Journalism

THE NEW YORK KNICKS ROSTER SET TO SONGS ON PEARL JAM’S DARK MATTER | 2024-04-25

What if each member on the core 2023-2024 New York Knicks line-up entering the NBA Playoffs was a song on Pearl Jam’s latest full length Dark Matter? With box score stats and roster standings updated as of the second game of the First Round best-of seven series against the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference (NYK up 2-0), that is exactly what is going to happen here. To get our ducks in a row, the Seattle grunge rock legends’s 12th studio effort was released earlier this month on Republic Records, and comes four years after their 2020 mixed bag Gigaton. All cuts on the project were produced by new-gen West Coast rock historian and Eddie Vedder-worshipper Andrew Watt, clocking in at just shy of 50 minutes on new fierce, ironclad, and robust material.

Before we delve into the sequencing—a quick monition on the draft method used to select the New York Knicks players. We’d be remiss if we didn’t start by acknowledging the perhaps painful omission of 25-year-old center Jericho Sims (#45) from the tracklist. In our operationalization’s defense, the album has only got eleven tracks, so a cursory season playtime extraction coupled with a lower musical match make him the proverbial twelfth man cut from this rock band team. For similar, yet less controversial reasons, further Knicks bench players on the official roster list this season, such as Jacob Toppin (#00), Duane Washington Jr (#1), Charlie Brown Jr (#4), Daquan Jeffries (#8), Shake Milton (#13), Mamadi Diakite (#21), are also excluded from being considered for this shortlist.

1. Scared of Fear — Bojan Bogdanović (#44) | Credit his naturally alarmed glance, or conversely, the gregarious approach he must’ve adopted to break through in the world’s top basketball league hailing from God-forsaken Croatia, but the 35-year-old small forward veteran feels like the best place to start with the PJ record. Slowly coming into this own after the February trade from the Detroit Pistons, he has so far undoubtedly been the more impactful of the two partners at the Law Firm of Burks & Bogdanović. The track’s full-throttle percussions and piercing guitars act as a fitting metaphor for his full-court hustle and shooting prowess, while the sonic plateau culled in the song’s bridge stands to represent the ebbs and flows experienced with the Knicks jersey hitherto. Still, the robust runtime at four minutes and a half nonetheless denotes Bogey’s stoic and earnest style of play on the floor.

2. React, Respond — Miles ‘Deuce’ McBride (#2) | “Don’t let the sky hook beat you to submission / Maybe it’s the price of price of our admission / Ain’t no fucking roses to our condition / Turn this anger into nuclear fission, yeah, baby, baby“. What better set of lyrics to describe the improbable ascent of what is now officially the floor general of the Knicks’s second unit? After a somewhat underwhelming first half of the season—bottlenecked by a wealth of players trumping him in coach Tom Thibodeau’s formation rankings—something unlocked in earnest around the NBA All-Star break for the former West Virginia Mountaineers youngster. McBride is arguably a top three ball handler on the team, and as a nod to the opening song stanza, has never let his smaller size be a limiting factor in his NBA hooping shenanigans. He was ready to seize his chance, and that has led him to become the second pure playmaking guard choice in the line-up—right after none other than breakout team star Jalen Brunson.

3. Wreckage — OG Anunoby (#8) | Befitting his first name shortening acronym, this Englishman in New York plays with the grace, poise, and wisdom of a multi-decade seasoned statesman, belying his mid-twenties age registry. A star trade in the winter transfer market season across the whole league, the Knickerbockers hold a stupidly impactful 20-3 winning record when Anunoby is on the floor (Playoff games included). A wreckage was both the athletic juncture he joined the Manhattan team in—with key starting players Robinson and Randle reported out for the rest of the season at the time—and the clinical picture of his right elbow during that fearful February-March stint, where he himself had to be sidelined, met by most Knicks fan’s exorcisms. The levity, emotion, and lightness with which he plays mirror the track’s sunny and carefree spirit, while the wholesome flair on the lyrical front as well as a soaring and catchy refrain recalling his vastly underrated jams at the rim.

4. Dark Matter — Julius Randle (#30) | For all intents and purposes, the greatest and most popular player on the team. The titular album track is not only its lead single, but its defining and equalizing driving force too. Congruently to its musical twin, Randle is the only element on the list that truly transcends the current team’s zeitgeist, as a three-time NBA All-Star and a two-time All-NBA player—on top being the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award in 2021. Now, scientific method sticklers might be quick to point out how his being out since the end of January due to his right shoulder dislocation should make him ineligible for this tracklist. Yet let us be serious, no Knicks roster list to speak of can afford to neglect its marquee player—especially during a statement season averaging 24 points a game, a whooping five more than his career average of 19. It’s plain and simple: the cut slaps, goes hard, and defines Dark Matter, so does (a healthy) Julius Randle.

5. Won’t Tell — Mitchell Robinson (#23) | The comic relief. Track number five on the album is the most uplifting, its most solar and joyous. Then again, do not get it twisted, Pearl Jam is stuffed with negative space and melancholy, even in its brighter moments. The song’s chorus motif chanting “You can find me here / Waiting for your message to come” seems like an indirect homage to Mitchell’s sweet spot stomping ground under the rim, while his unofficial role as the team’s prankster and meme master lends even more credence to him matching the record’s lightheartedness. We can’t skip the part where we acknowledge the cosmic balance found in this being Dark Matter‘s fifth track, and the traditional center role on a basketball court being labeled as ‘the five’. If you don’t read any more track-to-player pairings past this point, let this be proof this parallelism is worth humoring.

6. Upper Hand — Isaiah Hartenstein (#55) |The team’s tireless workhorse, he who played all 82 regular season games last year—reflected by an ambitious, expansive, and triumphant 6-minute opus. Heralded as way more than a luxury reserve for starting center Mitchell Robinson, Hartenstein kept the Knicks afloat during that critical February-March period, where they didn’t seem able to catch a break in their own town—alas, only to capitulate himself for a brief period under his own Achilles trials and tribulations. Much like the tune, Isaiah can be a smidge inconsistent at times, yet he never falters in blood, sweat, and tears, and most times he does manage to prevail and come out on top. As his signature defensive move, turn to this recent savage in-motion block of Tyrese Maxey’s surefire layup, denying the 76ers a certified win with only seconds left on the game clock during game 2 of the ongoing Playoff series.

7. Waiting for Stevie — Alec Burks (#18) | This one is rough. The second Knicks coming of 32-year-old shooting guard Alec Burks this winter was not supposed to turn out this way. After a somewhat average start in January and February—with sizable minutes as part of coach Thib’s end of 1st and end of 3rd quarter second unit rotation—the AWOL partner of the Law Firm of Burks & Bogdanović gradually faded into the team’s anonymous background, with a measly 30 minutes of combined playtime on the floor during the last ten Knicks games to date, and an even more dreadful 5 total points scored during the same timespan, for bad measure. Swap the “Stevie” for “Alec” on the similarly underwhelming, contrived, and rough around the edges album track’s title, and that tells you everything you need to know here. Mediocrity-fest.

