2024 in Review

It’s been yet another strange year, dominated once again by health concerns. I didn’t see many shows (and only one that I bothered to review), but I performed live four times with Transchor Plänterwald 2022 and three times with Soltero, and we released a new recording of “A True Indication”! As has apparently become tradition, here are my favorite releases of 2024:

• Cup Collector - On the Wing - A half hour of warm, soothing analogue synth drones. CC also released the wonderfully titled A Memory Warped by Time, which is darker, more experimental, and fairly challenging.
• The Cure - Songs of a Lost World - Their first album of consequence since Bloodflowers in 2000, uncoincidentally also coproduced with Paul Corkett. It is unmistakably The Cure, and sounds very much in the same vein as Bloodflowers, but hits dark nerves that they never quite reached before. Robert Smith may bemoan aging a little too melodramatically, but his voice is still in good form (excepting a few screechy stretches) and his trademark guitar riffs and 6-string bass leads are as impressive as ever. I can’t say the same for Reeves Gabrels’ guitar when it strays too far from texture into misplaced flashy solos, but that’s made up for by Simon Gallup’s reverberant bass, which underpins and drives the whole album. They should be proud to have put out such a good album after so many years!
• Dummy - Free Energy - delightful, playful, experimental, psychedelic shoegaze.
• Elephant Stone - Back into the Dream - Charmingly throwback psychedelia with sitar and tabla. The lyrics about depression, politics, and the pandemic really strike a chord with me. This band just keeps getting better with time.
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor - No Title As of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead - Given the defeated, grieving title, the weeping guitars and sparse, sad strokes of violin should come as no surprise. It’s perhaps their album with the heaviest emotional tone yet, which is saying something. There are still moments of uplifting celebration, but perhaps fewer than most Godspeed albums.
• International Music - Endless Rüttenscheid - Deceptively simple melancholic folk rock with subtle German wit and a hint of Krautrock. I love the prominent bass and manifold harmonies. The wild psychedelia of the aptly-named “Kraut” is a jam.
• Lightning Bug - No Paradise - The shoegaze is pretty much gone, but their production has gotten even more elaborate. I might prefer the lushness of A Color of the Sky (2021), but there are more moods and atmospheres here, and even if many are dark, there is still a playfulness and sense of hope. The vocal prowess, rhythmic variation, and mixing have leveled up as well.
• Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk - Post-vaporwave psychedelic pop with social commentary about self-image, self-improvement, and interfacing with the internet. The points of view are hard to follow but the vibe utterly captures a slice of modern life.
• Memorials - Memorial Waterslides - Verity Susman of Electrelane and Matthew Simms of post-2010 Wire continue the experimentation that both their biggest bands are known for, with an emphasis on tape loops and historical literary women. The album title was inspired by the Susan Sontag Memorial Water Slide at the Austin Dyke March, which in 2023 was apparently based at Cheer Up Charlie’s, my favorite bar and SXSW venue when I lived in Austin.
• Chappell Roan - “Good Luck, Babe!” - A banger about comphet!? I came late to the party but it’s rare that pop music speaks to me so well. I swear it’s not just that she’s from Missouri and wore a Kansas City sweatshirt in the “California” video.
• Nala Sinephro - Endlessness - Apparently I like ambient jazz? The arrangements are consistently impressive, but the synths are what really do it for me.
• St. Vincent - All Born Screaming - I think I liked Daddy’s Home (2021) more than everyone else, but this is even better. It’s closer to her career bests (Strange Mercy, 2011, and St. Vincent, 2014), but more eclectic and emotionally authentic. Clark runs through genres like a box of chocolates. I particularly like the funk and electronic soundscapes, and the Nine Inch Nails bits speak to some deep part of my soul that I too easily forget about.

Here are a few honorable mentions:

