Weekly Album: Week of 07/23 - 07/29 - some Saturday this has been

This week I listened to some Saturday this has been by ribbon fix. I saw this band on a list of good female-fronted emo bands, so I decided to give them a listen. This album fits squarely in the sound many Emo bands around this time were making, showing a lot more indie influence and dialing back the punk energy a bit musically in comparison to bands from earlier in the decade. This album certainly has a bit more angst than a lot of the Emo I tend to listen to, which is not a bad thing but rather a welcomed addition. This is aided by the downtempo nature of the entire album, which just gives the whole album a sort of, "I'm laying in bed thinking about everything" type of feel. A large part of the sound of the album is also contrasting dynamics, where parts will be very gentle and clean, and then other parts will have the distorted guitar come in and the vocalists will be screaming. Speaking of the vocals, that is one of my issues with the album. The female vocalist does a fantastic job, and so does the male vocalist but only when he is screaming. When he is just singing normally his voice has that "bad Emo vocalist" type voice that has kind of come to stereotype 90s Emo. I suppose it had to come from somewhere after all. It isn't a huge issue, but enough that during the first couple songs it would garner a negative reaction out of me. But besides that, I would say this is an enjoyable 90s Emo album, and I'm interested to hear the band's other albums along with Andi Camp's (who was the female vocalist and bassist of the band) other albums. 8/10

Weekly Album: Week of 07/16 - 07/22 - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

This week I listened to Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. For simplicity's sake I will refer to them as OMD. I first became aware of the group after watching a video about the synthesizers used on their hit single "Enola Gay" which is not on this album. I thought it was a great song as I have said before I am a closeted synth pop fan. So here I am listening to their debut album, which certainly smells of Kraftwerk. When looking into it the band notes them as their big influence, and I hear it on a number of tracks. The songs, "Bunker Soldiers", "Mystereality", "Messages", and somewhat "Red Frame/White Light" sound a lot like Kraftwerk with a bit more of a pop-sensibility in their melodies. This popiness is what sets them apart from Kraftwerk and similar groups, as Kraftwerk's whole aesthetic was very robotic. There are a song that I could tell without even looking it up was the single, that being "Electricity". It has way more energy and melodicism to it in comparison to the rest of the album, which makes it almost feel out of place. Not to say it is a bad song but it feels like it should be on a different album. There isn't much to say about the synth sounds on the album, they are good but due to the band's limited gear many of the songs feature the same sounds. This is something that you feel on the entirety of the album, this sort of DIY "made in my basement" type feel. It isn't a bad thing, but I think for synth music like this there needs to be a bit more cleanliness to it, which is why Kraftwerk and similar bands work so well. Nontheless, OMD's debut is a good album and it makes me want to listen to their other albums where their sound is developed further. 7/10 album

Weekly Album: Week of 07/09 - 07/15 - Skyscraper

This week I listened to Skyscraper by FEX. This is quite the interesting album to me, as it comes from the band that created the "Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" now known as "Subways of Your Mind". It was a very long search but the band was finally discovered sometime last year and I was quite happy about that as I always felt "Subways of Your Mind" was a great song. I'm sort of a closet New Wave/Synth Pop fan. Every song I hear from that genre I always end up really enjoying but I never really explored the genre very much, so listening to this album was quite the treat for me. All the songs are old recordings by FEX from the 80s; some of them are studio recordings and some are demos/rehearsal tapes of the band, but it all has this lofi production which I feel really adds to the atmosphere of a lot of the songs. The album has an impeccable groove to it, sort of like a Krautrock type groove. A driving groove that gives even the slow songs this sense of urgency to them. I found my head bobbing and foot tapping the whole way through. All of the songs themselves are written quite well too, not really a dud on the album. All the songs have pretty synth parts with the driving rhythm section. While there might not be many catchy hooks on most of the songs (aside from the poppier "Jenny" and aforementioned "Subways of Your Mind"), they don't really need them. The songs are carried by the instrumentation and atmosphere of it all. This is a great album to throw on in the background while doing something. I decided during one of my listens to put it on while playing an Arena Shooter game and I had a great time. Certainly an album I plan to revisit for many future listens. 8.5/10

