Discount - Half Fiction

First off, I'm really happy I haven't been the only one posting this month, so thanks to all the staff guys who've been contributing. I've been kind of scatterbrained/preoccupied with things that everyone reading this would find utterly un-compelling. Oh! But I did score a ticket to the way sold-out Paint It Black/Punch/Iron Chic/Vaccine show in Brooklyn, so ain't nuthin' gunna break mah' stride. Especially not that local Laura Stevenson & The Cans/Paul Baribeau show. Not that I feared it would, but you understand comedic phrasing, right?

I figure since I introduced Discount here with their final album, I may as well start heading in reverse chronological order to continuing heaping on the praise. Today I'm covering their second, and most well-loved album, Half Fiction. I already described the band's sound in the last review, but if you don't feel like backtracking, they played really hooky, high quality pop-punk rooted in the classic East Bay sound with the amazing, exuberant vocals of Alison Mosshart at the helm. On their third album, Crash Diagnostic, they mashed that sound together with post-hardcore (and created one of my favorite albums ever) but this one fits the first descriptor to a tee/"t"/whatever. It's about as straight forward as their preceding album, but everything has been smoothed out thanks to a much cleaner production, with the songs having become much more vocal driven (with Alison's voice brought to the forefront where it belongs), more dynamics at play, and the band as a whole sounding just as youthful and honest as they used to, but more practiced and comfortable.
I feel the "honest" remark in that sentence needs to be emphasized: Discount circa-Half Fiction sound like a band who accidentally became something amazing while pursuing something simple and personal, like playing the music they wanted to hear or simply trying to express themselves. As far as my travels have taken me, the band is one of the few that conveys almost no self-awareness, with absolutely no punk posturing or seemingly any intent beyond what's presented in the material. I know it sounds like a case of trying to use an intangible impression as a selling point, but I think it's clear when you give it a listen.

As far as the actual songs go, this is flawless from start to finish. And in case that didn't sound like hyperbole enough, I'd probably call this one of the best pop-punk albums ever. It doesn't tread into experimental territory like Crash Diagnostic, and aside the comparatively subdued "Toxic Home", this is pure, energetic, often surprisingly pretty pop-punk without a single weak moment all the way through. I don't know if I can really list highlights considering how consistent the album is both in terms of style and quality, but I'd probably list "Torn Jeans", "Keith", "The Usual Bad", and "Dreamt This Was A Castle" as my favorites. None of them have quite the emotional impact on me a lot of the songs on Crash Diagnostic (or challenge the position of "Math Won't Miss You" as the best Discount song), but that's more of an issue of sentimental value than anything you should be concerned about.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ngyymmwgvx6

If you're new to the genre, or just looking for the greats, this album is pretty much mandatory; up there with Crimpshrine's Duct Tape Soup, The Broadways' Broken Star, Dillinger Four's Midwestern Songs Of The Americas, Apocalypse Hoboken's Easy Instructions For Complex Machinery, and pretty much everything J Church ever did.
I mentioned this in the Crash Diagnostic review, but it bears repeating: if you dig Discount and Alison Mosshart's vocals, that's criteria enough not to bother checking out The Kills or The Dead Weather. If I wasn't informed that Alison was involved with either unit, I would've had no clue - and she provides most of the fucking vocals! Don't bother unless super-affected, incredibly dull, yet critically lauded pseudo-garage rock bullshit is up your alley.

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.