The Gaslight Anthem - Sink Or Swim

I have a weird relation to this band.
Back in my second semester of college, my iPod met a chilly, moist fate in a local stream as I was gallivanting about the rocks and crevices. In retrospect, keeping your mp3 device in your unbuttoned chest pocket whilst performing a careening leap across a body of water is typically not the best method of conducting yourself. With one last note from Crimpshrine's "Can You Feel That", I found myself out 300 USDs, and far worse, unable to escape the blaring bullshit echoing around the interior of the commuter's bus to campus. Fortunately, my parents had forced a cell phone into my hands after many years of refusal, and it happened to be a trendy (at the time) Juke or whatever it's called, replete with mp3 features and a pair of headphones with earbuds unsuitable to the human ear. I got so many fucking headaches from those little malformed lumps of plastic. But anyway, that was around the point I discovered this album.
I uploaded it to the low capacity phone alongside a handful of other albums I had downloaded long ago but never gotten around to listening to, sat down on the gross faux-leather seat, hit play, and instantly fell in love. It was one of those albums much like Nirvana's Bleach and Sebadoh's Bakesale that instantly captured my attention and led me to flog them brutally for several weeks straight. Unfortunately, just like those two albums, this one would meet a similar fate.
I've found that whenever this sort of infatuation occurs, there are two possible outcomes:

1.) a life-long affair with the disc in question, where the listening rate diminishes, but never your affection or admiration, and you find yourself revisiting said album forever more
2.) you love the shit out it for a few weeks/months, then take a long break, revisit it and wonder what the fuck you ever saw in it in the first place

Unfortunately, only a few months after adding The Gaslight Anthem's Sink Or Swim to my top 20 list, I put it on one day and found that my every potential gripe had distilled and floated to the surface in my absence. All I could think of from that point on was "holy fuck are these guys a bunch of cheesedicks". The fact that I overlooked the sheer corniness of this band provided a true shock to the system, and I abandoned them for close to a year. Eventually, though, I gave them another chance with far lower expectations and found myself enjoying them again, in spite of the inherent overstated-ness. Lemme give you a bit of background before I go any further, though: The Gaslight Anthem are four piece from New Jersey who formed in '05 and play what could be described as either a pop punk approximation of Bruce Springsteen or something like "folk rock-punk". Being a fan of a handful of Springsteen albums (mostly Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Nebraska) and The Replacements (the other band these guys draw the most comparisons from), I was genuinely intrigued by this band's marrying of styles, and for a while, I wasn't let down in the slightest. Their sound is certainly likeable enough - basically "orgcore" styled pop punk developed into a more rock-orientation with elements of folk and Midwestern bar band antics. Sound good? It is... sort of.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good songs on here, especially "1930", "I Coulda Been A Contender", and "I'da Called You Woody, Joe", it's just that once the initial sheen wears off, it's the corniness you have to contend with. Primarily, it's the prosody and lyrics here; Brian Fallon CANNOT POSSIBLY BE WRITING LYRICS LIKE THIS FROM THE HEART. I mean, look at this shit:

"And I spent time 'neath the trestles,
With the punks and the dimestore saints.
I kept faith and a switchblade tucked beneath my coat.
And I ran with dirty angels,
Slept out in the rain.
We were scared and tired and barely seventeen."

"I'm broke and I'm hungry.
I'm hard up and lonely,
I've been dancing on this killing floor for years.
And of the few things that I am certain,
I'm the captain of my burden.
I'm sorry doll, I could never stop the rain."

"Honey we came to dance with the girls with the stars in their eyes.
Do the jump back Jack stop and slide to the right.
Never break their hearts,
Never make them cry, so come on.
Strike up the band with a song that everybody knows.
If I'm not your kind then don't tell a soul.
I'm not the one who hates being alone,
So come on."

I've heard that some of these songs are written from different perspectives, but how would you know that right off the bat? They're all sung in first person. Y'know how when Bruce sings about personal pain and Americana hoo-ha, it sounds somewhat believable and spoken from a wisened, believable, almost cynical standpoint? Well that mold isn't exactly open to anyone's muse. You can't just get some fresh faced 20-something kid with sailor tattoos and a chimney sweep's cap to sing stuff like this without sounding completely ridiculous. If you can somehow move past that, though, there are certainly goods to be had here, though. This album doesn't have a chance of ever landing in my "favorite albums list" again ("We're Getting A Divorce, You Keep The Diner", "Red In The Morning", and "Red At Night" are pretty disposable), but it's still worth a listen if you haven't had one already.

http://www.mediafire.com/?bssm9mx0yxx

My only other complaint is pretty unfair to throw out on this album, but wore these guys out for me nonetheless: after hearing the band's second album, The '59 Sound, it kinda dawned on me that these guys weren't really going to progress any further, and by stripping down their sound, they revealed how few ideas they really had. That album definitely has some songs worth hearing ("Meet Me By The River's Edge", "Miles Davis & The Cool", "Old White Lincoln", and "Great Expectations"), but half the songs almost sound identical, especially by the time each crescendo/bridge hits. Oh, and wait until you hear "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues". It's like being barraged by a meteor shower of hot, sloppy, shit.

