Album of the Week Club (UNDER CONSTRUCTION / WILD WEST)

[SowiesoGroyp]

the whimsy and merriment of the beatles in a post-TVU world. there isn't really any point in talking about individual songs because it felt like they did everything they could to blur everything together and prevent anything from standing out too much, like the triviality is the point. though there is gesturing at experimentation here and there, it's always subtle and brief, here and gone like everything else. i'm trying to remember why i didn't like bee thousand, and i think it was because it felt too beatles-y when i was expecting sincerity and relatability. the singer even sounds like he's affecting a british accent at times. "inexplicably," as muttonhead would say.

for me, music that says "don't take us too seriously, we're just having fun" and shoots for the lofty goal of "hey, that's kinda neat" only really transcends itself when it tugs on your heartstrings, when it stirs you, when it evokes childhood, faded memories, and actual "love." the music of guided by voices is somewhat charming. it is breezy and inviting. it is not monotonous or particularly boring; there is just enough variety to keep things moving along at a steady pace. but i find it very minimally evocative. it fails to improve upon the beatles in this regard. there's a real difference between the approach of john lennon and the approach of brian wilson... the difference between creating a self-contained song of faceless fictional characters and bearing your soul for all to see. at the end of the day, it's pop music, and the novelty wears off quickly.

what does it say to me about my life? not much. it doesn't seem interested in that. and that's fine for a sunny summer sunday afternoon, i guess.

 

[SowiesoGroyp]

you're up @MagicHour

 

[MagicHour]

can i pick the next album plzzzzz i got a heater for u guys ^____^

Same​

Crain - Heater

1994’s Heater is the second album by Louisville post-hardcore band Crain. Following their debut album
Speed, Heater is a major improvement on their sound, a mix of thrashing, energetic rocking, and intense,
slower breakdowns, produced by Steve Albini. Crain, originally formed in 1989 by members of the band
Cerebellum, was one of the more nationally recognized acts from the Louisville music scene. Former
members of Crain went on to perform in bands such as The For Carnation, Shipping News, and Parlour.

You can find the album on YouTube and Soulseek, but I couldn’t find any high-quality downloads.

Listen here:

 

[MagicHour]

Here is an interesting profile of the band in a local newspaper from 1993:
https://www.louisvillemusicnews.net/webmanager/index.php?WEB_CAT_ID=50&issueid=52

Former Crain member Jon Cook is also featured in a great music documentary called Breadcrumb Trail, which is about Slint’s Spiderland album.

 

[vagabond]

i should also add that finding out guided by voices formed when they were all like 28/29 and didn't become popular until their late 30s gave me a small amount of hope that my life didn't end at age 12. and also a youtube comment on one of their songs lamenting on how gbv were the "sound of my 20s" which i thought people only did for their teenage years

u only hit the dip bro everyman hits it out of school, ur literally a valueless piece of shit untill ur like 30 as a man and u go from surrounded by the hottest women (age 16 yr olds) who want to ang u just for being around them, to being just another man who hasnt made anything of his life, so the dip is pretty extreme for most and many just rope out but u haev hitler and jesus 2 back u up man so keep ur head up, even if the jew world order and whores dont value u, God willed for u to be as u r rn and if He wills for it to be it means it will all work out, jesus wants u to exsist for some reason and its not to be in despair its to love bigly, so trust the plan and focus on making a scheme to get lots of money so then u can hoemaxx and repeat the cycle of life!

 

[vagabond]

Same​

View attachment 3613

Crain - Heater

1994’s Heater is the second album by Louisville post-hardcore band Crain. Following their debut album
Speed, Heater is a major improvement on their sound, a mix of thrashing, energetic rocking, and intense,
slower breakdowns, produced by Steve Albini. Crain, originally formed in 1989 by members of the band
Cerebellum, was one of the more nationally recognized acts from the Louisville music scene. Former
members of Crain went on to perform in bands such as The For Carnation, Shipping News, and Parlour.

You can find the album on YouTube and Soulseek, but I couldn’t find any high-quality downloads.

Listen here:

FAV SONG the last 1 broken heart of a Neutron Star, or the first song... I defiently felt pumped up by every track and my body wanted to move but I restrained myslef into the chair i have lived in for years, but I think I will play this next time I workout all the way through again, I felt like my audio was not loud enough on max volume, I wanted 2 blast it and shake my room but i dont have indoor speakers, but I can blast it tommorow outside I have speakers out there, the power 4 me seems to come from the instruments and not from the vocals, so it has a more subtle emotional activation but it seems to be welling up and more constant, only comparision I can make in my limited knowledge would be some gen x music head on a consctruction site I was on playing something through a giant speaker he brought to the job, what he played made me work fast and hard for hours but it was fun to work, strange but true

 

[cheesygloypist69]

I go to local hardcore shows sometimes and this is album perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being at a shitty DIY show in a hot corrugated metal warehouse that reeks of sweat and rubber. This album would be insane to experience live.


I've never heard a hardcore band do math rock like this, so for me the album is much more emotionally varied than some of the other passé gen x shit that came around at the same time. I think a lot of hardcore music suffers from being kinda flat and uninteresting but this album really feels highbrow and noteworthy in comparison. Like, if the guys from Sonic Youth took a bunch of speed and got really angry this is what I'd expect to come out.

My favorite track was Hey Cops!, that guitar part in the beginning was super unexpected and almost out of place on an album as heavy as this.

I give it a 6.9/10. I need to listen to Spiderland again.

 

[mochi]

i think it's hard to say something specific about this album because it's basically exactly what comes to mind when you think of 90s post-hardcore

it's like very core of all the obvious bands, unwound, slint, fugazi, jesus lizard, nomeansno, drive like jehu and whatever. if you strip away all the flair, unique parts of their music and all the outside influence of those bands (except fugazi because they're garbage and ian mackaye is a poser) this is what you'd get, with everything being purely inside the realms of being definitively post-hardcore. which sounds like an insult but i mean it in an indifferent way

the last track was the one i liked the most but i was thinking it was going to build up to some generic hardcore breakdown but thankfully it kept to the same kind of thing the whole time

it's decent i guess i dunno whatever

 

[NARINGENIN]

i think it's hard to say something specific about this album because it's basically exactly what comes to mind when you think of 90s post-hardcore

it's like very core of all the obvious bands, unwound, slint, fugazi, jesus lizard, nomeansno, drive like jehu and whatever. if you strip away all the flair, unique parts of their music and all the outside influence of those bands (except fugazi because they're garbage and ian mackaye is a poser) this is what you'd get, with everything being purely inside the realms of being definitively post-hardcore. which sounds like an insult but i mean it in an indifferent way

the last track was the one i liked the most but i was thinking it was going to build up to some generic hardcore breakdown but thankfully it kept to the same kind of thing the whole time

it's decent i guess i dunno whatever

I basically agree with everything said here.

I listened to the album twice. It sounds good, but most of everything in the middle kind of fades into the background. The first and last song are what caught most of my attention.

I would probably enjoy this sort of music 10 times more live.

 

[MagicHour]

@$lave and @SowiesoGroyp have one day and a half to give their opinion on this week's album