Author: Gene

Let there be peace.

Record of the Day 5-13-2020 – Dose Your Dreams – Fucked Up

Fucked Up’s record Dose Your Dreams is sprawling and diverse.  It is a kitchen sink record, they threw everything they could at it.  It keeps all the post-hardcore punk sounds that they had in the past (with some minor flourishes) and adds disco, EDM, indie rock, pop and psychedelic elements.  Unlike their great punk music of the past, this also utilizes what must be 15 to 20 vocalists including most band members, numerous female vocalists, and even inexplicable J. Mascis.  Damian Abraham is still on almost every song, but the songs are much broader and require more types of vocals than his distinctive cookie monster growl.  The record seems to have some of the themes and characters of the great 2011 album David Comes to Live, but from what I can tell it is loosely related.  Musically Dose Your Dreams is a step forward, but I can tell why some fans didn’t care for it as much as previous records.  It doesn’t have the immediate impact of The Chemistry of Common Life and it isn’t quite a cohesive and singular as David Comes to Life.  It is however extremely ambitious and the highlights of the record are about as good as anything from 2018.  I am not sure if I would tell someone to start with this for the band it is almost an hour and a half, but to me it is their best.

–BeardedRiffRaff

Dose_Your_Dreams

Record of the Day – 5-12-2020 – Ocean Songs – Dirty Three

Dirty Three might be my favorite post-rock rock band.  I’ve never been 100 percent sure where the category begins and end or when a band is considered an instrumental progressive rock band instead, but when you category includes Mogwai, Tortoise, and Sigur Ros competition to be the best in the small genre is pretty fierce.  Warren Ellis’s violin is so diverse in it’s sound and range you don’t miss the notion of a vocalist.  His composition skills have been on display on display via his scoring of numerous movies (with Nick Cave with whom he is one of the Bad Seeds) and any given Dirty Three record is pretty cinematic on it’s own.  I’ve listened to the Dirty Three records Horse Stories and Ocean Songs the most and they are both terrific.  I guess I give Ocean Songs the edge as my favorite, but it is close to a draw.   Ocean Songs attempts to evoke of the sounds of water and echos and beat of the Pacific Ocean.  As a band that comes from Australia where almost everyone lives by the water this seems like a task that would be intriguing, but daunting to them as a goal.  The record achieves good results.  I think for me the thing I like most on the record (compared to other Dirty Three records) is Jim White’s (of the currently very popular Xylouris While) drumming. On many of the songs with the looping sounds of the violin and the rhythmic sound of Mick Turner’s guitar the drums come to the forefront as if the ocean were speaking it’s mind through crack of the waves.  Oddly Ocean Songs is in many ways a less calming record than Horse Stories despite it’s approach and subject material.  It makes you pay attention a bit more, is a bit less like a soundtrack and more like the plot itself.  The drums in the forefront make the record a bit more present and a bit less passive than Horse Stories.  I’ve never seen Dirty Three live, but their a band I’d like to.  They seem liked they be the kind of band that was like a storm coming in from an ocean, something that would build up and they drench drench everything with sound.

–BeardedRiffRaff

D3-albumart-oceansongs

Record of the Day – 5-11-2020 – Anathema – Distant Satellites

I listened to the record Distant Satellites by Anathema many times in 2014.  I also listened to 2012’s Weather Systems almost as much that year, but Distant Satellites gets the edge for most played I think.  I am not sure how to describe the music Anathema makes.  It is definitely progressive rock, but there is a very romantic melancholy easy listening element to it also.  The music is emotional, but never saccharine.  This record is similar to their others of the past 12 years or so has two lead singers Vincent Cavanagh (male perspective vocals) and Lee Douglas (female perspective vocals).  The song cycle acts a sort of loosely related dialogue between the two vocalists.  The pacing of the record almost borders on rock based musical theater.   I don’t actually know if it a type of music that will work for all listeners, but for some reason it was a direct hit for me in 2014.  I think you could listen to any of their recent work and it might evoke the same experience, but it might just be the familiar case of its what you listen to first from an artist that impacts you the most.  For whatever reason like many Kscope label artists Anathema has never really caught on in the United States.  It is possible the sincere emotional nature of the music doesn’t translate for the American audience.  I hope they are able to continue to grow their fanbase because for a certain type of progressive rock devotee their music is wonderful.

-BeardedRiffRaff

Distan_Satellites

Mom

She wore a bonnet of significant bees

A fleece of fantastic fleas

She knew black beans and pintos

From her lentils and her peas

 

She didn’t walk on water

But she glided over nails

Which were strewn across the floor

From rusty timeworn pails

 

She loved the smell of smoke

But disdained the smell of cinder

She met your father Satan

On the devil’d own site Tinder

 

You told her happy mother’s day

She said son I am fictional and abstract

You infer you own responsivities

From how you think I act

 

So hold tight to your nostalgia

Or quietly feed your rage

I am not your icon or advisor

I am never your blueprint or cage.

