This is an updated Tier List—find the previous version here.
Support Thirty Seconds to Mars:
https://thirtysecondstomars.com
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/thirty-seconds-to-mars/2307416
https://www.instagram.com/30secondstomars
https://twitter.com/30SECONDSTOMARS
We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.
AV
2,597 days. That’s how much time will have passed since the release of Taking Back Sunday‘s last album Tidal Wave in 2016 by the time their eight studio project 152 comes out on 27th October. Announced yesterday in conjunction with their defiant and rabid second lead single “S’old“, the LP is slated to feature a scant ten songs, clocking in at just about half an hour and change of new music—officially making this their shortest album to date (for comparison, their seminal and raw emo-punk 10-track 2002 debut Tell All Your Friends is a whole two minutes longer). That is like around four minutes of new music on average for every year that has passed since Tidal Wave. Not exactly freehanded, but we’ll take it.
Riding on the fresh and reinvigorated coattails of the soaring and anthemic comeback single “The One” from a few months ago, the full length reveal broke the ice by way of injecting more speed and grittiness in earnest into the Long Islanders’ projected sound to come. Once again produced by radio-pop mainstay Tushar Apte (a connection via last year’s co-sign Steve Aoki, as it recently transpired) and mixed by Neal Avron, new cut “S’old” increases both pace and aggression compared to its softer and perhaps more agreeable predecessor, all the while relishing in a degree of carelessness rarely seen displayed by lead singer Adam Lazzara before: “You’re going to get s’old / You’re going to get so old / You’re gonna get so old either way“.
Undoubtedly, this second teaser packs a tighter and more nostalgic punch than “The One”, yet succeeds in couching enough of a lyrical arc into itself that ends up becoming even more gratifying, in spite of its shorter runtime—this both cathartically and lyrically: “Science never lies it only learns / I could use a bit of both / A little less your high hopes / A little more your love“. Standing as a spiritual love child between something off the edgiest moments on Happiness Is and Tidal Wave‘s “Death Wolf“, the exploit’s fierce delivery does not come at the expense of melody or replay value. Judging from these first two previews, on account of the somewhat unprecedented range displayed on them, most bets are off as to how the rest of the material on 152 is going to sound like.
That is, aside from the more surface-level remark about seven years having gone by since Tidal Wave (making this the largest gap between any two Taking Back Sunday releases to dare), a whole lot of life has happened for the band and its members in-between. For starters, there was Twenty in 2019, their career retrospective compilation celebrating twenty years as a band while keeping in touch with two previously unheard bonus tracks. Then there was the experimental, off-the-beaten path, vocal-only, lockdown-imposed side project Fuckin Whatever—we’re still owed some more explanation that can’t be chalked up to the pandemic cabin fever. Most importantly for the band, there was the departure of storied founding member and longtime rhythm guitarist Eddie Reyes in 2018. The umpteenth line-up change impacting the alt rock outfit, now officially a quartet (Adam Lazzara, John Nolan, Shaun Cooper, and Mark O’Connell).
In an attempt to make some sense of it all, their new US West Coast imprint Fantasy Record summarizes said ebbs and flows permeating the last seven years as catalysts for an album “[i]nspired by the long layoff and the cloud of uncertainty that blanketed the world (and music industry) these past few years”. Continuing by stating how “152 stands among the most genuinely reflective and emotionally pure efforts of Taking Back Sunday’s illustrious career“. Self-indulgent record industry jargon notwithstanding, a similar earnest sentiment seems to come straight from the horses’ mouth:
152 offers a lot more hope and light than we first realized when we were in the thick of it, putting it all together. We’ve been fortunate enough, through our music, to grow up with a lot of people going through the same things at the same time, and probably feeling the same way. Our hope is that you’re able to find a little bit of yourself in this new collection of songs, because you’re not alone, and neither are we.
You would think after 20 years, we knew what each other is going to do. But there were so many times making this record where I heard the initial idea and thought I knew where it would go, but then I was super surprised. It’s those kinds of surprises that make it so exciting. That’s why we all still want it so badly.
When we’re writing songs, the one thing we ask ourselves, ‘Is it capable of making people feel something?’ You try to make people feel emotion. That’s the one goal we went in with, and we think we did it.
In short: this thing is riddles with incognitos. Fantasy is a brand new label for the band (their fourth), putting out, amongst others, Americana, jazz, and R&B. Australia’s very own Tushar Apte is an unchartered and frankly unlikely choice to executively produce what’s arguably the most highly anticipated project of their career. For context, his production pedigree hitherto includes Chris Brown, Demi Lovato, and Nicki Minaj—not exactly scene pals to the emo rockers. And yet, there’s the 152. Even the occasional Taking Back Sunday fan knows about its symbolism and semantic, and in all likelihood has sculpted their own version of what it truly means. For what it’s worth, Fantasy saw fit to set the record straight by providing a somewhat diplomatic and collectively agreed upon answer, explaining how Exit 152 is “the section of road in North Carolina between Highpoint, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh where the band and their friends would meet up as teenagers“.
Regardless of what version one runs with, the lore surrounding 152 almost seems like the only familiar through line die hard fans can still cling on to, for now. Amidst so much wind of change for the New York group, another two months of patient wait before getting the full body of work looms as an agonizing gust at best. Here’s to hoping another teaser will see the light of day between now and late October. The boys seem very excited about the new record: they’ve been testing as many as the aforementioned two cuts off it live during their recent US headlining run at Sad Summer Fest—something almost unheard of for the band. What’s for sure is that, by and large, Taking Back Sunday has grown up. And that can’t but be a comforting beacon to rely on, still after so long.
We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.
AV
Being a bona fide Taking Back Sunday stan has not been a breezy stroll in the park over the past seven years. Since their robust classic rock-indebted LP Tidal Wave in 2016—their seventh—the band’s musical output has all but run on slim picking leitmotivs. Maybe through a little bit of fault of their own. Like it or not, they didn’t capitalize on the latter end of the past decade’s emo revival, fell prey of not one, but two new nostalgia-fueling anniversary traps in-between, kept us trippy during the pandemic with their Fuckin Whatever side-project, and embarked on an eyebrow-raising yet sticky one-off joint with OTT electronic dance DJ Steve Aoki right around this time last year. Today, Friday 30th June, marks the day they’re back with their first slice of new original music in four years.
