Have you heard? Jack White is going solo! Yes, it’s been a long time coming, right? After The White Stripes and The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather and a host of other guest work on other records, he’s finally doing something for himself. The record will be titled “Blunderbuss” and it will be out on April 24th on his label Third Man, in association with Columbia. Expect it to be magic. If you’re itching for a taste of what the album is going to sound like, enjoy this first song from it, “Love Interruption”.
As far as today’s Pick Your Poison is concerned, I’ll recommend tracks from Ane Brun, BBU, Damien Jurado, Doe Paoro, Mark Lanegan Band, Pelican, and Terry Malts.
Prior to this Metro show, I’d only seen Los Campesinos! twice before. Both times were at Lollapalooza, but both were vastly different from one another. The first time, the band was playing one of the small side stages, had just released their first EP, and the crowd to watch them numbered less than 200. For a festival set, even on a side stage, it was a small crowd. Yet it was as if the band was hoping to win every single person over, even the ones casually walking by on their way to see another artist at another stage. They had an intense energy, playfulness and songs that showed it off while being catchy as hell. After the show, I immediately bought their EP and had them sign it, which all of them did while drawing doodles on it and chatting with me for an inordinate amount of time. There’s just something about those super young bands, so full of life and possibility, that you hope they never lose such charms. A couple years and a couple albums later, Los Campesinos! returned to Lollapalooza, this time on a massive stage with a massive crowd. I was excited to see my old friends again, but watching their set became a bit like going to your favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant to find it’s now become super popular and there’s a 2 hour wait to get in. The band was getting the success they so rightly deserved, but I felt as if some of their edge had been lost. Throw on top of it the fact that one of their core members Aleks Campesinos! would be leaving the band at the end of the tour, and I began to worry about the future of these indie pop upstarts. Their last album Romance Is Boring was also much darker and less energetic than their previous efforts, though it was still one of the best records of 2010. That darkness held strong on their most recent effort Hello Sadness, but that album felt like it took the band full circle, the lyrics holding strong and the hooks suddenly perking up to increase the likeability factor. Turns out they’re doing just fine without Aleks (and a couple other now-former members) in the fold. It had become high time, in my mind, to finally see this band outside of a festival setting and see if they could win me over once again.
All ages shows tend to bother me just a little bit, mostly because so much of the youth of today feels that talking to their friends while a band is performing right in front of them is a good idea. If you paid money to see a show, you’re there to watch the band, not talk to friends. You can do that anytime. For free. But the one thing all ages shows bring to the table is the spirit of youth. When everyone’s paying attention, there’s jumping around, sing-alongs at the top of your lungs, and generally good vibes to be absorbed by all. Los Campesinos! provided a great assist in all of this straight from the beginning of their set, starting with the dynamic first single and track off Hello Sadness, “By Your Hand”. Following it up immediately with prior singles “Romance Is Boring” and “Death to Los Campesinos!” both kept the energy level high and also provided a great retrospective of where the band is at present vs. where they were in their early days all of 4 years ago. It was the sonic equivalent of a knockout punch from the get-go, which is probably why everyone behaved themselves in the most immature way possible. There was dancing, there was singing, there was crowd surfing and even a touch of moshing, but thankfully it appeared that everyone was physically okay for the duration of the show. Gareth was doing his best to keep a cool head as the ringmaster of the proceedings, encouraging everyone to keep having a good time but also to be mindful of others and helping those in need. It was about building friendship and community as much as it was seeing some great songs performed, and it seems everyone got their way. Those hoping for catalogue-spanning highlights from Los Campesinos! weren’t really disappointed either, though as expected the majority of songs were from their new album Hello Sadness. It was grand to hear bouncing around from “Songs About Your Girlfriend” to “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed” to “There Are Listed Buildings” and “Straight in at 101” without so much as a blink of an eye. Things slowed down just past the midpoint of the set, as new songs “To Tundra” and “The Black Bird, The Dark Slope” were emotionally tough but dragged in a crowd that was looking for a good time all night. Nothing that a little “You! Me! Dancing!” couldn’t fix though, which it did and kept the celebration going for another few songs, including the encore.
