On The Ex-Optimists fifth full-length album, they are not wasting any time on being taken seriously. Their latest LP demands to be cranked up and absorbed, with no outside distractions. Drowned in Moonlight is one of those rare records that you don’t expect to blow you away, yet their passion for music comes shouting through the speakers.
“When they take me down the corridor, they’ll secure my wrists with ties” Marissa Nadler croons in “For My Crimes,” the title track and album opener of the American songwriter’s eighth album. Nadler takes on the perspective of an individual on death row in a songwriting exercise, pleading to not be remembered for their crimes. The opening title track is a seemingly simple song. It’s not even close. “For My Crimes” – per the album’s press release, is labeled as “a sweeping, vaguely Southern drama of voices, strings, and acoustic guitar, that walks the line between character song and personal indictment by metaphor.” – I couldn’t agree more. The song brings listeners into a haunting atmosphere shaped by eerie backing vocals from Nadler’s friend and collaborator, Angel Olsen, clear and emotive acoustic guitar, and swells of strings. All these elements combined create a sprawling, remorseful story. In For My Crimes, Marissa Nadler seeks hard truths through turmoil. The album follows Nadler as she ponders whether love is strong enough to get past numerous struggles, from the distance to falling out of love. Nadler’s delicate, mesmerizing voice alongside gentle plucking of the acoustic guitar and layered strings form an unforgettable collection of songs to add to an already impressive discography.
“Even if your voice comes back again/Maybe there’ll be no one listening.”
The morning I climbed into my car to drive myself to the first day of my last year of high school, those lyrics punched me straight in the gut. I was reeling from a broken heart, given to me by a girl who’d occupied my mind all summer long. A few months earlier, she would have been walking the same high school halls that I was driving toward that morning. But she’d graduated and was now two hours south, probably waking up for her first day of college classes. Things hadn’t worked out between us, and if I’d been smart, I would have realized three months earlier that they were never going to. I didn’t, and now I was nursing a few fresh wounds and the prospect of facing down one last year of high school without her and without all the other friends who had left this town behind. “Crashin” was the song playing on the stereo, but it was a line from Andrew McMahon’s previous album that might have been most appropriate: “Hold on/It’s gonna be a hard day.”
“Are you ready for my soul?/What if I’m broken from the start?/And what if I never heal?” lead vocalist Dustin Kensrue, of Thrice, sings on the sixth song on Palms. This outpouring of emotion is what we have come to expect from Thrice over the years, but the honesty and earnestness of Kensrue’s delivery feels different with this great album. Thrice have a back catalog of albums that most artists would be envious of, and on their ninth studio album, they could have gone in any number of directions. The most important course for Thrice has always been forward, as they have improved upon their unique brand of rock as they continue to evolve as artists.
Metric’s seventh full-length album has a curious title in Art of Doubt, as there is little doubt that this Canadian four-piece band is as confident as they’ve ever been. The first song released on this effort, “Dark Saturday,” gets the brooding tones and dark atmosphere going early on this fantastic record. Lead singer, Emily Haines, shows a ton of composure on this LP, as she swaggers through the first track and “picks her spots” on when to belt it out and when to whisper. Metric have found their late-career masterpiece in Art of Doubt, as it encompasses all of the sounds that the band has tinkered with since their formation in 1998, into an outstanding work of art.
Over the past few years, I have found it easier to defend my adoration for Good Charlotte, even after many critics had written them off after the multi-platinum success of The Young & the Hopeless. Good Charlotte is continuing to find ways to reinvent themselves in the latter stages of their career, and their seventh full-length album entitled Generation Rx is no exception. Coming off of two commercially successful albums (Cardiology and Youth Authority) after a lengthy hiatus is no small feat, and the fact that many fans have stayed with the band over their lengthy career shows the staying power of the Waldorf, Maryland natives.
On the propulsive opener “Fever Dreams,” Emma Ruth Rundle breathlessly declares, “Fear, a feeling, is it real?/So nostalgic too, it just puts the dark on you,” immediately setting the tone on her fourth solo album, On Dark Horses, before the guitars can even come thundering through. Following up the wounded vulnerability on 2016’s Marked For Death, On Dark Horses features a restless Rundle picking up the pieces and moving forward all while creating her most visceral and personal piece of art yet.
While Marked For Death was written in isolation in the desert, Rundle collaborated with Jaye Jayle’s Evan Patterson and Todd Cook and Woven Hand’s Dylan Nadon to help flesh out her new record, giving On Dark Horses a relentless dynamic between Rundle’s intoxicating vocals and the ominous yet electrifying guitar work. The blackened folk of “Control” begins with a slow smoldering of sound before being engulfed by jolted guitar riffs, while the bluesy “Dead Set Eyes” emerges with hazy, dueling guitar interplay that Rundle’s vocals cut through like a knife.
Debut albums are tricky. On the one hand, they’re the first real look most people will take at your band. Sure, you’ve released a bunch of singles, maybe even a few EPs, but the actual debut album still seems to end up being where you take all the momentum you’ve had, and make a push to build a fan base around your music. So far, Pale Waves have been doing everything right. They’ve released a variety of songs, they’ve been building some buzz, and they have locked down the style they’re going for. On the other hand, getting a debut album right means finding a collection of songs that can keep those early adopters happy (since they’ve probably overplayed a good portion of your record already) while also building around it a cohesive feeling. My first impressions of Pale Waves’, My Mind Makes Noises, is that they have a lot of really good songs, but I’m not sure they have a really good album.
