Review: Dear Landlord - Dream Homes

Dream Homes by Illinois own Dear Landlord was one of last years breakout punk rock albums if such a thing is possible. Since it's now more than a year old, it seemed like as good a time as any for me to talk about it and I can tell you, it's worth the hype. This is pitch-perfect punk rock. And by that I mean not super 'pitch-perfect.' Songs are short (fifteen songs in under thirty minutes) and fast, vocals are gruff and there's choruses aplenty. These guys deserve to have their names included with the No Idea army of big name, rough voiced pop-punk bands.

Lyrically however, I think Dear Landlord is a little different from their sub-genre-ed brethren. There's a lot more personal politics on this album than you would expect. By personal I mean, there's no song calling for an end to the Iraq war, there are songs about being poor, looked down on and generally living in less than ideal conditions (hence the title). Track 2, 'Rosa' is about a drug addict, 'Park Bench' is about being homeless, and the penultimate track 'Begging for Tips' reminds us that in some ways we are all living on the generosity of the wealthy. 'Door Mat' is an ode to an abused woman that would go nicely alongside 'Lean on Sheena' on a mix of catchy songs about domestic violence. It would be a mistake though, to think that this album is a downer or preachy. Content aside, this album is catchy as hell. More than half the songs have the kind of chorus that you can sing along to the second time it comes around in the song. The opener 'I Live in Hell' is a perfect example of this, as are 'Lake Ontario' and 'Landlocked' whose singalong chorus saves it from kind of a wordy verse.

Musically, there isn't a whole lot of diversity on the album. It's not bad like the Marked Men album I reviewed, you can tell which songs are which, but you aren't going to hear any arrangements, there aren't acoustic breaks. The tempos range from fast (any of them) to blisteringly fast ('Three to the Beach') and the vocals go from throaty singing to gruff yelling. With most of the songs coming in at under 2:30 there isn't a lot of room for jamming. The sole exception to this is the last track, 'A World We Never Made,' that eats the last 4+ minutes of the album and ends with a long instrumental stretch that finds the band working its way back to the riff from 'Landlocked.' It's almost the perfecting ending for the album and might hint at more that they have to offer in future. Final thought: I bet this band is amazing live.

Dear Landlord - I Live In Hell

Dear Landlord - Lake Ontario

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Dear Landlord

Review: iwrestledabearonce - It's All Happening

When I was in high school and I first heard the band The Distillers, I was very fond to getting people to listen to 'The Hunger' and asking what gender they thought the lead singer was. People would invariably answer "A dude?" and I would laugh that they had been taken in by Brody Dalle's guttural vocals. I tell you this because iwrestledabearonce's singer Krysta Cameron makes Dalle sound a touch castrati. This girl is brutal. Those of you who attended Clark University's Noise Day event last year will be put in mind of Providence's Tinsel Teeth.

Let me be frank; if you don't like hardcore music, iwrestledabearonce's first full length It's All Happening is not going to be the album that opens that particular horizon for you. This album is gnarly. In places it's more grindcore than anything else and by that I mean many people will find it un-listenable. That said, there's some interesting stuff to be had here. The band is clearly drawing from some seriously diverse influences. Witness the country break in "You Ain't No Family" complete with fiddle and slide guitar, the dance beats in "See You In Shell" or the techno beats sprinkled liberally throughout the album. As throaty and terrifying as Cameron's screaming is, her voice is surprisingly nice when not being shredded and she does her fair share of clean vocals on a majority of songs. Other than that, this album is decently standard hardcore fare. There's some guitar pyrotechnics, there's a crushing breakdown or two. The songs all have clever offbeat names that are quirky pop culture references ("Tastes Like Kevin Bacon") and there are little moments of ambient music here and there as is currently the style in some areas of hardcore. If I had to pick a single band to share fans with this I would probably say Horse the Band. Or Band of Horses because they're basically the same thing (but seriously, only that first one).

Mp3's removed upon request.



iwrestledabearonce - Tastes Like Kevin Bacon ****

iwrestledabearonce - You Ain't No Family***

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iwrestledabearonce

Review: Austin Lucas - Sombody Loves You

So this is what might best be described as a bluegrass album and I don't know a whole lot about bluegrass, and while my ignorance has never deterred me before, I'm probably going to keep this relatively short. Somebody Loves You is the newest album from Austin Lucas who skyrocketed to the attention of the world (sort of) with his participation on the Revival Tour alongside such greats as Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music), Tim Barry (Avail), Ben Nichols (Lucero) and Tom Gabel (some other band).