Closing out the main set was a very good rendition of “Baby I Got the Death Rattle”, even if much of the crowd apparently didn’t know the song’s closing lyrics of “Not headstone, but headboard/is where I want to be mourned.” Gareth clearly tried to get a sing-along started and it unfortunately didn’t quite work out. Finishing the encore with the classic “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” worked out far better, and there was a distinct smell of satisfaction in the air when the band walked off the stage that last time. That smell may also have been sweat. What helps make Los Campesinos! an exceptional band, outside of their dynamic and fun live shows, is the respect they have for their fans. They walked off the stage, through the backstage area, and straight to the merch table, where they remained until the very last person had cleared the room. They signed stuff, drew stuff, took photos, shook hands, engaged in too-long conversations, and basically did the same thing as the first time I saw them in 2007. To know that in spite of all their success and growth the last few years that they still care for their fans and put in the time and effort, well to me that’s the mark of a great band. It’s also a big reason why I’ll probably be a fan of theirs for as long as they’re around.
Set List
By Your Hand
Romance Is Boring
Death to Los Campesinos!
Life Is A Long Time
A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte
Songs About Your Girlfriend
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
There Are Listed Buildings
Straight in at 101
To Tundra
The Black Bird, The Dark Slope
You! Me! Dancing!
The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future
Hello Sadness
Baby I Got the Death Rattle \\**ENCORE**//
Miserabilia
Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks
Upcoming Los Campesinos! U.S. Tour Dates:
Jan 31 – BLUEBIRD THEATER, DENVER CO (16+)*
Feb 1 – CLUB SOUND, SALT LAKE CITY UT (ALL AGES)
Feb 3 – ELECTRIC OWL, VANCOUVER BC (19+)
Feb 4 – NEPTUNE, SEATTLE WA (ALL AGES)
Feb 6 – WILD BUFFALO, BELLINGHAM WA (21+)
Feb 7 – DOUG FIR LOUNGE, PORTLAND OR (21+)*
Feb 8 – DOUG FIR LOUNGE, PORTLAND OR (21+)*
Feb 10 – GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL, SAN FRANCISCO CA (ALL AGES)*
Feb 11 – ECHOPLEX, LOS ANGELES CA (18+)*
Feb 12 – CASBAH, SAN DIEGO CA (21+)*
Feb 15 – CLUB DADA, DALLAS TX (ALL AGES)*
Feb 16 – FITZGERALD’S, HOUSTON TX (ALL AGES)*
Feb 17 – THE PARISH, AUSTIN TX (ALL AGES)*
Feb 18 – THE PARISH, AUSTIN TX (ALL AGES)*
I literally get hundreds of emails about this here site each and every day, and that’s not an attempt to brag but makes for just a little note of concern on my part. If somebody really wants or needs a response from me about music they’ve sent me or want to send me, I do my best to write and send replies. On occasion though, some people have a tough time getting enough oxygen to their brains and they’ll ask me a silly or downright stupid question. If you’re an artist or a promotions/public relations person for an artist, please try to do a little leg work yourself. I get all kinds of emails asking if “Artist X” can have their mp3 featured in an edition of Pick Your Poison. These are the second and third emails I get from such people, and if I’m able, I’ll try and put their mp3 into a Pick Your Poison edition within a couple days of the very first email sent to me. Some artists and promoters are impatient, especially if they don’t see their song up on this site within 24 hours. Others fail to recognize that the music they’re hoping to promote has already been posted on my site, days or weeks beforehand. Here’s a helpful hint to all those people, and to you dear reader as well: there is a search bar. It is located near the top of the page on the right side. Type in whatever you want, an artist name, a song name, and so forth, and the search function will do its best to find all the posts matching your criteria. Brilliant, isn’t it? Just a helpful Friday tip from me to you. Oh, and thanks to the artists and promoters that are clearly paying attention to what’s being posted. You’re the smart ones and I appreciate the leg work you do to make that happen. Okay, now let’s do today’s Pick Your Poison. I’ll place the spotlight on tracks from Bleeding Knees Club, David’s Lyre, The Ex-Girlfriends Club, Isidore, Leema Mountain, Po Po, and Sharks. In the Soundcloud section enjoy Rick Rubin’s remix of Justice’s “On’N’On”, among others.
