff being so lo-fi that it can be a little hard to swallow). Then they disappeared…and then they reunited. This reunion has been explosive, and they’ve received more praise for their past three records than ever before in their career. The Seer, their 2012 opus, was a pretty good album that could have used some cutting to make it a great album. To Be Kind, their follow up to that album, suffers all of The Seer’s problems, but now in an even longer form.
Swans is a band that relishes in the power of tension. Every good song the band’s ever made spreads this tension as thin as possible to make things uncomfortable and aggressive; this was done exceedingly well on Lunacy, the fantastic opener on their last record. Of course, since Michael Gira is obsessed with topping himself at this point in his career, To Be Kind tries to match The Seer by opening with Screen Shot. Gira’s lyrics that lists nouns is supposed to be intense but it kind of comes off as being…well…stupid. The continuous guitar and metallic percussion repeats over and over again, with no effect. Gira comes back in rambling “No Pain, No Hate” etc. and, once again, the song just drags out forever without really going anywhere. Some may find the slow burn of this opener intense, but this “slow burner” is about as intense as watching a Yankee Candle fade away. There are guitar flourishes that come in and out, but there’s nothing really strong about them. As Gira falls into full-blown “old guy yelling” territory later in the song, there’s finally a moment of explosive catharsis, but the pay off does not make the minutes leading up to it remotely worthwhile. Screen Shot is one of the shortest songs on the album. GAH.
Again, To Be Kind is definitely meant for people who already like and appreciate what Swans have been doing or people that are into heavy rock that ramps up tension. However, it is most definitely not meant for people with short attention spans or people who don’t find a lot of pay off in Michael Gira’s bizarre Western Standoff sound. Swans doesn’t have a ton going for it in the vocal department, as Gira relies more on angry rambling and strange tangents than anything remotely resembling singing. Instrumentally, a ton of the songs here just repeat the same couple of notes over and over again, taking what The Seer has already done and making it go even further. When Gira starts yelling over the Dying Circus Elephant rhythm on Just a Little Boy, the results are laughable. Hell, the album even laughs with you. Some may find this intensely awesome. Some may find it stupid and pretentious. It’s an album that tries every last bit of patience within you, which creates an experience that is not remotely enjoyable at all.
Music that tries to challenge can often be exciting and fresh, creating new ideas and thoughts, cultivating new and innovative ways of creating music. However, To Be Kind isn’t really experimental sonically. It’s experimental in how it drags songs to their absolute limits, stretching songs so far beyond their limits that it in essence ruins songs that could have been quite enjoyable. A Little God In My Hands would be a great song if it was 3 minutes long. However, the damn thing is over 7 minutes long. And it’s one of the shorter songs on the album. Again, some people will just eat this up, but it provides little to nothing for Swans newcomers or general music fans.
Perhaps my own personal inability to connect whatsoever with this bloated project reveals my own inadequacy, showing that I can’t draw up enough patience to swallow this 2 hour epic. However, there are plenty of double albums that I’ve enjoyed in the past. The problem here is how the album is bloated not with extra material, but its bloated with the same material over and over again. Every song here could use a heavy radio cut, and then the album could probably be amazing. Which is strange, because the songs that actually work here are the longest songs. Bring The Sun/Toussaint L’Ouverture is a sprawling 35 minute epic, but it doesn’t retread a lot of ground throughout its run. The explosion on the first half feels deserved rather than forced, while Gira’s vocal delivery on the second half of the song is actually pretty intense. There’s an actual sense of anger and not some stupid forced intensity (Still mad about Just a Little Boy). And then we get Some Things We Do, which is the antithesis of Bring The Sun. It’s short, and repeats the same thing over and over again. Maybe repeating “We Love” over and over again is supposed to create some kind of intimate effect, but it’s really just creepy and kind of annoying. At this point, we’re only halfway into the project. The main point to get across here is that this album needs a good trimming on nearly every song.