Defiance, Ohio - Share What Ya Got

My high school experience started off as a veritable maelstrom of inanity and social dis-grace, aided by the help of my trusty sidekick, "2 Preceding Years Of Enormous And Deforming Emotional Discomfort At The Mercy Of A Catholic School". It's pretty amazing how cloistered you become when trying unsuccessfully to gel with a classroom of tightly knit aggressors who've shared the same company (aside the odd yearly addition) since Kindergarten, and even worse, how long it takes to stand back up once the burden falls off your shoulders. Fortunately, by the time senior year rolled around, I was seemingly well-off and recovered, confident enough to pick up an internship for my art teacher, to befriend most of the people who piqued my interest, and even enough to be rejected by a small handful of lasses - in person, no less. I felt a false sense of security and knowing, like I went through the ropes early and somehow attained enough wisdom through it to carry a sense of superiority. It was a completely unconscious brand of smug douchebaggery.

The summer before that year, my friends and I went on a semi-sprawling road trip, finding our way from New York to Boston, to the Adirondacks and back home to NY, then to Virginia, North Carolina, and all the way up to Chicago before ending the pilgrimage in Pennsylvania for a 15 lb burger challenge. Along the way, my friend Ryan (who we picked up in NC after a 3 year separation) introduced me to folk-punk and the riot-folk movements happening as we spoke. He was pretty passionate about the bunch, and having gained a desire for musical expansion the following year, I was eager to give this stuff a try, and promptly scoured the web for all the free tuneage I could find. Admittedly, I wasn't completely blown away on first rotation. Mischief Brew wouldn't make a whole lot of sense until I'd made my way through a Tom Waits phase a year later, This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb struck me as inoffensive dullardry (and still do), and Ghost Mice grated on my nerves; Defiance, Ohio and Evan Greer on the other hand, settled nicely with the rest of my aural diet, which at the time was primarily noise rock, pop- and post-punk.

Not so long after, the shroud of familiarity got pulled away, graduation happened, and the bottom fell out. The aforementioned armchair nihilism and cynical brand of security began to give way to the disillusionment inherent in no longer having the immediate future mapped out and realizing how little I actually knew. Y'know, the typical ascent into "adulthood" paired with all the confusion reserved for kids who don't have the desire to get pinned down by a colossal fortress of college-related debt and fear the confines of the standard American life. I was slogging my way through community college and accruing more and more sludge for the sticky pile of isolationism in the back of my skull, and pretty soon after, I ended up randomly pulling out Defiance, Ohio's debut again to see whether it held up from the previous year. Upon listening, the lyrics pretty much hit me like a train. It was funny, because I remembered most of them from listening to Share What Ya Got in high school, but it was as if all their meaning was totally lost on me until that moment. It was the first time I really, truly related to what I was hearing since picking up Rites Of Spring's eponymous in 10th grade.

Defiance, Ohio are a DIY, 6-piece from Columbus, Ohio, and play acoustic primarily, employing not only the instruments standard to any punk release, but also a stand-up bass, cello, and violin. They started off by releasing their records for free online and other tiny labels, but have since moved to No Idea in order to accumulate enough l00tz tokeep their back catalog in print for dorks like me to fawn over while staring lovingly at the turntable. If I didn't make it obvious enough through the extremely long-winded intro, Share What Ya Got (their first full-length release) is a huge favorite of mine for reasons sentimental, musical, and lyrical (ie "the gamut"). It's by far their rawest, least self-conscious album, sounding like it was recorded strictly for free basement shows and rallies, but that's probably why I like it so much more than anything else they'd go on to do. It's pretty clear that no one in the band is exactly the virtuoso, but it's really their vibes that sell it for me. That's not to say the songs on here aren't catchy as hell and sing-a-long-able - in fact, that's probably what they're best for - it's just that the hopefulness and positivity seething through the somewhat frustrated lyrics manifests in much more than just what they're saying.
The sparse, simple opener, "Hey Kathleen, Are You Hungry?" sets the tone of the entire album:

"Are you angry?
Are you searching for a better life to lead?
Are you waiting?
Have you been waiting too long?
What holds us back and how to burn the bridges to a culture that taught us to hate and fear and live like cogs in a machine and not like lovers, friends, and kin?
How can you help but feel depressed?
Get up in the morning and get dressed
Look out the window through rush hour smog
Smoke and drink the world away 'cause what the politicians say won't answer any of my questions like...
Why am I angry?
What am I searching for?
Is there a better way to live?
Why am I hopeless?
Have I been waiting too long to strike back against this state of affairs?