8. Running — Josh Hart (#3) | A clear case for when a one-word song name fits a player like a glove. Josh Hart has low-key been the true blue-collar revelation of this New York Knicks season. The definition of an industrious all-around role player, this guy’s regularly playing 40+ minutes each game, and not batting an eye. Eddie Vedder’s opening verse on the cut, “Got me running, got me running, but the race, it never ends / Got me running, or else I’m done in / You got me coming as you’re going and the chase, it never ends / I’ll be running ’til the second coming” legit sounds like it was written about the versatile 29-year-old Maryland native. Hands down the best rebounding guard of the whole NBA, and its most ruthless birdwatchers’s murderer, Josh Hart epitomizes all the little actions and plays that don’t quite end up in the box score, but that make teams win games, and (hopefully) leagues. The track is a two-minute incendiary blister that cuts throats and claws listeners by their ears, not without splashing specks of melody and introspection. The h(e)art and soul of the project.

9. Something Special — Precious Achiuwa (#5) | The quintessential providential player. Nigerian-American Precious Achiuwa was there when no one else was. A ductile player and homegrown New Yorker—via Miami and Toronto—he is able to seamlessly play each of the five positions on the floor. In those few and far-in between games where Robinson, Randle, Anunoby, and Hartenstein were all down, he rose from the ashes and stood up for the city, carrying the whole quintet’s presence under the basket on his shoulders. Arguably the most underrated overachiever on this Knicks version, it was his outstanding locked-in performance during those cold winter months that made it possible for fans to quickly forgive and forget RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley for jumping ship during the trade window—not exactly the easiest kicks to fill. As better and stronger songs come back to relevance on the tracklist, Achiuwa finds himself retreating to warming up the bench a bit more—albeit never forgotten. Not the most skilled, talented, or dexterous player on the list, but boy is he something special.

10. Got to Give — Donte DiVincenzo (#0) | The Knicks sniper with a diesel engine. Big Ragu went from borderline disappointing summer trade wannabe-highlight to fixture shooting guard starter on the 2nd seed team of the Easter Conference in around six months. Whilst at that, he saw fit to set the all-time franchise record for three-pointers in a single regular season with 283 (joining Stephen Curry, James Harden, Klay Thompson, Paul George, Buddy Hield and Luka Doncic as the only players to make 280+ in a season). Coinciding with the tune’s crescendo build, DiVo successfully learned how to make himself indispensable, much like this back-end album highlight. Catchy, agreeable, and so damn trademark Knicks; together with the aforementioned Hart and Jalen Brunson he represents that Villanova Wildcats college basketball core that is daring the Mecca of Basketball to dream big this year. “I’ll be the last one standing / I’ll be the first to forgive, yeah“—if one is to trust Pearl Jam, the sniper’s aim is sharper than ever.

11. Setting Sun — Jalen Brunson (#11) | Last, but not least. Song number eleven for #11. Yes, Randle might be the New York Knicks poster child, but Brunson is their prodigal son. The indisputable leader and top scorer on this team, thanks to his formidable performances and sensational contributions to the Knicks once-in-a-generation season record, Jalen was named an All-Star Player this past February. Like his sonic counterpart, he is beautiful to watch, universally impactful, and the undeniably constituent part of the whole. The guy is averaging 29 points and 7 assists per game this season, for God’s sake. We couldn’t imagine Dark Matter without this wall-to-wall acoustic enchantment coda, and so can’t we the New York Knicks without his 27-year-old point guard. Without being a prisoner of the moment, Jalen Brunson is poetry in motion. Jalen Brunson was born to play basketball.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time. And good luck to the Knicks in the Playoffs this time around.

AV

A PRELIMINARY INTRODUCTION TO: GURU’S JAZZMATAZZ SERIES | 2024-03-23

Essaying to introduce audiences to a body of work whose first of six installments debuted more than thirty years ago might seem like an oxymoron to most. Yet, considering the multi-hyphenate and still to this day vastly under-appreciated career of hip-hop MC extraordinaire Keith Edward Elam—aka Guru, a backronym for Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal—we claim this framework to be based and useful to some. The exceptionally talented American recording artist, producer, and actor, whose career was tragically cut short in 2010, is best known for his long-lasting impact as one half of superstar alt-rap duo Gang Starr, accompanied by DJ Premier on decks and production duties. Fewer people have the Boston, MA-native’s solo career trajectory on their radar though, particularly as it pertains to his contributions as the host of the unsung collaborative live jazz-rap project series dubbed Jazzmatazz. In his own words: “an experimental fusion of hip-hop and live jazz”.

While on a break in-between Gang Starr albums in 1993, the East Coast rapper saw fit to temporarily diverge from his storied trademark partnership with DJ Premier and venture into collaborations with both old-school and new-school postmod jazz stylists. The first 21-track chapter result of the series, Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1: An Experimental Fusion of Hip-Hop and Jazz, saw the light of day that same year, and featured notable collaborations with none other than Donald Byrd, N’Dea Davenport, MC Solaar as well as Roy Ayers. While overall positively received at the time, the exploit reveals vast amounts of comfortable smoothness beyond what meets the eye; that both aged incredibly well, and belied Guru’s otherwise streetwise toughness.

To be clear, the sampling and interpolation of jazz segments into rap joints was nothing new to Gang Starr or even other prominent hip-hop collectives at the time. However, the way Guru executes that marriage throughout the six-episode Jazzmatazz series results in much more intricate, slamming, and gently seductive records than their street-anchored ones. Doubling down on his successful series opener, Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 2: The New Reality followed suit a few years later (1995), with as much as an hour and fifteen minutes of new material, counting an expanded stylistic horizon inclusive of Chaka Khan, Ramsey Lewis, Branford Marsalis and Jamiroquai amongst its ranks. The project ended up commercially outperforming its predecessor, peaking at number 71 on the Billboard 200 chart (Vol. 1 had to make do with number 94) and number 16 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums list, lending marketable credibility to Guru’s trailblazing vision at the time.

Amazingly, Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 3: Streetsoul—the following offering in the run arriving five years later—did even better across its sixteen cuts than the previous two albums did. Departing even more drastically from the intelligent hardcore lessons set to incidental jazz on the first two chapters, Vol. 3 embraced more neo-soul and R&B-centric aesthetics, recruiting both genres heavyweights such as Angie Stone, Bilal, Craig David, Donell Jones, and Erykah Badu. Notwithstanding a perhaps more lukewarm critical reception from the reviewing intelligentsia, the album peaked at #32 and #8 on the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts, respectively. Evidently, there existed at the time an audience appetite and marketability for the previously unchartered territory of direct taping live instrumentation to underscore sixteen bars over sixteen bars, aptly spat by a generationally impactful and revered MC.