The second disc is just all the problems and good things about the first disc repeated. Once again,the best track is the longest one: the sprawling and chaotic She Loves Us feels like an explosion of passion, something that the entire rest of the album is lacking. Kirsten Supine has some cool instrumental work on it, but it again drags out a shorter song into a length that ruins everything that could have made it work. Meanwhile, Oxygen sounds like an overly long punk song made it on the wrong album. The song sounds like some borderline thrash metal garbage, with Gira’s old man whooping nearly crossing into Lulu levels of awfulness. Once we get to the end of the album, there’s not much saving anything. The percussion is cool on Nathalie Neal, but that’s about all that song has going for it. To Be Kind, the closer, is actually a cool and intense track, but the 2 hour sprawl has killed any goodwill towards the track actually creating any sort of payoff. To Be Kind is an angry album that will make you angry. Take that as you will.
Summary:Overlong, monotonous, and borderline pretentious, To Be Kind is a bloated mess of an album that just can’t create true intensity without repeating itself over and over again. It’s The Seer Pt. 2, and it’s one of the most disappointing sequels ever.
Choice Cuts: Bring The Sun/Toussaint L’Ouveture, She Loves Us
Leftovers: Oxygen
C-
You can stream Oxygen below. To Be Kind is out now on Young God.
ALBUM REVIEW: Young Widows- Easy Pain
2014 has been a good year for noisy genres. Noise Rock, Post-Hardcore, and Post Punk have all gotten albums and songs to shine in the spotlight this year (If you haven’t heard Savages’ Fuckers yet, you might want to reevaluate how you live your life). Cloud Nothings, Have a Nice Life, and a bunch of other bands have released albums that I keep raving about to people. There’s also been an influx of awesome metal albums that I haven’t even gotten around to listening to yet. However, out of all of these great things, there’s one album that’s been the most striking.
Young Widows is a Noise Rock outfit from Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to Noisy Rock, they also add elements of Post-Hardcore and a subtle influence of heavier Post Punk into their music. They’re loud and they’re brutal. While their latest album, Easy Pain, is their fourth record, it is easily their best and most definitive album to date. The fact that a group that’s just a trio can create these massive walls of abrasive noise is incredible, the fact that this noise can sustain itself over an entire album- without melting into generic and intolerable noise- is even more impressive.
The first three tracks alone immediately establish just how intense the rest of the record will be. Godman opens with some modulated feedback that disappears and gives way to some of the heaviest riffing to ever open an album. The onslaught of guitar and drum is overwhelming, with the bluesy tone of the guitar taking the reigns almost immediately. Evan Patterson comes in on vocals that evoke a bit of Mastodon and a bit of Queens of the Stone Age, presenting a subtle intensity that bubbles, yet never fully boils. It’s a commanding introduction to an album that never relents. The heavy tornado furor of Cool Night includes some of the heaviest noise on the record, creating a warped and unstable sound that could fall apart at any moment. It never does, but it gets precariously close.
This melts into the lead single from the album, the explosive Kerosene Girl. On one of the best tracks of 2014, the light vocals join with the repetitive guitar. Within the first minute of the track, Patterson already sounds like he’s on the brink of a breakdown. This madness ensues for over 5 minutes, with the song being sucked into this void of noise and distortion that does not relent until the very end of the song. It’s an intense and stunning ending to a song so brutal and vicious. The entire album is basically a series of songs trying to top Kerosene Girl, which makes for an entertaining and richly satisfying album.
The album can get so intense, at times, that it can become almost a tire to listen to. Doomed Moon, a great track, can lean in a bit too much on a repetitive riff that keeps coming back with dizzying results (which, for all we know, could be the purpose). This hinders the re-playability of the album as a whole, but it never sacrifices the quality of each individual song. However, there are plenty of moments that make the intricate instrumentals pop and create a satisfying album. The low sound of the bass guitar on Gift of Failure has an almost orchestral vibe to it that drives the entire track, creating an epic backdrop for a nice guitar solo from Patterson. This track also allows the primal drumming of Geoff Paton to shine through. There are also some cool blues vibes on Bird Feeder which provide a backdrop for one of Patterson’s zaniest and most off-kilter vocal performances. The transition from this into the more propulsive King Sol is also a nice touch, showing the band’s knack for organizing their albums dynamically (even if those dynamics are solely “pretty loud”, “just loud”, and “this will permanently damage your ears loud”).
