Staring at machinescapes
Fractal music in my head
The inflammation of my spine
Confirms for me I am not dead
A priori me
In the wind, dust, and shadows
A posteriori me
Weighing and measuring my battles
Knowing what I know
Without knowing the reason
The eerie absent answers
Feel like my mind committing treason
I accept the betrayal
My cognizance shoulders on
Knowing some framework exists
Both before and after I am gone
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
When I heard the echoes of the choir
I wondered whom they sung to
Was it a present loving god
Or fading ideals they still clung to
Did they sing endless songs to joy
Choral anthems of light, rebirth and flowers
Were their voices raised to dogma
Honoring and preserving structures of power
Were they all just howling
Like the night’s wolves seeking grace
Were they drowning out their thoughts
Of the things they would rather never face
Or maybe the voices of the choir
Include the sum of these things
Voices of dreams hopes and desires
Blended as the choir sings
Gene G. McLaughlin 2021
There are phases to being a Neil Young fan. There are the giant songs you first hear. Helpless, Ohio, Old Man or Heart of Gold. These you could have heard of classic rock radio anytime during the last 40 years. That might draw you into CSNY or Harvest or After the Gold Rush beautiful folksy music that sounds as great today as it did when it sold millions of copies. That might lead you to the rest of the 70’s where he is trying to find meaning through his music, trying to account for a world filled with addiction, Vietnam, lost friends, and what fame at a certain level really is. These records are beautiful and an artistic peak, but also bleak and permeated with sadness. This brings you to the 1980’s where he experiments with different sounds and ideas. A mishmash of many things come to the forefront. Again he is a man attempting to find meaning in a world gone mad. Watch the movie he wrote, directed and starred in 1982 ‘Human Highway’ if you want to see a man trying to figure things out in real time. That brings me to his newly released live record from 1990 Way Down In The Rust Bucket recorded before the Ragged Glory tour as a warm up in Santa Clara. The record itself is a loose meandering affair consisting of songs mainly from the same time period. It isn’t what you would call a tight performance, but it sounds great in the disjointed way that only Crazy Horse can. In 1990 Neil Young and Crazy Horse had something that was often missing in the past. Joy. The performance isn’t confrontational or elegy. It is joyous. Sure there are songs of a darker tone like Cortez the Killer, but the man and the band sound like they have come out of the dark. I suppose that is why it is my favorite Neil Young period. I am grateful to have this live recording from it.
Gene G. McLaughlin 2021
I like many records that Mark Kozelek has done over the years. His career has been varied between band projects he was the dominate force in and completely solo projects. I think think the lovely Ocean Beach record is my favorite though. It is a record that I think reproduces the feels of joy and melancholy on an open beach on a windy week day in early summer well. The first three songs on the record (Cabezon, Summer Dress, and San Geronimo) are a perfect opening for the effect the record is trying to produce. They hook you and show you Red House Painters intentions immediately. I find the record somewhat more sincere than Kozelek’s later ironic or absurdist stream of consciousness songs. I love his record Benji, but this early record seems like it was almost from a different person and I suppose being they are about 20 years apparent he likely was. It is a record I like to put on for a rainy work day, perhaps a Monday, when you might need some vision other than you office. In my book a classic.
–BeardedRiffRaff
In 2016 I would listen to the record Telefone by Noname when walking in mornings often. It is an easy smooth rap record, good not great. It did show signs of greatness though. Noname has great writing ability and wry sense of humor. Her rapping and rhyming were solid if not quite great yet. Her 2018 record Room 25 is fulfills that promise. It didn’t get a huge amount of notice in 2018 from rap audiences despite her association with mega-star Chance the Rapper. The content is basically tales of a girl from Chicago living in Los Angeles navigating relationships and the industry. There is sexual content and imagery which is much different than Telefone. The guest vocals are timed well and enhance the record greatly. The music and rapping are purposefully slightly low-key and the lyrics and rhyming are intricate. It definitely feels like a Chicago hip-hop record, with lots slam poetry style rapping and lots great lush jazz style arrangements. I know when Noname toured the record she sold out places like the Orange Peel in Asheville, but she expressed disappointment at the audiences being all white and didn’t have a strong desire to ‘dance on a stage for white people.’ She also expressed interest in quitting if this continues to be the case. I hope that doesn’t come to be and her audience expands and is a broad as she would like it to be. She is a unique talent and I think many people hope to hear more from her. It would be a shame to lose her voice in hip-hop.
-BearedRiffRaff
I guess you would call Black Midi’s Schlagenheim math rock? Maybe noise rock? I am never sure where the genres cross over and become something else. Let’s just say it has a lot going on. They are kind of somewhere in between the howling fury of The Jesus Lizard and atmospheric chant rock of Alt-J with an ever present undercurrent of Don Caballero. They play fast, well, and loud with tons of percussive elements and tons of atmospheric changes in tempo. The first time I listened to the record I thought there were barely any lyrics, but maybe the third time through I realized the songs had full sets of lyrics when them some with actual semi-stories to them. I am not sure the lyrics matter that much, they seem more like an addition of an instruments to the mix than a necessary element, but they are present. The vocals are well done, but they are definitely secondary to the music. To describe it in terms of how you would listen to it I would say you would take a walk and listen to something else and then reach a park bench and sit down and watch the world go by and listen to this. It doesn’t make you want to move as much as ponder. This not a style of record I would typically recommend to people, but it is definitely one of the best records of 2019 to me and I think people who might not normally enjoy math rock/noise rock might like it. Some people might find not find enough melody or emotional engagement, but to certain listeners it is relaxing (almost) and compelling. I think the phrase that describes the record to me most to is thought provoking. It sends my mind off on tangents. It is music that makes you neither want to dance or sing along which is sometimes very welcome in life.
–BeardedRiffRaff
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
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
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
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
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