Initially inspired to pursue his vision by a trip to Europe in the late 1980s, during which his eyes opened to the so-called ‘fusion scene’ where hip-hop breakbeats got grafted onto live jazz sonic mantels, Guru was all too aware that his ongoing undertakings with Gang Starr were loaded with too much pretext and expectation for them to be the right conduits for Jazzmatazz. So, leaning into a softer edge, he fully committed to experimentation under his own name instead. The East Coast hip-hop staple left no stone unturned in pledging allegiance to such cause, ranging from the more obvious instrumental layer all the way to his lyrical content. By his own admission, verses and flows on his Jazzmatazz series are more laidback, more easy listening, although still message-oriented. Moreover, he had no small chip on his shoulder—one grappling with the trials and tribulations that came with the record industry of the time.

Lamenting how the lack of radio hit records with Gang Starr was less attributable to the music’s inherent palatability than to label executives’ shortsighted understanding of what the art stood for, the wordsmith actively sought alliance from jazz and its cats on account of what he saw as a shared cultural curse. Both genres are art forms that are highly relevant and intrinsic to black culture and experience, and they both deal with real emotions. As the rapper learned of the different ways the grandparental record industry tampered and warped jazz in an attempt to increase its commercial appetite in the past, he immediately saw the value in uniting in order to speak truth to power. In a poetic twist of fate (and perhaps not coincidentally), major label Virgin Records, that had earmarked his Jazzmatazz endeavors hitherto, stopped supporting Guru’s recorded affairs after Vol. 3. So he went ahead and founded his own imprint in response; 7 Grand Records.

Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 4: The Hip Hop Jazz Messenger: Back to the Future—his sixth solo studio LP to date (in-between Vol. 3 and 4., he dropped the standalone projects Baldhead Slick & da Click and Version 7.0: The Street Scriptures)—took a whole other seven years to come to fruition, only to clock in at just shy of an hour of runtime as it was released by 7 Grand Records in 2007. Officially billed as the final installment in the Jazzmatazz canon event, the full length was entirely produced by Solar, and features guest appearances from Blackalicious, Bobby Valentino, Slum Village, Common, and Damian Marley amongst others. However, in a move that put even Frank Ocean‘s 2016 millennium label deal finessing to shame, Guru and 7 Grand saw fit to surprise drop a raw companion mixtape on the same 31st July Vol. 4 came out: Guru’s Jazzmatazz: The Timebomb Back to the Future Mixtape. So much for making a statement of intent directed at the majors.

Ironically, the industrious approach ended up backfiring, turning the right heads in the major label circuit. A mere year later, on the heels of Guru’s growing legacy and influence both within and outside of his Gang Starr lane, dearly departed Virgin Records kind of proved his original point entirely by throwing together a puffy, rushed, and haphazard Jazzmatazz greatest hits compilation. It’s too bad that owing to the EMI/Universal Music Group controlling stake of the body of work’s front-end, the best-of collection only featured 18 cuts, limited to the first three Jazzmatazz volumes. Not exactly the faithful rearview mirror doing justice to the whole creative vision on Guru’s part. Only two years later, and not without having released his swan song solo LP Guru 8.0: Lost and Found, Keith Edward Elam passed away from myeloma at the premature age of 48. Although his carnal manifestation might’ve moved on, his visionary impact is forever. Amidst a genre-less and experimentation-prone contemporary musical zeitgeist, Guru’s Jazzmatazz was both prescient and incisive—as Nate Patrin so eloquently outlines for Stereogum:

Jazzmatazz isn’t nearly as outlandish an idea as its creators might have thought at the time. That seems to matter less than the fact it still bumps, though, and slotted between the two Gang Starr classics that bookend it, it captures one of the all-time greatest MCs at a creative peak. Maybe the more important takeaway is this: it’s always worth celebrating when hip-hop finds a way to do the job of preservation that the conservative purists never really could do alone. And the future belongs to those who know where to take the past.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time. RIP Guru.

AV

Below listed and displayed are Guru’s Jazzmatazz volumes (1993-2008):

  • Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1: An Experimental Fusion of Hip-Hop and Jazz (Chrysalis, 1993)
  • Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 2: The New Reality (Chrysalis, 1995)
  • Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 3: Streetsoul (Virgin Records, 2000)
  • Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 4: The Hip Hop Jazz Messenger: Back to the Future (7 Grand Records, 2007)
  • Guru’s Jazzmatazz: The Timebomb Back to the Future Mixtape (7 Grand Records, 2007)
  • The Best of Guru’s Jazzmatazz (Virgin Records, 2008)

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): PUDDLE OF MUDD TIER LIST | 2020-07-26

PoM Tier List

Support Puddle of Mudd:

http://puddleofmudd.com
https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/puddle-of-mudd/109754
https://www.instagram.com/puddleofmudd1
https://twitter.com/puddleofmudd

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): THE 4TH JULY TRACK REVIEW—AVA, DOMINIC FIKE, GEORGE CLANTON & NICK HEXUM | 2020-07-04

It’s the feel-good heat of the summer and the laureate poet of Willow Lane has a new site, so it only felt right to come on here and blabber about a string of singles that recently saw the light of day and fiercely stand to represent lead promo anticipation for hyped up full length projects from a couple of acts on the rise (both the record label and figuratively, as in starting to climb their career ladder showing promising signs of imminent explosion and audience adoption). We thought we’d collate and scrutinise a gauntlet of songs that caught and left our attention over the past month or so, worthy of critical appraisal by way of short, straightforward, passionate, biased opinions. Sonically, it’s everything but the kitchen sink, illustrating works of art ranging from the anthemic arena rock of California alternative band Angels & Airwaves (aka AVA) all the way to the indie R&B synth-pop sensibilities of singer/songwriter Dominic Fike, as well as the quintessential electronic retro nostalgic vaporwave orchestrations of the stylistic meetings of the minds between Virginia-native George Clanton and 311’s Nick Hexum.

When Tom DeLonge is not busy figuring out astrobiology and breaking life in space via his para-governmental scientific think tank venture To The Stars… Academy, his principal day job for the last fifteen years or so—notwithstanding his erratic and dysfunctional blink-182 reunions in-between—has consisted in masterminding, fronting, and furthering the realm for multi-media douchy artistic project AVA, whose meaningful musical output in the 2010s had to be significantly kneecapped by his extracurricular commitments both inside and outside the music sphere. So much so that aside from a couple lukewarmly received EPs, dating sometime during the decade’s back-end, their sole, true, proper front-to-back album and relative promotional cycle was 2014’s The Dream Walker—one no less exclusively written by Tom with the only help of multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Ilan Rubin, sans founding member and fellow guitarist David Kennedy (who, fair enough, was probably very preoccupied running and nurturing his entrepreneurial stick via his artisan and handcrafted coffee brand in San Diego).