Let me do my best on this Thursday to give you a Class of 2012 update. I try to do this once a week, because typically there’s at least something to report. For example, this week it seems that Azealia Banks has been spending time with fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld. He’s apparently become smitten with her, and it’s not hard to see why. If you’d like to watch her perform at his house, simply click this link. Additionally, Class of 2012 artist A$AP Rocky unleashed a brand new, NSFW music video for his track “Wassup”. There are some naked people in it, just be aware of that before following this YouTube link. I should probably also say something about Lana Del Rey too. She’s been on the receiving end of some serious backlash the last couple weeks, spurned primarily from her disastrous SNL performance. They can’t all be winners. The anti-LDR sentiment is growing, and her debut album “Born to Die” is out on Tuesday. I’ll have a review of it before then, so pay attention to the site the next couple days if you’re itching to learn more. Would I slam one of the artists I predicted success for this year? Ah, there’s the rub, and the hook to hopefully grab your interest. What should have your attention right now though are the songs in today’s edition of Pick Your Poison. Plenty to love here, including tracks from Ariane Moffatt, Evan Voytas, The Darcys, Grace Woodroofe, The Just Barelys, The Head and the Heart, and Yukon Blonde, to name a few.
So the Joy Division-inspired Mickey Mouse shirt has been stopped. Yes, Disney decided that there may be some issues with the design, specifically the legality of it, and so they’ve decided to stop selling the shirt altogether. You can no longer find it for sale on the Disney website. They probably also got some flak from some people upset the company would align themselves with a band whose name had Nazi ties and whose lead singer killed himself. But whatever, it was an interesting piece of merchandise while it lasted, and got people talking. If you’re desperate to own one, right now your best friend is eBay, where they’re going for hundreds of dollars. Good luck. Okay, today’s Pick Your Poison is a good one, as they tend to be. I’ll give gold stars to tracks from Cardinal, England in 1819, Erin Passmore, Grand Duchy, Theresa Andersson (with Peter Moren of Peter Bjorn and John), Xiu Xiu and Zammuto (aka one half of The Books). Oh, and I can’t forget about Cynthia Lennon, John’s first wife, singing a ukulele version of the Beatles classic “In My Life”. There’s something just a little special about that.
In today’s weird music news, it seems that Disney has unleashed an odd piece of merchandise – a t-shirt that repurposes the cover of Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures” into the shape of a Mickey Mouse head. Have a look on the Disney Store website where you’ll also notice it’s “sold out”. As somebody that owns a Joy Division “Unknown Pleasures” t-shirt myself (as I’m sure many others do as well), Disney’s version intrigues me for a few reasons. First and foremost, they claim the shirt was inspired by Joy Division. I’m inspired by Joy Division too, but Disney is about the last thing I think of when associating things with that name. Anybody that knows a thing or two about the band realizes they took their name from the brothels in Nazi concentration camps. There was controversy with the band when they changed their name from Warsaw to Joy Division for that exact reason. Ian Curtis and the boys were really just taking the piss out of the name. They weren’t really advocates for Nazi brothels. And while we’re talking Nazis and WWII, one of the icons of the war was Mickey Mouse, a symbol used to represent America and American capitalism and values. In a sense, both Mickey Mouse and the band Joy Division were anti-Nazi symbols, even as the band didn’t take on the name until some 40 odd years later. As to the issue of Ian Curtis hanging himself and the general darkness of Joy Division’s music, those really aren’t things you want associated with beloved children’s cartoon character Mickey Mouse. Now for the record, the shirt is made for adults, and hopefully most that buy it understand the history where I’m sure little kids are none the wiser. And finally, I point out the history of the “Unknown Pleasures” cover itself. The image is not a Joy Division original, but rather something they repurposed themselves. The image was originally generated by a computer in the 1960s, mapping out successive pulses from the first pulsar ever discovered. The image was then published first in a 1971 edition of Scientific American magazine, then a 1974 edition of Graphis Diagrams, and finally a 1977 edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. The boys in Joy Division first encountered the image in that 1977 encyclopedia, which featured black lines on white paper, and simply flipped the two colors for the album cover. The published 1974 version of the image actually had it the same way the cover of “Unknown Pleasures” has it. My point is the Mickey Mouse shirt may have been inspired by the “Unknown Pleasures” cover, but that cover was inspired by an earlier published image that’s entirely science-based. Make of that what you will. I’ve already said way too much on this trivial subject. How about some Pick Your Poison? Tracks I’ll recommend today come from Air Review, Barry Adamson, Coast Jumper, Eric Chenaux, Royal Canoe and The Violet Lights.
Happy Friday! I hope your week was great. I’d call mine solid. I don’t have much else to say beyond that. Oh hey, it seems that SOPA/PIPA has been put on hold for the time being, so that’s a small victory for freedom on the internet, which is great. Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with such nonsense again, though the legislation might be back at some point in a different form. Okay, let’s get to some mp3s, shall we? Today I’ll highlight tracks from Black Marble, Circus Devils, COnduits, First Person Shooter, Lee Ranaldo, Lower Dens, Narrow Sparrow, and Shearwater. In the Soundcloud section enjoy Clams Casino’s remix of Lana Del Rey, as well as a new song from Miike Snow.
