What’s up scenesters? Who else remembers coming home from shows reeking of sweat and cigarettes? Sometimes I long for the simplicity of those days and others I cringe at the memories of awkward teenage egoism. Last week we talked with God Program about the year 2004 and the album Let It Enfold You by Senses Fail.
Mostly I just miss Myspace surveys and going to shows without worrying about waking up on time the next morning.
Here are your Lucky Numbers…
I’ve made it pretty clear on our show that this is not my favorite era of Punk. I’ll be honest, some of these cuts are way past their expiration date but I thought I’d take a somewhat scientific approach to my playlist. THE big Pop Punk records of this year are all represented here and I’m always a little shocked at just how much that sound overlapped with the Mall Emo years. I should remember it better, I lived through it, but I’ve held these two apart in my mind because the first seems to so logically precede the other. Not represented here is the raging tidal wave of Interpol/Strokes worship at it’s Hot Fuss-ing crest. I threw in some lingering legacy acts that still had Van’s Warped Tour appeal for good measure. So tie on your thrifted primary red necktie and your checkerboard vans, this one’s a real time warp.
The Pitch
I suspect Justin picked this record for me on purpose to tie in with the year.
pulses. have pulled off a pretty big undertaking by condensing a lot of post-Millineium Post-Hardcore, Mathcore and Emo into such a small package. An 18-minute LP with 12 fast songs—and it is an LP, an EP would have fewer tracks(!)—is nothing new for Punk rock but given the excesses prevalent in the scenes that seeded this record, it’s nice to get right to the punch.
I absolutely love it when bands work through their ideas efficiently and keep their songs short. There’s only two tracks on this record over two minutes, so even if you’re not especially impressed, the transitions alone are thrilling. Like the opening 32 second tap and talk intro that crescendos and fades into the face-raking Miss Machine whir of the first proper song “Bold New Taste” for instance. That first song moves through four parts with nods to almost as many musical sounds. “We’re Gonna play, Steve” hints at my once beloved Fear Before the March of Flames but doubles back down on Dillinger Escape Plan riff calculations.
“Meet Me in Temecula” doesn’t come close to elucidating the meaning of that title, I know it’s a reference to the “Meet me in Montauk” line from the (heh) 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Substituting the hamlet at the very eastern end of Long Island’s South Shore from that film with the name of the capital of Southern California’s Wine Country could make sense if you consider that both places are tourist destinations for wealthy whites. My own mental connections spider out from here but bare with me: Temecula also happens to be where I have gotten four of my five tattoos by Dave Quiggle, formerly of a handful of 90s/00s Christian HXC bands and the art director for Facedown Records who put out a record by a band called Symphony In Peril that had a song called “Stiletto” with a killer breakdown that was the soundtrack of a short lived, early days of Youtube, series of videos called “drive-by HXC dancing” which is exactly what it sounds like. Kind of the 2006 equivalent to the Denny’s Grand Slam. I guess I felt this was relevant to bring up because this song opens with a clip of a woman saying “they got their music cranked, treatin the street like a mosh pit” followed by a satisfyingly ignorant mosh-riff.
“No Good Can Come From This, But It Can’t Get Any Worse” jangles and squiggles in the Fall of Troy style followed by the biggest curve ball on the record “If Life’s a Gift, I Hope You Kept the Receipt” which dials in 5 seconds of frantic riffing that breaks into what could be the melodic chorus from a 2005 Metalcore track before giving out and letting the guitars fade to total silence as an apparent aperitif to the next few tracks. “Miss Me” ratchets up a clanking Deadguy groove but sheds it’s metallic skin in a few more twists, culminating in a finger picking, harmonic plucking and brass girded Maps & Atlases style Math Folk. The American Football nod in the title “I Meant It” is pretty funny because the song itself, a chamber poppy acoustic guitar and cello primitivistic exercise accomplishes for me what that band could never do.
The rest of the record retains more of the melodicism to some varying degree; “As a Treat” flips the scream-sing Post-Hardcore equation by interjecting a few gut busters into a mostly feel good Pop Punk bopper, “II” sounds like Thrice before they went overtly Christian and “General Grievance” staples two different song ideas into one with the first half barreling through some Kurt Ballou inspired chromatic flashed thrash that gives way to the prior song’s melodic Post-Hardcore.
Speak Less ends on it’s longest and weakest note with a three minute distillation of Post-Metal with the album intro palindrome “Evidence of Absence”. This variation of the brown pants sound does remind me of Cult of Luna who for many years I favored over anyone else chugging and droning for ten minutes at a time back in the day. Did anyone else suffer from Post-Sludge burnout? I’m strictly a one Neurosis dose a year guy now because of it.
Anyway, this review ended up being twice as long as the record so that’s all I’ve got for this week.
Speak soon, stay lucky
Dylan