2019 brought along rosey eventualities for AVA fans though, as the band not only saw fit to officially reunite with Mr Kennedy, but also enlisted prominent and reputable bass guitar virtuoso Matthew Rubano (of Taking Back Sunday and All-American Rejects fame) for a host of live shows in the USA spanning the fall of that same year. On the heels of a new partnership with BMG Rights-owned underground indie imprint Rise Records, and in conjunction with the mini tour announcement which came in April 2019, Tom and co. unveiled two new crisp and synth-laden exploits, poised to tease and preview an upcoming album slated presumably for some time in the near future. First was the carefree, sticky, and electro-poppy “Rebel Girl“, followed up shortly during the summer by the washed out and tongue-in-cheek “Kiss & Tell“, two unequivocal indications of a band’s heightened flirt with catchier melodies and emotive radio-friendliness, perhaps stemming from residual occupational hazards from many of the project members’ past budding experiences in the upper echelons of the American pop-punk canon.

So next thing we know 2020 rolls along, and with it various irreversible ecological cataclysms, an unprecedented public health crisis, and existential insurrectionary racial protests plaguing virtually the whole Western hemisphere—these not just completely jeopardising the music industry’s lifeblood and sustainability, but also obviously putting gargantuan brakes on any creative process’ progression due to take place during this year’s first cursed half. Nonetheless, some time in April amidst peak pandemic mode, AVA chose to reveal a third single in anticipation to its yet-to-be-announced sixth studio LP, coming in the shape of the four minute atmospheric stadium rock number “All That’s Left Is Love“. This cut strips back the abundant tapestries of electronic layering that so pronouncedly ornamented their first two singles in this series, in favour of a rawer and more organic six-string sonic funnelling coupled with unsurprisingly outstanding drumming from Rubin, throwing listeners back to some of the collective’s earlier efforts (as heard particularly on their debut LP We Don’t Need to Whisper). However, what causes the tune to not stick its landing, leaving much to be desired, is Tom and Rubin’s uninspired songwriting here—falling flat on a strident lack of structure and spotty vocal lines. Bottom line, the tune at the core of this song needs fixing and more TLC.

Queued up next in this track roundup review bonanza is the inaugural offering from American singer and ex-rapper Dominic Fike‘s highly-anticipated upcoming debut album, which shall to this day remain untitled (although not un-tracklisted). After singlehandedly spurring a multi-million record contract bidding war amongst major industry players off the back of his grassroots SoundCloud hype and the clout surrounding his later re-released indie rock project Don’t Forget About Me, Demos, before lending his creative and vocal imprint on the BROCKHAMPTON collective, and dropping a handful standalone singles during the course of last year, the 24-year-old Floridian seems finally ready to unearth his long awaited first outing on major label Columbia Records. An initial robust hint in this direction was the release of the dead-beat and hypnotic R&B bedroom jam “Chicken Tenders” on 26th June—a teasing slice of what the full blown out project might hold attached to a hazy, hallucinating, and playful music video. Granted, this thing is far from a stunner or even a significant step up from the pre-existing sublime songwriting skills and instrumental proficiency he showcased on previous outputs, but it does hold inherent replay value and rocks an irresistibly exhilarating refrain, just mildly quenching our thirst while we await for the full album to drop: “Chicken tenders in my hotel, yeah / Christina’s in my bed watchin’ TV shows / When she hit the remote with her legs shakin’, that’s good love makin’ / Watchin’ wherever my head facin’, it’s for bugs, baby“.

Moving on from there—it’s time for vaporwave’s own self-declared David Bowie George Clanton, who turned the underground electronic music scene on its head in 2018 as he gave birth to his synthwave retro-nostalgia-soaked magnum opus Slide and legit started to turn heads in the industry, flirting with influential tastemakers, more mainstream circles, and even going as far as launching the first vaporwave-approved music festival in the world, 100% ElectroniCON. Ever the indie Internet underdog kid and founder of influential Bandcamp-generation full-service record label 100% Electronica, Clanton is also known by the monikers Mirror Kisses and ESPRIT 空想, under which he has been dishing out slightly different yet extremely adjacent stripes of cloudy electronic musings since the late Noughties. Meanwhile, late last year the Richmond, VA-native surprise-announced an exclusive creative collaboration with USA reggae-rock band 311’s singer and guitarist Nick Hexum—incidentally and by his own admission one of Clanton’s biggest musical influences. Initially, this resulted in the carelessly euphoric and angelic double single “Crash Pad / King for A Day“, featuring songwriting and production from Clanton hugging gnarly staccato deliveries by Hexum. This winning authored formula got preserved for a following streak of new singles in relatively fast succession, including the sublimely divine dream-state extravaganza of “Under Your Window“, the colder, insipid and lacklustre “Out of the Blue“, as well as a five-track EP dubbed Aurora Summer, unveiled at the end of May and bundling all previously debuted tracks plus the inclusion of the crunchy and gratifying synthetic moods of the self-titled opening piece.

Next thing we know, “Aurora Summer” the song gets downgraded to B-side on yet another two-track single from the top dawg-duo titled “Topanga State of Mind“, released at the end of June in what appears to be the last sonic teaser before a full length 100% Electronica-earmarked project drops on 24th July. This last preview offering might be the most unapologetically ‘vaporwave-y’ of them all, soaked and drenched as it is in gelid reverbed synth menageries, slickly working in joyous guitar riffs whilst comfortably nestling some of the most reductive and simplistic sets of lyrics heard on a Clanton tape to date: “Sunburn in a place I’ve never been before / When I get out here I feel like I know the score / Why’s it gotta be people can’t unwind? / You can’t move along until you’re righting the wrong / Even if you just put it in a song / Topanga state of mind“. Admittedly, once the self-titled debut comes out later this month, there won’t be much left to the listeners’ imagination, considering that a beefy six out of nine projected songs on the LP have already been unchained in some form or another over the span of the last ten months. Yet, it is always a joy and never a chore to re-delve into Clanton’s otherworldly and ontological auditory journeys—and while Hexum’s overproduced and mid-range-adoring singing is an acquired taste, arguably best left to this one-off collaborative effort, at this point the genius can’t be put back in the bottle.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ANGELS & AIRWAVES