Stavi Rants About: Emo (And How 90s Emo Became Fender-Washed)

As a brief introduction before the actual post, this is part of what I'm calling "Stavi Rants About" where I just rant about things I am interested in. It could be music related but it might not be sometimes. These will be more free form than the album reviews so expect paragraphs that wander everywhere and can be, at times, nonsensical. Enjoy!

Over the past few years, Emo has become one of my favorite genres of rock music. I used to reject the term Emo for a number of years when I first started listening to it, mostly because the term had a negative connotation in my mind, shaped by what popular culture had said about the genre. When I was a Punk fan listening to Rites of Spring, I would just call them Hardcore. They are hardcore but their album is certainly an Emo album in my mind. Similarly, I wouldn't call Cap'n Jazz, my first exposure to the 90s Emo scene, Emo. I would call them Indie Rock or Post-Hardcore, which they are but they are certainly Emo as well. It wasn't until I stopped actually caring about what people thought of what I listened to that I started saying that I was a fan of Emo music. 

What is Emo? I have no idea and neither does anyone else really! It's one of those genres that has had such a varied sound, a large amount overlap with other genres, and describes so many bands that trying to actually describe it is difficult. Any definition I see has exceptions to it. It is somewhat of a Potter Stewart situation, "I know it when I see it." I can tell that I consider an album emo, but if you asked me what about it makes it qualify as such I could not really tell you, and this differs greatly from person to person. For example, I do not consider Owls' self-titled debut album Emo. I think of it more as a Math Rock album, even if it is made by the reformation of one of my favorite Emo bands of all time. Despite this, the album is listed as Emo on Wikipedia and Rate Your Music. Things like this leads to great debates about what is and isn't Emo, and truly I believe none of it matters really unless someone is trying to use Emo to describe something that has no relation to the genre's history. Such as trying to apply Goth stylings and fashion as Emo's own fashion. Emo has roots in Hardcore and the DIY scene which is a scene famous for rejecting what is essentially branding like that. But the problem now is that calling "Emo" fashion Emo has been normalized that you can't really call it anything else! It isn't Goth, it is similar to Scene but still different enough to be it's own thing. It is all semantics anyway, so even if I care about it does it really matter? 

I just feel the history of things is very important. Looking back on the history of something is very important to think ahead for the future, but to also appreciate what it started as. This brings me to a big point of contention for me, which is the "Fender-Washing" of 90s Emo or Midwest Emo as it tends to be called. In the modern day, when people talk about the sound of Midwest Emo, the things that come to mind are tapping, complicated riffs, odd-time signatures, and the Fender Telecaster. These pristine, sparkly sounding guitars that play this progressive music. But when you truly look back a lot of the actual Emo bands from the 90s, their music 99% of the time sounds nothing like this. Many of those bands still had a lot of punk/hardcore influence, especially in the earlier half of the decade. In the late 90s, yes there was a little bit more of a shift to a more indie/alternative influenced sound with bands like Penfold or Mineral, but there was still this punk energy to them. Not to mention most of them weren't playing Fender Telecasters!!!! That is the big thing that sticks out to me. All of a sudden, the Telecaster is the ultimate 90s Emo guitar. Looking back at live footage from back then, the only two 90s Emo bands I can really see with a Telecaster are Victor from Cap'n Jazz... and American Football.