As for the music on the album, as I said before, I'm not the biggest fan of bluegrass-y type music, but even I think it's pretty great. Austin can play guitar pretty well, he's got a strong voice that he can really work and he writes a decent song musically and lyrically. That's pretty much all you need isn't it? It doesn't hurt that his daddy used to work with Alison Krauss and helped him with making the album. Some of these songs are kinda slow and don't stand out to me as much but about half of them are real barn-burners. I've never really understood quite what a barn-burner was besides a rural arsonist. I imagine it's the sort of song that makes you spill your mason jar of moonshine over the lantern flame causing a conflagration. If that is the case than I think you'll find my usage was correct. Anyway, there's not much more I can say about this album that Austin himself, and his big ernest face can't tell you better. Here he is in the video for what I think is far and away the best song on the album, if not in his catalogue:



Austin Lucas - Somebody Loves You

Austin Lucas - Go West

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Austin Lucas

Review: Cursive - Mama, I'm Swollen

I was not looking forward to when this album came up in my list of things to review. Not reviewing it was not an option: Cursive is one of my favorite bands of all time. Actually, that's what made it so hard. I keep holding out hope that I just don't understand this album, that one day I'll play it and just realize the genius that I just know Tim Kasher packed it full of. Unfortunately, that day hasn't come yet and so with a heavy heart I have to admit, I think this is probably the weakest Cursive offering to date.

That said, this isn't a terrible album. Almost any of the songs on it would be fine down-tempo numbers on a different Cursive album surround by bigger, screamier, more dynamic songs. They wouldn't be our favorites and when we talked about the album and someone mentioned them we'd be like "oh yeah, that song's on there too," but they wouldn't be bad. The problem with Mama, I'm Swollen (I hadn't actually gotten around to saying that yet had I?), is that it's a whole album of what I would hesitate to call 'filler tracks' but that's really the only word for them. When I talk to other people about Cursive we usually agree that as Tim Kasher cleaned his life up, the songs took a hit. Where the hard drinking, self-loathing Tim cranked out the truly awesome Domestica and The Ugly Organ, it was a much better situated Tim that gave us Happy Hollow and I would hazard a downright stable guy who wrote Mama. He can't even get it up to rage about religion anymore. Sure the album takes a few swings here and there ('We're Going to Hell' and 'Mama, I'm Satan') but they lack the teeth and claws of even an interlude from back in the old days.

The album opens with a rocker (it's only rocker, really) "In The Now" and then promptly hits its high points in "From the Hips" and "I Couldn't Love You." The latter is probably the closest this album gets to form with Kasher screwing up his face to scream "I couldn't love you anymooooooooore" (if you don't believe me just watch the video). After these three, the album just kind of coasts for seven tracks. Again, these are all fine songs. They're Cursive songs, they just aren't the best we've seen. And you know what? That's fine. Tim, if you're out there, you been through some stuff and it seems like you're coming out of it now and if that means you have to take your foot off the gas pedal a little bit then go for it, you've earned it. You don't have to prove anything anymore. This album is fine, I'll just mix in 'The Great Decay' 'The Recluse' and 'Tall tales' when I need a jolt. But for those of you who have never listened to Cursive, please don't make this the first album you listen to.

And now, the videos for the album (there were three. anyone else think that's a little excessive?)







Cursive - In The Now
Cursive - I Couldn't Love You

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Cursive

A couple cool items to combat the weather

It has been toasty here in Worcester, and I mean hot like you read about. You what else is hot though? Some of the sweet news items I have to share, all of which are courtesy of the fine, fine, unknowing individuals over at punk news. The first and most awesome of these is the news that Desaparecidos, the greatest thing that Conor Oberst has ever done with his life, will be re-uniting. They are playing a benefit show to raise funds to combat a Nebraska cities new policy which is similar to AZ new (and now under litigation!) immigration law. We can only hope that the boys will remember how great it feels to play together and maybe think about a whole tour or even -gasp- a follow-up record to Read Music/Speak Spanish. This would be awesome, since with Hot Water Music alive and kicking my short list of bands I'd like to see re-form gets down to Jawbreaker, Refused and the boys from Omaha.

Speaking of Refused, here's a fun video of Dennis Lyxzen from Refused performing a Minor Threat cover with Rise Against (Brian Baker from Bad Religion is there too, but I'm less excited for him). Doesn't Dennis look like he's having fun? Running around getting to be hardcore again after the colossal snore-fest that is International Noise Conspiracy?



I had a third thing, but now I don't remember what it is. Hot Water Music is recording a 7" with Bouncing Souls, but I got less excited about that when I heard that they were just going to be covering each other.