ALL THAT’S LEFT IS LOVE

2020, Rise Records

https://www.angelsandairwaves.com

AVA_All That's Left

DOMINIC FIKE

CHICKEN TENDERS

2020, Columbia Records

https://dominicfike.com

Dom Fike_Chicken

GEORGE CLANTON & NICK HEXUM

TOPANGA STATE OF MIND

2020, 100% Electronica

https://www.georgeclanton.com

George Clanton_Topanga

NOW ACCEPTING YOUR MUSIC FOR REVIEW | 2020-06-22

EMS has partnered with the good people over at Share PRO and is now officially accepting music submissions seeking unbiased critical appraisals—send us all your joints good and bad at this page and we will get back to you with a review in 48 hours.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

beverly-hills_shutterstock_dezeen_ss

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): FAKE NAMES – FAKE NAMES | 2020-05-21

Fortuity, spontaneity, and intuition might not be your conventional attributes used to portray the causational origin behind a significant new supergroup, let alone in nowadays’ hypernormalized times—yet as far as recent Epitaph Records-signees Fake Names are concerned, those might just be the utmost apt ones. The American-Swedish quartet is composed of gargantuan Washington D.C. punk rock mainstays Brian Baker (of Minor Threat and Bad Religion fame) and Michael Hampton (S.O.A., Embrace, One Last Wish), who linked up in 2016 initially simply to jam and mess around with one another, without any thought furthering anything more than that. However, after they swiftly realised that their songwriting process and output yield was appearing to be flowing way more smoothly than expected, they landed on the temptation of putting an actual outfit together. So that’s how they figured they’d call up radical Johnny Temple from Girls Against Boys and Soulside, whom they knew from elementary school, and by their own admission seamlessly fit right in with their passion for what the bassist refers to as “loud, angry, visceral music”. One practice and writing session led to another, and by the end of the year the new formed punk Mount Rushmore enlisted iconic Refused frontman Dennis Lyxzén on rage-fuelled vocal duties, thanks to a serendipitous run-in at the same year’s Riot Fest edition in Chicago.

After a socially-distanced record crafting gestation lasting several years, before social-distancing became trendy and en vogue, the foursome saw fit to drop their self-titled debut LP Fake Names on 8th May—their alias doubling as a nod to both 1987 American crime comedy picture Raising Arizona and the relentless proliferation of false news items and statements, equal courtesy of both FAANG and Donald Trump. Allegedly recorded analogue and directly to tape in New York, and enjoying a little help from their friends Geoff Sanoff (A Perfect Circle, Jawbox) on production and Matt Schulz on drums and percussions performances, Fake Names is a straight-as-an-arrow, concise, and cohesive collection of ten meat-and-potatoes numbers clocking in just shy of half an hour. The album and ancillary band announcement were previewed with the insurrectionary blistering sing-along anthem “Brick“, unveiled to the whole wide world at the end of March in the heat of a full C-19 pandemic mode. The galloping and unnerved stunner barely reaches two minutes of runtime, yet manages to pack in it voracious lyrical content (“Took down the names of everyone in my little red book / Here comes revenge for everything that you ever took / Shots heard all around the world yeah you’re gonna bleed / Ever seen the face of revolution? It looks like me“), fiery distorted guitar play, and an exhilaratingly catchy refrain.

This project’s lead single acquires an even heightened sense of purpose when taken in context with the full track listing, sequenced as it is at number four between album highlight “Being Them“—a superior slice of garage rock-meets-power pop where Lyxzén proves just how he hasn’t skipped a beat when it comes to penning infectious hooks since his early Refused days—and the pensive, reflective tormented croonerisms of “Darkest Days” (“Here we storm into the darkest times / Stole our souls then they drained our minds / An epidemic of stupidity / Let us here left us all to bleed“). Other distilled examples of tracks furthering the self-proclaimed and actively sought-after objective of producing and recording straight to tape, without the help of guitar pedals or any manipulated sound effects (Fake Names go as far as making sure every song on the LP is credited as having “No synthesizers”), are groovy and visceral album opener “All For Sale” as well as its correlated ostracised hymn for the disenfranchised “Heavy Feather“, belonging at number six to the crop of songs on the shorter end of the runtime spectrum.

While both Baker and Hampton provide luscious and compelling backing vocal harmonies to Lyxzén’s biting and soar laments pretty much throughout this whole thing—incidentally lending that poppier flair that so strongly trademarked their previous pivotal scene bands in spite of their abrasive hardcore wrapping—two understated standouts portraying such functional texturing are both “Driver” at number two on the tracklist and the badass “Weight“. The latter so wonderfully underlines the overbearing six-strings chemistry between the two punk legends. In fact, the undeniable magic spellbound by Baker and Hampton and their instrumental dialectic in the studio had the group very aware they were in the midst of witnessing something nothing short of historical—sitting on the decades of influential dues paid by the two guitarists in the American hardcore punk scene. So bassist Temple on this fellow bandmates’ collaboration: “It’s two lead guitar players who really know how to work together, with such an incredibly fluid meshing of their individual styles, and there’s never a moment where they’re competing over who’s playing the catchiest riff. I’ve never seen a hint of anything like that before”.

For better or worse, Fake Names’ conscious decision to refrain from any audio-enhancing techniques employment in delivering their no-frills true blue punk rock directness and pathos does show through in multiple occasions on the full length, at times rendering the overall mix a tad too thin and bare bone for its own good. This can be experienced on the nonetheless adult alternative radio-friendly penultimate cut “This Is Nothing“, doubtlessly one of the lulls on this thing alongside formulaic frenetic LP closer “Lost Cause“, showcasing some of Lyxzén’s most uninspired and underwhelming pen game in recent memory: “Some kind / Some kind of violence / Something sacred something pure / Some kind / Some kind of wonder / Everything we’ve waited for / Hold on / Gotta hold on to this lost cause“. At the same time, it’s not like this back-to-basics sonic mantra is anything new for punk rock, and while the broader heavier music canon struggles to desperately try to re-invent itself via foreign electronic sounds and aimless genre crossovers amidst a wrenching existential crisis that displaced it afar from influential mainstream conversations, to much of critics’ dismay, Fake Names rely on elevating the inherent importance of each tape-tracked instrument, demanding listeners to pay a little bit closer attention to the final master. Not a bad trick for someone conveying not-so-disguised leftist prophecies and anti-capitalist sermons set to enthralling distortion.

