Rejection Hurts! + A Shitty Music Review

Rejection hurts! They say you are supposed to get used to it, accept it, even embrace it. “I sent out my short story to 100 literary journals before one accepted,” say websites run by smart-looking women with their arms crossed. “You will have to as well, if you want to be a writer.” Is that supposed to be encouraging? Why can’t I succeed much earlier, and at a much higher rate?

I recently applied to write about music for a culture website. They had me send in a test review on an album of my choosing. That apparently got me to the next stage (It’s the Tera Melos review that I posted on here). Next they gave me an album to review. I was juggling a lot of stuff at the time, so I tried to pass off stinky brown-wet garbage with no redeeming qualities as music criticism – or so I found out later.

In this case it wasn’t the rejection that hurt. At the time, I didn’t know if taking on another unpaid writing gig was a good time commitment, so I was halfway planning to fail (I planned to turn in something really pretentious and overwrought, but I didn’t have time). In the end I didn’t want to turn in sloppy work, so I did a quick, OK job – or so I thought.

I got an email back saying they’d pass. Fine. Then, wanting to be some young sponge, some paragon of self-improvement and humility, I asked the editor if he could send me an area or two to improve on. WHOOPS – BIG FUCK UP THERE! He forwarded me the comments of the editors, which read like any round-table review of some half-baked screenplay, or one of those stage-lighted undressings on American Idol-type shows, where the poor fool who just tried their best smiles helplessly as their screaming mind runs for the nearest 12^th story window. It was kinda clinical and cold, the way they judged me. Took me apart on a cold metal table, naked. Cruel in print, and battering to the ego. I read some of the other reviews on the site, and I didn’t think they were very good, but apparently neither am I…

NEITHER AM I. Yes, I had a crisis of confidence. I’m not some established writer. I’m just some daydreaming, word-spewing asshole who earned the wrong degree for five years and worked in that same wrong field for four more years (four more years! Four more years!) after graduation. I wondered if everything I’ve ever written has been crap, and nobody had the heart to tell me. I had cold-sweat thoughts about the 100,000+ word novel-in-progress that is sitting on my computer. It just really bothered me a lot, that spectrum of mostly-fair criticisms those editors leveled at me.

I replied with something like “Oof! Well, thanks for passing that along.” To which the editor expressed “Sorry man,” and that maybe it would have been better if he didn’t send the email. To this day I don’t know whether I agree with him or not.

I write for another music website, and after every review, my editor writes glowing praise at me until I blush. “Awww [editor], you always know just what to say,” is what I usually coo as I smile into my email. After The Rejection^TM, I wondered if I wasn’t just being glad-handed so that I’ll keep working for free.

Eventually I got over it, but I don’t know how many of those gang-judgments I could take. Constructive criticisms, yeah alright. But being rejected and told I’m lousy? Ugh. I suppose I should ready myself for more. Nobody just waltzes in and takes the literary world by storm right? Gotta pay dues right? Gotta paaaay those duuuues.

So without further adoo, here is the doo doo in question, my ham-handed bungling of Ought’s More Than Any Other Day. Enjoy!

 

Ought: More Than Any Other Day

Review by [FormerConformer]

3.5 / 5

There is a danger in naming your band Ought:

“Who is this?”

“They’re called Ought”

“Well they Ought to have made a better album! Haw haw.”

Ought they have? Is the band’s first proper full-length More Than Any Other Day lacking in some essential way? At first the answer seems like a resounding NO. Album opener “Pleasant Heart” strides through the gate beautifully. The song is an enthusiastic stew of wonderful noise, led by the rambling post-punk guitar and impassioned vocals of Tim Beeler. The rest of the band collage in complimentary parts, building the song into a chaotic, idealistic mix that recalls a less jaded This Heat. “Pleasant Heart” is about six minutes long and earns each one, with even Tim Keen’s extended interlude of scratching violins feeling necessary and harmonious.

Ought conjure up a different kind of energy on “Today, More Than Any Other Day”. Here, after a bit of brooding, Beeler jumps up and runs barefoot through the neighborhood, shouting out how excited he is for “the milk of human kindness”. He beckons his listeners to follow behind, to expose their naked joy to the whole wide world and to delight in the idea that “We’re all the fuck-ing same”. Skinny fists will pump to this, at music festivals and lakeside campfires and farmers markets for years to come.

