Hey, I’m back with a brand new edition.
In the last few weeks we have done a Shoegaze radio episode for My Bloody Valentine’s Day and talked about the 2006 album We Don’t Need to Whisper by Angels & Airwaves. We don’t need to recap those, you can go listen to them.
Here are your Lucky Numbers
For the mix this week I decided to go HEAVY because we haven’t touched on Hardcore much at all on our show and definitely not recently. We have been hovering in the early 2000s for a while so I wanted to mix up the mixtape and show a different side of Punk. Consider this your mid-week pick me up.
The Pitch - Double Header
In keeping with gambling and sports terminology that I barely understand that we have adopted for our entire aesthetic, this week I’m serving up a double header pitch because I told Justin to keep assigning me shit even though I knew I was falling behind. The bases are loaded…uh…play ball? We’re really forcing it.
First up is this EP by Education called Parenting Style
Quite a few years ago Paint it Black put out two EPs stating that they would likely not put out anymore full length albums making a probably bullshit statement about how the EP is the truest statement of Hardcore music. I think they were right even if it was probably an overly academic excuse to not put in the effort for anymore LPs.
Parenting Style is a really fucking good case for that rule. This freaky, four song Post-everything release is a noxious, sloshing, witches brew of latter period Coliseum groove, Deathrock yawling and cascading Loma Prieta feedback over gloomy 80s floor tom Gothy Post-Punk beats.
I texted a good friend telling him he should send me Blacklisted riffs for me to sing verbed out Danzig vox over not realizing that that almost describes what I was going to listen to this afternoon. I would slot this right in between Wailin Storms and Pleasure Leftists. I listened to this EP twice in a row. It’s fucking good.
Next up at bat is the debut LP Stay Gone by Calyx. Full disclosure, Calyx will be on our show in the near future.
Holy shit I was so stoked for this record even though I haven’t heard a note of this band’s music until right this second, except 30 seconds at barely audible levels after seeing the Plastic Miracles announcement.
“Americana Get a Break” kicks off with the heart lifting, raw but melodic sound of Latterman and every other Punk band I’ve heard from outside Loosey’s in Gainesville. I really want a slice of 5 Star and a can of Sprite and for my brother to turn to me and ask “who’s that?!” before he looks it up on the Fest app and says “ah” and names some band I’ve heard of but haven’t heard.
I have not heard anything bridge the exploratory and the familiar sides of Punk quite this well since the last Hard Girls or Shinobu records. Take a bunch of raucous NoMeansNo songs and filter it through Restorations washed out Heartland Punk sound. John Ahn(formerly of the equally jam-oriented Edhochuli) lays a massive foundation alternating between the punchy, bopping thump of Kim Deal and the tube-cooking grind of Kim Coletta.
Caitlin Bender sings “a chorus comes on, so I sing along” in “Pacific Light Wave” and an angel horde of gruff Punk voices rip the clouds asunder and vocalizes a wordless group chant. It’s funny because there’s very few parts on this record that you could call a chorus. It’s one long Orgcore jam, the Free Jazz idiom applied to Minutemen/fIREHOSE. It’s not the first time punks have tried their hands at this but like Ornette Coleman, Calyx can’t resist a catchy tune even if they shift gears frequently. Can we call this Free Punk? It definitely jams econo and I wouldn’t call it Math Rock. My heart is in my throat listening to this. I want more.
The doxology referencing “praise those from whom all knowledge of side effects flow / praise those who use their bodies every way they know how / lay them down sweet tonight” coda on the mid-album epic “Money Blood” about selling plasma—which nods to all the ways people use their bodies to pay their bills that society wrongfully deems icky or desperate—gave me goosebumps. Indie Rock and Punk needs to strive more for this balance of ambitious song structure, soaring melodicism and poignant lyric writing.
Stay lucky,
Dylan