The Long Island outfit, now officially a quartet after the painful departure of founding member and longtime guitarist Eddie Reyes in 2018, has released “The One“, a number that embodies all guises so as to pass as the lead single in anticipation to a forthcoming eight studio album. Accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek and self-aware DJay Brawner-directed music video, and backed by new imprint Fantasy Records through Nashville-based indie circuit powerhouse Concord, the record finds Taking Back Sunday in a tender and content mood. Billed by the band as a “sweet love song—full-on John Cusack holding a boombox”, the alt rocking cut coasts through a soaring compositional dynamic, culminating in an emphatic post-chorus refrain aptly delivered by lead guitarist and backing vocalist John Nolan: “Now I’m close enough to reach you / All the walls that I could see through / Still the words that I can’t say go on and on and on“.
More than on any other recent sonic teaser dished out by the foursome, the trademark vocal call and response dynamic between frontman Adam Lazzara and Nolan is fiercely on point here. Underpinned by a spacious and expansive electric guitar-led soundbed, it’s the principal vocal delivery that pulls the biggest heavy-lifting for the track, both melodically and performance-wise. The songwriting is injected with a solid dose of romantic honesty, doubling as an unconditional tribute to one’s significant other—a thematic impetus acutely elevated by the broad and big Tushar Apte-assisted production, lending the main chorus a fitting revelatory closure: “Oh, I’m better off for betting / I’d be better off forgetting / Go big, or go home / If I was the one / Like you’re my one / You are the one / You arе the one / The onе“.
The overtly pop-oriented and former Chris Brown, BTS, and Demi Lovato-collaborator Apte is actually a fairly unorthodox production decision for the outfit, and one which could prove enthusing in charting a speculative new artistic direction the whole—yet to be formally announced—project might be leaning toward. After their watertight two-album run on California’s Hopeless Records over the past ten years with legendary underground New York producer Mike Sapone at the helm (2014’s Happiness Is and the aforementioned Tidal Wave), the band looks to be on the prowl for a different and riskier approach, perhaps nudged by the new incubating record label. Safe to say, it’s starting to show from this initial appetizer. Case in point, “The One”‘s got radio-friendly hooks, a lavish and perhaps overly sanitized mix, as well as an overall compositional arc arguably more at home with pop-first material, than a landmark Noughties emo band’s eight career album. The good news is that the overhauled format is neither off-putting nor impulse-warping, allowing for the band’s storied and signature songwriting to still bleed through in earnest.
Speaking of which, Taking Back Sunday had this to say about the initial pre-pandemic gestation of the single:
This song came from a riff that [bassist] Shaun Cooper wrote the day he lost his grandmother while she was in a nursing home at the start of the Covid pandemic. Devastated with overpowering sadness, he found comfort in writing music and initially titled the riff ‘Posivibes’ in an effort to find some light through the darkness. He never shared the story of the title or how that riff came together with us until after it was complete. Shaun didn’t want his story affecting the ultimate meaning of the song, because it’s actually an uplifting one.
The somewhat laid-back and unintrusive instrumentation committed to tape here suits the prime valence of the reclaimed sugary messaging, which takes yield over anything else. Such an understated ethos, slyly laced into the three minutes and change record, concedes only to a mightier and grander chorus—effectively preempting what could’ve been a flashier return to the scene after seven years. While the choice is an unexpected one to say the least, “The One” ultimately stands as an accomplished example of a group putting the song at the core of this tune first, over any embellishment or heady instrumentation—not necessarily something the band has historically always excelled at.
Furthermore, fans ought not mind the seeming void of ancillary leave behinds accompanying this latest single, without much pointing to a larger project coming in our later in the year; for the branding overhaul on Taking Back Sunday’s online properties—as well as a general tangible momentum surrounding this one drop—possesses all of the crucial signaling that past standalone single releases didn’t. If nothing else, with an imminent summer on the road in the USA headlining the touring Sad Summer Fest with fellow scene fixtures The Maine, PVRIS, and Hot Mulligan, it’s high time for the Long Islanders to usher into their next album cycle, with a new line up formation, and a restored creative phase. We missed them so much.
We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.
AV
TAKING BACK SUNDAY
THE ONE
2023, Fantasy Records
Trailblazing a distinct chronological spate of significant releases coming out throughout June and July—including Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Far From Saints, Killer Mike, Queens of the Stone Age, Dominic Fike, and George Clanton—the mighty Foo Fighters are back. This time scathed. Dropping this past Friday 2nd June, But Here We Are counts as the alternative rock mainstays’s eleventh studio LP—their first since the untimely death of their longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins, early last year. The project comes orchestrated and arranged by returning production consigliere Greg Kurstin, whose royal pop knack and undeniable chemistry with the band made him an obvious choice for such a critical artistic statement in the group’s timeline, even after the mixed bag success collected in the wake of his work on both 2017’s Concrete and Gold as well as 2021’s Medicine at Midnight.
Unsurprisingly, and perhaps fittingly, frontman Dave Grohl traveled back to handling percussive duties on the whole record, marking his first official drum credit on a Foos album in almost twenty years. Not only that, the stickman-turned-ringleader also saw fit to lace a familial spin into the recording process for the first time, inviting his 17-year-old daughter Violet to sing prominent background vocals on the hazy, hollow, and dreamy “Show Me How“—the formidable third single in the lead up to the full album. Unveiled a mere seven days before the entire collection of songs, the track eerily journeys through plateaus of both reverb canvasses and gnarly distorted licks alike, before unboxing an unexpected sense of finality woven into the narrator’s bounce-back arc: “I’ll take care of everything / I’ll take care of everything from now on“.
