Cyrano on the stereo — Ten records of 2022
X. Fred, again — Actual Life 3
One year removed from the bulk of lockdown and distancing, it’s a marvel the work of Fred, again is in no way a cultural vacuum. It pulls from any conceivable reference point one might encounter when sequencing an hour of prog beats that rise, breakdowns that pummel, and trance-inducing frequencies. The listener is first dropped into a voice note recorded on the first of January 2022 and from there, voices from IRL or the WWW sprout and bloom outward in front of euphoric house-backed soundscapes, pulse-racing garage cuts, and sentiment fueled by ecstacy and desperation scored by the kaleidoscope of IDM.
From club to club, the realm of electronic music steeps itself in the sweat and adrenaline of high-paced movement and the kink of contact – Fred again’s approach to synth and sampler is to couple it with heartrending spoken word and the joyous din of kickback chatter. The producer cloaked in red light and blue smoke atop the masses in flux will always be in vogue, driving home their crowds to higher points of action and noise, burning the glowstick at both ends, satiated and charged by pheromones. However, tapes like Actual Life 3 and the bulk of Fred again’s catalog journals an advent of sound tailor made to nourish one up from the comedowns of living, the reassuring TED talk lent by a loved one you could dance to.
IX. Fievel Is Glauque – Flaming Swords
If one mad-dashed down the halls of every recording studio in the United Nations with a wish to whip up an album tailor made for someone like me, it’d likely sound a lot like the equal parts Belgian/American brainchild of Fievel Is Glauque’s ‘Flaming Swords’. Once half of space-age pop group, Blanche Blanche Blanche, multi-instrumentalist Zach Philips, and vocalist Ma Clément, the duo knit prose intimate to etching one’s place in society and relationship with composition veering from the funkier LPs of Miles Davis to the gentle sun-kissed tones of tropicália. Flaming Swords is three-fourths an hour of blissful off beat jazzy chanson – sunny cuts like ‘Days of Pleasure’ jut outward with bursts of guitar noise and twinkling piano licks before they turn into dazzling moonlit numbers like ‘Constantly Rare’ lovingly paying homage to 7os A.M. country radio twang and blue note horn quartets.
Between the tides and swaying of FIG’s powers blitzing through the 196os and its bossa nova, the 198s and its acid jazz, and the way Flaming Swords toys with time signatures (if not time itself) it is easygoing music on the surface with fierce notation that serves as a monument to unsung records cultivating dust on bedroom walls or worse yet, spun digital in cafes solely meant as “wallpaper music.’
VIII. Jockstrap – I Love You Jennifer B.
Expressing one’s emotions is a herculean task, especially so in this day and age. All the ways in which we depict ourselves live evergreen through the wires that once only held meagre means of power, such as the spark to cast a telephone call. Despite the connotations posted by eager critics lunging for indie valour, there is far less Black Country New Road in the DNA of Jockstrap than one vaguely familiar might assume. Though the reach is understandable lead vocalist/violinist Georgia Ellery makes up one of the many in BCNR) the influence culls less from Speedy Underground and more from the glistening metallic blissed-out halls of hyperpop and plunderphonics. Gorgeously operatic vocal runs clip out to make room for sassy cowboys talking shit before producer Taylor Skye diassembles once-intact drumkit itself in real time giving way to blown out electro-pads.
Many artists in the winter of their tenure pray technology can salvage a voice memo, dressing up late-career burnout in artificial youth and Fiver quality production – Jockstrap show you how the entire sausage is made, diverting from conventional song structure often through cuts like Concrete Over Water as its second verse starts with the Korg stumbles gurgling from it once clear and resonant before all cuts out, leaving the sparse piano vocals of Georgia and Taylor tracking the raw take in a breathtaking moment of translucent artistic composition. It can be tempting to dress up one’s sincerity in layers of distance and affectation, but I Love You Jennifer B peers beyond the uncanny valley cloaked in desolate grays towards the peaks finding technicolour in open sentiment, distant and free from the vogue of cynicism. Jockstrap bares themselves frequent to reveal a beautiful, hilarious, compassionate palette demanding to be known in a world still wrangling with how mortifying that ordeal remains.