However, it’s on “Habit” where Ought tip their hand and reveal their real motivations, as well as their real shortcomings. Beeler’s eyes roll back in rapture, and he begins to roll off a rather shameless series of David Byrne-isms. These shtick-y life lessons sound odd coming from a singer and a band, who are so patently young and idealistic. Even in bittersweet mode, Ought’s reveries are all college-beard wistfulness, the sound of wool coats with upturned collars on brisk invigorating city nights. The overriding characteristic – and perhaps theme – of More Than Any Other Day is that optimism permeates all.

More Than Any Other Day offers a good deal of variety, from the cutesy plinkety-plink of “The Weather Song” to the pastoral, ambient violins of “Forgiveness”. “Clarity!” rises and falls with the rollicking energy of a carnival thrill ride. “Around Again” is a groovy, disco-ish post-punk strut, until it swerves suddenly (on a cringe-inducing bit of poetry) into an eerie, chiming menace of an outro, featuring more Byrne-ish incantations from Tim Beeler. Album closer “Gemini” hums with latent energy in the verses, and erupts into a riotous clangor-in-three during the choruses.

In a later part of the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense concert film, David Byrne dons the comically oversized “big suit”. Ought are trying to wear that suit, but the support structure just isn’t there. More than Any Other Day is the somewhat patronizing, slightly pretentious sound of young musicians setting goals for themselves, and beginning to fake it until they make it. Ought may not embody the cool-and-knowing urban shaman sensibility they are striving for just yet, but the results of their first attempt are exciting and mostly enjoyable. They Ought to give it another try.

Best of Bandcamp Review – Tera Melos

 

Formed in Sacramento in 2004, Tera Melos are long-time purveyors of that distinctive, spidery, mathy, Pacific coast sound. Their contemporaries include Hella, Botch, Fall of Troy, Minus the Bear and other members of that fine ilk. Growing up alongside such innovators, and sharing a sonic calling with other bands like Polvo and Don Caballero, Tera Melos have continually made strides in refining and redefining their sound. Along the way, Tera Melos have left signposts of their progress, creating one of those fragmentary, EP-and-split-album-riddled discographies that are as delightful to music scene archaeologist as they are frustrating to casual fans.

And after nearly ten years, minor lineup changes and the phasing in of vocals, Tera Melos have nailed it. On X’ed Out, their third full-length, Tera Melos strike an essential compromise between the summery, slacked-out, intimate vibes of indie rock, the exuberantly technical showmanship of math rock, and the squalling abrasion of post-hardcore. These ingredients have not been blended completely to smoothness, and often butt up against one other in strange juxtaposition. Hear as the subdued Don Caballero-esque intro to “Weird Circles” gives way to a discordant, cymbal-bashing rave-up. Hear the shambling, Polvo-esque verses of “New Chlorine” wrestle handily with the song’s hard-driving choruses.

These sorts of battles crop up all over X’ed Out, and thankfully so. The essential tension between styles keeps the album interesting. The many, often sharp contrasts reveal musicians for all seasons – as comfortable at rest as they are in motion, ready to loudly show off their chops, as on “Slimed”, knead them into easily digested runs of mellifluous grace, as on “Bite”, or simply chill out, as on “No Phase” and “Snake Lake”. There is a joyous sense of compositional freedom on X’ed Out, earned by Tera Melos’ proficiency in the arts of approachability and technicality, pop and math, and charm and aggression.

Due to the harmonious, unruffled vocals, the balance of X’ed Out swings mostly toward charm. The wild noises of the instruments are usually tempered by a breathy, catchy verse or chorus. This could be a deflating prospect, but Tera Melos have engineered a set of songs that are dual-leveled, possessing a candy-shell of pop sensibility, covering a rich sub-layer of vigorous, melodic basslines, exuberant, intricately detailed drumming and acrobatic guitar parts that chime, charm, ring, wobble and dance.