In the album’s relatively packed and crammed promo roll out, said slow tempo number was preceded initially by the stark and stoic lead single “Rescued” (released on 19th April), as well as the gold-striking throwback grunge belter “Under You” around a month later. Both cuts carry a musical ethos that translates as an earnest return to form for the Seattle-gestated band. Raw and unfiltered aches of grief bleed through the somewhat low-fidelity taped instrumentation on the former, only to be snapped out of their emotional stalemate by two robust sets of verses with lots and lots of teeth (“It came in a flash, it came outta nowhere / It happened so fast, and then it was over; I fell in a trap, my hеart’s getting colder / It’s coming on fast, it’s over my shouldеr“). Conversely, But Here We Are‘s sophomore single triumphs in its catchy, anthemic, and heavily Hüsker Dü-indebted refrain, all the while lodging slews of nostalgic sonic moods that were first successfully forayed into as part of Dave’s inspired first three album run (1995-1999).
Hardly earning enough grandfathered rights to be considered an official single, the RCA Records-affiliates released a final teaser a few days before the arrival of the full length in the form of the 10-minute epic fever dream “The Teacher“. Sequenced as the album’s penultimate cut, before the unplugged, jagged, and forlorn coda “Rest“, the song unfolds and crumbles before the listener’s ears by way of proxying obsessive and thick stanzas atop of an unhinged baseline jam impetus, the latter ultimately binding the whole herculean effort together. It’s indulgent, inconclusive, and far from the most memorable moment on this thing—once again, definitely not single material. Yet this exploit’s biggest merit, standing as the Foo Fighters’ longest recorded track to date, is to allegorize the loose and unconstrained ethos that served as the album’s through line on here, whilst its constituent human parts rebuilt themselves amidst junctures of grief and mourning.
Aside from the aforementioned first two promo cuts, the record’s side A sports quite a lot more to write home about. At number three on the tracklist is “Hearing Voices“, a groovier and more contemplative affair wholly anchored by Grohl’s helpless cries, lamenting whatever part of letting go of someone who’s no longer there somehow still involves unfulfilled promises—in all likelihood reaching for a hybridized and spiritualized pastiche version of both Hawkins and his late mother Virginia (who passed away mere months after the drummer last year): “I’ve seen you in the moon / I wish that you were here / You promised me your words / A whisper in my ear / Every night I tell myself nothing like you could last forever“. The album title track follows suit, with its impervious and claustrophobic gain six-string riffs, pummeling a sense of utter paranoia and unsettlement into the track’s otherwise conventional late Foo Fighters formula. Dave Grohl’s soaring vocals reach husky heights rarely heard on a deep cut before, especially with such a quasi-psychedelic drawl, spookily adding to the tune’s disorienting sentence.
Wrapping up side A is perhaps the poppiest and most sanitized cut on the whole thing: “The Glass“. Flexing evident Concrete and Gold muscles on the peppy beat and flow front (cue “The Sky Is A Neighborhood“), the song does stick out a little bit like a sterilized thumb amidst the sea of musical roughness and lyrical rawness found elsewhere on the project. Don’t get it twisted, it’s far from the worst thing the Foos have ever put out, but the sensation it would’ve felt much more at home on any of their previous two LPs is one to not be easily shaken off—even after repeated listens. But Here We Are‘s flip side picks up strong again with “Nothing at All“, a Frankenstein’d power pop voyage starting off all but approachable and sticky, before completely transforming into an abrasive and savage chorus wave wholly obliterating the previously collected brownie points with casual listeners.
The aforementioned gorgeous ballad “Show Me How” follows on the tracklist at number seven, before deep feels continue to run at full steam thanks to the subsequent “Beyond Me“; an austere and truthful slice of emotional rock and roll, doubling as perhaps the most beautiful track on the record. “If it all just went away / Would you be kind? / Would you be so kind?; Are you well? / I can’t tell / Do tell / Do tell“, asks the former Nirvana percussionist, in a custom and manner that is so believable it hurts. “The Teacher” and “Rest” end the 48-minute runtime listening experience on a somewhat weaker note, although not less honest or compelling. More in particular, the latter cut’s second half suddenly photosynthesizes into a haunting and unsettling wall of distorted sound around the 2:40 mark, moonlighting as the farewell sendoff to this album’s dedicated dearly departed, and anyone else in the listeners’ minds for that matter: “Rest, you can rest now / Rest, you will be safe now“.
Safe to say with But Here We Are the Foo Fighters have made their best set of cohesive songs since Wasting Light. More than a decade and a pandemic later, and one core member down, they attested once again that resilience and defiance are two key ingredients in their raison d’être, whether they like it or not. If nothing else, they both have proven to be powering some of their best and most existential songwriting. With a set of ten new songs under their belts, and after having put to rest most rumors around seeking closure in order to move past their recent hardships by announcing celebrity session drummer Josh Freese (of Devo, Guns N’ Roses, and Nine Inch Nails fame) as Hawkins replacement, Dave, Nate, Pat, Chris, and Rami finally seem ready to move on and go back to being the biggest arena rock band on the planet. To do the easy part, in other words.
We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.
AV
FOO FIGHTERS
BUT HERE WE ARE
2023, Roswell Records
Standalone singles killed the album star. If it weren’t for a grieving Foo Fighters—now sans late drummer Taylor Hawkins—fitting to the standard industry mould with their lead single-and-LP announcement combo (“Rescued“, teasing the release of their eleventh studio album But Here We Are next month), one would be fooled to think better of the notion that focus tracks need to exist as part of a far-sighted project roll out. Thus, by way of rounding up a batch of recently unveiled solo records, here we dare put forward a non-definitive reflection around the seemingly dissipated importance to lend a monetizable roadmap to new music.
Beginning chronologically and alphabetically with vaporwave heavyweight George Clanton. Nearly cracking under the pressure to follow up his spotless and watertight Slide record from 2018, the 100% Electronica label founder unveiled his latest smash hit single “I Been Young” early last month—only to not be accompanied by an official announcement about a potential full length container. Sure, while it is true that the 35-year old electronic musician has been all but half-jokingly teasing his newest project on social media since his incandescent Nick Hexum collaboration, given his humorous and self-deprecating ethos it’s hard to gauge how founded that pipeline might actually be.