The weird disorienting rhythm on the brooding The Last Young Widow also emphasizes an incredible dedication to experimentation in addition to their dedication to noise. The bashing noises that close the song bring the album to an abrupt and noisy close, but it’s one that makes complete sense. Young Widows are a band that bathes in muck and filth, creating a sludgy and abrasive sound that’s just as repelling as it is desirable. It’s best played loudly, and it’s best played to piss off your neighbors.
Summary: Young Widows is a LOUD, abrasive, and filthy Noise Rock album full of Post-Punk and Post-Hardcore influences. The result is a vicious and unrelenting onslaught of noise that will please anyone who likes their rock to sound like a planet exploding.
Choice Cuts: Kerosene Girl, Godman, Cool Night, Bird Feeder
Leftovers: Doomed Moon
A
You can stream Kerosene Girl below. Easy Pain is out now on Temporary Residence.
ALBUM REVIEW: EMA- The Future’s Void
The Future’s Void opens with a song that almost feels suffocating. It keeps gasping for air, desperately and tenaciously trying to cling to some kind of vicious intensity. There’s a noodling and dissonant distortion effect that whirls throughout the entire track. However, here’s the thing: it never ACTUALLY hits the intensity it’s so desperately trying to create. Satellites just kind of sits and lingers, never exploding into the cathartic moment it is failing to create. Various critics and listeners praise EMA for her ability to create some fine intensity, but The Future’s Void is the third album of hers that just does not live up to the hype.
She’s clearly been influenced by early 90s Grunge and Indie Rock, with twinges of Nirvana and Pixies being tossed in here and there. Her droning vocal style that intermittently includes bursts of screechier vocals does owe a lot to Kurt Cobain’s style. But the songs themselves aren’t entirely special. The worst songs here are the louder, more energetic tracks. They try to produce levels of excitement without any of the energy necessary to do so. The production tries to amp up the energy through distorting her vocals, but that rarely does anything than make the sound quality sound mediocre. So Blonde sounds like it came out of the doldrums of late-90s Post-Grunge, but somehow manages to be even less memorable. Satellites, which was discussed earlier, is desperately trying to be a more experimental, late 80s art punk tune. Sadly, it isn’t.
Now, that’s not to say that EMA’s Erika Anderson is even remotely untalented. Even on the weakest songs showcase her knack for strong songwriting, and it’s not that she isn’t TRYING to muster the energy necessary for her faster songs. Really, the points where Anderson can stretch her wings are the slower and more moody songs. 3Jane isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s pleasant enough to make up for the lackluster energy of the first two tracks. Cthulu is a cool, slow burning track that also shows off some nice dynamic range and instrumentation (Even if the choir-synths during the crescendos are a bit too cheesy). Not all the slow tracks work (Smoulder is slow, but it’s so lathered in distortion that it becomes almost unbearable), but it is where Anderson can really express something unique and memorable.
The Future’s Void is never truly boring, since Anderson does enjoy visiting sonic regions that many others wouldn’t. There are moments that are unpleasant, and moments that could clearly be more than they actually are (See previous complaints over energetic songs). However, there are moments where Anderson can actually present something special. The slow and intimate 100 Years is an incredibly emotional song that feels almost out of place in the dissonance of the rest of the album. Backed by only a light piano and some mumbling electronics, it’s one of the most stunning songs on any album this year. This then leads into Solace, another album highlight that sounds like some kind of 80s synth ballad. Then the last track, Dead Celebrity, ties up the album on a pleasant and quiet note. If the rest of the album was like the final three tracks, The Future’s Void would be a contender for album of the year. But, the first 7 tracks fail to truly match the prowess of the final few, creating a somewhat interesting, but ultimately disappointing album.