Nearly ten-years in, Tera Melos have accomplished a feat that many musicians can only dream about – creating an album where everybody wins. Fans of pop and indie rock can delight in the smooth vocals and rambling, not-too-serious tone of X’ed Out. Fans of aggressive music will dig the roughness at the edges of many of the songs, and there is more than enough complexity here to keep math-rock fans happily confounded through many, many listens. One naturally hopes that Tera Melos will settle into this well-earned groove and continue to make hay. Then again, evolution has worked for the band before, so if they decide on another significant shift, who is to say that it won’t yield even more fantastic results.

Best of Bandcamp Review – Kubark

RANT BEGINS (Skip to the REVIEW if you like Tool)

I’ve developed a mental block when it comes to the band Tool. Really it’s more about their fans. There may have been a small window in the 1990’s where I had a chance to discover Tool on my own, and judge them objectively[i]. That window closed, and instead I have built a very long opinion about Tool based on the statements, endorsements, ravings, internet comments and general behavior of their fans.

Let’s be clear – there is a stereotype at work here. It’s sort of a slippery one, but it exists sure enough. It is the Tool fan as a profoundly uncool, pseudo-intellectual white male. Picture the characters from Kevin Smith’s Clerks, but with less charisma, no comic timing, and a deep and externally awkward sense of self-seriousness.

Additionally, Tool fans are RABID. Anyone who doesn’t recognize Tool’s greatness is a Troglodyte, a musical Philistine unworthy to even pronounce the name Maynard James Keenan. Of course, if you want to argue about, a card carrying member of the Tool Army will argue with you for hours, laying out in stunning detail just how complex, spiritual, technically superb and intellectually deep Tool are.

In many ways, Tool fans formed a blueprint for the Nolan-Batman fanboys of the 2000’s. I can’t tell you how many times I encountered the sycophantic ramblings of batman fans in comment sections or on facebook and thought “Replace The Dark Knight with Lateralus and this exact campaign has been waged somewhere before. What we’re hearing is an echo.”

So to be forthright, I have become prejudiced toward Tool and their fans. I’m part of the great, often silent backlash. I have met recommendations of Tool over the years with subtle derision, ironic enthusiasm, quiet doubt and probably outright hostility. How could I ever join the Tool army? In Mark Prindle’s review of Tool’s 10,000 Days he wrote:

DEFENSIVE POST-SCRIPT: So I don’t know. The more I listen to Tool – and this album in particular – the more they seem less like an ‘intelligent’ band and more like a band that seems ‘intelligent’ to people of average intelligence. I’m not saying that to put anybody down — I like plenty of dumb as shit music, and it’s no secret that I’m not exactly a Rocket Surgeon. But the whole Tool package, with its unnecessary and ineffectual little musical changes every few seconds, the unceasingly ‘serious’ mood tied to simplistic riffs, the lyrics that tackle insightful issues in a hamfisted high school philosophy manner – man, I’m dumb as shit and even I’m not dumb enough to fall for this. It just reeks of ‘the uncreative preaching to the easily impressed.’ And maybe they’re smarter than Soundgarden or Britney Spears or something, but how much is that really saying?[ii]

That stuck with me. It seemed accurate somehow. Ever felt that spirit of “I listen to Tool, therefore I am 35% smarter, and certainly smarter than you.”? It hangs like a foul mist, the residue of poor social skills in action. People listen to certain kinds of music to feel stronger, more adequate, understood. I know that’s why I listen to Punk Rock. But to take your taste and use it as a bludgeoning ‘Tool’ to assert your superior intelligence over others is an unfortunate mistake.[iii] And hey, I’ve been huckstered by pseudo-intellectual music before, particularly Canibus, after he traded in his cleverly phrased, rhythmically exciting battle-raps for long regurgitations of programs he saw on The History Channel.

So Tool is not for me, I decided. And nothing I heard or saw since made me regret my decision. I’m listening to Aenima right now, and I’m hardly jizzing my pants with epiphany. While Tool’s music is technically tight and conceptually ambitious, it is in truth, tedious. These riffs just create too much tension for the releases to satisfy[iv], and Maynard’s affected vocals just aren’t doing anything for me.

I didn’t really set out to write about Tool. But the intertwined topics of Tool and fanboys have been on my mind for years and years, revitalized every time one of my heavy friends recommended Tool or lionized MJK, every time a Christopher Nolan Batman sequel was announced. It’s a strange and awkward feeling, when a friend raves about Tool. It’s like when someone you respect for their independent intelligence and ability begins talking in earnest about the help they received from God or Jesus Christ. But I digress.