Actually, writing them out, they seem kinda clunky. Sorry, it's a little difficult for me to imagine them without the melody and vocal strain's guidance. They're definitely more affective in action. Like something you'd sing around a campfire, almost. Lyrical concerns are probably the most inward leaning here, with lots of songs detailing feelings of entrapment in routine, desire to leave the ugly confinements we willingly affix ourselves to, and the alienation purported by a capitalist environment - stuff roiling in the pit of my stomach I couldn't quite articulate or put a name to. Unlike pretty much every release proceeding this one, there are none of those fantastic, anthemic songs that sound like they could be the highlight of the album before ending abruptly for no apparent reason. I don't know why this became a staple as their sound matured, but it's always a disappointing little present to unwrap whenever a new album comes out - like waiting with baited breath to rock out until the track's duration proves suitable.

If I had to list highlights, "Bikes And Bridges", "Response To Griot", "I'm Just Going To Leave" are probably my favorites, but there's not one bad song on here, or even any I skip over from time to time; it's an album I've taken in from first to last every time, uninterrupted, by some strange stroke of fate. This is of course, despite the fact that every track on here is permanently etched into my eardrums due to almost constant exposure; from that moment on the bus ride home from campus through the scream-a-longs in my friend's car and the late night/early morning bike rides around town with my headphones till now this has been one of my absolute favorite albums ever. It's just such an honest, simple kind of music, with everything sounding like a single take but somehow coalescing into something catchy, poppy, heartfelt, and without any ambitions beyond conveying a message. Give it a go?

http://www.mediafire.com/?0yftoh4mivg

If you suffered through this whole exhausting piece, you're a brave soul, since this might be the cheesiest mess I've penned since... actually never mind. I've written a shit-ton of godawful slop, so it's probably nowhere near a benchmark. Hopefully you'll never find most of it. If this actually made you wanna check this album out though, that's pretty much all I wanted to convey. These guys probably get a stronger reccomendation from me than almost anything I've posted here before if that means anything to you. Enjoy, and try to catch them live. I've only gotten to see them live twice, but the first time involved giving Theo a hug on stage, so needless to say, they're a good time.

Assfactor 4 - s/t

I'm not sure why I'm so adamant about meeting the ten post quota every month. It's certainly not a mandate established to improve my writing skills to prepare for a journalism career (especially since all grammatical non-errors I make are purely incidental). I guess SOME THINGS WE JUST GOTTA ACCEPT HURRR.

I fucking hate venting to people who just accept the injustices you present instead of getting angry about them with you or even TRYING to grasp it. I realize they might be equally futile approaches to conversation, but goddamn is it depressing to hear someone just aurally shrug at you when you're inviting them up on your soapbox.

Anyway, Assfactor 4 were a band and they released music and shit. I like them. Which is obvious because I'm posting them here.
Right here in fact:

http://www.mediafire.com/?x0twwqllzw2

I kinda wanna let it alone right there.
I'm really tired.
But the train of lucrative endeavorin' must keep on chooglin' into uninformative oblivion. So. I've already done the boring spiel about moving from the completely inaccessible (grind, PV, crust, death metal, etc...) to the comparatively friendly (old school emo, indie rock, pop punk, ska, etc...) to boomeranging back to utterly uncompromising (free jazz, electro acoustic, power electronics, japanoise, etc...) like, a zillion times already, so let's move past that. Assfactor 4 are probably one of my favorite hardcore bands ever, and acted kind of like a bridge from the emo island I inhabited to the fruitful lands of hardcore punk and melodic hardcore. They formed somewhere in 1992, after the dissolution of both Tonka and Unherd (both pretty great bands in their own right), released two EPs and this full length before getting voted the "Coolest Band To Hang Out With" by Heartattackzine in '95 and calling it quits in '97. They also came out with a slightly less good, but still enjoyable, posthumous LP in 2000 called Sports, parodying Huey Lewis And The News' similarly titled album in more ways than the title.

