Review: Hailey, It Happens – Hailey, It Happens

Craig Manning Dec 14, 2016

Nothing good comes out in December, right? That’s more or less what most of the major music publications would have you believe, as End-of-the-Year lists start hitting the web in earnest earlier and earlier each year. This year, the start date was around Thanksgiving week. Maybe by 2026, we can make it all the way to Halloween! Personally, I’ll never finalize an AOTY list until mid-to-late December, and albums like Hailey, It Happens are Exhibit A for why that is. Not only was this record—the fourth official release and second full-length from Boston-based electropop duo Hailey, It Happens—a December 2nd release, but it’s also the kind of album that wouldn’t have sounded quite right until this particular time of year. On Hailey, It Happens, the band’s sound is driven by icy synths, yearning vocals, and wistful hooks built to come alive on the coldest nights of the year.

Review: The Alchemist Cookbook

Nathan Hall Dec 6, 2016

A man lives alone in the woods with his cat, attempting to use alchemy to summon the devil and create riches for himself. Plotwise, that’s about all there is to Joel Potrykus’ The Alchemist Cookbook, a film that I find hard to organize thoughts on. Much of what I like about it lies just beyond the grasp of my ability to verbalize, possibly because what I enjoyed so much in the film doesn’t quite feel concrete, and might more come from the feeling the film captures. This is a film with an aura, and for a film that deals so much with the implied, or presences more felt than seen, the balance is an accomplishment for Potrykus.

Review: Yellowcard – Yellowcard

Jason Tate Dec 1, 2016

With goodbye comes reflection. This reflection is often bittersweet as it drifts between that which has filled us with joy and that which has caused us pain. There’s a cauterization of once open wounds that necessitates a search for meaning in the steps that led us here. And it’s within this reflection that we try and attach understanding to our history. Why does saying goodbye make us feel this way? What is it about this specific action that leads to an emotional cluster-fuck? A perceptible and undeniable bond between love and sadness? I keep asking myself these questions as I prepare to say goodbye to one of the best bands that ever came from our music scene. A band that has soundtracked my highs, soundtracked my lows, and has been a constant musical mirror to the love, and sadness, that life has brought. As I walk into this realization, I can’t help but reflect on just how many of my goodbyes have been punctuated by a Yellowcard song. Goodbye to friends, goodbye to family, goodbye to relationships, goodbye to states, goodbye to innocence, goodbye to youth. And with that I realize that I don’t want to become numb to goodbyes. I want them to sting. I want them to hurt. I want the goodbye to be a remembrance of everything that led to that moment. Yellowcard’s final self-titled album is that pinprick. It’s that puncture against the consciousness that reminds me why I listen to music, it’s the melodic pull that has dominated my life for all these years. It’s between this intense feeling of familiar and new that I find the closing Yellowcard album lays itself to rest.

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Review: Countless Thousands – You’re Goddamn Right

Craig Manning Nov 30, 2016

I don’t review anywhere near a high percentage of the albums that land in my inbox. Largely, this fact is due to sheer, raw statistics. I get dozens of promos a day, most of them from artists I’ve never heard of. I don’t even have time to listen to the majority of them, let alone put pen to paper and give each album a fair, in-depth write-up. Believe me when I say that I wish I did have that kind of time.

With all that said, though, even I couldn’t resist giving Los Angeles rock band Countless Thousands a review, and their music was only one of several reasons. Between one of those eye-catching band names that pulls you in right away, a funny, tongue-in-cheek album title (You’re Goddamn Right), and an intriguing RIYL that included names like Against Me!, The Clash, and Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, these guys won my attention in a way that few unknown bands ever do with a promo email. Add a serious master class in bio writing, which casts the four band members as a “show choir reject,” an “East Coast jazz legend,” a “cosplay nerd,” and a “Civil War reenacting drum geek,” and I was ready to write half the review before I even pressed play.

Review: Two Tongues – Two Tongues Two

Aaron Mook Nov 25, 2016

Before I started writing this review, I felt the need to revisit both Say Anything’s album from this past January, I Don’t Think It Is, as well my subsequent review of the album that I wrote for AbsolutePunk.net. This was a surreal experience, partially because of my own disdain for the album but more so because I spoke with Bemis about the aforementioned review. Following its publication, we had a (very pleasant) dialogue about my review, Bemis’s music and art criticism in general, and all things considered, it proved to be a thought-provoking and productive conversation.