• Einstürzende Neubauten - Rampen (apm: alien pop music) - Alien, certainly. Pop, not so much. After 44 years of improvising on stage, they finally dedicated a whole album to it. It reminds me more than a little of Jewels (2007), which had a similarly conceptual, improvisational foundation. It suffers the same faults of lacking melody, structure, and dynamics, but it does certainly contain multitudes of mildly unsettling vibes. (It is still Neubauten, after all.) Yet the weird rhythmic spaces that the songs inhabit under Blixa Bargeld’s bemused but subtle social commentary still draw me in. “Gesundbrunnen” appears to be a meditation on gender from a non-binary lens. I apparently caught an early version of “Before I Go” when I saw them at the Konzerthaus in 2022. (The Rampe that they played at the Columbiahalle didn’t make the cut.)
• Khruangbin - A La Sala - This feels like a conscious throwback to the simpler, more open, mostly instrumental, pure vibe-setting style of their early singles and first album (The Universe Smiles Upon You, 2015). I still enjoy the work they’ve done in the meantime, but I was slowly losing interest and worried they would give up on what made them special. This isn’t quite transcendent, but it is quite pleasant and still manages a few subtle surprises.
• Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven - The punkiest songs are too aggro for me, but the rest are a superb balance of raw power, careful production, and emotional vulnerability and ambiguity.
• Ride - Interplay - On par with their other reunion-era albums, and full of broadly painted feelings about the pandemic and (presumably British) politics. It’s nonetheless rather upbeat.

And here a few other 2024 releases that I have opinions about:

• Can - Live in Paris 1973 - This circulated as a bootleg for years, and although this official release boasts a better quality than what was previously available, it’s still not exactly high fidelity. It still ends abruptly and prematurely. These five jams are sometimes based on known songs, but it sounds 90% improvised. Damo Suzuki’s words are almost entirely incoherent, but that’s not unusual. It’s cool for hardcore fans, but certainly not for casual listening. They also released a couple live albums from 1977, and while both are pleasantly funky, they don’t reach the same heights.
• The Smile - Wall of Eyes and Cutouts - Very moody, often unsettling, and minimally exciting. The only release comes from the big crashing moment of “Bending Hectic”. Wall of Eyes feels a bit by the numbers for Yorke and Greenwood, and while Cutouts might be slightly better, neither is as good as A Light for Attracting Attention (2022). These albums take the band further away from Radiohead and more into Yorke’s familiar solo territory, albeit with Jonny’s orchestrations and better drumming. I’ve realized that I’m bored of that. I didn’t even bother buying Cutouts after my relative disappointment with Wall of Eyes.

In other news, I finally found an Element of Crime album that I enjoy without restriction: Romantik from 2001. It’s a perfect balance of their best parts (down-to-earth poetic texts, beautiful arrangements of an indeterminate era, Sven Regener’s baritone at its most melodic) with hardly a trace of their early roughness or later predictability. “Alle vier Minuten” is the best ode to the Berliner U-Bahn that I could ever ask for.

2020 in Review

In this strange year without much live music, my writing here has obviously suffered. I still saw a few shows early in the year, and one during the early autumn lull, but nothing big. Last year was a record number of concerts and reviews for me, and I had no hope of matching that this year. However, I released my first solo song in 9 years and an album from my old band in Austin, and I’m about to release some more music, too. But like any other year, I’ve spent a ton of time listening to music, and like I did last year, I’ll share a few of my favorite releases from 2020.

Here they are, in alphabetical order:

• The Asteroid No.4 - Northern Songs - The obvious Beatles references are well-done, but so are the Isn’t Anything-era My Bloody Valentine bits. This is a wonderful psych rock adventure.
• Cremant Ding Dong - assorted singles - Great lyrics, great videos, great music, prominent cute cat. Hard to beat that.
• Cup Collector - Cordum Hominum Renovatio and Morning Cofee and Tea - The former might be CC’s best electric guitar-based drone yet, and the latter is a successful experiment with layers of nylon-string guitar. I hope it’s not absurd to say that Cup Collector has become my favorite artist to listen to while doing lockdown yoga.
• Elephant Stone - Hollow - Is this an album about the end of the world released before the pandemic reached full fury? Doesn’t matter, the music is rich and the storytelling is prescient. This is my favorite Elephant Stone album yet. The more explicitly pandemic-related “American Dream” single is also good, albeit a bit precious.
• Holy Wave - Interloper - Their live shows were always great, and now they finally have an album that equals them. They’ve grown far from their garage roots and have embraced a wealth of new sounds, naturally mostly psychedelic in nature. The lyrics are a huge leap, too: “Maybe Then I Can Cry” hit me hard.
• Hum - Inlet - Is this another album about the world ending, again presumably written and recorded before the pandemic? This album sounds huge and simultaneously vibrant. It’s their best yet.
• Ian Fisher - American Standards - This adopted Austrian sure seems enamored with Nashville, but the music is tellingly much wider in scope than mainstream country or even the classic 70s pop hinted at in “AAA Station”. The lyrics are even more powerful and self-aware than Ian’s already-high standard. I can read the excellent title track five or six different ways, and I love that I don’t know which is right.
• Melange & Jacco Gardner - “Ashokh” - It’s such a shame they only recorded this one song and that the band broke up. It’s a superb, spritely, groovy jam on par with their wondrous Viento Bravo from 2017.
• Monta at Odds - Zen Diagram and A Great Conjunction EPs - Both are majestic kosmische space rock from my hometown of Kansas City, and the former successfully covers a great Tones on Tail song.
• Nation of Language - Introduction, Presence - Is this pure 80s nostalgia? Yes, probably. But is it a crime to want to sound like Simple Minds or OMD? Certainly not!
• Pia Fraus - Empty Parks - This sounds like an Estonian blend of Slowdive (especially their self-titled album from 2017), Stereolab, and Loveless, and obviously I rather enjoy it. I wish it was a bit punchier, but sometimes soft and warm is nice, too.