VII. Foxtails – Fawn
Hailing from Connecticut, Foxtails is a quartet one could borrow a tag from their discog to describe their work, ‘non-denominational emo’. The atmosphere of their latest record, Fawn, which dropped in the winter of 2022, is at times infernal with glimmers of triumph; chaos speckled with catharsis – June Benham’s guitarwork hammers out dirge-like riffs thick as tundra as Michael Larocca’s bass drum and fills flip from splashy to cacophonous while Blue Luno Solaz’s howls rung lamented and uncaged cleave through the steely murk of New England fog. A flaw of any scene green in age and wave mired in emotional transparency is its tendency to mine melodrama for content; partners once platonic/romantic are now cast as villains perpetual in verse, the failings of others nearby are etched in the proverbial stone of expression while the artist at hand peels away from mishap reassured by their peers and following how their slip-ups were a necessary strain.
The body of Foxtails’ work and their equally adventurous contemporaries (Philadelphia’s They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Wisconsin’s Disq, Pittsburgh’s feeble little horse) blitz fierce unconventional through that stale mold, identical in spirit to Japanese noise band Hanatarash’s Yamantaka Eye bulldozing through Tokyo Super Loft in ‘85. Today’s wave of North American emo greets the onlooker both hands clasped, asking you to trust that each palm waits an offering. Unfold one to find empathy; anguished passages of Jared Schmidt’s violin interwoven through cuts like ‘ataque de nervios’ elegantly coupled with Blue’s resigned murmurs doting on the futility of piety in the face of traumatic hardship. Unfold the other and there will stand the model of resolution; as James Baldwin’s enduring gospel on the imbalance of poverty and its effects on the BIPOC+ community, the red circle of rage it shrouds those blighted by the powers that be and the wealth they horde, and the despair of it all as the soundscape through ‘bbq’ surrounding builds to a beautiful noise revolting full force against the brutal nature of it all. No longer in a state of freeze or flight – to band forevermore a horde of faun against the flock
VI. Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain
“There are boxes of clementines in the kitchen and the thing is that I love you again. […] Last year, I brought up questions about mending after loss and all orange could bring was eye spasms and stomach aches. But now the only pain left is left in rinds, and there are plenty of ways to remove it from the heart,” muses Alessia Di Cesare in a piece titled, ‘The Side Effects of Eating Too Many Clementines.’ Adrianne Lenker (vox/guitar) refers to the opening cut ‘Change’ off Dragon New Warm Mountain, Brooklyn-based (seemingly evermore nomadic) Big Thief’s fifth LP, as a dance between her child self and her mother self (“ …always in conversation”) and there is no description more apt for the whole of the twenty-track opus that is Dragon New Warm Mountain. It is a sonic tour de force that circuits through the winding paths of love in all its forms, cribbing elements from American primitivism, left-of-the-dial dream-pop, Falklands folk, stretching onward gallivant and mystic as Big Thief are wont.
Landmarks such as early-morning paeans (‘Dried Roses’) to twin flames pour glorious sunbeams through kitchen windows. Deep-fried hootenannies raucous, laden with jaw harp and shouts out to grandma one could harmonize with the cicadas and their wilder relatives up north, (‘Spud Infinity,’ ‘Red Moon’) and roadtrip numbers (‘Wake Me Up to Drive’) that rock gentle so adoringly you find its inclusion of accordion and drum machine utmost endearing. The atlas of Adrianne Lenker and what she’s graciously divulged about her upbringing point to turbulence in her stations of childhood; what makes the canon of Big Thief so enlightening is the reassurance made delicate if need be lor righteously outraged when need be) that everyone is worthy of compassion and patience, and that love will always emit a pulse much brighter than spite and bears potential as the one true force to dispel all that ails us.
