potpourri
I really can’t focus these days, the news, it’s too much. But I wanted to keep this going, and I realized that I didn’t have to put out some full essay with every one of these. So here we go, assorted recent music things.
One of my favorite local bands, Iress, put out a new album a month or so back. It’s good! They play towering, doom-paced guitar shit, centered on the lead vocals of Michelle Malley, which carry you along in huge sweeping phrases. There are strong metal influences, but calling it straight-up metal doesn’t quite feel right for whatever reason. Gothic heavy alternative?
The album really sounds great; the production makes everything feel vast and cavernous, a dark place to be lost in. It was produced by Sarah Tudzin (i.e. illuminati hotties) in a bit of a change of pace for her, but it all really works, kudos for that.
I used to see Iress perform fairly regularly, and run into some of them at other shows routinely. Our tastes in heavy music, at least, overlap a lot. They’re cool people, and I miss catching up with them briefly once a month or so. Even though I don’t know them super well, it was still pretty exciting to see when Bandcamp said it was one of the best albums of the summer, like some friends made good, you know? I hope they’re holding up and I’ll get to run into them at a show again eventually.
Speaking of Bandcamp, they published an interview/retrospective with Aaron Turner (best known of ISIS, but mentioned here before as part of Battle of Mice). I hadn’t realized how prolific he was, and just how many different people he’d collaborated with.
He’s married to the woman behind Mamiffer, Faith Coloccia, I had no idea. Mamiffer’s first album, Hirror Enniffer, is excellent; when I first got it I listened to it three times in one day. (That’s very rare for me.) The guy who lived above me that only listened to classical music once came down just to find out who it was so he could listen to it, so when I tell you it’s dark and at times overbearing piano don’t be too scared, check it out.
Most relevant to here though, if you remember the context I mentioned Turner in before, is the following snippet of the interview:
“I was honestly uncomfortable being told what to do by a woman, and that was an unspoken problem for years,” says Turner. “But through much patience on Faith’s part and aggravation on my part, I was able to understand what it meant to support someone else’s vision and to be able to hear a woman without imposing my own sexist agenda.”
That’s reassuring, in a way. Seems like genuine personal growth.
Here is a little chunk of my youth, a Cartoon Network interstitial with an original ska song that bops:
This is a song I have come back to often, I’ve even listened to other stuff from Pain on the strength of it. (The other stuff is fine, but this is honestly their best song.) So when I saw that Skatune Network (you know, they did that fun multi-genre cover of The Impression That I Get) was doing a cover of it you know I had to check that out:
What I hadn’t noticed in the tiny thumbnail before I clicked through to watch was who’s providing the vocals for this one: that’s right, it’s Sarah Tudzin from illuminati hotties. The range, my god.
Every so often I get stuck on certain songs, which for me means I’ll listen to it once or twice a day for a week or two. (I normally mix things up more than that.) This used to coincide with finals week most semesters, so it’s probably some sort of unconscious stress coping mechanism. Anyways, lately it’s been happening again, and that song has been “Orange Peeler”, by Horse Jumper of Love.
The shimmery but compressed guitar that opens the song is really what does it for me, that’s about all I need. It rises and falls throughout the first verse of the song in a doppler-effect fashion, reminding me of lights going by the car window when driving at night. I like the rhythm of the vocals too, the way they unfold, each phrase going a little longer than you think it will and leading right into another one. It ends with an extended instrumental portion, including a simple but effective guitar solo and a final krautrock-inflected outro. I just let it carry me along.