It’s grin and bear it time in Chicago again. For the second time in two weeks, a snowstorm is blowing in and is set to drop several more inches of snow. I’ve got my rations all set for a day spent entirely indoors. I don’t want to go out in dangerous conditions unless I have to. Yes, tomorrow’s going to be a quiet day for me, and I’m pretty happy about that. If you’ll be dealing with a snowstorm at all tomorrow, stay safe. Maybe listen to some new music? There’s plenty here for you to check out. I’ll advise downloading songs from BOY, Fort Romeau, Oberhofer, Thomas White, and Two Suns. Lightouts’ cover of a Guided By Voices classic isn’t half bad either. In the Soundcloud section you may be interested in Flosstradamus’ remix of Major Lazer.
And now, for a word about SOPA. Today is the day many websites “go dark” in an effort to push awareness about SOPA. What is SOPA? Well, if you’re reading this right now, I would hope you’ve got at least a small idea of what it is. Then again, if you’re outside the U.S., these things can be a little confusing. Any and all questions you might need answered about SOPA are available to you simply by typing the acronymn into your favorite search engine. Needless to say, if SOPA does become government policy, this site will very much cease to exist in its current form. It may cease to exist entirely, with the mere possibility that I’d be facing potential jail time for posting copyrighted music, even though I’ve been given permission to post all the songs below. So I encourage you to join the fight against SOPA, to help keep the internet free of government censorship. Okay, important piece said, let’s get to the music. Among the group of songs below, there are a handful I’ll place a special recommendation on for you. Those include tracks from Cold War Kids, Jenny Gillespie, Museum Mouth, Now, Now, The Pharmacy and Viper Creek Club. In the Soundcloud section, enjoy some danceable DFA Records cuts from Prinzhorn Dance School and Cut Copy’s remix of The Rapture. I’ll also recommend streaming the new song from Walls.
Field Music are a very “English” band. Sure, they’re FROM England, but as with so many other bands, that doesn’t automatically dictate what they sound like. It takes a certain style, a certain panache if you will, to make your sound country-distinctive. Beirut tends to do the sound of Eastern Europe justice. Vampire Weekend take on African-inspired pop and are somehow able to get away with it, as Paul Simon did. So with that same sort of trend, Field Music tread heavily in the realms of Britpop and more traditionally stuffy (yet catchy) arrangements. That hasn’t always been the case. 2010’s Field Music (Measure) had the band returning from a hiatus to an engaging 20-song double album that displayed a newfound confidence and looser arrangements than ever before. They also took trips down much more guitar-heavy and psychedelic alleys, which worked to their benefit by keeping you guessing over the course of 70+ minutes. Now two years later, the brothers Brewis are back with Plumb, a 15-track excursion that finds their confidence still intact but their urge for experimentation and expansion falling by the wayside.
The boys in Field Music probably think that they’re still taking risks and innovating, as listening to Plumb that seems to make sense. Orchestral swells, tracks bleeding into one another like one continuous thread, and a few cheeky sound effects are all things they’ve never done before or have done very little of before. Here’s the thing about that though: it’s a new coat of paint on the same wall. Remove those small bits and it’s the same band that made Tones of Town in 2007. They’ve even brought quite a bit of piano back into their arrangements after going largely without it on Field Music (Measure) due to Andrew Moore’s departure from the band. The band has stated in interviews and press materials they wanted to return to the much more angular and non-traditional songwriting of their first two albums, but with a modified and updated perspective that pulls influence from 20th century film soundtracks. Surprisingly, that’s an accurate description of what they’ve done on Plumb, though the film soundtrack references are a little come and go. That is to say from the kick off “Start the Day Right” and bleeding through “It’s OK to Change” and “Sorry Again, Mate” things move smartly, swiftly and with a symphonic bent. Upon the arrival of “A New Town” four tracks in, the band is instantly back in standard mode, ignoring the elements at work in the songs before it. When “From Hide and Seek to Heartache” shows up at track 11, the band suddenly “remembers” what they set out to do for another couple songs. “How Many More Times?” is an effective 40 second a capella experiment while “Ce Soir” would have made for a mournful closing number, though in many respects it sounds unfinished itself. Alas, the record continues for 2 more songs and 6 more minutes, just to get the total running time over the 30 minute mark.