Lest we get it twisted here: prioritizing autonomous singles is nothing inherently new and unchartered. Over the past decade, the complete digitization and platformization of music consumption has made it so that its industry specifics design a clear incentivization scheme benefitting the ‘waterfall’ release of smaller projects (read: singles) over full bodies of work. Partly due to the major music services’s editorial playlisting leitmotivs, partly pushed by the opportunity of creating more ‘release events’ by staggering smaller drops over time, artists and labels alike have not been shy to tap into the predicament headfirst. Whether pundits mess with it or not—such tidal wave is not to be stopped and rather ubiquitous today.
Interestingly enough, instead of selling out to such rabid cheat code demands of the modern streaming economy, Clanton saw fit to take a somewhat different homegrown path, by creating a subscription-like community around 100% Electronica. He then elevated the concept to a whole new level with 100% ElectroniCON in 2019, effectively the first vaporwave music festival in the world. As the planet deranged and all live entertainment ground to a halt, he kept it going through so-called Virtual Utopia gigs, as well as by establishing a weekly VR talk show, THE BIG STREAM. Clearly, an adapted approach to a changing paradigm in the machinery—yet, still no unequivocal announcement to anticipate a next record. Here’s to hoping a Slide follow up does in fact materialize, for “I Been Young” sounds just as dreamy, hazy, and sticky as anything on it. Alas, it is also not exactly the type of material that would sit naturally next to “Fucking Up My Life” (his other standalone drop) on an LP’s tracklist.
This specific sample of latest releases seems to be doubling as something akin to a final straw. Especially on account of the fact that these artists have historically made it a point to curate and elevate full album experiences in their discographies. Let’s take 28-year old Brooklyn, NY MC Joey Bada$$ as further exhibit. His newest R&B-infused joint “Fallin’” quickly followed on the coattails of last year’s brilliant 2000, the highly anticipated spiritual successor to his groundbreaking debut mixtape 1999 (2012). With a street date of 7th April, and featuring production from Powers Pleasant, DJ Khalil, Chuck Strangers, Adam Pallin, and McClenney, the 4:30 minutes-crooner finds the Pro Era founder coasting through a butter-smooth neo-soul canvas for the song’s greasy first-half, before switching gears into sets of convinced and stern 16s that all bring out his spitting prowess on the backend—just in case anyone needed reminding.
The record is a welcome change of pace for the up and coming thespian, who flexes both singing and compositional proficiency on a cut that would have admittedly felt a tad out of place on his jazz rap-indebted third studio LP last year. Most suspiciously though, it’s the lack of cliffhanging substance attached to the headline drop, leaving fans with little to nothing to look for forward to musically past this point. For at this time it is wholly unclear whether “Fallin'” is to lead up to a new sizable project from the progressive rapper, or if it’s to exist as an isolated statement à la his impeccable and faithful Mos Def cover “UMI Says“, performed live for Australia triple j‘s storied Like A Version series at the turn of the new year.
Meanwhile, just mere days ago on 27th April, it was high time for the welcome and highly anticipated return of New Jersey alt rockers The Gaslight Anthem. Their newest track “Positive Charge” represents the first taste of original music after their seven-year indefinite hiatus—and since their lukewarm 2014 fifth studio LP Get Hurt—thanks to frontman Brian Fallon getting them back together to much fan acclaim last year after a successful solo stint. Ever the quintessential album-oriented group, their fans had however hoped their comeback single would be splashed together with a more robust dispatch, hopefully revealing details around their long-awaiting next studio project; tough luck for them too.
Musically, the song plugs straight into Brian Fallon, Alex Rosamilia, Alex Levine, and Benny Horowitz’s trademark punk-indebted heartland aesthetic. Dirty, distorted, ragged, yet undercut by a melodic emotionality that affords them certain of liberties to structure their tune around pop tropes. Thing is: no album release date as of yet. Granted, The Gaslight Anthem are the type of salt of the earth band from whom it would be outright unthinkable to not imagine a full album transpiring from a singles release cycle, especially when it’s a long-anticipated reunion one. What’s particularly uneasy here though is the complete lack of LP forethought in burning such comeback card, unlike say the aforementioned Foo Fighters—a band most people would likely claim The Gaslight Anthem are cut from a similar clot of.
Much like “Positive Charge”, the final record scrutinized today comes courtesy of distribution from Sony Music-owned Thirty Tigers, and marks the surprise-release of a new loose joint called “SentRock” by legendary Chicago lyricist Lupe Fiasco. Named after fellow Chi-towner and visual artist SentRock—real name Joe Perez—the tune is being dished out as part of a cross-media collaboration that resulted in limited-edition autographed prints of his A Westside Bird’s Eye View painting, doubling as its front cover. The abstract and jolty single is the MIT visiting professor‘s first taste of new music since his watertight Drill Music in Zion project last year, and yes, you guessed it right: no indication has hitherto been given as to whether it is to function as teaser to something bigger in the pipe. In Lupe’s defense, he appears to be keeping fairly busy on the heels of his recent nomination as Saybrook Fellow at Yale University—highlighting the conscious rapper’s latest honor in a series in the realm of academia.
As media outlets and online fan communities alike all heavily debate around the likelihood of full length collections of songs by these four acts in varying degrees of speculation, there’s no denying the notion that most artists and labels largely do so to protect themselves and the sacredness of their writing process. Chances are, all aforementioned creatives currently fall into that category. With that being said, there exists a foreboding sense of aftermath from a chasm that was perhaps long bound to happen, and that now seems to be reaching what were once immaculate corners of a revered space, that used to actually care about the craft of an album, and that wouldn’t stick their necks out unless there was one to announce. For as much as we find it convenient to throw around the self-protection argument when faced with their absence, what if the artists themselves have stopped giving a damn?
We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.