It’s exactly this matter-of-factly demeanour and the singular way this music carries itself throughout its 28 minutes that make Lyxzén and co stand out, not only when compared to the overboard and exaggerated fringes of alternative music acts hopelessly engaging in loudness wars today, but also when placed shoulder-to-shoulder with their insular punk rock genre contemporaries. To this end, the Swedish frontman is not shy in highlighting the complete absence of spin doctoring that has driven the band since their inception in 2016: “A lot of times with bands there’s an agenda, and people often have very different ideas on what you need to do to succeed. But with this band there’s no agenda at all: it’s a project completely driven by lust for the music, and the simple fact that we just truly love playing together”. Raging against late stage-capitalism and diminishing returns has never sounded so catchy.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

FAKE NAMES

FAKE NAMES

2020, Epitaph

http://epitaph.com/artists/fake-names

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A PRELIMINARY INTRODUCTION TO: BRIGITTE LAVERNE | 2020-04-26

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

BRIGITTE LAVERNE

DISCO CHINA

2019, Brigitte Laverne

https://www.instagram.com/brigittelaverne/

Disco China_BL

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): THE STROKES – THE NEW ABNORMAL | 2020-04-11

It’s Easter where I am so thank God for The Strokes. Thank God for The Strokes and their inexplicable ability to turn trivial guitar riffs I could myself come up with within a few minutes of impromptu jamming into transcendental modern rock classics, assuming a whole form way, way bigger than the mere sum of its parts. After having ventured into a fiercely written iteration of my unfiltered thoughts over their comeback single “At the Door” earlier this year—nota bene in a pre-C-word world—the writing was all over Jean-Michel Basquiat’s wall as far as reprising said cliffhanger with a full-fledged critical appraisal of the New York City Cops-band’s sixth studio album The New Abnormal is concerned—nota bene prophetically titled during a pre-C-word world. You can’t imagine the dash of existential relief that rushed through yours truly’s spine when the garage rock fivesome, alongside pretty much the rest of the global live entertainment industry, decided to cancel and/or postpone everything but their Good Friday slated street date for their first album in more than half a decade (under the influence).

Issued through a joint venture between frontman’s Julian Casablancas’ very own Cult Records label and major Sony Music’s gnarly RCA imprint; fully executive produced by DAW-heavyweight and Malibu radical chic extraordinaire Rick Rubin; overkilled by saturated hype and dead-on-arrival obstructionist skepticism by those who alighted at their sophomore Room on Fire career station—this album was not meant to experience a smooth and lean landing by design. Speaking of which, one cannot but grin and rejoice over the inordinate amounts of raised eyebrows and posh hand gusting that must have occurred among high-brow fine arts cultural milieus in their ivory towers upon realisation that a mainstream popular band managed to successfully license an iconic 1981 Basquiat canvas to serve as their cheapened digital album front cover. This fact alone would warrant a full unpacking dissection of wasted gentrified atelier simpaticos from Los Angeles to Tokyo and everywhere in between, but especially Paris.

Aside from the aforementioned hallucinating epic beaut “At the Door“, the USA East Coast indie boyz saw fit to preview their ominously titled studio full length via two more standalone singles. On 18th February, one week after their lead cut was unleashed, the group unveiled the ingeniously jolly and retro gated reverb-sounding “Bad Decisions” (attached to a larger-than-life music video), a supremely tongue-in-cheek and exaggeratedly self-aware 80s festive sing-a-long borrowing a switched-on interpolation of the supremely tongue-in-cheek and exaggeratedly self-aware 80s festive sing-a-long “Dancing With Myself” by English rock n roll crooner Billy Idol, by doing so awarding the latter handy songwriting credits as well as important claims on future mechanical and performing royalties stemming from the song’s playback. From there nearly another uneventful month had to pass before The Strokes dropped a final juicy and fun album taster with the squeaky and faux-futuristic hymn “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus“, albeit it ending up being the lukewarm lull of the trio of singles, with its superfluous meta-narrative coupled with what comes off as insincere indifference working slightly in its disfavour.

Notwithstanding the regular run-of-the-mill album roll out comprised of the above promo singles, with the band likely bound to surrender to its inevitable execution upon repeated RCA and brand sponsoring nudges, Julian, Albert, Fab, Nick, and Nik chose to pull out all the stops and celebrate The New Abnormal’s landing by throwing a self-described pirate radio show on YouTube. Named 5guys talking about things they know nothing about, at the time of writing the podcast sees its peak on episode two already, as the clique hilariously and dorkily sits through their own album listening party made up of only deep cuts over Zoom conference video calling. Just what we all wanted and needed from the biggest guitar band of the millennium. Deliberate or not, the decision to skip the premiere three songs “people already know” actually bears a wealth of merits in and of itself, for as with most records, their true lasting inherent value is really only found emerging by way of those sets of songs making up the structural yet paramount underbelly of any extended work of art. You ask Basquiat.

The swaggerish and airtightly sanitised album opener “The Adults Are Talking” might go toe to toe with 2006 First Impressions of Earth’s YOLO as their strongest and most showstopping intro tune since their trailblazing debut LP, elevated as it is by some of Julian’s sharpest and most defiant sets of lyrics to date (“They will blame us, crucify and shame us / We can’t help it if we are a problem / We are tryin’ hard to get your attention / I’m climbin’ up your wall“), and complete with a refreshing recording-fading into organic live Shangri-La studio bantering, wonderfully liaising with the following smooth downtempo slice and Angles-relative “Selfless” at number two on the nine-joint tracklist. A similar “keep it rolling, all-systems-go on air” live session feel permeates both the last ten seconds of the above mentioned “Bad Decisions” as well as big anthemic curtain puller “Ode to the Mets“, where Julian’s baritone crooning straying from his vocal flow and demanding “Drums, please, Fab” at 1:40 legit sounds just like history in the making. Apropos the latter discordant and angst-filled stunner, one can’t but notice a pretty uncanny melodic reminiscence between the song’s outro vocal and guitar licks and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)“—could it be that it flowing under the crediting radar might have anything to do with the share of royalties demanded by the Lennon & Ono estates?

Sequenced at number seven and eight on the tracklist respectively, both “Why Are Sundays So Depressing“—highlighted by its underwater and suffocated-gated guitar and vocal choruses interwoven by strident and scorching six-string passages throughout—and “Not The Same Anymore“—this being the best example of the band’s inexplicable ability to turn trivial guitar riffs I could myself come up with within a few minutes of impromptu jamming into transcendental modern rock classics—make for absolutely decent and regular Strokes jams, however it’s the six-minute aphrodisiac elixir “Eternal Summer” splitting the album in two that will have people talk in spades for ever. Not necessarily a standout in terms of runtime per se, considering that as much as more than half the songs on The New Abnormal pass the five-minute mark (!), this is arguably going to be the diamond in the rough that folks will look back to as distilling the unequivocal ultimate Strokes sound. Easily amongst the best tunes the group has ever written at its core, the track makes smart and creative use of a host of quintessential Strokes trademarks in order to elevate the final mix to a spine-chilling, mind-numbing washed out haze of pure spiritual alignment and bliss. This joint’s production is exactly why Rick Rubin is the highest paid producer in popular rock music.