V. Soul Glo – Diaspora Problems
A once-wise counter cultural figurehead tapped close as one could to the nucleus of revolt and protest when he cried out “anger is an energy!” The year was 1986 – opioids synthesized in labs bankrolled by Reagan’s administration funneled through northeastern states primarily targeting black neighbourhoods inevitably leading to more blood shed in the police cell and more flesh fed to the industrialized prison complex, crippling many families already ravaged by centuries of their draconian government’s carpet-bombing. Unfortunately, John Lydon (née Johnny Rotten) would spelunk hellward as alt-right grifter at best and neo-liberal bootlicker at worst, though the mantra rings clear having been thoughtfully co-opted and proven as a radical method in present-day shots fired at the gilded monoliths of systematic racism and hoarded wealth. In 2022, there wasn’t much wax with wit as scathing and anger as righteous than Philadelphia-based Soul Glo’s major label debut, Diaspora Problems.
Each revolution a minute or two of eviscerating hardcore punk that cracks one up as often as it crashes; you’re beckoned in with a bong rip which ushers in guitarwork that rattles in tandem with the best this wave of skramz has to offer and the glorious rasp of Pierce Jordan that kicks off opener ‘Gold Chain Punk’ (brilliantly bracketed with the cut’s chorus, “who gon beat my ass?”) What follows next is a glorious power hour of rockers drenched in thrasher volume and decadent with lyricism evoking agony and empowerment reflecting on personal and societal levels (note: I cannot highlight just one lyric from cuts like ‘Thumbsucker,’ ‘My Family,’ and ‘Driponomics’ -– the material is at once both so succinct in their portrayal of trauma, and so breakneck in their energy. If any album from 2022 warranted a pit in which to mosh for catharsis, it would be Diaspora Problems.)
IV. Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up There
Collective effervescence: a transmission of harmony chemical and compositional when voices unite enmasse. Gen-Z post rock zaibatsu Black Country New Road’s 2022 release, ‘Ants From Up There’ is an immaculate document of human attachment in one’s budding stages. There is homage to post modern classical composer Steve Reich’s work in BCNR’s grand discovery of the real world and self-imposed exodus scored by jaunty piano chords in staccato in row with a sea of woodwinds. (‘Theme’, ‘Chaos Space Marine’) There is the ringing void of familiarity post-settlement, trudging along guitarwork arranged like a funeral march that swells to catharsis teeming with saxophones arranged by Lewis Evans) and explosive percussion (delicate thrasher Charlie Wayne behind the skins). Latter leads the alienation packaged with long-distance situationship reliant on low quality service both in pixel and purity; rhythm section (bassist Tyler Hyde, guitarist Luke Mark) motorik and careful as former lead vox/lyricist Isaac Wood crooning soars, never overpowering the majesty in songstress craftsmanship surrounding (‘Concorde’, ‘Bread Song’)
The inherent need of those with parental wounds to nourish those of another in fear the winds that plague them will only push them further away, and the shell-shock that strikes when it inevitably does. (‘Good Will Hunting’, ‘Haldern’) There is lapse from anxious-attachment to secure wherein one lover ceases masking in pursuit of total sincerity, confiding defects and all to another (‘The Place…’) unto desolation that ensues when recognition of one’s faults is not enough to salvage graces once flawless. (‘Snow Globes’) The closer (‘Basketball Shoes’) is a twelve-minute triptych that visits seeds once planted as lyrical motifs and melodic landmarks now in full bloom – the first part cribbing a sparse micro rendition of the opening theme, once jubilant now bleary-eyed as Isaac bleats wearily as if only wecks through the post split healing stage. The second; the listener is teased with that haunting breathy melody suggesting gusts from the wasteland that kicks off into a spry passage not unlike the heyday of eighties’ era college radio alt-rock as Wood veers shakily, reminiscing upbeat atop gold sounds the sunnier times floating conjoined. The din stirs and stops.
The keys and strings thrum cautiously yet again, as do the woodwinds. Then, all at once, guitars and drums strike in tandem with the sax (ala Brotzmann Octet circa-Machine Gun) and thrum with colossal force, harsh enough to crater leagues into bedrock. Masses rise foretold; manifestations of grief, trauma, and devotion cast as sirens now coiling around the listener – a hymn is calling; one of time tethered, of abject shame, of bottomless loss, of catharsis too vast to articulate. Words cannot depict the cut with any justice – it is the greatest closing track of 2022. Ants From Up There preserved in Ziploc may refer to the sense between states travelled; whether by air fuel or the codependent mania of romance – it is a record in form and function of something so taxing and raw captured. It comes as no surprise Isaac Wood would take flight to find peace once wax hit acetate.
