New Music Monday: August 15, 2016

Hey there. It’s been awhile. I wonder what’s been going on in the world of musiOH DEAR GOD, NO…

of Montreal – Innocence Reaches 
I’ve spent 10 or 15 years completely ignoring this band and had no idea that this is what they sounded like. It’s sort of what I imagine plays in the heads of Nickelback fans when you mention the words “indie pop” to them. It comes off as a bit trite and self-consciously avant to me. Some great sounds, but all in service of a song that I don’t find all that compelling. Also, these people aren’t really from Montreal, which is bullshit. I’ll check in with them again in another 10 or 15 years.

JEFF The Brotherhood – Zone
There’s some fun to be had here with time-signatures, and the fuzzed-out/chopped up guitar work speaks to me. Overall, though, this is fairly tuneless and is hampered by an incredibly limited turn by the vocalist. Sounds vaguely high school Battle of the Bands-ish. I know a guy named Jeff. He’s alright.

Rae Sremmurd – SremmLife 2
Ermergerd. It’s Rae Sremmurd. I missed out on the first SremmLife, but I’m sure it was an album to sremember. This is hyper-minimalist, bass-heavy music that is delivered with a low-energy drawl. The lyrics are about something or other. Honestly, I’m not going to pretend to understand this. The bass sounds pretty great. This Youtube comment kind of says it all:

Indeed, niknatural. Indeed.

Thee Oh Sees – A Weird Exits
While I’m not thrilled by the high-pitched, over-processed, delay-soaked vocals, I’m a big fan of the high-pitched, over-processed, delay-soaked guitar solos. If this song were 90 seconds long and just the instrumental spazz-out bits, I would be pretty into it. This group feels in line with the current crop of retro-rockers that I don’t have much of an affinity for. Upon listening to another track, I’m struck by the same feeling of “this is just so-so”, until the guitar lead comes in and the track becomes totally bonkers. This band might be fun to see live. I’m not stuck on these recorded performances.

Blind Pilot – And Then Like Lions
Two seconds into this I was sure that it wasn’t for me. This guy’s voice is murder to my ears. It’s a shame, because I like the mellotron/synth work happening underneath and I’m not even sure that the song is all that terrible. I just can’t stand to hear a guy trying so hard to sound like he has feelings. I don’t buy a single one of his emotions.

But he’s blind, I guess. So I’m not going to be too hard on him.

Young The Giant – Home of the Strange
The recording engineers on this album are very talented. They’ve made a song that I think is bad sound very well produced. Doesn’t it seem like there are too many “indie” or “alternative” bands doing this kind of semi-dancey, mega-slick pop-rock? Three hyphenated words in a row! I’m a great writer. I’m like the Young The Giant of writing blogs.

Hockey Dad – Boronia
Great band name. The music is about what you’d expect. Very straightforward rock n’ roll with a pop edge. It’s entirely unremarkable, but not the worst song I’ve heard today. The lyrics could be a parody of terrible rock-dude lyrics, though. Maybe they wrote it when they were 12 or something. There ought to be a law against ever using a line with the words “in my bed” followed by a line with the words “in my head” in a song. You may as well just be Bryan Adams at that point.

Ausmuteants – Band of the Future
The future sounds a lot like a bunch of punk music that already happened decades ago. That said, I like a bunch of punk music that happened decades ago. This is reasonably fun and snotty-sounding. The song is also short, which is a bonus. I’m probably one of the only people I know that would like this, but that could be because I’m so smart that I can appreciate future music and other people are dumb.

The Pineapple Thief – Your Wilderness
I’ve said it before – Nothing makes lyrics seem dumber than parsing out every line into a dramatically animated lyrics video. Holy shit, these lyrics. This is worth listening to for around halfway through the song when the drummer enters and starts fucking around the way you remember the drummer from your high school jazz band doing. When he starts hitting the teeny cymbals, I nearly lost it. The back half of this song is pretty ridiculous and amusing, but I can’t imagine wanting to listen to any more of this record.

Katie Dey – Flood Network
This is weird and noisy and innovative and very interesting. The few tracks that I’ve heard off of this album so far actually sound like new music to me. It’s abrasively recorded and won’t be for everyone, but the songs have a canny sense of melody and play with time signature and structure in ways that tickle me. I’m going to listen to the whole record on Bandcamp right now. You should too:

Dylan Scott – Dylan Scott
I refuse to believe that this song, this album and – indeed – this human being are not actually just jokes concocted in a board room by some really hilarious executives. They are really good jokes. Seriously. Listen to this fucking thing. It is the best.