Take the ostensibly innocuous ad-lib “This, and I never let it happen / Hey, yeah, oh / Hey, yeah, oh” grindingly cutting through the sea of layered electric guitars and synths just ten seconds into the song: it’s classic Strokes. Another case in point, consider Julian’s biting, blistering, and dreamy falsetto during the song’s verses and pre-choruses: it’s classic Strokes. Zero in on the menacing and distorted vocal shouts in its mystical refrain, “I can’t believe it / This is the eleventh hour / Psychedelic / Life is such a funny journey / Hercules, your silence is no longer needed / It’s just like make-believe“: it’s classic Strokes. Bask in the galloping and subaltern melodic hook of its subsequent post-chorus, “They got the remedy / But they won’t let it happen / Yeah, they got the remedy / But they won’t let it happen“: it’s classic Strokes. Relinquish your moral compass to the hypnotic, hammering, and distorted first half of the tune’s outro, before reaching unmediated enlightenment thanks to the solar chopped and screwed telephone fading at the tail end of six minutes that flow by in a way that’s hard to explain: it’s classic Strokes. The New Abnormal: it’s classic Strokes.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

THE STROKES

THE NEW ABNORMAL

2020, RCA Records

https://www.thestrokes.com

strokes-new abnormal

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A PRELIMINARY INTRODUCTION TO: BOB MOULD | 2020-03-15

Since every March is APIT season, I figured this is as good a time as any to shine additional ethereal light on Bob Mould. Not that the 59-year-old guitarist and singer/songwriter would ever need it, but recent haphazard revisiting of his immensely prolific catalogue—spanning two major influential rock outfits and thirteen LPs worth of solo work—made it abundantly clear and poignant that the gentleman stands as one of alternative rock’s most paramount, characteristic, and genre-defining frontmen in the last forty years. I understand how filing this piece under the Preliminary Introduction To rubric might sound like an abhorrent affront to many a punk rock brothers and sisters. I hear you all and I agree—Bob needs no delirious preliminary introduction. Yet again, it’s March after all and this the ideal excuse to indulge ourselves one more time in this amply revered author’s relatable melodic distortion of harshness…

Ask any self-respecting ex-scene kid who came up in the punk, underground, hardcore, or alternative artistic milieus in the 80s what Hüsker Dü meant to them and their peers and you’ll be graced with passionate tell-alls aplenty. The Malone, NY-native fronted punk rock outfit—completed by iconic drummer/singer Grant Hart and bassist Greg Norton—almost singlehandedly steered the cultural and critique agenda of alternative music’s heavier spectrum during the better part of the legendary decade, together with a few other core projects such as The Replacements, Minutemen, and Sonic Youth. With seminal and trailblazing concept albums such as the off-the-wall Zen Arcade (1984), as well as the quick succession of near-perfect gnarly full-length catchy ankle-biters New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig (both 1985), and Candy Apple Grey (1986), the St Paul, MN-band thunderously rose to the mount Rushmore of indie underground punk within the span of twelve months (despite ending up signing with prestigious major Warner Bros for the latter record).

Their songs had the intelligent melodic tapestry of The Beatles, but were performed with the intensity, sound, and ferocity of The Ramones. The following year’s Warehouse: Songs and Stories turned out to be the trio’s final studio album and de facto fulfilment of their fat major label deal contract, with Hüsker Dü dissolving in the wake of the tour in its support, allegedly due to creative differences between Bob and Grant Hart, exacerbated by the drummer’s drug use at the time. Bob certainly didn’t rest on his laurels though, and within the span of a year from the band’s break-up saw fit to put out his first, highly-anticipated solo album in 1989, coming in the shape of the almost wholly reverb-folk acoustic affair Workbook. His return to slightly heavier soundscapes on his foreboding sophomore solo project Black Sheets of Rain provided another assertive statement of post-Hüsker intent, before foraying into bona fide early 90s alternative rock canon with his cult and critically-acclaimed band Sugar.

Sugar—sculpted by Mould alongside bassist David Barbe (ex-Mercyland) and drummer Malcolm Travis (ex-Human Sexual Response)—turned out to be a relatively short-lived stint for Bob and co, albeit one of tremendous cultural resonance at the time. The band’s calculated turn towards more melodic fringes of punk, and especially its life-defining debut LP Copper Blue (1992), went on to attract both commercial and high-brow success amidst glowing reviews, most notably snapping the number one spot in the same year’s Best Albums list by at the time reputable music publication NME. Two more hollowly stark studio projects in swift timely succession (Beaster and File Under: Easy Listening) sealed Sugar’s brief yet terrific ascension spell, toothlessly completed by a handful of compilations and live recordings thrown out over the years following the trio’s disbandment.

It’s not until 1996 that Bob decides to reprise his solo project stick—notwithstanding the erratic vanity exercise of releasing bundled halves of his first two solo records as part of a Virgin-issued compilation titled Poison Years banking on Sugar’s acclaim in 1994—as he returned to the scene with his third eponymous outing, effectively re-launching his musical trajectory as a one-man show. A number of dime a dozen and partially uninspired studio LPs followed between then and 2008’s regal District Line, a robust 10-track exercise in his unique trademark sombre and sticky punk rock authorship. Distortion-drenched, capo-steered, gain-optimised Fender Stratocaster-generated sound waves had long been his superior discerned unique selling point as a popular punk rock songwriter, but nowhere are these better distilled than in his output during the 2010s. While I don’t mean to go over his 2009 preciously delicate and fragile Life and Times too thanklessly—one that incidentally provided the contextual building blocks for his heart-on-sleeve 2011 memoir See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody—the work of art released over the past ten years might be his best.

By his own admission, the 2010s saw Bob go through a whirlwind of private and public emotions, ranging from the perishing of both his parents to the socio-cultural shock of relocating his whole entire life away from utterly hip and radical chic San Francisco to the even more utterly hip and radical chic Berlin, Germany. His first record under his new deal with imperial indie label Merge Records, the outstanding Silver Age in 2012, signalled a fortified return to raw honesty and compositional poignancy, unsurprisingly so, considering the motions the New York state native was going through at the time. Truly and honestly, pick any Bob Mould record past this point and you’ll be furnished with exceptional performances, impeccable delivery, quality ideas, and watertight no-frills punk rock truth. Guaranteed. 2014’s Beauty and Ruin might just be his best—it’s hard to describe what kind of music it conduits, collectively surrendering to the fact that one can’t quite understand what happens in those songs transporting to transcendental states—although both Patch the Sky (2016) and last year’s Sunshine Rock surely give it a run for its money.

All in all, in all his artistic forms and expressions, Bob Mould stands to represent a trustworthy, prolific, and timeless underground rock minstrel who approaches his craft with scientific-like devotion and method. It will come to no surprise to most that the infamous and sublime north star that keeps on guiding him like a lighthouse when led astray is the goal to perfect the quintessential pop song. Case in point, he always sequences his stickiest track, his calling card, the one with the most powerful hook and airplay rotation potential, at number three on his tracklists. This is true for Hüsker, Sugar, and his solo material. Go back to his discog and check that for yourselves. After all though, Bob Mould remains a relatable, fallible, pedestrian, and regular gay man. By happenstance, he somehow ended up being a very important one, too.