Do not get me wrong, I love American Football. Their first album will forever hold a special place in my heart and they've certainly influenced me musically. But, the rise of American Football in the 2010s has led to some revisionist history taking place about what Emo was like in the 90s. Now, people think that American Football's sound was the dominating sound back then, and the Fender Telecaster is the ultimate Emo guitar. Not to diss the Telecaster either, they are wonderful guitars, but this is just not the case. American Football was a very small band during their initial run, and did not see a lot of success. They barely even toured, breaking up right after they released their first album. Most people were more aware of frontman Mike Kinsella's other projects, such as the band him and his brother were in Cap'n Jazz, or his solo project Owen which he did after American Football. I mean, Cap'n Jazz's first album is often cited as this legendary Midwest Emo album, so it just pains me when American Football is the more remembered band nowadays by most people, and their sound takes the claim as the "Midwest Emo Sound". So now, to be a Midwest Emo band, you have to play twinkly and noodley guitar riffs and play with odd time signatures and all this stuff. The funny things is, American Football themselves admit that they were trying to go away from Emo. They felt that sound had been perfected, so they were taking more influence from indie bands like Tortoise. Quite ironic that they are the Emo gods now. 

I hope I don't come across as mad about all this. These things are kind of silly so it can be a little fun to take them seriously sometimes. I would just like the history of something dear to me to be properly looked at instead of revised like has been in the modern day. This is why it pays to do your research.

Weekly Album - Week of 07/02 - 07/08 - Song Cycle

This week I listened to Song Cycle by Van Dyke Parks. This album came to my attention through Parks' involvement with the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson on their unfinished Smile album. I was always a fan of Parks' writing for many of the Smile songs, and always thought I should give this album a shot. It took me a while to work up to it, as I fell out of my intense love for the Beach Boys for a time, but I came back to them just prior to Brian Wilson's death. As a result of that and getting back into the Smile material, I put this album on the list for the weekly album so I could finally listen to it. I can tell you that this album certainly did not disappoint. It blends together so many things that I love: Old-style dance band music, orchestral influences, some psychedelia/experimental elements, historical/Americana references, and Parks' fantastic wordplay. All of the songs are fantastic, even ones like the short sound collage, "Van Dyke Parks". They add so much to the feel and pacing of the album, which isn't something I think about too much but the pacing on this album is incredible. It is up there most perfectly paced album in my opinion. The songs are all in this style that is part orchestral/progressive pop and part psychedelic, where they might sound a little weird or obtuse at times but those are the things that make it so interesting to me. All of this also has this "old-timey" tint over it so to speak, with the orchestral arrangements invoking 1920s and 30s musicals and the use of instruments like the mandolin and tack piano invoking the southern and western parts of the United States, which is fitting considering this album is largely about the USA and California. It all meshes together so well and almost feels like it was made for me. Overall this is an amazing album and certainly one of the best I've ever heard. 10/10

Weekly Album: Week of 06/25 - 07/01 - Split Personalities

This week I listened to Split Personalities by 12 RODS (Who I will be referring to as 12 Rods for the sake of formatting). I first heard of this band on accident. In an attempt to search for this song I heard one time, that being "Tim, Wish You Were Born a Girl" by Of, Montreal, I was served up 12 Rods song "I Wish You Were a Girl" and was entranced by the beautiful instrumental and frontman Ryan Olcott's voice singing these pretty melodies. The name of the game for this album are thick and layered instrumentals. When this album is loud, it goes all out in a total noise explosion. But, the album knows when to dial it back. For example, the song, "I Am Faster" has these haunting, quiet verses showing how they can dial it back. I think there is only a single guitar track during those parts, in stark contrast to the wall of sound that is the chorus. This album also isn't afraid to get a little weird with it. The track, "Chromatically Declining Me" sounds almost like a weird 80s Post-Punk or New Wave song during the verses with the pummelling synth bass that pairs well with these short guitar bends. The band also isn't afraid to get a little strange with the melodies, but still keeps them feeling pretty and sounding catchy. They might sing a note that might sound a little strange over the chords or the rhythm might feel a little disjointed at times, but little things like that add so much character to the album's sound. This is certainly one of the great albums of the 90s. 9/10