III. Ethel Cain – Preacher’s Daughter
What is Americana? The towers didn’t just ‘fall’, rather they were struck by commercial airliners and the ramifications were monumental. Advertisers realized they could profit from this and delude terrified families with no chance of higher education into enlisting their young to die for “freedom.” Media targeted for southern audiences reforms by nationalist standards lousy in dogma and bids adieu to thoughtful meditations on hard living for hyper-masculine flag-waving. Any cultural progress in view of welcoming diversity and introspection by working class heroes like Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, and Dolly Parton goes by the wayside for troop-shilling and rifle-toting by new outlaws like Keith Urban, Toby Keith, and her majesty’s Kid Rock.
The world would rock onward at a glacial pace, though its round-the-clock cycle of doomscroller journalism would stick. We’d learn in piecemeal that holy war in the Middle East was rife with oil theft and breaches in the Geneva convention, and to some extent the effect of ads for malt liquor and four-wheel automobiles on tedium between local access side show, body-cam choice cuts, and barely legal coercion has on vulnerable groups. This is how a team of world leaders (both bureaucratic and curatorial) inflicts intergenerational trauma unto their populace. Ethel Cain’s 2022 alt-pop release, Preacher’s Daughter, beckons you past its ‘Bless This Mess’ doormat, inviting you to sup from the Pabst Blue rhinestone chalice. Years after the second World War, a collective of artists reeling from the atrocity disperate to one another innovated pieces stark and absurd that would cast a refracted projection informed by violence humanity couldn’t fathom now published and broadcast in the dailies for all to combo with breakfast. Herein lies the birth of the Dadaist movement.
Rural gothic as an aesthetic has cast its specter long before nine-eleven, but the subjugation of a people already impoverished on soil local and distant injected new dimensions to the medium, showcasing the nightmarish plight undertaken by the bible belt. All of this ruin, all of this rapture, all of this blood holy and diseased is what pumps through the Floridian heart of Ethel Cain’s canon and the realm of Preacher’s Daughter. Elegiac surges of synth-driven ambient usher in the listener on the opener (‘Family Tree Intro’) with swirling verse lamenting the damnation of the powers that be and the ascendant fates have consigned her to. Next, twinkling guitars evocative of mid-aughts alt-rock dovetail with percussion that reverberates gloriously to Ethel’s vox euphoric tailor-made for joyrides soundtracking reckless abandon in the summer of one’s life. That, or the estrogenic myth of Sisyphus. (American Teenager*) Along the trajectory of Preacher’s Daughter, there is favor found in travel, love and vice-versa (‘Thoroughfare') outfitted with Skynyrd-flavoured honky tonk guitarwork.
Choral worship turned inward and solemn warbled out the dirty window of a battered spouse pining for the salvation of stained glass. (‘Sun Bleached Flies’) Dissonant moans like whispers from Leviathan, lacquered in serpent moult, drag standout cut Ptolemaea to the surface; more Lingua than Lana as brooding guitar passages lick like moths to flames while the skin of toms taut in heatstroke parallel the oblivion met by the singer frozen, reduced to concubine as her cries rise to a pulverizing wail. Preacher’s Daughter is a feat of innovation with its pitch-black macabre pop production by slanted virtue of Bjork, Diamanda Galás, and Kate Bush. It is another in the candid portrayal of deceit and ceaseless abuse doled upon femme bodies in red states, revelations foretold past and present; daughters of Cain survived to pass along their gifts of mercy.