Below listed are Bob Mould’s selected works from 1982 to 2019:

Hüsker Dü

Studio albums
Everything Falls Apart (1983)
Zen Arcade (1984)
New Day Rising (1985)
Flip Your Wig (1985)
Candy Apple Grey (1986)
Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987)

Live Recordings
Land Speed Record (1982)
The Living End (1994)

Studio EPs
Metal Circus (1983)
Extra Circus (2017)

Sugar

Studio albums
Copper Blue (1992)
Beaster (EP) (1993)
File Under: Easy Listening (1994)

Bob Mould

Studio albums
Workbook (1989)
Black Sheets of Rain (1990)
Bob Mould (sometimes referred to as Hubcap) (1996)
The Last Dog and Pony Show (1998)
Modulate (2002)
Body of Songs (2005)
District Line (2008)
Life and Times (2009)
Silver Age (2012)
Beauty & Ruin (2014)
Patch the Sky (2016)
Sunshine Rock (2019)

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

Bob Mould_Portrait

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): THE STROKES – AT THE DOOR | 2020-02-12

I’m a simple man of simple pleasures like that—I see the biggest guitar band of the 2000s drop a new single slash announce a new album and I click. NYC garage rock stalwarts The Strokes just came out of the woodwork to gargantuously announce their sixth full length studio album The New Abnormal, out on RCA/Cult Records 10th April, peppering its earnest brand new lead single “At the Door” on top of it. While we’re speaking of RCA—allow me to ride off a swift digression over here, encouraging all of us to humbly collect our thoughts around what a tremendous work the Sony-owned label is currently doing when it comes to bolstering the alternative music scene within the broader mainstream pantheon. Just take a look around and think about it. For one, the American imprint can’t seem to get one project wrong—anything with their fingerprints on it spurs quality and taste from pillar to post. Plus, it ended up picking up nearly half of this site’s 2019 AOTY spots just a couple months ago, repping projects as disparate on the genre spectrum as abstract hip-hop and emo rock. Not that this alone would imply universal appeal or anything like that, but ya know—it’s ya boy’s opinion here.

Tying it back to the Julian Casablancas-fronted rock outfit—do jump onboard with me with frivolous excitement over the above mentioned announcement, esteemed readers. Let me put it this way: The New Abnormal is The Strokes’ first LP in seven years, following 2013’s sparkly, glitchy, and dense yet polarising hodgepodge Comedown Machine. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though; as of right now, according to its Apple Music pre-ordering landing page, the new record sports a mere nine original cuts, with no indication of total runtime to speak of. Naturally, not all songs will clock in at over five minutes, just like the album’s brilliant lead single does, hence let’s just say we’ll have slim chances of it beefing up its playback experience to a decent industry standard of three quarters of an hour. What I’m alluding to is that we might be in for a less-is-more, slim pickings-type of affair over here, ladies and gentlemen. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would die for the album to ultimately end up sporting “At the Door” as its shortest, radio-friendly edit, with every other track being longer than six minutes. However, that’s simply not going to happen.

Apropos not getting stuff wrong, The New Abnormal isn’t technically the group’s first batch of new music in seven years, as the quintet did come through with the somewhat lukewarm and gelid Future Past Present EP, back in 2016. Unfortunately though, said outing didn’t so much turn fans’ heads left and right, leaving a somber bittersweet taste in their mouth, speeding into the audience’s consciousness just as fast as it anonymously left it. Furthermore, in the band’s defence, it’s not like its members didn’t keep busy during the previous decade’s latter half. Frontman Julian architected his experimental lo-fi indie rock side project The Voidz and went on to release to major studio outings in the shape of 2014’s Tyranny and 2018’s Virtue, while rhythm guitarist Albert Hammond Jr followed in on similar creative footsteps by reprising his mid-naughties solo act and putting out two LPs titled Momentary Masters and Francis Trouble in 2015 and 2018, respectively. Similarly, remaining band members Nick Valensi (lead guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass), and Fab Moretti (drums) all kept quite preoccupied throughout the same span of time, albeit as part of less flashy and flamboyant projects.

Eventually, this all led to The Strokes becoming USA Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ marquee backing band in 2020, as the God-like garage rockers found themselves doing the honours and headlining the senator’s New Hampshire concert rally on Monday 10th February. It’s during the same gala evening that the band first unveiled their highly anticipated comeback single via its laser-abundant, cosmonautically futuristic, sci-fi attached music video. The track sees the group embark on a beefy, synth-heavy syncopated motif, initially blistered by intermittent and piercingly clear cut croons by Julian, vocalising a profoundly self-suffocating yet somehow carefree existential stream-of-consciousness: “I can’t escape it / I’m never gonna make it out of this in time / I guess that’s just fine / I’m not there quite yet / My thoughts, such a mess / Like a little boy / What you runnin’ for?”. Erupting into a radically gratifying and gorgeous melodic release around the one-minute mark, the frontman’s vocals quickly begin to get enveloped by surgically strummed guitars as well as celestial layers of synths. A stern second verse then picks up where the first one left off, both sonically and lyrically:

Bang at the door / Anyone home? / It’s just what they do / Right in front of you / Like a cannonball / Slammin’ through your wall / In their face, I saw / What they’re fightin’ for / I can’t escape it / I’m never gonna make it to the end, I guess

Fab Moretti must’ve been left behind smoking in album producer Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La’s parking lot for most of this track’s recording sessions, as it’s not until past the second refrain that we get even the slightest hint of a drum beat. Awkwardly stumbling in around three minutes, an understated and subdued electronic kick introduces the song’s bridge, during which Julian grants himself a tad more creative freedom, ranging just lightly off the hitherto beaten path. The song’s fast-lived drumming track rapidly disappears again, as a cacophonously textured host of synthesizers steals the scene for a minute-long grim non-lyrical intermezzo, paving the way for a panning, fluctuating, sombre, and darkly bright solmizated outro. Leaving us all salivating for more.

Now, if it weren’t clear enough at this point, this is no Is This It or Room On Fire-era Strokes. Far from it. The lights are dimmed by red bulbs, the candles are flickering, and leather jackets have been swapped with space suits-like onesies and cologne-soaked shaved beards. Yet somehow, for the first time in over a decade, a similar reminiscing sense of trailblazing excitement for what blend of cultural implication a new Strokes album will carry is no longer to be denied.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

THE STROKES

AT THE DOOR

2020, RCA Records

https://www.thestrokes.com

the-strokes-at-the-door-e1581432223801