AV
GEORGE CLANTON
I BEEN YOUNG
2023, 100% Electronica
https://www.100percentelectronica.com/
JOEY BADA$$
FALLIN’
2023, Columbia Records
THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM
POSITIVE CHARGE
2023, Thirty Tigers
https://www.thegaslightanthem.com/
LUPE FIASCO
SENTROCK
2023, Thirty Tigers
Part requited commendation, part early-year new musical round-up, this missive comes by way of a collection of noteworthy projects that stood out to us of late. Both complete exploits and works in progress alike, each one alone might not warrant a whole chaptered entry by itself, yet gelled together they stoke a surprisingly elevated appeal. How not to begin with the incomparable Smashing Pumpkins, who are knee-deep and well underway the release cycle for their libertine high-brow triple LP ATUM: A Rock Opera in Three Acts. After having dropped the first instalment at the tail end of last year (15th November), the 35-year old American alternative rock giants are just fresh off the coattails of releasing Act Two, this past 31st January.
Ideated and intended as the clear spiritual and musical successor to the band’s seminal concept albums Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995) and Machina/The Machines of God (2000), the 33-track sequel was produced entirely in-house by wizard in chief Billy Corgan. Each part enlists eleven tracks, and the whole sonic opera’s roll out is being staggered with exactly eleven weeks of separation between each Act—with a highly anticipated final instalment slated for release on 21st April. Owing to the seasonal faculty inherent to its titling, the project loosely follows the changing atmospheric intervals following the Fall Equinox into winter and spring (album title ATUM is to be pronounced Autumn).
The Chicago rockers’ twelveth studio effort clocks in at a whooping 138 minutes of runtime—nothing unfathomable by any stretch of the imagination given Corgan’s first-hand involvement, yet a remarkable feat by any other unadulterated metric. Not least on account of the consideration that the Pumpkins’s last record in time, 2020’s CYR, was a bloated and ambitious 20-track double-sided affair of its own. Previewed as early as last September by the frizzy distortion and self-repressed marching of “Beguiled“—a cut ending up being sequenced at number nine on ATUM‘s Act Two, go figure—the auditory epic now sports two thirds of its unhinged musical narration, compounding to 85 minutes of material readily available for taste discernment.
To accompany the release and help fans make head or tails of the sheer critical mass of new music unveiled, the 55-year old National Wrestling Alliance-owner saw fit to design an audio-only companion guide to the rock-opera roll out, aptly dubbed Thirty-Three podcast. In it, the emblematic frontman dissects one new ATUM track per episode—alongside selected past works from his Pumpkins and solo back-catalogue—whilst contemporaneously offering previously unheard insights straight from Smashing Pumpkins Factory. Handpicked special guests such as bandmates Jimmy Chamberlin and Jeff Schroeder as well as fellow artists like Butch Vig and YUNGBLUD act as sidekicks to the ever so verbose and erudite Corgan.
Musically, the 22 recordings revealed hitherto cover a wealth of relevant sonic terrains. This is not something terribly foreign to third-act Smashing Pumpkins, who after having brought most of the founding line up back together for their fugitive yet brilliant Rick Rubin-produced Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. have found themselves working more and more synth-pop elements, if not even country pop at times, into their trademark alt-goth aesthetics. If Act One rollicks through a somewhat disjointed and tortuous sonic backdrop, with numbers as inherently variegated as the unforgiving “The Good In Goodbye“and the soft nintendocore “Hooray!” placed on the same side, Act Two reigns supreme with both its immaculate sound tightness coupled with an almost irresistible catchiness.
Songs such as “Neophyte“, “Every Morning“, “To The Grays“, as well as “Springtimes” on ATUM‘s second instalment sit comfortably amongst the band’s best and most timeless in the last twenty years. Notwithstanding side B’s overall superior delivery, what both parts have in common is a new found knack for compositional stickiness by Corgan. Significantly more so than in recent years, these tunes emanate universality and endurance. Mind you, the core leitmotiv journeying throughout is still of a softer and lighter blend—for all intents and purposes, ATUM is a very current-era Pumpkins statement—so invidious nostalgic pundits orthodoxly pledged to their 90s sound should probably best stay away. Everyone else is invited to bask and indulge in Corgan’s studious artistic idiosyncrasies, and look forward to welcoming Spring with a final set of tracks that might well round up what could become the group’s most exciting and readily accessible project since its spiritual predecessor Machina/The Machines of God.
A shorter, yet no less ambitious release hitting the shelves recently was from Brooklyn-transplant via Washington, DC rapper Oddisee, real name Amir Mohamed el Khalifa. To What End is out on budding New York label Outer Note and follows the imprint’s debut ODD CURE (2020), as well as a lustrum during which the underground sensation forayed into one-off live albums and EPs. The 16-track tape is the 37-year old American-Sudanese’s most ambitious and refined to date—a highly accomplished and well-rounded exploit perhaps only matched by 2015’s The Good Fight. Clocking in at a robust sixteen joints, with no skits and a slim layer of carefully placed featured guests—special mention for the Phonte, Bemyfiasco, and Kay Young trio illuminating album standout “Choices“—the LP coasts through a wide array of high-caliber sounds, freely touching on hip-hop, jazz, soul, and R&B throughout its beats portfolio.
Dropping this past January, this thing is a near all killer, no filler—with a metric ton of hooks splashed on top, just for us. Historically more renowned and commended for his articulate, heady, and introspective flows, on here Oddisee trades some of that vitiated one-dimensionality of rhyme spitting for a heightened sense of melody. All without sacrificing urgency, intention, or poignancy of message conveyance. Take the focus and conciseness of sophomore groovy dancer “How Far” on the tracklist, or even the pop-affability and radio-friendliness of lead single “Try Again” and “All I Need“; one would be hard-pressed to sample similarly effective-while-accessible spells in his back-catalogue.