Summary: The Future’s Void is a noisy Art Pop record that doesn’t hit its stride until later in the album; There are a couple damn fine songs scattered throughout, but the record ultimately suffers from unevenness.
Choice Cuts: 100 Years, Solace, Dead Celebrity
Leftovers: Smoulder
C+
You can stream 3Jane below. The Future’s Void is out now on Matador.
ALBUM REVIEWS: Yo La Tengo- Fade
OK, So I might have started 2013 on a bad note. Let’s kick it up a notch.
Yo La Tengo is an Indie Rock band from Hoboken, New Jersey. Their current lineup has been around since 1992 (The band itself since 1984), and they’ve put out a lot of material. These guys have dropped a lot of great records, including my favorite Yo La Tengo album, I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One. Their style has a noisy, busy effect to it. But the thing is, unlike a lot of noise groups (Especially these days), these guys still know how to show a great sense of melody, chorus, and traditional Indie sound. This album is just more proof that the excel at that.
The album opener Ohm is very noisy, with a lot of distortion and squiggly sounds. But the thing is, it still has a fantastic chorus, an amazing guitar solo (God, does it sound good), and some nice thumping percussion. The thing I like about these guys is that they can have a messy sound without coming across as too disorganized and noisy. And the 7:50 Ohm is a perfect display of this. And it’s nearly 8 minutes long, and it doesn’t lose your attention, growing naturally and having a great structure.
The rest of the album basically follows the same game plan. The instruments throughout manage to show their stuff without being overwhelmed by the distortion, noise, or even the cleaner production. The drums are poppy and pleasant, the guitars sound good on every track (seriously), and the vocals tend to adapt to whatever the song requires. There are times where certain elements outshine others. The drums on the relatively clean Well You Better practically make the song. The gnarly distorted grunts at the beginning of Paddle Forward flow wonderfully into the sweet vocal harmonies and distorted guitars of the rest of the song.
Getting even more into instruments, the guitar sound on this album is fantastic. The way the production from John McEntire incorporates the guitars into the fold is wonderful. They always manage to be interesting and wonderful, without ever taking too much attention from anything else going on. On the awesome solos, you notice how fantastic the guitar sounds, but you also notice the other effects going on. Plus, they bring in some very subtle guest instruments, too. Those horns on Cornelia and Jane are incredibly subtle, but they have an immense power to them.
Plus, there’s a nice mix of your down and dirty distorted Indie rock and your crisper, cleaner cut Indie Rock. Hell, sometimes both are interlaced on a few tracks. Stupid Things has a nice and crisp electric guitar as a gnarly, distorted guitar begins to approach from the distance, followed by some intense hand production and whispery vocals. The production on this album just WORKS.
Of course, not everything on this album works. On Is That Enough, the vocals are a bit too clean (And off-key) for my taste. But the quiet distorted guitars in the background of the track are a cool idea, as are the strings. Really, the vocals mainly falter when they aren’t shrouded in loud guitars. Save Hubley, who sounds good regardless of the production. Some tracks stand out more than others just for the pure ideas used.
I mean, Is That Enough and Well You Better are good tracks, but they don’t have as many great qualities as the tracks that surround them to really do something to stick out. Not that that’s bad, since there aren’t any tracks on here that are less than OK. It’s just one negative thing. It’s good, but it has an inconsistent amount of both good and great material. The back half especially paints this disparity in the clearer light. It also doesn’t feel like an album that immediately has a lot of background replay value, at least on immediate listen. I listened to it several times, and I enjoyed it much more when I paid more attention to it (All music is like this, but the difference was more notable than usual).
Really, the thing that astounds me more than anything is how long these guys have been doing it. Ira Kapllan has been with the group since 1984, so that means next year he’s been with Yo La Tengo for 30 years. And to be putting out music this good at nearly 30 is quite the accomplishment. This album does everything it needs to, and it sounds great.
Summary: Fade shows that Yo La Tengo are still strong 30 years in, with interesting instrumentation, great production, and some good songs.