Sometimes you need a couple of pop songs to play through the closing credits, and “(I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing” finally puts Plumb to bed. What’s a little ironic is that it’s the record’s first single and one of its best moments. You need to slog through quite a bit of musical nonsense to get there, and you’re left wondering why the entire thing couldn’t have been that good. Not that there aren’t a few Field Music highlights to keep an eye and ear out for. In spite of how it ruins the experimental mojo generated by the tracks before it, “A New Town” is a solid and one of the more engaging Field Music songs in recent memory. The dramatic dynamism of “Guillotine” fares best on this album though, the verses almost hushed with light acoustic guitar picking and subtle bass matched against the explosive and catchy chorus. The obtuse “Is This the Picture?” is framed in excellent fashion too, with the Brewis brothers trading off falsettos amidst some weaving finger picked electric guitars. Beyond those few highlights though, Plumb is plum out of luck. It may be admirable the band wants to experiment with traditional song structures, but most of the tracks just fall flat when there isn’t a chorus to latch onto or are just plain unmemorable when there is one. The good news is that the record’s best moments are almost evenly spaced across its 15 tracks, meaning that if you listen straight through it won’t be more than a few minutes before another gem comes along. In a perfect world (or a perfect album) of course, they’d all be gems. It’s easy to speculate that maybe if they had held onto the film soundtrack theme for the full album or if they’d tried a few more stylistic shifts like their last record then all would have turned out better. Alas, there’s no sense in arguing about what could be, only what is. Try as they might, Field Music just don’t quite have it this time around.
Class of 2012 update: With SXSW announcing most of the artists performing this year, I’m pleased to say that 7 of the 10 artists on my Class of 2012 list will be there. So will I. Expect updates from their performances. That includes Charli XCX, who teamed up with Alex Metric on the song “End of the World”, two remixes of which you can download below. Also in the Class of 2012 is Azealia Banks, and as of now she will not be at SXSW 2012. She is giving away a new song though, which again you can download below. And though they’re not part of my Class of 2012, I want to make mention that there’s a new song from The Dirty Three available in this set, and they’ve got a new record called “Off Toward the Low Sun” coming out on February 28th. Other tracks I’ll recommend today come from Beat Culture, Julianna Barwick, and Sick Figures. In the Soundcloud section, be sure to stream a new song from Great Lake Swimmers. Oh, and one last mention of the Class of 2012: Lana Del Rey’s SNL performance? Brutal.
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to you. In my mind, I always thought a day like today was about the equivalent of President’s Day, in that while government offices are closed, most everyone else was forced to work. Turns out Martin Luther King, Jr. was more important than George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or both of them combined. Okay, so that’s probably not really the case, one American hero being more important than another, but I do want to say that if all was right and just in the world, we’d have vacations on all 3 of their birthdays. So a big Happy Birthday to Dr. King. The world is a better place today because of the things he did. And so we reach today’s edition of Pick Your Poison. I’ll recommend tracks from Black Bananas, COOLRUNNINGS, Field Music, Pontiak, Porcelain Raft and Tanlines. In the Soundcloud section you can hear some new material from Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, The Jealous Sound and School of Seven Bells.
I just looked at the calendar for 2012. There are THREE Friday the 13ths this year. The first of those is today. If you’re the superstitious type, today’s the day you steer clear of anything that might even look like bad luck. Ladders, black cats, mirrors and salt are just a few things to keep a close eye on (or off), for they can swing your life in some pretty wild and wrong directions should the circumstances turn bad. I’m still staying locked away inside, avoiding the world, even though the snow has stopped falling (for now). Okay, maybe I’ll go see a movie later. Probably shouldn’t do “The Devil Inside” though, what with the evil spirits/exorcism plotline factoring into the whole luck proposition. Eh, I’m not that superstitious anyways. On to today’s lucky Pick Your Poison. I’ll recommend tracks from Andrew Sisk, Field Mouse, Gabriel & The Hounds, Newtimers, Peasant, The Plimsouls and Theophilus London. In the Soundcloud section be sure to stream new stuff from Olafur Arnalds and You Won’t. Perhaps the most fascinating artifact in this entire set though is a song collaboration between Jay Farrar (Son Volt/Uncle Tupelo), Will Johnson (Centro-matic), Anders Parker (Varnaline) and Yim Yames (aka Jim James of My Morning Jacket). They’ve got a record coming out that has them turning old, unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics into songs. The record is called “New Multitudes” and it’ll be out at the end of February. Keep an eye out for that one, and hear the first track from their collaboration in the Soundcloud section.