What you must understand is just how much Say Anything’s music has meant to me over the past decade. Even now, at a time in my life when I find myself returning to the band’s later output less and less, it’s easy to trace a thick black line from my tastes today to the year I discovered In Defense of the Genre, and subsequently …Is a Real Boy. At the time, my 13-year-old mind had never heard something quite so complex, so unique as Bemis’s knack for musical arrangement and lyrical phrasing. They were my favorite band for years, and the release of I Don’t Think It Is in January, my review and the discussion surrounding it, left me questioning my growing musical tastes, platform, and the very purpose of music reviews in the Age of Streaming.

Review: Max Fite – Shake It On Down

Craig Manning Nov 23, 2016

We’ve been hearing for years that “rock is dead,” but let’s just be honest: 2016 has been a damn fine year for rock music. Between new classics from the likes of Butch Walker and Jimmy Eat World, a Green Day album that was better than I ever expected a Green Day album would be in 2016, a sterling goodbye from Yellowcard, another strong round of emo releases led by The Hotelier, and the most ambitious Dawes album yet, 2016 has been the best year for rock in recent memory.

You can add Max Fite’s Shake It On Down to the list. An up-and-coming outfit from the Los Angeles area, Max Fite strike an effective balance between garage rock, 1990s brit pop, and whiskey-soaked southern rock. Held together by the voice of frontman Max Fitelson—who himself sounds like a mix between Craig Finn (The Hold Steady) and Noel Gallagher (Oasis), the band’s collision of different sounds coheres surprisingly well.

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Review: Brand New – The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me

Aj LaGambina Nov 22, 2016

In 2006, Brand New were a band known mostly for their work as one of the Long Island based pop-punk bands that managed to make it to a national stage. They were winding down from the success of their 2003 sophomore record Deja Entendu, an album that saw the band eschew the pop-punk tag in favor of more complex and dynamic songwriting, in addition to exploring more introspective themes than their contemporaries.

The sonic shift experienced between those first two records was nothing, however, when compared to the shift between the second and third. Complications arose in January of 2006 when nine demos leaked. This leak stalled the band’s creative process, further delaying their third LP. Though the band was vocal in their disappointment about these songs making it to the internet, it may have been for the best. And then, on November 21st, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was unleashed onto the world. I think it’s fair to say that most of the people who have listened to the record have found themselves greatly affected by it. Why is that? I can only really answer by explaining my experience.

Review: Miranda Lambert – The Weight of These Wings

Craig Manning Nov 22, 2016

Earlier this year, in a 10-year retrospective piece for Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium, I talked at length about the impossibility of double albums. The crux of my argument there was that the double album was something of a cautionary tale. So many artists have tried and failed to make compelling double albums, free of filler and with enough thematic or sonic cohesion to hold together over the course of two discs. Even as a songwriter myself, I can’t fathom wanting to attempt a double album. The idea of writing lots of songs is that you can take the finest ones, the ones that best cohere to your vision, and put them on a record together.

Review: Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout

Thomas Nassiff Nov 15, 2016

Being drawn to Laura Jane Grace’s memoir, TRANNY: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, is a natural side-effect of being hypnotized, mesmerized, and forever in awe of Against Me!’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues. I appreciated Transgender Dysphoria Blues for a myriad of reasons: It’s a hell of a rock-and-roll album, it’s intimate and personal in its storytelling, the way my favorite artists have always sung their stories, and it made me a better person. The latter point is not something that can be said for a ton of my favorite albums.

Review: All Get Out – Nobody Likes a Quitter

Aj LaGambina Nov 8, 2016

Sometimes waiting pays off.

It’s now the last quarter of 2016, and we finally have the sophomore effort from All Get Out, Nobody Likes a Quitter. The band’s last full length, The Season, was released all the way back in September of 2011. Now widely considered something of a cult classic, that record was followed up four years later with the Movement EP, an effort meant to reflect the pace and energy of the band’s live show. Now almost a year later, we have All Get Out’s second full length, and it was worth every (im)patient day we waited for it.

Review: John K. Samson – Winter Wheat

Zac Djamoos Oct 26, 2016

“Word is getting out that The Weakerthans are done.”