Choice Cuts: Ohm, Paddle Forward, Stupid Things, Cornelia and Jane
Stream Ohm below. Fade is out 1/15 (Tuesday) on Matador
ALBUM REVIEW: Deerhoof-Breakup Song
Deerhoof is an Indie Noise Rock group from San Francisco, and they’ve been dropping albums since 1996, Breakup Song being their 11th. I’m not overly familiar with their past work, including last years Deerhoof Vs. Evil, so this is my first time really observing their music. And I left this album a bit…unimpressed.
The main problem with the album is it’s combination of noise rock with a vocalist who just doesn’t seem to realize that she is singing on a noise rock album. It’s an odd, contradicting, and ultimately confusing sound. For example, on Bad Kids to the Front, these weird, dissonant synth plucks hit every few seconds, and while I don’t really care for the sound they make, they sure sound threatening. There’s also some bells and whistles, making the instrumentation loud and uninviting. But vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki has a light, bubbly, very inviting voice. It doesn’t mesh well with the instrumentation on the album, at least for me.
My distaste for this album is somewhat swayed since the sound itself bothers me. Even though the instrumentation itself is OK, a lot of the synths and electronics are just too sharp and plucky to really be inviting. The music is very unsure of what it wants to be throughout the album. Some songs hit the right note, like Mothball the Fleet, where the instrumentation manages to keep that noisy element without coming across as too complicated and messy to not compliment Matsuzaki’s voice. However, Mothball the Fleet is an exception on the album, as most of the rest of the album is just ugly noise with some sweet but forgettable vocals over it.
The songs are all pretty repetitive as well. Fête D’Adieu the album closer feels like two choruses that just keep going back and forth and back and forth. It’s kind of excruciating. Songs like this also rely way too much on the vocals (I’ll get back to that), and the instrumentation (which while not not fantastic, it is more interesting) is completely buried by melody and the production.
Satomi Matsuzaki’s voice isn’t really my cup of tea, as she’s kind of an uninteresting vocalist. Her voice stays in the same higher range the entire album, and really just sings some boring melodies over the noise rock below. The melodies are all bland, and she just repeats the same words over and over for choruses and “hooks”. To be a good noise rock vocalist, in my opinion, you have to be just as noisy as the arrangements you’re singing over, kind of like a Sleigh Bells. Here, it sounds like a little girl’s tea party backed by crashing computers and nasty guitar licks. She seems totally out of place, and even if she were in place, she’d remain a very uninteresting vocalist.
There are a few moments on this album I’d say I legitimately like. The opening of To Fly or Not to Fly is pretty captivating (Even if the rest of the song isn’t), and The Trouble With Candyhands has some weird Latin-flavored horns and is actually an enjoyable song. There are also moments, that while they kind of fall flat, are interesting through their weird and new sounds. The rest of this album, though, just doesn’t hit any of the right notes.
Summary: The combination of noise rock on and sweet vocals on Breakup Song doesn’t work at all, despite some interesting experimentation.
Choice Cuts- The Trouble With Candyhands
1.5/5
The video for Fête D’Adieu is below. Breakup Song is out now on Polyvinyl.
LATE ALBUM REVIEW: Japandorids- Celebration Rock
Late Album Reviews are basically albums that, though now may seem like an odd time to finally review them, weren’t reviewed at their initial release for reasons that will vary (For this one, the blog didn’t exist when it was released). I basically only label them “Late Album Reviews” because if I didn’t people would be obnoxious and ask “Isn’t it a little too late to review this album?”. The title just prematurely answers that question.
Every summer there’s discussion of “Summer Music”, which is a pretty vague topic. “Summer Music” doesn’t necessarily have to be some Beach Boys-esque track where the lyrics are about going to the beach and getting some sun. It really only has to be A) Released around Summer and B) Have a certain energy to it that captures the feelings of the mood of the season. A fairly easy discussion would be the “Song of the Summer”, a song that just screams the feelings of the season (Youth, fun, energy), and frankly has to be pretty adored by whatever community deems it “Song of the Summer” (For example, the Indie community last summer probably would have given “Song of the Summer” to M83’s Midnight City).