Due to their place in history, vocal style, and melodious riffing, these guys were lumped in tightly with the fourfa.com denoted "hardcore emo" crew, including Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, John Henry West, Mohinder, the vastly underrated and totally amazing Second Story Window, and of course, Heroin. While all of those bands were cut from a similar cloth and used a lot of discordance and chaos in their music, Assfactor 4 was more obviously from a hardcore punk background than a second-wave emo one, and were a whole lot less dissonant. Instead, they focused on delivering short, really memorable, songs built around super catchy melodic riffage, and righteous dual (triple?) vocal assaults. Best of all, the band never ends up repeating itself or getting too "samey" throughout the 18 tracks in 23 minutes, perfectly mixing the poppy with the darker.
Also, I just realized that pretty much every non-hardcore initiated person on the planet would find it hilarious that I'm impressed a band could write 23 minutes of music without repeating themselves.
Phat phuckin' jams to form an imaginary circle pit in your bedroom include: "Dorothy", "I Reckon", "This Shit Is For The Birds", "Can't Fight The Feeling", and of course, "Burger-Rock".

this would be where the link would be if I hadn't already posted it

Enjoy. Also, since this took two days to write, I was not actually tired throughout most of it like I originally claimed. Awright.

Against Me! - The Disco Before The Breakdown

I've talked about a lot of really obvious, popular, bands on here recently (Descendents, Lemuria, Minutemen, etc...), but what's one more?
In the year 2011, the fans of Against Me! have become totally stratified by the band's musical progression - there's the assholes who bitch that Against Me! sold out, abandoned their values, and should be pariahs; then there are the assholes who gripe whenever an old Against Me! fan claims their new shit sucks, retorting that they're just afraid of progression, that Gabel would have never written another "Walking Is Still Honest" anyway, and that they're closed-minded for not boogieing to "Thrash Unreal". I kinda straddle the divider. Against Me! didn't take a crash course into commercialism (their slow progression over 3 albums as testimony), they just eased in and turned their back on their anarchist values in exchange for a more plush lifestyle. I can't say I don't understand the pressure to do so, but it's not exactly relateable. Of course, now they're just lame arena rock on Warner Bros, so it's hard to feel anything other than indifference at this point.

Anyway, this EP is the bridge between their raw, folky, first incarnation (Reinventing Axl Rose, the self-titled, Acoustic EP, and the brilliant Crime As Forgiven By) and their more rock/post-punk centric second phase (As The Eternal Cowboy, Searching For A Former Clarity), and is their first release not to contain any reworked tracks Tom wrote beforehand. The result is an unfortunately brief 3-track mash-up between the two aforementioned phases, and is easily one of the best items in their catalog. As The Eternal Cowboy is an album I like well enough, but it contains none of the scream-your-throat-raw, intensely emotional, anthemic heights that everything preceding it did. Disco Before The Breakdown sounds like what Against Me! could've been like if they kept these elements in their sound while progressing into a more rock-oriented unit... or at least, the first two songs do. The third is your typical, poorly recorded, acoustic solo track with Gabel doing his thing (which is great in it's own right), and each song's lyrics are really top notch.

We drank bottled water together and talked business.
I think I played the right moves.
You were lookin' over my shoulder,
as I went through the motions of another night,
And it was alright,
'cause I thought I knew who everybody was just by lookin' at them.
My heart is anywhere but here,
and how tired I was from the past couple of weeks,
From the past couple of years.
Well, it hit me all at once,
On a balcony overlooking nothing,
With snow falling all around,
Well I, I called just to say "Goodnight".
And you hadn't done anything wrong,
And know, really, really, it's me not you.
I can't believe how naive I was to think things could ever be so simple,
And can you live with what you know about yourself,
When you're all alone, behind closed doors?
The things we never said, but we always knew were right there.
It's got me on my knees in a bathroom,
Praying to a God that I don't even believe in,
"Well, dear Jesus, are you listening?
If this is the one chance that really matters,
Well, don't let me fuck this up.
If you'd told me about all this when I was fifteen,
I never would have believed it."

I can't stress enough though how un-fulfilling this EP can be. Not because it's full of dud notes or wasted space, but simply due to the lack of an accompanying 10 or 11 tracks. This is the kind of band Against Me! really should have "sold out" into - a super solid rock band with folk leanings and blistering vocals and anthemic, soaring, choruses. I'm always glad when I listen to this that I wasn't aware of these guys when this EP first surfaced, or I'd have been pretty damn let down by it's follow up (which is again, a decent album anyway).

try it
then
fuck it, Against Me! have enough money

Also, the first song has a horn! Wheee! I can't remember if it was a guest or not, but it doesn't really sound out of place (or ska-esque).