A few additional honorable mentions:

• Khruangbin - Mordechai - Khruangbin seem incapable of making bad music, but this album is merely pleasant. It actually sounds more derivative than their previous albums, and some parts are a touch too silly. Their collaborative Texas Sun EP with Leon Bridges from earlier in the year was also an interesting aside, but where Bridges’ vocals shone, the lyrics didn’t.
• Mietminderung - Tatsächliche Verhältnisse EP - Their tagline of “rock music in bureaucratically-inflected German generally about interpersonal relationships” really undersells them, but it hits a certain type of dry German humor on the head. The vocals are indeed a bit stiff, but the music is more adventurous. This is the last and best of the three EPs they’ve released this year.
• Neil Young - Homegrown - The Archives Volume II collection is almost too big to handle, but this forgotten record is a condensed version of the best of the unreleased content. It’s not exactly great and I understand why he shelved it. Then again, it’s also idiosyncratic and emotionally complex, so it’s a shame that it took 46 years to release it. (I’m almost considering buying the box set anyway just for the wonderful CSNY versions of “Human Highway”, though.)
• Perlee - Slow Creature EP - It starts slow and doesn’t really pick up much at all, but “Charlie’s Song” is quite good. The early-era Beach House vibes are heavy, but the harmonies are a nice extra touch.

And while I don’t like being rude, there were a few high-ish profile releases that I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by. Here are those:

• Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles in Allem - I love Neubauten, but not this album. It lacks the creative energy and unpredictable spark of their finest works. It’s weirdly restrained and dour. I like the requiem for Rosa Luxemburg, though.
• Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension - This seems like a retread of The Age of Adz, but with less variation. Some of the lyrics are nice, but I don’t really get it.
• Other Lives - For Their Love - I really like the idea of this band, and I still think Tamer Animals is excellent, but this one sounds a bit stale. Much like Rituals from 2015, it sounds huge and cavernous, yet lacks anything memorable.

Lastly, there were again some excellent albums from (relatively) recent years that I missed before but picked up this year. Here are some of the best:

• Lush - Blind Spot EP (2016) - Their only new music after reuniting, and it matches their classic sound in all the right ways.
• Monta at Odds - Argentum Dreams (2018) - More great space rock with lovely 80s synth sounds, but also featuring Lawrence artist Your Friend!
• Tocotronic - K.O.O.K. (1999) - Tocotronic took a while to grow on me. The lyrics are subtle and yet evocative. Musically, I think this is their album that’s most closely tuned to my tastes.

With any luck, live music will be a viable option again at some point in 2021!

South by Southwest Music Festival 2016, Day 3, Part 2

Event: South by Southwest Music Festival, Day 3: Levitation Showcase

Venue: Hotel Vegas (outside stage)
Location: Austin, Texas
Date: 17 March 2016

Introduction: As previously mentioned, this was a long day, so I've split it into two reviews. The previous post covers the various day parties I attended, and this one covers the Levitation showcase at Hotel Vegas. I've come to really treasure the ability of the people who run Levitation to curate the bands they sponsor. The lineup of this year's Levitation Festival might look rather populist, but they still find lots of great bands. Last year's Levitation SXSW showcase was so impressive that it was an easy choice to return this year.

I got through the gate with what I thought was just a few minutes to spare before Elephant Stone started. However, things were running obviously late, and Vaadat Charigim was just starting. I didn't complain, except that almost every band of the evening was forced to play a truncated set. Anyway, Vaadat Charaigim are a noisy, shoegazing power trio from Tel Aviv, Israel. Their preferred sound was a thick, heavy, solid wash of guitar. It was actually rather nice to get lost in, but the lack of variation was disappointing. Since they sung in Hebrew, there was no additional thread for me to follow in the lyrics, although to be fair, meaningful lyrics are rarely important for shoegazers.