Desaparecidos - Happiest Place On Earth

Minor Threat - Minor Threat

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Desaparecidos
Minor Threat

Review: Marked Men - Ghosts

The first time I ever heard of the Denton Texas punk band Marked Men, was when Mitch Clem (internet comic artist extraordinaire) put their album "Fix My Brain" at number one on his list of best albums of 2006. Now, three years later, the boys are back with 2009's Ghosts, which weighs in at 15 tracks and not a single one touching 3 minutes in length. I know I harp on short songs a lot in reviews, but I think Shakespeare said it best when he wrote in Hamlet "As brevity is the soul of punk rock, keep thy hardcore and pop-punk songs under 3 and a half minutes." I might be remembering that wrong put the point is that gettin' it done in a timely fashion is for the most part a virtue I look for in bands like this and Marked Men deliver in spades. Listen to this baby end to end and you barely sacrifice a half-hour of your day.

As for actual substance, it's pretty standard, better-than-average pop-punk (lotta hyphens there). The guitars are angular, distorted and played with down-strokes; the drummer's mostly doing high-hat and snare; the vocals are a little rough both in recording quality and delivery and everything is moving along at a pretty good clip. The band apparently has a policy of not publishing lyrics which as a lyrics-oriented kind of guy, I found a little annoying, especially when I turned to write about the album (grrrrr). Combine this with the vocal quality and you could go a decent amount of listens and never have a clue what you were hearing. Besides the lack of published lyrics, my only complaint would be that the guitar sound doesn't change much song-to-song which means that a lot of the songs kind of seem indistinguishable from each other. It's all good, but at times a song will end and the next will start and you think "didn't I just hear this?"

The title track and Red Light Rumors seem to me to be the two songs that really stand out as different from the others but even that is only a slight shift. While all the songs are pretty good, the best two (as opposed to the two that stand out) are Ditch and Stay Away. Strangely enough, those two are the ones I'm going to post.

Marked Men - Ditch

Marked Men - Stay Away

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Marked Men

Review: Franz Nicolay - Major General

I regard Franz Nicolay's musical career with mixed feelings. He rose to prominence as a member of World/Inferno Friendship Society, a band I'm hard pressed to find any redeeming value to (and yes, I have witnessed their vaunted live show. They were assholes.) before going on to be the keyboardist and and back up singer in The Hold Steady. I like the Hold Steady and I really liked what he brought to them (it's his rough voiced- back up on "Stuck Between Stations") . Now he has announced that he's going out on tour with Against Me! as their keyboardist. The very fact that they need a keyboardist is proof that they are no longer a band to be excited about joining (he says, like he wouldn't take that call). The reason I outline my feelings on Franz's career path is that I have similar mixed feelings about his first solo effort 2009's Major General. There are some great songs on this album, and some friggin' terrible ones.

The album kicks off with what is easily the best song on the whole thing: "Jeff Penalty" and song about a man who was briefly the lead singer of the Dead Kennedys. This is a great song, it rocks, has dynamics, a great little group part and it builds like a sonofabitch. It also has a pretty nifty video:


Sadly, after "Penalty," this little wagon starts rolling down hill and never really climbs that high again. The second song, "Hey Dad" isn't bad but doesn't really hit enough anywhere for my taste. He transitions to piano for the next two, the unfortunate "World/Inferno Vs. The End Of The Evening" (suprise, suprise) and the piano-tango of "Dead Sailors." Despite its slow start, 'Sailors' has some gas in its tank and pulls it out at the last minute with a huge chorus. The promise of a simliar payoff is a lie which keeps you going to the dragging, insomnia-banishing, guitar and clarinet jazz of "Do We Not Live In Dreams?" Seriously, it's not good, but like a typical season for J D Drew, after you wade through the waist high mediocrity, there's a couple of hot streaks in there someplace. This particular streak opens with the crashing drums of "Confessions Of An Ineffective Casanova" and follows that up with a pretty solid chorus (this is where a better reviewer would quote lyrics but I'm too lazy). Nicolay doesn't take his foot off the gas and charges straight into the pretty great "Quiet Where I Lie" before nose diving into the godawful "Note on a Subway Wall". This swing and miss is the first in a trio of songs that leave me thinking maybe this should have been an Ep.

The last three songs are a microcosm of the entire album. Uptempo rocker "This World Is An Open Door" is just great. The next is an acceptable down-tempo number (possibly the best slow song on the album) and then the last song is a convincing argument for the album being just one song shorter. Don't get me wrong, this album has some really good songs on it, but it also has some serious fat that needs trimming. You could honestly lose about half this album and you'd be left with a really great product. It's fine as it is now, but you have to do some digging before you hit the gold.

Franz Nicolay - Jeff Penalty

Franz Nicolay - Confessions Of An Ineffective Casanova

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Franz Nicolay