A brief glimpse into the exciting world of alternative rock

So hey, does anyone remember this Oasis song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOQByQtqRqA

I do for some reason, even though I only braved one of their albums once or twice back in 10th grade (don't ask; it was learning period). I guess I should give them credit, as this song stuck with me vaguely - or at least, well enough that when I heard this song here by Lifehouse many years later, I could've sworn I'd heard it before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6u5ZneaW2c

For best results, wait until the chorus hits. It's pretty amazing how similar the two are. When I made the connection, I figured Lifehouse either shamelessly pillaged an old hit since their music is directed towards an audience that probably doesn't even remember "Don't Go Away", or the choruses were both so faceless they just happened to sound the same.

But then, just recently I heard this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFhRowkNrTM

On this, there's really no debate over what happened. This is clearly a shameless rewrite of "Whatever It Takes", and better yet, probably written without any knowledge of the original derision. I mean, come on you assholes, that stupid Lifehouse song came out 2 years before and got a shitload of radio play (I know, 'cause I worked in a wholesale club that happened to play it every goddamn day for a year) - there's no way they weren't aware of it. I mean, even the LYRICS are similar and share some key phrasing. Any naivete I had regarding bands riding other bands' coat tails kinda died with this combo though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7oGGud2Jk4

then Trivium comes along and...

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trivium+pull+harder+on+the+strings+of+your+martyr&aq=0

No one who listens and performs metal could possibly rewrite Carcass' most well-loved song by mistake, then use it as a single with a big, doofy, pop chorus. It's beyond improbable.

So in conclusion, I think we should make a petition entitled "Alternative Rock Should Give It A Rest For A While" and get a million signatures.

The Sidekicks - Weight Of Air

I've been meaning to write up a piece about this album for a long time now, but sometimes its hard to form a coherent thought, let alone pen an entry for this dumbass blog.

About 7 months ago, my friend Lindsay invited me to a Tigers Jaw concert in Pennsylvania with three staff members of this blog in tow, oddly enough (Sean, Jack, Blizzard Of '93). I dug the first Tigers Jaw album well enough, and I figured it might be the last time I see any of this crew for a long time, so I decided to hop on board. It was right before I left on a bike trip with no planned conclusion (one that ended far too soon), and I felt obligated to pack in as much party as possible into what little time I had left. The show was opened by a handful of bands I was only quasi-aware of but hadn't heard - Captain We're Sinking, Kite Fight, of course, the band in the header. For whatever reason, while the band was tight as hell and the vocal harmonies were pulled off to great effect, I remember saying something to the effect of "I wish they'd have laid off the college rock stuff and play more of the fast shit -perhaps to cement my presence as a generic punk rock asshole. I didn't bother giving their latest album a spin until a few months after, but if there's any testament to this band's songwriting talent, I was able to recognize 4 songs on Weight Of Air right off the bat as songs they played live.

The Sidekicks are a 4-piece, dual vocal pop-punk/"orgcore" band from California (I think) and have released 2 full lengths and a transitional EP between them. While their debut, So Long, Soggy Dog sounds a lot like what you'd expect from a band doing rounds on punknews with it's quasi-gruff, vaguely alt-rock indebted, and crunchy guitar'd pop-punk sound, Weight Of Air is a more mature, midwestern indie rock kind of album, with that 70's pop jangle and most of the aggression of the first album and preceding EP vanquished. That's not to say this is a trudger, though; almost every song is mid-to-uptempo, but the punk aspects have been toned down considerably and replaced with wonderfully hooky, Replacements-y, collegiate rock with appropriate touch of folk and the aforementioned 70's pop vibe. I apologize if that description could be clearer, but I really can't think of any current bands that encapsulate the same sound as these guys do. They're not reinventing the wheel exactly, but they're a great pastiche with no real contemporaries.
Here's an acoustic rendition of one of my favorite of their songs, "A Healthy Time" done for the Pink Couch Sessions; I feel like the easy transition from electric illustrates the point about their lack of "punkiness" pretty well:

While the songs aren't technical or complex by any means, there are lots of little intricacies that begin to show themselves upon repeat listens, like tinkering with the guitar leads from verse to verse or the cadence of the vocal harmonies; nothing ridiculously innovative, but the real charm here is how naturally the songs fall together and progress, especially with the incredibly hooky vocals and sing-a-long-able choruses. Just top notch songwriting throughout, and a sound that the band seems much more comfortable with than the aggressive pop-punk of their first two releases.

try it here
then
buy it here

I really wish I had gotten into these guys before I saw them live, 'cause it definitely seems like a wasted opportunity now.