REVIEW BEGINS

What brought about the above screed was my encountering of the Italian Post-Rock, Post-Metal band Kubark, whom I found one day on Bandcamp. Upon first hearing “VIXI”, the closing track from Kubark’s Ulysses EP, I realized very clearly that “This band sounds like Tool, but they’re good!” Just what is it that sets Kubark so definitively apart from the art-alt metal pretentiousness of Tool?

Sex!

Yes – Sex! Indeed, “Ainsoph”, the EP’s second song, begins with a long and somewhat uncomfortable sample from a pornographic BDSM video. But more generally, and more enjoyably, there is a subtle Sexiness, a sort of shifting blend of mischief, melancholy and desire that pervades Kubark’s work. This kind of vibe is rarely found in this kind of music. Note the opening lyrics to VIXI:

Head on your / Eyes on your

Thoughts on your / Fingers in your

Hands on your / Face on your

Tongue in your / Cock in your

Naked body / Naked mind

Your arms wide open / Your legs wide open

Which are delivered in a seductive, yet earnest croon, followed by a delightful, lovelorn section of “Lai dee di”s and “Lai dee daan lai”s, delivered sonorously over romantic guitar arpeggios and gently cresting cymbal crashes. This is the second aspect that makes Kubark enjoyable – the wistful melancholy which suffuses their songs. Instead of the epic-scale intellectual frustration of Tool, we have something much more relatable and immediate – sexual misadventures, urban loneliness, beautifully sad nighttime walks through festively-lit arcades. Kubark don’t brood, they smolder.

But there is also release – On the great “Autogenic”[v] from Kubark’s previous, eponymous release, there is a section where Andrea Nulla literally ROARS repeatedly after a long buildup. Things don’t get this heavy on Ulysses, but stomping sections featuring big, heavy guitar chords do make their way into Kubark’s stemwinders.

I don’t mean to sound like everything is perfect. The sample that begins “Ainsoph” is too long and loud to be clever, and the song itself just isn’t that great. The last part of “VIXI” is patently not as good as the first part, ending the EP on a somewhat mediocre note.

However, as a whole, Kubark are a unique and promising band. Their combination of poignant wistfulness, sexual energy, woven into their atmospheric post-rock and muscular post-metal feels confident and natural. The three-song run that closes the EP – The immaculately constructed “Love & Preach Hate”, cosmopolitan instrumental “Ulysses” and the aforementioned “VIXI” – are pure gold. They buoy Ulysses to a quality worthy of enshrinement in the Post-Rock hall of fame someday. I would also highly recommended Kubark to fans of Tool.

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[i] Alas, a lost art, and the reason I love Bandcamp.

[ii] Pitchfork Media also piled on with this review: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8104-lateralus/

[iii] Which I’ve been guilty of. I just try not to say it too much or too seriously.

[iv] The idea of tension with no release is an idea that is welcomed in indie rock and other genres, but unforgivable in Heavy Metal. If anything, Metal’s guiding principle is closer to ‘All release, all of the time.’

[v] Memorable lyric: “Organize a naked meal”

Best of Bandcamp Review – Kekal

Kekal is a criminally underappreciated band. Yes, as an experimentally inclined Black Metal band from Indonesia, there is a certain natural limit to their fame, but at their height, Kekal were creating something so strange and unique, and executing it so well, they should have become a household name.

Kekal’s 2005 album Acidity finds the band blending aggressive Heavy Metal with digressions and influences from a host of other genres. There are bits and traces of Reggae, Electronica, Tropicalia, Classical and many more within Acidity’s songs. However, Kekal’s musical swerves are not as sudden and complete as Japanese Black Metal band Sigh’s – Kekal tend not to launch completely and hilariously into incongruous parts. These are metal songs at their heart.

But metal is such a generic descriptor nowadays. What do Kekal sound like? What sets them apart? The base sound of Acidity is large. The songs sound like they are issuing forth in some humongous, dark echo chamber. There is an aura of nighttime to the songs – but they seem to lack setting almost completely. There is little sense of city, countryside, woods, desert, ocean or outer space. These are songs of vacuum, strange inventions of the void.