Thematically, the MC re-essays previous notions of struggle and bottom-up realness, however this time with a higher aspirational grandeur. The systemic self-perpetration of purposelessness seeps through album opener “The Start of Something“, rising all boats and not even sparing kindred fringe-adjacent geezers: “You might not beat the odds but you got to meet the odd / It took time to accept that I’m worthy of admiration / Was brought up in a family not caught up in celebration / No clock within the house to remind me that time was racing“. Meanwhile, the chorus on glossy and tender curtain closer “Race” can’t help but wrestle with slews of unanswered questions, preventing closure from subduing overwhelmingness: “Sitting in my car, in the driveway / I’ve been home a while, but my minds late / It’s the only time that I day dream / Getting really hard to find a quite space / Open up the door and world screams / Getting overwhelmed by the high pace / Something’s on my mind I deserve peace / Until the door swings, race“.
Bookending this early in the year round-up with the inaugural offering from the enthusing and anticipated new supergroup Far From Saints. A country rock-meets-Americana trio composed of brit-pop legends Stereophonics‘s founder Kelly Jones, as well as Patty Lynn and Dwight Baker of Austin group The Wind + The Wave. The perhaps unlikely pairing first started gestating when Jones and Lynn met backstage during a U.S. tour ten years ago. That encounter led the Phonics frontman to recruit The Wind + The Wave to open for his 2019 solo tour, as part of which they whipped up impromptu on-stage renditions of Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks’s timeless “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around“—which immediately resonated with both them and the fans.
Fast forward to this past Friday 20th January, when Far From Saints officially came out of the pandemic-halted woodwork with their debut taster “Let’s Turn This Back Around“, a rich and full-bodied offering of flavoursome country with evident pop tinges. A dejected guitar picking, paired with forlorn steel-guitar laments, underpin the lead single’s first half, before converting into an expansive and swelling feast of accompanying strings and anthemic chants by Jones and Lynn (a vocal timbre pairing made in heaven). The number counts a such a wealth of engrossing musical elements that it grandfathers itself as a mouthwatering teaser for what else is to come as part of the yet-to-be-named ten-track baptism project—produced by the band itself and helmed by Al Clay on the mix. If a good beginning bodes well, Far From Saints seems poised to pan out as so much more than the occasional atrophied side-project.
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 SMASHING PUMPKINS
ATUM
2023, Martha’s Music
ODDISEE
TO WHAT END
2023, Outer Note
FAR FROM SAINTS
LET’S TURN THIS BACK AROUND
2023, Ignition Records
NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSE — BARN, TOAST & WORLD RECORD (REPRISE RECORDS)
EARL SWEATSHIRT — SICK! (TAN CRESSIDA)
SABA — FEW GOOD THINGS (PIVOT GANG)
EDDIE VEDDER — EARTHLING (REPUBLIC RECORDS)
STEREOPHONICS — OOCHYA! (IGNITION RECORDS)
ALEX CAMERON — OXY MUSIC (SECRETLY CANADIAN)
RYAN ADAMS — CHRIS, ROMEO & JULIET, FM, DEVOLVER + NEBRASKA (PAXAM RECORDING COMPANY)
DENZEL CURRY — MELT MY EYEZ SEE YOUR FUTURE (LOMA VISTA RECORDINGS)
JACK WHITE — FEAR OF THE DAWN & ENTERING HEAVEN ALIVE (THIRD MAN RECORDS)
ALEX G — WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR, OST & GOD SAVE THE ANIMALS (MILAN RECORDS / DOMINO RECORDING)
RANSOM — NO REST FOR THE WICKED & CHAOS IS MY LADDER (MOMENTUM ENTERTAINMENT)
KENDRICK LAMAR — MR MORALE & THE BIG STEPPERS (TOP DAWG ENTERTAINMENT)
JAMIE T — THE THEORY OF WHATEVER (POLYDOR RECORDS)
DANGER MOUSE & BLACK THOUGHT — CHEAT CODES (BMG RIGHTS MGMT)
FREDDIE GIBBS — $OUL $OLD $EPARATELY (ESGN/WARNER RECORDS)
CORY BRANAN — WHEN I GO I GHOST (BLUE ELAN RECORDS)
ARCTIC MONKEYS — THE CAR (DOMINO RECORDING)
CARLY RAE JEPSEN — THE LONELIEST TIME (INTERSCOPE RECORDS)
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN — ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE (COLUMBIA RECORDS)
BROCKHAMPTON — THE FAMILY & TM (RCA RECORDS)
I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time. And happy holidays this time around.
AV
Support Arctic Monkeys:
https://arcticmonkeys.com
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/arctic-monkeys/62820413
https://www.instagram.com/arcticmonkeys
https://twitter.com/ArcticMonkeys
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
One quick way to realize one has exhausted all eligible attributes to describe North Carolinian singer/songwriter Ryan Adams’s unparalleled hyperactivity ensues upon by being left at, well, a loss for words by the release of his fourth studio album of 2022, Devolver—his twenty-second solo outing overall (and counting…). As if the current year of our Lord had not already seen the 47-year old author trial and error pretty much every project roll out antic under the sun, spanning scarcely announced windowed double LPs (Chris and Romeo & Juliet) as well as full-blown industry promo pandering including physical limited edition cassettes (FM), with the brilliant, astute, and ruffian Devolver the boundlessly prolific artist opted for a non-streaming free digital giveaway on 23rd September, of all methods. Evidently, it’s high-time for mid-Noughties peer-to-peer file sharing nostalgia all over again.
Another emphatic clue that demonstrates just how deep and backlogged the Jacksonville native’s songwriting well extends descends upon us by way of the realization that this latest batch of cuts actually goes to jeopardize a previously announced wealthy release roadmap for the remained of this year, teased over the summer by the PaxAm boss. Said ‘out soon’ catalogue allegedly bore two additional drops slated for this forthcoming fall and winter: Return to Carnegie Hall and 1985. Thusly, with the complete surprise release of Devolver, Adams’s 2022 total album tally would reportedly spike up to six: that’s a whole entire twenty year-album discography worth of material for your average band, only being put out in one single year (!). Bookended as both a token of worship and gratitude toward his ride-or-die listenership, as well as the remarkable celebration of one full sober lap around the sun, the 11-track Ian Sefchick-mastered project was birthed whilst chaperoned by the following incipit:
To my fans,
Today I want to say THANK YOU and I love you, in the language we speak to each other – with music.