Something a little more rare than a “Summer Song” is a “Summer Album”. Frankly, there isn’t much discussion to “Album of the Summer” because normally, no album can capture that kind of mood for a majority of the LP. Last summer some would have claimed that Jay-Z and Kanye’s Watch the Throne would have been that album, but lyrics about stacks on stacks on stacks and how much money they had wasn’t really something that had a Summer feel to it. Nor was it particularly easy to relate to. Hell, there are so few “Summer Albums” out there that the only one I can think fully qualifies is Prince’s 1984 album Purple Rain. This summer, however, we may finally have the a great Summer album. Maybe even a PERFECT summer album.
A little background, Japandroids are a Canadian band from Vancouver signed to Polyvinyl, their music is somewhat of a Post-hardcore/Indie fusion. It’s punk music, but not really to the degree of something like The Sex Pistols or The Ramones. It’s Noisy, Garage Indie Punk. It’s kind of like The Replacements with a Bruce Springsteen energy to it. They released the solid Post-Nothing in 2009, an album that was overlooked despite having some great tracks on it. In fact, in the years between Post-Nothing and this album, the band, made up of Guitarist/Vocalist Brian King and Drummer/Back-Up Vocalist David Prowse, nearly broke up. Post-Nothing didn’t really gain traction, and touring was hellbent. Nearly in shambles, the duo recorded Celebration Rock. The album saved the band from breaking up, and when released received a lot of attention. With good reason.
Celebration Rock is bookended by the sound of fireworks, which sets and reestablishes the mood of the album. A few seconds into the album opener The Night of Wine and Roses, the pounding of drums begins, with some guitar feedback also heard. Soon enough, the Guitar triumphantly begins to strum, bringing you into an album that you won’t want to stop listening to until it ends. Brian King’s lyrics match the driving energy of every song, with statements like “We yell like hell to the heavens” sang with defiance and power over the guitars and drums.
Celebration Rock’s main draw is it’s pure, youthful energy. The drums pound with driving force, the guitars accent each song with the perfect notes to match Brian’s lyrics, and choruses of “Whoa-whoa-whoas” capture the general feeling the album is going for better than any actual lyrics ever could. The lyrics on every song are simple and very plain, but that’s the brilliance of it. If Brian tried giving more abstract or hard to decipher lyrics to the album, the result wouldn’t be as effective. The words Brian uses are simply there to illustrate the youthfulness and energy of the music itself.
This is one of those great albums where not one song is of less quality than any of the others. Every track is full of energy, fun, and equal greatness. The point where the album hits the highest of highs is the last two tracks, The House That Heaven Built and Continuous Thunder. The former, the lead single of the album, showcases every element of the album I love to the highest degree, and the energy here is unmatched by any other song I’ve heard all year. The final track, Continuous Thunder, closes out the album perfectly, with a slower song that still manages to keep up with the rest of the album. It closes with fireworks similar to those at the beginning of the album, and truly makes the album something very special.
This is not only a perfect summer album, but a near perfect album, period. It’s the first punk album I’ve truly loved since I first heard The Replacement’s Let It Be. Some say the album relies too much on its energy as a crutch, but I disagree. This album wouldn’t be any good if it were just energetic. Every element of this album interacts with that energy in a nearly pitch-perfect manner. The drumming, the guitars, and the vocals are so simple that it meshes perfectly with the energy. It’s hard to describe why I think this album is so great, but listen for yourself, and maybe you’ll see it to.
Summary: Celebration Rock manages to make a phenomenal album by putting emphasis on energetic songs, simplicity, and a perfect meshing of Indie Rock and Punk
Choice Cuts: The Nights of Wine and Roses, Fire’s Highway, Adrenaline Nightshift, The House That Heaven Built, Continuous Thunder
5/5
Here’s the video for The House That Heaven Built
Vantage Point Music 