The drums are “hybrid”, which is to say partially programmed. They often sound stiff and clipped, but gaining the advantage of being amenable to near impossible patterns and standards of precision. The Drums are indeed intricate, sneaking maximalist fills into moments of transition and growing complex and syncopated during stretches of simpler guitar melody.

The guitars carry the weight. They are large and full. Despite Kekal’s Black Metal origins, there is not much blastbeat-n-tremolo action here. It is more striking for its scarcity – hear it dispatched with aplomb in “Thy Neighbor’s Morality”. Much of Acidity’s guitar work is harder to pin down – chords, chugging, solos, sounding retro, corny, wistful, melodramatic. Chords progress in unexpected ways. Sudden shifts in genre and guitar tone disorient and delight. There is a lot of 80’s arena metal influence here. There’s also just a lot going on here.

Lead singer Jeff Arwadi’s vocals bring home the emotional bacon. His black metal screech is demonic and threatening, yet his singing is plaintive, bordering on histrionic. There’s something modern and quintessentially Asian at work here, a lack of macho posturing that allows Arwadi to really bare his soul. This is great on songs like “Empty Space” and “Strength in my Weakness”, songs with heft and impact, counterpoints to the vulnerability of the vocals. However, all the heartfelt wailing grows a little tiresome at times, like in the synth and power chord ballad “Broken”.

The trouble with Kekal is that you never really know what they are going to do next, and whether it will work or not. Their songs are generally fairly long, and many times a song will start out great, but will be hopelessly mangled by some strange musical experiment – or several – before it is halfway through. Centerpiece “The Way of Thinking Beyond Comprehension” is a casualty of this tendency, transitioning from a brilliantly varied, pummeling and uplifting early section that whips around almost like jazz-inflected Mathcore, to a long and pointless middle stretch of chanting, goofy asides and interminable, context-poor guitar solos. You’ll forget what the good part sounded like. The opposite is true of “Broken” which wallows in nearly three and a half minutes of caterwauling before breaking loose into a suite of manic guitar solos that is too little, too late.

But when Kekal’s experiments work, boy do they ever. “Characteristicon” is a sublimely satisfying metal thrill ride, flying through big overtures, dramatic arena metal riffs, bizarre middle-eastern motifs, fleet-fingered guitar solos, drum exhibitions, reggae breakdowns, philosophical lyrics and an 80’s style shouted refrain that generates unusual emotional power.

“Thy Neighbor’s Morality” is another achievement. Here Kekal conjure up black metal storms worthy of Emperor, but surround them with unconventional support structures. Electronica gives way to BM, gives way to Hair Metal melodicism, gives way to youthful shouts. The result is a novel rave-up with strange coexisting elements of power and menace, melody and poignancy. Indeed Kekal pluck not just simple melodies and emotions from the genres they sweep across the canvas, but whole contexts, scenes, whole ways of thinking and feeling.

By the time album closer “Empty Space” hits its heartbreaking stride you may be ready to forgive Kekal some of their musical trespasses. Black Metal has become, strangely, a fertile ground for stylistic exploration, for a breaking of boundaries and unapologetic musical experimentation. Kekal are a mostly forgotten and ignored part of that push, of the opening up and enriching of black metal. Kekal used Acidity and their other albums in much the same way that progressive rock artists of the 70’s used their work to open up rock’s framework for new attachments and improvements. There is no cynical “blowing up” of the genre here, Kekal operate on metal in the spirit of possibility and hope.

And it’s a crying shame that Kekal continue to exist in such a deep cardinality of obscurity. The band’s history is somewhat confounding and sad. Kekal should be touring the world with Meshuggah and Dimmu Borgir. Instead they seem to exist in the same dark and expansive nowhere that Acidity takes place in, a dim borderless void assembled piecemeal from dark corners of the internet and unlit eaves of dingy music venues. This is an unfair fate for the band who made “1000 Thoughts of Violence” and “Acidity” back to back. It may be too late for Kekal to gain the recognition they deserve, but it’s not too late for extreme music seekers to appreciate the work they have done, and give it renewed life.