[Vaadat Charigim.]

After a long break came Yonatan Gat, another rock trio originally from Israel. Their gimmick is to set up right in the middle of the audience and let the crowd encircle them as they flail about. The music was purely instrumental and focused primarily on the improvisational guitar of the frontman. The drummer was wild and intense, but I wasn't even sure there was a bassist for the first half of the set. I liked the energy level and the creative, tense, spindly guitar runs, but I wasn't up for fighting through the crowd, and I suffered from a lack of a view. It got a bit tiring to just listen when I really wanted to see.

Elephant Stone finally went on and immediately delivered some great psychedelic grooves. The frontman alternated between bass, keyboard, and sitar, while two other members handled guitars and keyboards (and some bass) and a fourth drummed. Alex Maas of The Black Angels joined them on vocals for one song as well. The mix was frustratingly terrible, but I still enjoyed what I could hear. The bass in particular was smooth and skillful, and when the sitar was audible, it added a great dimension to the sound. The music was just barely danceable, as if it begged to soar and be heard in a more pure setting.

[Elephant Stone with Alex Maas.]

After another long break, Noura Mint Seymali of Mauritania began playing. It was a little unclear where the soundcheck stopped and the set began, but their first extended piece featured the frontwoman playing an ardin, a type of harp, while seated. Her husband accompanied on guitar, and a bassist and drummer completed the band. I was disappointed that Seymali didn't continue with the ardin after the first song, but the guitarist increased the intensity of his playing to fill in the void. Between her vocals and his blistering guitar, they made for quite a powerful, twisting, contrapuntal musical experience. By the end, they were doing some kind of funky blues, but they were cut short by the limitations of their set length.

[Noura Mint Seymali, playing the ardin.]

The appropriate successor to Seymali was Bombino, who I've seen wield his guitar like a blazing hammer once before. The Tuareg bandleader had his own share of sound problems, including his guitar dropping out a few times, but did his best to bring an incredibly funky and infinitely groovy set. The bassist could be a star in his own right, and his solo was unbelievably good. Bombino even gave the drummer and rhythm guitarist their own turns at brief solos that were also no disappointment. The band was tight and the blistering guitar of Bombino was as mesmerizing as ever.

[Bombino.]

Finally, the main reason I was there: Faust, the storied, pseudo-mythical, avant-garde, German band from the early 70s. This particular configuration of the band features just two of the original five or six members: Jean-Hervé Péron on bass, vocals, and samples, and Werner "Zappi" Diermaier on drums. (Hans Joachim Irmler fronts another version.) They were joined by French synthesists Éric Débris (of Métal Urbain fame) and Maxime Manac'h (although the latter was absent for the first half of the set). After an infuriatingly long soundcheck, they fumbled into a song mostly consisting of repetitive vocal samples and aimless drumming. Péron would occasionally shout-sing seemingly disconnected phrases into the mic or veer into a flurry of rhythmic bass work. These trends continued for the remainder of the set. Most songs were apparently unstructured, and whatever message may have been intended was unclear. However, knowing this band's roots in dada, improvisation, and sonic experimentation, they might be more interested in the method than the result. The only attempt made to appeal to the audience was the inclusion of the refrain to the classic "Mamie Is Blue", but even that sounded little like the original other than sharing the same words. Their obstinate artistic sensibility and general joie de vivre was somewhat endearing, but I felt like I was missing the joke.

Here's my best guess at the setlist:

1. French National Anthem

2. Dada Hierarchy (written by Jean-Marie Drot?)

3. Fresh Air

4. Mamie Is Blue

5. Listen to the Fish

[Faust.]

I was exhausted but still hoped to see one more band: Electric Eye, the Bergen, Norway psych band I'd seen on the inside stage of Hotel Vegas two years prior. They were an absolute highlight of my first SXSW and I still enjoy their debut record. This time, they were playing inside on the Volstead Lounge stage, but as things were not running late on the inside, I only caught the last ten minutes of the their set, which included part of a new song and all of "Tangerine". They were going strong but it was over all too soon.

Scores:

Vaadat Charigim: C+

Yonatan Gat: B-

Elephant Stone: B+

Noura Mint Seymali: B-

Bombino: A-

Faust: C