Gene G. McLaughlin 2020

Coraline_Other_Mother

 

Record of the Day 5-10-2020 – Separation Sunday – The Hold Steady

The record Separation Sunday by The Hold Steady is a record about being a not quite middle class young man somewhere in the American Midwest.  As a kid you probably went to Catholic school (maybe to about 6th grade), but your parents couldn’t afford one of the good high schools so you went to public school.  You smoked your first cigarette in 7th grade and had your first drink soon after.  You parents noticed, but they were working doubles so they ignored it.  You were not bad at school, but you didn’t pay attention as well as you should have and were more interested in reading On the Road or skipping school to go to the Ramones show.  Sometimes on Saturday night you went to church like you told your parents, but sometimes you sat on the bench outside and smoked cigarettes and read Spin magazine.  When you shop lifted or sold weed you felt slightly bad about it.  As you got older your friends started to diverge, but when things went sideways they really went sideways.  You made friends who always had some idea that was suspect (you went along with it anyway) and you loved girls that loved maybe a little too frequently (weird loves better than no love as they say).  You got some habits that were easy to start, but hard to quit.  Despite that Jesus was something to you still and you felt low sometimes about the way life going.  Things have their own trajectory though and they have to play themselves out.  They work out or they don’t.  It’s all in the dice throw.  Then you come up for air and you see what the world looks like.  Separation Sunday are the songs of that trajectory.

–BeardedRiffRaff

The_Hold_Steady_-_Separation_Sunday_cover

About the Name

A number of years ago at Barley’s Taproom in Asheville, North Carolina I was talking to a man at the bar.  His wife quietly interrupted him and said, “Why are you talking to that Bearded Riff Raff, we are from NEW JERSEY.”  I couldn’t deny it, I am the Bearded Riff Raff and I am not from NEW JERSEY.  I decided to own it. Bottoms up!  Here’s to the Bearded Riff Raff!

Record of the Day 5-9-2020

In the 1980’s I liked rap, but it was one of those things I didn’t pay close attention to until the 1990’s when a friend gave me a tape with the with Tribe Called Quest, Black Sheep Squadron and Main Source on it.  I realized there was more to the genre than just Beastie Boys, Fat Boys, and Run-D.M.C.  There was the top selling tier of rap royalty that was on MTV, but there was a second tier that was maybe better than the first (although not much is better than King of Rock or Paul’s Boutique).  I woke up to the idea that rap was record based art form succeeding on a broad scale.  The 2019 record Psychodrama by the rapper Dave (full name David Orobosa Omoregie) is a concept album and it is a good as any of the classics I loved in 1991.  The concept is a man facing down his demons in London talking to his therapist for one hour.  The record follows the trajectory of a therapy session with intros and segues from the psychotherapist and is broke up in sections Environment, Relationships, and Social Compass.  Some of the songs are searing, some are introspective, and some are just realistic depictions of the life as the child of Nigerian immigrants in modern London.  The poetry and flow of the record are amazing.  Dave is an eloquent and insightful MC.  The music is low key, more constructed to match the lyrical content than vice versa, but Fraser Smith’s implementation of it is perfect.  For me, the highlight of the record is the 11-minute rap epic Lesley a sorrowful tale of domestic violence, but almost every track is great.  Dave is a rapper at the height of his powers and this record is a window into him working on growth as a man and self-awareness of the world around him.

–BearededRiffRaff

Dave_Psychodrama

Jump Cuts Like Godard

Jump cuts

Like Godard

On the evening news

Your attention is

The one thing

They can’t afford to lose

 

Stories like Hitchcock

Winding up and down

Twisted stairs

People searching

For secrets and motives

That aren’t really there

 

Sounds like Altman

Bleeding one into another

Cutting in and out

People trying to discern

Truths they whisper

From lies they shout

 

Faith like Scorsese

Still present, but

Beaten and torn

Hoping between

All the death and privation

Something better is born

 

Reality like Lanzmann

Laying bare plagues foul effects

On me and you

Not metaphors

No soft lenses

Just a truth hard to view

Gene G. McLaughlin 2020

Godard

 

The Monkey Sees God in Bananas

The monkey sees God in bananas

The tiger sees the divine in his claws

The crow sees God in the worms of the morning

As he cackles, preens, and craws

Man sees God in the unseen

The preacher sees the divine in his words

The zealot sees it in the crowds that gather before him

As he guides them like an unthinking herd

Let your eyes be your faith and your heart

Let your ears hear the sounds of the divine

Let your own steps guide you to your version of God

As I shall let my feet lead me to mine

Gene G. McLaughlin 2020

Monkey

Record of the Day 5-8-2020

Bars of Gold record Shelters is a straight up rock record.  There is no cleverness attempted and no frills.  It is definitely a record that is in the tradition of Detroit rock legends the MC5 and the Stooges.  I like to listen to it when I move because the record itself never stops moving.  I find it even encourages dancing while walking down the street.  Luckily I trained in Russia at the Bolshoi in the 90’s so it looks really good when I get down on the sidewalk.  I don’t know too much about the band aside from some articles online.  The drummer and lead singer were in a band called Bear vs. Shark and the other members were in an instrumental rock band called Wildcatting and they united to create this band 10 years ago.  Apparently in 2018 before making this record they thought they might drop one of their three guitarist, but instead decided it would better to add a fourth guitar instead.  That direction is represented in the record.  They are all in with a big sound and big songs. Honestly it is record you probably know if you like immediately from the first song.  Shelters might not be the best record for sheltering in place though.  Maybe take a run or walk if you listen to it.  Maybe even dance a bit while doing either.

Bars of Gold Shelters