Discount - Crash Diagnostic

I originally wrote about this album in my old blog and presented it in a really squirrel-y, uncertain manner in which I was forgoing any attempt to convince the few readers I had to download it because it was such a radically different kind of music than I commonly waxed on. It seemed kind of pointless at the time, but in retrospect, I just should've tried harder. I mean, why not? What's there possibly to lose? Just for value of a persuasive writing exercise, maybe. This blog is probably a better home for it, but really, I'd recommend almost everyone I know to stockpile the majority of albums I reviewed and uploaded on my old blog, too. I mean, sure, the chances of anyone reading a blog like this liking half of ye olde blogg's contents are nil, but dammit if I don't wanna try to convince you to give them a chance. I mean, Fela Kuti was pretty punk rock, right? He stood up for his limited rights, and paid a few horrible prices for them too. If you're gonna harvest anything from the old blog, I strongly oh wait I never published that Fela Kuti review. Nevermind.

And that concludes the worst intro ever.

Discount was an amazing Florida pop-punk unit that released 3 full lengths and a slew of splits and EPs and is renown for being the only non-shitty musical entity Alison Mosshart has ever partook in. I really, really, don't like The Kills or the Dead Weather at all. I also don't use heroin, though, which may be a contributing factor. And by "renown", I kinda mean "in my opinion". After all, The Kills have approximately 50 times the amount of listeners on last.fm than Discount do. Oof. But anyway, Crash Diagnostic is the band's third full length, swan song, and an album I saturated so completely with nostalgia/sentiment late in high school I can barely listen to it anymore without getting foggy eyed.
If you've heard any of the band's preceding work, this album sounds like a mash-up between the exceedingly pretty, vocal driven pop-punk of Half Fiction and the more churning, dynamic sounds of early post-hardcore a la Fugazi. Prior to this album, Discount's sound could be traced to the family tree inhabited by East Bay pop-punk, J-Church, and Jawbreaker, but never sounding like an extension of any of those bands. Just pure, exhuberant, melodic punk music for young guys and gals to lose their shit to. On Crash Diagnostic, it sounds like they went out of their way to challenge convention and make their sound more conceptual. It kinda seems like a weird thing for a pop-punk band to do, but it's pulled off really well - not perfectly, as some of the songs embody one genre over the other, but even without perfect cohesion, every song on here is excellent. I know I'm making this album sound like a comparatively pretentious, self-conscious work compared to its predecessors, but there's a reason I chose this album for coverage over the others. Listen to "Broken To Blue", "Black And White Can't Capture Blue And Red", "Math Won't Miss You" (one of my favorite songs ever), "Harder To Tell", "Hit", and "Age Of Spitting". They might be less perfunctory than their older stuff, but all the energy's there. It sounds like a lot of care went into each of these songs.

I should reiterate, though - The Kills aren't bad just because of their lame retread on later Royal Trux's sound, but coming from a Discount-fanhood, it pains me to hear Mosshart's once vibrant, hooky, emotional vocals reduced to a dull, obnoxious slur. It's actually hard to believe they're the same person. Seriously, go on amazon.com and listen to some samples from any of their albums. I realize she was only like, 19 or 20 when this album was released and still finding a vocal niche that suited her, but man did things take a turn for the drawl.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dm2mon4t4yt

I'll be able to die happy if I get to see these guys reunite for a few shows, as unlikely as that seems. One more thought: the amount of assholes who comment derisively on how Alison looked circa Discount compared to how she looks now makes me want to punch a hole in the wall. I guess it's just a symptom of mainstream exposure, though.

Off With Their Heads - Hospitals

Unfortunately for this blog, I'm slipping back out of my strictly punk-ass phase and into another bout with avant-garde, purely noise, improvisational, and otherwise fucked-up tuneage. I think I detailed this bizarre transformation in an old entry on my other blog, but the gist is basically as follows: I spend roughly half my time in phase A, then without warning, morph to phase B. Phase A is populated strictly with pop-punk, hardcore, powerviolence, folk-punk, and indie rock. Phase B is packed with free jazz, krautrock, noise, ambient, proto-metal, power electronics, psychedelic, and other matters of experimental music. While I'm in either phase, I want nothing to do with the music in it's opposing phase. I don't know how to explain it, but that's pretty much what happens every 4 months or so.