II. Alvvays – Blue Rev
Even in the dead-middle of winter, one can conjure the perfume of the beach; a sensory illusion that weds pacific front to the arctic. So long as one has grazed through a patch of sand and watched the waves lap into each other; the memory never leaves you, always waiting. Few can rhapsodize lotusland ideation to slumberland (records) texture quite like the Harbourfront quintet from Toronto, Alvvays. Their third LP, ‘Blue Rev,’ was marred by flooded studios, demo theft, and a worldwide plague (a phenomenon us hosers dub a hat trick of hexes) though the setbacks only compelled the band to draw back, hunker down, and rewrite. Awash in distortion that leave idyllic trails of hyper dazzle that blast through the amp; passages of lead guitar (Alec O’Hanley) swirl in peppermint tones with the rhythm and witticisms of vocalist/guitarist Molly Rankin all while thunderously backed in percussion by pacekeeper Sheridan Riley before Kerri MacLellan adorns the glorious noise in past-perfect halcyon synthesizer.
The first ring of Side A (‘Pharmacist’) chimes in by lo-fi beat loop as Rankin coos the opening verse as though half-sung/half-sigh through a landline until Riley ignites the body like a multi-shot repeater the night of summer solstice. Echo unreeled from studio feedback guide the band through shades of Teenage Fanclub on ‘Easy On Your Own’, a satisfyingly kick-drum drop that bleeds into a mid-tempo rocker that delves into resigning to monotony on terms self-set in the wake of romantic ruin whilst wondering how your former half is faring. Alternating riffs that glint easy and sun-tan before runs that’d cast a beam off Johnny Marr’s wayfarers pierce through zinger numero tres, ‘After The Earthquake’ (bearing choice symbolism and slant namesake of a Murakami novella.)
So much of Blue Rev can be found honouring its stylistic predecessors; C-86 indie-pop, slice-of-life literature, new-age celtic production by way of Enya and the Cranberries. This hour-long blend brewed by the Celsius Girls charts a diagnosis of oneself in post-split aftermath of bitter spats revisited through cuts like “Pomeranian Spinster’ and ‘Pressed’ next to points of melancholic nostalgia (Lottery Noises’, ‘Fourth Figure’). Each minute a thought mined from time capsule of past love exorcised wherein one can express heartache openly in pursuit of embracing future sentiment without restraint.
An outlier integral to the rich tapestry of Blue Rev is the chamber-infused Tile by Tile, bound with string quartet. There is forlorn yearning that sways along conveyed so bittersweet as Molly sings of longing to a fading memory of another’s voice, wreaking insomnia and deferring to the whimsy of scammers. Like ‘Next of Kin’ two cycles prior, and ‘Not My Baby’ a spell ago, it gracefully toes the patented Alvvays lighthearted balance of heartbreak and humour. Like plimsolls in wet winter, it slides into whirlwind karmic retribution, ‘Pomeranian Spinster’ – a cutthroat dispatch to a once-familiar turned Gatsbyian-adversary, blissfully arrested in naiveté and insistent on performative goodwill to frayed ties withheld by divorce. It’s rare when Molly Mayhem wields buzz saw technique and righteously snarls for atonement, which makes Alvvays’ forays into punk passage resonate so deeply.
A scan of the cover (Molly as a child, sailing coastbound under overcast skies with her family, forever preserved as watchful guardians) hearkens fan-favourite ‘Belinda Says,’ a tune cascading in delicate twinkle before the tide of verse and guitar rush in as Rankin sings of a young woman at odds with her partner uneasy and itching to flee the coop upon news of her pregnancy. The cut drifts still to a meditative pass wherein Molly manifests leaving it all; moving to the country, having that baby – to see how it goes. The transition from gentle bridge to final chorus and how it soars over the compositional cliff into a beautiful moment of self-certainty and resilience never fails bringing mist to dry eyes. Insecurity, heartbreak, and failure are themes commonplace in the mosaic of Alvvays, but when Molly Rankin yells in companionship with the band in row alongside her as that spring summit thaws, it is one moment of many that cinches Blue Rev as golden eternal.
I. Chat Pile – God’s Country
Did you know that the blare of most American car horns are in the key of F? There is a point midway through performing ‘Why?’ live in Denton, Texas a year before God’s Country drops where all one can hear beyond the rustic tumult of Chat Pile is the roar of an oncoming train. It is complete serendipity and a detail they’d nail unto the studio version. In the heart of Oklahoma City that beats ever so mondo pious there sits Oklahoma County Detention Centre, entrenched in power lines. OKCDC is a jail wherein sixteen people died within its walls from January of 2022 to December. It is second in rank to inmate fatality rates, a mere couple shy of Rikers Island. A haunted building, crowded with haunted life. Underneath the medieval blacklettering that reads Chat Pile, the viewer is met with an image of the Detention Centre, placed mere miles from elementary schools and fast-food haunts.