When you think of Philadelphia, you most likely don’t think of folk music. Well, Philly native Shannen Moser is trying her damnedest to change that, as her latest LP I’ll Sing is one of the genre’s best offerings of the year. Hell, it’s one of the best albums of the year in any genre.
On The Mowgli’s latest effort, I Was Starting to Wonder, they hone in on all of the best parts of their sound and deliver an outstanding EP from start to finish. With three full-length albums to their name thus far and multiple sold-out touring campaigns, The Mowgli’s realize who they truly are on this EP: a talented band that focuses on the optimistic side of life.
The album kicks off with “I Feel Good About This” and gets the Summertime vibes started early, and it fits perfectly with the cover art of a day out in the sun with friends. The two lead vocalists, Colin Dieden and Katie Earl, harmonize beautifully on the chorus here as they sing, “I’ve been looking for love in the distance/Down the sidewalks of cities I visit/Up the coast looking for something different/All along you were there but I missed it/I don’t know what it is but I feel good about this.” The themes of looking for love while still staying true to themselves are prevalent in this great collection of songs perfect for the end of the Summer season.
“I’m so glad that chapter of my life is over.”
Ruston Kelly tweeted those words out while introducing “Faceplant,” one of the (many) pre-release songs from his full-length debut album, Dying Star. They could just as easily be applied to the album as a whole, which exorcises a boatload of demons over the course of 14 beautiful, despairing songs. It’s a heavy listen: Kelly doesn’t try to glamorize his portraits of heartbreak, nor is he anything but candid about his personal struggles with addiction. Kelly overdosed in early 2016 and ended up in rehab. Later that year, he released his debut EP, called Halloween. He’s been building buzz ever since, and seems poised to explode with Dying Star. He also fell in love, getting married earlier this year to country music star Kacey Musgraves.
Do you remember your first kiss?
A few weeks ago my mom stopped by for dinner and brought with her a shoebox she had found in the basement. The box, now flimsy and tattered, contained love letters and notes from elementary school up through college. I laughed when she gave them to me. Over the years she’s dropped off countless things from my childhood whenever she decides it is time to redistribute the stuff neither of us knows what to do with any longer. When she left, I almost just tossed them aside. However, on top of the pile, I caught a glimpse of something that caused sensory memories to start flooding back. I took a sip of beer, mumbled “fuck it” under my breath, and pulled a few folded pieces of paper from the box.
I recognized handwriting. I recalled the way specific notes were folded. Ink colors. Inside jokes. Faded pencil sketches of pen-names and scribbled between class “I love you’s.” I started to feel long-buried memories of when these little pieces of paper, pre-cell phone and instant messaging, meant everything to me. When each letter represented possibilities and of being so in love that these possibilities, these fleeting ideas of a future, all felt inevitable. And each, now, clearly also representing a moment of heartbreak; of unfulfilled youthful promises.
I first heard of the new band, Spirit Animal, when I looked at the concert listings at my local venues and saw their name as the main support act for established artists such as Incubus and The Struts. Naturally, I was curious to check out the band if for nothing else to see what the hype was all about. On their debut album, Born Yesterday, Spirit Animal are clearly here for good times and party vibes, while still maintaining enough composure to reflect on history as well.
Having recently signed a record deal with Atlantic Records, Spirit Animal tend to embrace the high hopes put forth by their label and delivers a product worthy of our attention. In a lot of ways, I can find similarities to Spirit Animal with the early work of their tour-mates, Incubus, with the type of “funk rock” that they portray throughout their debut. However, Spirit Animal stretch out more to create a unique enough product to stand on their own as well.
This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on August 29th, 2018. I’ve decided to make it free to all users of the website. First impressions are meant to be quick, fun, initial impressions on an album or release as I listen to it for the first time. It’s a running commentary written while listening to an album — not a review. More like a diary of thoughts. This post has been lightly edited for structure and flow.
I figured with the album coming out on Friday this was really the last time I had to try and get some early thoughts down on this album for everyone before you’ll be able to hear it. Hell, there’s always the chance this leaks while I’m typing this up. Then everyone can join in with me.
At a high-level, this album works for me more than any of their albums have since Crimson. I’ve liked the stuff that followed, but it never really captured that same magic as their earlier work. I would find myself listening to them for a few weeks (with the exception of This Addiction, which never really grabbed me), but after that, when I wanted an Alkaline Trio fix, I’d go back to Crimson or something before it. That’s just how it played out for me. I can’t predict with certainty that this is going to be an album I come back to in the future, but there’s something about it that hits me just right and gives me that feeling. There’s an energy here, a feeling of immediacy that they touched on with My Shame is True, but one that feels much more rolled into a “classic” Alkaline Trio-sounding album. This urgency to the songs is really resonating with me at the moment.
“I love you, Chicago,” Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy sings on the closing notes of the second track “City in a Garden,” and, in a lot of ways, Lake Effect Kid, is very much a love letter to Chicago and all of the band’s memories surrounding their city. Nostalgia aside, Fall Out Boy have shown that they have not peaked, and the Lake Effect Kid EP showcases some of their best work to date.