So hey, if any staff guys wanna help me fill the 10 entry per month quota, I'd really appreciate the help. I'm still gonna post, but it's probably not going to be as "spirited" as usual (or whatever word you'd use to describe my shitty writing style).

Say, you like nearly cringe-worthy quantities of pain and self-loathing in your pop-punk, right?
Off With Their Heads feature some of the darkest, most angst-laden, almost laughably negative themes I've ever had the fortune of encountering in such an upbeat brand of music, and they're all the better for it. Formed in Minnesota in '02, these guys started off playing somewhat light-weight, keyboard-laden power pop/pop punk before trimming off the cheesiness, speeding up, and cranking the distortion. If you've ever been confounded enough by the stupidity of the term "orgcore" to look up the bands that define it, you've probably seen this band's moniker in there somewhere; in other words, these guys play gruff, aggressive, poppy punk with raw, pack-a-day vocals and an angsty edge. Oh... I guess the "orgcore" term also includes folk-punk, but don't expect Plan-It-X or junk band-esque stuff if you try out The Riot Before or Gaslight Anthem.

Hospitals is an mini-LP (I think it was a 10 inch... do they still make 10 inches? Also: obligatory penis joke) from 2006, and probably my favorite material of theirs. Stylistically, it's really not far from really anything else they've recorded (aside from the aforementioned keyboard bullshit), but it's probably their strongest, catchiest songs paired with the most appropriate production style they've ever used. There's only 8 songs on here, but each one is filler-free and memorable, including the itty-bitty "Idiot", which clocks in at around 25 seconds. Jovial anthems like "Die Today", "Heroin In NYC", and "Your Child Is Dead" all feature some really catchy, poppy melodies unfitting of such gutwrenching themes, but it's never overdone or reeks too strongly of irony. Even though it's obvious these guys have a sense of humor regarding their craft, their songs still contain huge doses of catharsis and emotional resonance, which makes me wonder if any of their lyrics reflect on the writers' personal experience. Maybe I'm just falling for their schtick, but my favorite track almost always gets my eyes to well up; the closing track, "Jackie Lee" slows things down, and is based around one really strong melody that permeates the entire song. I can't exactly relate to the song's lyrics, but they stand out for some reason:

Drunk in a waiting room, I can't fall asleep
Without knowing how you're gonna to be.
Think about what you have,
It isn't that bad.
Sometimes it's so hard to see.

High in a waiting room, I can't fall asleep.
It's not funny how things came to me.
Thought about what you had, it wasn't half bad.
Sometimes it's so hard to see.

My time spent in hospitals makes it seem impossible
To ever walk back through that door.
You've got so much more to do.
I'd trade it all with you.
I'm just a drug addict and nothing more.

The rest of their material is strong, too, especially the EPs featured on their All Things Move Towards Their End compilation, but this is definitely my most listened. I think it's been re-pressed recently, so you know the drill:
Download it here
then
Buy it here

Descendents - Milo Goes To College

Time for another block on text on the internet! Yeah! So this is an incredibly obvious choice for a punk-centric blog revolving around my favorites or now and then, but hey, let me once again remind you (myself) that this blog's "followers" include two staff members out of three. Also one of them is me so I'm alerted when another staff member writes something. The first Descendents LP, Milo Goes To College, is considered a classic by pretty much everyone, cemented in the annals of musical history for furthering the developing of both pop punk and the melodic hardcore non-scene a few bounds, leaps, etc. Basically, the band took the speed of hardcore and melded it with some left-field pop sensibilities, packed it full of wonderfully melodic basslines, and developed the whole nerd-chic bands would pillage and forcibly conform to for years on end. Oh, and then the band members formed ALL at some point, who were super-saccharine, girl-crazy, nerd-pandering, garbage that took all the thematic elements of the Descendents and applied them to dull, generic, pop-punk.

I guess I could technically stop there without any repercussions. Those are usually all the things I cover in these reviews reduced to a single paragraph. BUT ANYWAY, this album is the 1982 followup to the ridiculously brief and comical Fat EP, and features 15 crucial tracks in something like 23 or 24 minutes. I don't remember. Either way, it was here that the band began to buckle down and write more focused, less nonsensical material - basically this is to Fat what Dirty Rotten LP is to Dealing With It! - all presented in a super energetic, not-quite-polished aggression with tons of memorable hooks, especially in the vocals and bass. Milo's lyrics are mostly a continuum of the angst/youth/girls triad found on the preceding EP, but now injected with lots of non-satirical misogyny and really naive-sounding sexism. Fortunately I discovered (and loved) this album a few years before any semblance of social awareness set in, because currently it's difficult to ignore such gross quips as "take a girl out, she won't fuck you, after you just bought her a gram of coke" and "the only fish I smell are on the deck of my boat". I guess they both might require some elaboration. Eh, just listen to the album and you'll get it. Pretty much every song is along the whimsical lines of "women are whores and cockteases", though.