This is God’s Country and amidst the smoggy mirage, that is your greeting. Jenny Holzer prophesied, “SOMETIMES YOU HAVE NO OTHER CHOIGE THAN TO WATCH SOMETHING GRUESOME OCCUR. YOU DONT HAVE THE OPTION OF CLOSING YOUR EYES BECAUSE IT HAPPENS FAST AND ENTERS YOUR MEMORY.” which feels just as apt for the motifs throughout Chat Pile’s oeuvre and God’s Country in particular. A passing of the molotov-bearer by proto-industrial duo, Suicide’s ‘Frankie Teardrop’ aside, there is no lyrical epic that melds absurdity, grit, and barbarity like closer ‘grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg’. Equal parts Weird Twitter and Liveleak, the harrowing nine-minute see-saw of anvil-heavy riffs and drums in hellish maul soundtrack an anguished man’s bout of temporal exodus. Needless to say the closer warrants any trigger warnings the critics bookend its mention whenever lauded.
There is no voice like lead vocalist/lyricist Raygun Busch; a bleeding heart detuned with the shock and horror of today’s desensitization to violence as it howls, shrieks, and bawls in conjunction with those eerie mechanical notes of percussion by drummer Cap’n Ron. The bass (Stin) and lead guitars (Luther Manhole) lurch in and snap back with so much malicious intent, one gets the sense the tablature glows radiant under luminol. All this to say the record is intense, of course, but deeper within there is heart wherein many albums of this nature and calibre fall short. Ron’s electronic five-piece kit stagger through gated reverb, before an earth-boring scream unveils the detritus. The stark atmosphere cast is warranted – the opener (‘Slaughterhouse’) revolves around the cardinal evil committed for mass-market meat.
One of Chat Pile’s many proficiencies is never to grandstand, rather to voice for many what plagues the underprivileged from a place of ravenous empathy. Is it scary? Yes. But not without reason – take breakout single ‘Why?’ at face value and initially the listener may find it silly and naive, no matter its brooding instrumentation. On repeated spins, the sincerity and torment of Busch’s direct messaging in shades of Liar-era David Yow and Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen set to that pulverizing score as calls rung out and bawling for answers to why we can’t host people unhoused in cities swollen with lavish temples unto owner remote and local gentry will only resonate more the deeper the world plunges into hyper-capitalist dystopia.
‘Pamela,’ ‘Tropical Beaches, Inc,’ and ‘Anywhere’ root themselves in landscape familiar to ones found in grindhouse, though the deeper one peers into these scenes they’ll find mirrors for wretched real-life souls indeed. ‘Pamela’, the delicate goth-infused old widow’s tale one could leave at its Crystal Lake surface, but within the surf it rolls into a rage; an allegory of the mistreatment faced by disabled groups, and loved ones lost to red-tape malfeasance. Wrath arising: Dante’s all-consuming layer of grief executed whether righteous or no, come hell or high water. ‘Tropical Beaches,’ a driving bass-heavy cut centered around the model of service work in crippling exhaustion on the brink of going postal. As the overload of its breakdowns whiplash, each chorus finds our comrade terrorized by the grind, long-since isolated from warmth and familiarity, seeking refuge in timeshare amenities to no avail.
‘Anywhere,’ a gut-wrenching eyewitness’ beat-by-beat account of gun violence; Busch’s monotone drawl painting the timeline in vivid detail (the brain matter on his shoe, the blur of others around him) is impactful to a sickening degree, though its report is necessary as his affectation is one conveying genuine commonplace trauma. God’s Country and all its distemper serve as parables by and for the increasing entropy of North America. Chat Pile does not set out to dismantle the crosses we bear or trek the purple mountains in vain – they are merely a band seeking to recognize and amplify any echo of casualty from the black hole wherein all matter finds way.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.