This tweet from The Weakerthans’ drummer, Jason Tait, last July didn’t surprise many fans – their last album had been in 2007 and they hadn’t played a show in two years – but it was confirmation, and it still stung to read. So when it was announced that Weakerthans vocalist/guitarist/lyricist John K. Samson would be releasing his second solo album this year featuring collaborations from Tait and Weakerthans bassist Greg Smith (among others), it almost felt like that hiatus was over. Many fans probably expected Winter Wheat to sound, somewhat, like a Weakerthans album. Given the members involved, it didn’t seem like a stretch, especially consider Samson’s last solo outing, 2012’s Provincial, was stylistically similar to his old band’s brand of indie rock. Those people were wrong.

Review: Jimmy Eat World – Integrity Blues

Craig Ismaili Oct 24, 2016

“The open road is still miles away. Ain’t nothing serious. We still have our fun. Oh, we had it once.” These words, from the second verse of Jimmy Eat World’s perpetually underrated song, “The World You Love,” sum up so much of why I have fallen head-over-heels in love with this band over the past five years of my life. Jimmy Eat World’s music is best represented by the open road late night drives that “The World You Love” calls to mind. The freedom to explore the best of what the world has to offer.

My life is currently in a state of transition. One change, in particular, looms larger than the others. One of my closest friends, and one of the catalysts for thrusting me headfirst into Jimmy Eat World super fandom, is moving 600 miles away at the end of the month. Someday, maybe soon, I will end up relocating as well. So that line, so symbolic of the open road optimism for the future, is also simultaneously so wistful about the places we’re leaving behind, and the fun we’re putting in the rear-view mirror.

It’s this tightrope act between pensive, longing reflection on the past and relentless optimism for the future that I pondered as I drove north on I-287 through the rain, with no clear destination in mind, and the dashboard clock winding towards midnight. And sound-tracking that late-night drive was Integrity Blues, the breathtaking ninth studio album from Jimmy Eat World.

Review: Kevin Devine – Instigator

Zac Djamoos Oct 20, 2016

“I can’t say I’m underrated,” Kevin Devine sings at the beginning of a new Bright Eyes-like folk song called “No One Says You Have To.” Although in the context of the song, it serves as a reminder to Devine to appreciate the success he’s found, I’ll have to disagree with him there. The 39-year-old Brookyln singer/songwriter is now nine albums deep and still hasn’t put out a bad album. He was able to release two albums in the same year – on the same day – with nearly two completely different sounds and both were rightfully acclaimed. But for all that, he crowdfunded his last two albums and he was dropped from Capitol after only one release — he can say he’s not underrated all he wants, but I’m going to disagree every time.

Instigator is my argument as to why.

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Review: Green Day – Revolution Radio

Craig Manning Oct 6, 2016

A lot of people probably thought Green Day were down for the count leading into 2004. They’d had a tumultuous decade of success in the 1990s, capturing the sound of a generation on Dookie and then writing the definitive graduation song with “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” Their catalog was stacked with hit singles and earworm hooks, but they’d ushered in the start of the new millennium with little fanfare. 2000’s Warning got decent reviews but changed their sound in ways fans probably weren’t expecting and weren’t terribly psyched about by being more folk-pop than pop-punk. That, combined with the lack of a world-conquering single and the fact that Napster was busy taking a hatchet to the record industry, meant that Warning only ever went gold. Not bad for your average band, but not so great for a group that had gone either multiplatinum or diamond on their three previous albums. Add the 2003 theft of the record that was supposed to the follow-up to Warning, and Green Day seemed washed up and left for dead.

Review: Ceres – Drag It Down on You

Zac Djamoos Oct 5, 2016

Throughout most of the new Ceres album, Drag It Down on You, vocalist Tom Lanyon sounds pissed. Not pissed in the way that The Story So Far’s Parker Cannon sounds pissed, not the kind of pissed that makes you want to punch your bedroom wall, but the kind of pissed that makes you want to punch yourself. See, Lanyon and the rest of Ceres have done a lot of growing up since 2014’s remarkable debut, I Don’t Want to Be Anywhere But Here, and the result of that growth is the band’s sophomore album, which will go down as one of the best albums in an absolutely stacked year.

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