http://www.mediafire.com/?flsgh0snt2z

I don't know if I made this sound like a worthwhile album, but it is. It's really incredibly good. The thing about the Descendents, though, is that they have a lot of really, really, really fucking awful songs, too. In fact, I made a list:

10.) Hurtin' Crue
9.) Parents
8.) No FB
7.) All-O-Gistics
6.) Van
5.) Enjoy
4.) Blast Off
3.) Sour Grapes
2.) Orgofart
1.) The Days Are Blood

They're in order of least-worst to worst-worst, by the way. And "Parents" is really catchy and has a great bass line, it's just incredibly stupid. Maybe I shouldn't have included it. After this album, though, the band got less and less good until they ended up with their good and bad songs completely distilled and polarized into either trait on the ALL album. Basically, if it's played in a pop-punk vein, it's good; if it's played in horrendous, sub-Black Flag style, it's... yeah, bad.

Lemuria - The First Collection

I have a friend who's probably a dozen times more qualified to review this collection and talk about this band. I'm probably gonna ask her to do an article on them in the future, but right now the spirit has actually hit me and I need to write something before I return to indifference.

Lemuria is a pop-punk/indie pop 3-piece from upstate New Yawk with dual male and female vocals I discovered right before their full length Get Better dropped in 2008. My mp3 player was in the shitter at the time (since I dropped it in a stream mid-song due to an apparent lack of foresight), and I was forced to download a couple albums onto my trendy phone to keep me company on the obnoxiously loud bus rides to and from campus. Due to the wonder of the internet, I've had a semi-difficult time giving each album I've DOWNLOADED ILLEGALLY the proper amount of time to sink in. Considering how little space was available on my phone, I figured this would be a good opportunity to pile in some stuff I wasn't entirely familiar with to see if sparks would fly upon repeat listens. While it turns out that Tuesday's Freewheelin' is nauseatingly corny, Latterman's Turn Up The Punk We'll Be Singing is almost like injecting distilled boredom into your eardrums, and the pre-Wilhelm Scream band Smackin' Isaiah realized the full extent of their shittiness early on, Lemuria's First Collection somehow didn't wear itself out over the course of two months and actually became a favorite of mine.

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this documents everything the band did from their formation in 2004 up to the last release before their 2008 LP. Usually, I would break this into individual releases to cover here, but therein lies the appeal of this compilation: every EP this is comprised of is relatively short, so I get the feeling that a lot of love and care went into perfecting every song on here; fortunately, though, the production on each effort is similar enough that it doesn't feel like you're listening to a mash of different records in a row, but one cohesive piece with a lot of variation and multiple recording sessions' worth of energy. As I said before, Lemuria's vocal front is XX/XY, with guitarist Sheena typically taking the lead and sounding like a less erratic version of Alison Mosshart circa-Discount; drummer Alex is more along the lines of Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, pulling a monotone slur that complements the more crisp leads. I've heard the non-term "progressive punk" bandied around this band's camp recently, and it took me a while to even guess what the fuck it's supposed to be in reference to. People know that "progressive rock" was an approximation of classical music using rock instruments, right? "Progressive" isn't a catchall term for bands that happen to use weird time signatures sometimes. That said, Lemuria do have very few songs with the traditional pop structuring (and do utilize some odd timings in most of their riffs) but isn't it easier to call them a pop-punk/indie band that isn't generic? Either way, almost every track on here is great (except "The Origamists". I really don't like that song.), and as I said before, the fact that this is pieced together from a bunch of different studio sessions gives it a lot of diversity, both in mood and sound without ever straying too far away from what makes them sound so appealing (except "The Origamists", again).

I was going to post a video for "Bristles And Whiskers", which is my favorite song of theirs, but unfortunately the only semi-passable video youtube had featured Ben Barnett of Kind Of Like Spitting sharing the vocals for some reason. "In A World Of Ghosts" is probably one of their most accessible songs, so it seems like a good alternative:


Download here
then
Buy here

Their two LPs that preceded this are good, too (one of which *technically* hasn't been released yet), but something about them just doesn't appeal to me as much as this does. I don't even think it's sentiment, for once. Oh, and go see them live if you get the chance. My friend Tess and I got to see them play a gross little acoustically-horrific, capacity-breached basement a month ago, and they still ended up being a lot of fun.