DEVOLVER is for you, please feel free to download for free – this is your party and this album is me celebrating you.
In my darkest moments you lifted me up, creatively and personally and that love was instrumental in how I got here today, to safety and in a place of healing – one year sober.
Please accept this album as token of my appreciation for all the love you have shown me through the years, for your encouragement to continue on when I didn’t think I could and for standing with me, rebuilding this dream house brick by brick.
Sometimes the trick is to strip it all back, to keep it so simple life has a way to throw you some curb balls – to devolve back into the apeman and embrace the wild spirit in our bones.
This is that album and it has been my honour to have been given the chance to find myself and be myself fully – embracing my music and my life as it comes – in its own way – free of the patterns of the past.
So thank you. This one’s for you. You are truly loved and appreciate with all that I am.
XO
DRA
By way of a brush up: Devolver follows on the heels of this summer’s commercially ambitious yet somewhat lukewarm FM, a record which aside from a few weeks at improbable positions within a handful countries’ Top 200 albums charts on scattered services, coupled with sporadic grandparental charting on iTunes, did regrettably not seem to live up to the PaxAm camp’s expectations. Musically though, the radio format-worshipping oeuvre still ended up rendering one of Adams’ most focused, well-jointed, and tastefully curated projects since the austere and dour Wednesdays: truth be told, this latest Fab Four-indebted exploit does not fall far from that sonic tree, albeit trading power and jangle pop for heartland/garage indie rock.
With a bang-on runtime of thirty minutes, it’s the most concise and reduced collection of songs the former Cardinals frontman has put out since his accomplished and impactful hardcore punk digression 1984—itself the trailblazer for the cleverly versatile and sublime 2014 PaxAm Singles instalment series. Devolver rings also above-average sticky and immediate for Adams’s canon, with a significant number of knee-jerk hooks appearing for the first time in his recorded history that one can’t quite believe he had not written before (start with “Stare at the TV”: “I like to stare at the TV / and wait here for you / My life wasn’t easy / and then I met you / I like to stare at the TV / I miss you / Do you miss me“).
The semantic irony of opening this complimentary record’s dances with the bluesy and ragged “Don’t Give It Away” is probably lost on no one, although it’s mostly the head-scratching lyrical prose laced into the tune that most betrays the built-in priceless component of the album: “Sick people / do you need to see a doctor? / Double too cool and icy / so bi-polar“. Similarly honky-tonk-sounding is the foot-stomping “Alien USA” at number three on the tracklist, a crooning exercise set to a fuzzy, reverberated, and groovy soundbed accompanying soaring chorus vocals and tired guitar solos alike. Meanwhile, two separate records on this thing, “Banging On My Head” and “I’m In Love With You”, clock in at less than two minutes each. While the former can be afforded a pass by virtue of its upbeat semi-punk rock flair and off-key vocal delivery, the latter nets a criminally underdeveloped re-recording and rendition of the dusty and nocturnal demo-like unplugged offering dating back to almost a decade ago, initially unveiled as part of the Do You Laugh When You Lie?, Vol. 4 issue of the aforementioned PaxAm Singles Series in 2014.
Without a doubt, it’s the album’s halfway point that houses the strongest and sharpest moments. The fierce and dreamy “Marquee” is a flawless exercise in textbook heartland rock and roll, unblemished and immaculate in its multicolored innocence as it pledges to surrender to the all-encompassing might of love. The song is followed by the hinged introspection of “Eyes on the Door”, a cacophonic six-string affair decorated by impressive vocal flexes and enveloping a suspiciously earnest amount of vice-laden frivolousness meets near-epiphany clarity: “I get to thinking I wake up so cold in the night / Hyperventilate and sigh / I get to thinking I get high“. The record’s central backbone reaches a highpoint with “Too Bored to Run”, a fantastic, anthemic, and timeless enchantment pulling out all the classic rock stops at number seven—from the songwriting at its core to Adams’ passionate, lulling, and life-depending performance—carrying what some might argue are the most essential elements of the alt/country rocker’s post-self titled third act songwriting arc.
Devolver‘s back-end wraps everything up in a plateauing, spotty, and perhaps subaltern way, corralling what sounds like a Chris throwaway amongst throwaways (“Free Your Self”), a sample of bum guitar notes that almost have to be intentional (cue in “Get Away” at 0:04), as well as a Cardinals-evoking experimental coda that too suffers from painful and shameful underwriting (“Why Do You Hate Me”). Mind you, there are no flat out fillers on here—if anything, some compositions could have used some more fleshing out and another minute or two of breathing time. As a front-to-back listening experience, this thing might be better than FM, which sparks reasonable doubt around whether the roll out succession (and accompanying industry plugs) should have been inverted. Yet now more than ever before in Adams’ career, spontaneity of abundance seems to be sole tenet around which to predict what is next. Considering the remarkable accessibility and artistic quality packed into his first ever purposefully gratis album, devolving into a primordial musical core might just be the name-checked clue that’s hiding in plain sight.
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
RYAN ADAMS
DEVOLVER
2022, PaxAm Recording
Truly and honestly, we never thought we would say this, but with last Friday’s release of FM, singer/songwriter Ryan Adams has officially dropped more studio albums in the last nineteen months than the whole 2010s combined. What’s more, there already seem to be two additional LPs dolled up in the can for the endlessly productive 47-year-old North Carolinian musician and poet, both slated for release later in the year. Those extra two would bring the total 2022 full length project tally to an unprecedented five (!)—which would in turn render the last 24 months at that point as prolific as his whole previous thirteen years of career, with respect to unveiling brand new material. And to think that when talking about the former Whiskeytown and Cardinals ringleader, one is already dealing with the pantheon of one of the most relentlessly fertile artists of this generation (for the record, FM is Adams’ 21st solo studio album to date).