Cloud Nothings are the sort of band that has been hyped forever but has yet to deliver on the promise of true brilliance. They’ve always been “on the cusp”, without ever fully reaching it. Each of their two previous full lengths has kept them at such a precipice, meaning they’re great enough to be highly regarded but never to the point where their name is on the tip of everyone’s tongues. It is with such continued propulsion that we arrive at the band’s third long player in 3 years, the aptly titled Attack on Memory. This time, we’re assured, things are different. Previously, the band has been very much a one-man show, with Dylan Baldi writing and crafting most of the songs on his own, and then having people back him up in the studio and live. In a sense, it was sort of a “hired hands” band. At this point though, Baldi seems to have reached a point where he’s comfortable with the guys he’s working with, and the new record is more of a collaborative effort than ever before. They also chose to bring in legendary producer Steve Albini, which according to some recent interviews with Baldi, may have been a bad decision. The guy apparently treated the recording process as his time to do anything but pay attention to the job at hand. Still, the album is somehow able to retain that Albini sheen (or is it a lack of sheen?), and makes for the most interesting and ultimately divisive Cloud Nothings records to date.
The title of the album, Attack on Memory, is supposed to be a challenge to the way you think about Cloud Nothings. If you’re familiar with their previous two albums, Turning On and Cloud Nothings, then you should be clearly familiar with the band’s lo-fi pop-punk pedigree. It’s been a bouncy and fun ride, even as the sound hones closer to Sum 41 and Blink 182 than it does Fugazi or The Wipers. The new album tries to shake off those comparisons and re-establish the band as something more visceral and hardcore. They almost completely succeed at this, save for a couple moments of relapse. One listen to opening track “No Future/No Past” and you’ll instantly understand the changes and hopefully embrace them with open arms. Baldi sings like a man possessed, and it’ll be amazing if he can perform that umpteen times on tour and still keep his voice intact. It genuinely feels like this was the sound he was aiming for all along. Yet if that doesn’t do much for you, perhaps the nearly 9 minutes of “Wasted Days” will. To my mind, the song stands as the new piece de resistance of Cloud Nothings, a juggernaut that chugs along and actively engages the listener with every waking moment, doing the exact opposite of what its title suggests. Just when you think it’s on the verge of outstaying its welcome, it gets harder, better and faster than ever, falling somewhere in the path between Sonic Youth and Bitch Magnet. Seriously, the band should use the song as a mission statement for future records it’s so impressive and certainly shows off the talents of all the band members beyond just a series of power chords.
Speaking of power chords, fans of the first two Cloud Nothings albums will find that tracks like “Fall In” and “Stay Useless” are much more up their alley, the former moreso than the latter. Both are fun and speedy doses of proto-punk excellence, and are probably the two most easily memorable songs on the entire album. The 3 minute instrumental “Separation” is kind of the gooey center of Attack on Memory, and its title too is very apt. With the absence of Baldi’s vocals, the weight of the song rests entirely on the sharp and heavy guitar/drum assault, which is more than effective as a statement of purpose going forwards: separate yourself from what you thought you knew about this band. And though Baldi screams, “No nostalgia!” on “No Sentiment”, the song itself actually carries the drudging feeling that you’ve heard it somewhere before. That’s not to say the song is unoriginal, not by a long shot, but rather evokes the goodness of a Sunny Day Real Estate or even Slint, in glorious fashion. You can practically hear Baldi sneering behind the microphone, and there’s a certain kickass quality to that.
In spite of everything, Attack on Memory sort of loses steam in its final two tracks. Both feel like noble efforts to keep the same sort of spirit alive from all that came before it, but they’re a little more emotionally disconnected and drag in spite of their decent tempos. Baldi’s well-written lyrics remain intact, but his voice doesn’t reflect what he’s throwing out there. “It’ll never get old,” he sings on “Our Plans”, ironically sounding like somebody that’s pretty bored. You’d hope that wasn’t the case, particularly as the album is only 8 tracks total, with nothing except for “Wasted Days” crossing the 5-minute mark. In such cases it’d be nice if everything was as explosive as dynamite. Still, there’s so much quality over the duration of this album you’d be wrong to call it a misstep for the band. If anything, this should strengthen their resolve and push them even further in the right direction for the future. Is this finally the record that pushes Cloud Nothings into a new league of hyped bands that finally make good on their promise? It stands to reason that yes, this is finally their time. That said, why am I still thinking they’re still destined for even bigger, even better things?