Unlike the last two stream-of-consciousness, batched and collated catharses that came by way of March’s Chris and April’s Romeo & Juliet, FM sticks its audiowaved landing as a compact and concise one-sided album, clocking in at a comparatively scant 10 tracks and 33 minutes of runtime. Much like its two near double LP predecessors though, the record finds the Grammy-nominated alt-rock prodigy coasting through a vivid, exuberant, and multi-layered heartland rock sonic canvases—if not power pop, at times—with renewed ventures into deep-ended seas of crunchy chorus as well as reverb effects to complement semi-idly evocative songwriting motives. Self-proclaimed and billed as “the musical equivalent of Albert Einstein’s ghost punching George Washington’s ghost in the nuts” by his camp, the windowed project is once again initially only being made available for premium purchase on Adams’ own Pax Am label store from Friday 22nd July, awaiting a wider worldwide release on all remaining digital outlets on 19th August.
By the creator’s own admission, in contrast to its previous two ‘caught-up-with-time’, cacophonic, and self-published exploits, FM also symbolises his return to a somewhat more formal and fully fledged marketing strategy, with the record having gone through the necessary due diligence in order for it to be picked up and chartered by conventional record industry bodies (presumably for the first time since before his Wednesdays/Big Colors/Chris trilogy). Sonically, the record does indeed exhume a more intentional and assertive attempt at gelling together a batch of songs that, while not necessarily on the lyrical front, all sound like they were germed and sprouted within the confines of the same musical garden of Eden, before mustering up enough survival-of-the-fittest oomph to stick together and solidarize as a self-referential oasis (although admittedly, “Fairweather” is reportedly a Big Colors throwaway…). Think looser and jollied up Smiths meet accessible Big Star, sprinkle a dash of self-titled era Adams, and even if you’re amongst the plebs salivating for FM‘s full public availability at the tail end of August, you’ll have earned a fairly accurate depiction of how this half hour and change rings.
In his typical misfit pariah style, much of the new project’s online promotion consisted of chopped and screwed unplugged Creed and REM covers, full giveaways of “What a Waste” and “Oh My Sweet Carolina“—both unreleased cuts off his last two forthcoming fall and winter drops this year, Return to Carnegie Hall and 1985—the FM outtake “Take the Money“, as well as motley clips and bobs from each of the ten records queued up on FM, gauntlet style. Similarly counterintuitively, the closest one could have pass as lead singles for the exploit would have to be the 4th July handout “When She Smiles“—a brilliant Johnny Marr-worship tracklisted at number four on the album’s A side, finding peak ecstatic Adams tapestries, arrangements, and lyrics—as well as ‘hot one’ “Fantasy File“, a smooth and silky saxophone-led bluesy serenade unveiled days before the album’s (exclusive) street date, sequenced right before “When She Smiles” at number three.
We know all too well how at this point it is near impossible to establish how and when exactly these ten tracks were written and recorded—God forbid, the exquisite and formidable album coda “Someday” could be hiding in plain sight if quietly inserted into 2017’s Prisoner tracklist. What one can attest to, however, is how much more focused, experiential, and cohesive this latest collection of songs is, relatively speaking. Mind you—the thematic arc is nowhere near as conceptual as on, say Prisoner, and the production and mixing mantel can’t compare to his rose-coloured Blue Note Records days yielding something like his 2014 eponymous epic. Yet, on almost each wavelength-chaptered station on FM, there are an otherworldly gated snare drum, multilayered strata of acquose reverb, lots and lots of arpeggio-ed strumming, and mighty fine songwriting at their core. Color that formulaic, but even humouring Adams and Pax Am as they afforded themselves to indulge in yet another crate-digging curatorial mixtape-like stunt feels like a pleasant and benevolent admission to have been punk’d here. Frankly, one could also choose to simply view FM as a slick and watertight little 10-track LP with lots of teeth; for bliss often lurks in the hive-mind ignorance of not overthinking.
The Jacksonville-native saw fit to alert listeners that “Ancient Incan and Aztec cultures warned not downloading FM once it was released would turn a human skeleton into a chalky dinosaur poo that the Gods would use to draw clouds on mountain rock once the person had ‘passed’”, yet we claim one ought not go quite as far to attain a wholesome and elated enjoyment outta this sweet little petty record. What we’ll certainly take away from it are the profoundly intense grace of A-side record flipper “Hall of Shame”—an urgent and poignant reflection of one’s true rock bottom set to lush six string motives and a converging outro that might stand the test of time as one of Adams’ most perfect. “So Dumb” is so earnest and stoic a barebone composition that one could easily imagine it being rendered under a whole host of different instrumental renditions and arrangements, and still kick listeners in the gut the same elemental way. Elsewhere, the glossy dream rock tapestries and lush articulations on the aforementioned “Someday” might make for what is the best third-act Ryan Adams album closer committed to tape.
If anything, it’s more of the upbeat and groovy moments on the album that come across as most rickety and frail. Granted, a few of them, such as “Love Me Don’t” at number two or penultimate cut “Do You Feel”, also suffer ever so slightly from a lack of extra TLC on the production end, but even in hearing something like FM‘s centerpiece “Wild & Hopeless”, one can’t quite shake off the feeling that it sounds more like a micro-serviced pastiche of solid compositional ideas all frankenstein’d together, rather than a tune arriving at its final evolution stage by way of an organic, raw, and un-doctored fashion. Not that this should necessarily matter, or even influence one’s enjoyment of the record, but when set side by side with stronger and more definitive songs like “I Want You“, “When She Smiles, “Hall of Shame”, or “Fairweather”, they do tend to stick out a little bit like sore thumbs. Nonetheless, Adams catches way more flies with honey than vinegar, and thankfully FM is by and large a victorious sunlit affair. Considering it got dished out on the heels of two double LP grieving odes to the dearly departed, we’ll take the switch of pace in spades.
We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.
AV
RYAN ADAMS
FM
2022, PaxAm Recording
Everything Must Swing 