we'll give 'em a smorgasbord!
Writing about music new and old, a show announcement, a root beer round-up, other stuff even
In continuing on a path toward newsletter amorphousness, here’s…stuff.
First things first: my hardcore band Horsie’s first ever show is in Kingston on Friday, July 24th, at West Kill Supply. It’s free. I’ve been calling it “The Cubist Overheard show” since all four members of Overheard (plus three of our frequent collaborators) are performing on the same bill in different bands. Erin’s duo Grackles with Grace Moore, plus the Kennys as the reversed rhythm section of TV Sleep. You’ll get to see our many sides all at once.
Also, Buffalo friends, keep your eyes peeled for a Ghost Down gig this August!
Second things second, a few ‘icymi’ writing links:
A Big Fuck-You List of Music:
A hypnotizing listen. I’m gonna be revisiting this one a ton this year. I like the Bon Iver features, and they’re (in my opinion) the lesser songs on this record, which I think is really saying something with regards to how much Dua Saleh’s songwriting stands alone, apart, and above.
Overheard’s Lenny has been telling me about this group ever since we shared a bill with one of their drummers last year, and I finally got around to listening to their latest. Inspirational and terrifying hip-hop, screams, bars, wit, Zach-Hill-esque drumming, mind-expanding production. I shouldn’t find it hard to believe that the deeply Staten-Island-coded frontman of Post No Bills has these tireless drum chops with the way he was flailing about on the floor at Cobra Club, but I still feel like I had a brush with a celebrity with how much I’ve loved this Lip Critic record!
Alice in Chains’s Alice in Chains
It’s always fun to listen to an artist I was only vaguely aware of and learn how deep that artist’s roots go in the way I write, experience, and appreciate the guitar. This album is sludgy and disgusting! It rips, and it feels inexplicably like ‘homework in a good way.’
STREET SEX’s FULL COLOR ECLIPSE
In a week, Horsie is taking a field trip to see Portrayal of Guilt at LPR, with Street Sects opening for them. I’ve spun the new PoG record, and it’s great, but I’ve found myself gravitating instead toward the opener’s poppy side project, STREET SEX, for a little more of that necessary pep and color amidst the recent dreary days. Speaking of Horsie…
MIZI MARÉ x ayashi[!]’s - I LEARNED HOW TO SWIM AFTER I DROWNED
A new hip-hop mixtape by my beloved Horsie bandmate, Idris. The fun and energy, silliness and rage emanating off of these ten tracks has me honored I get to share a band with the big guy. Listen goes down smooth as hell, you’ll laugh, you’ll thrash, and maybe you’ll throw a brick at someone/something that deserves it.
Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial: Joe’s Story
It is very hard to believe that the original version of this album is ten years old. There’s not all that much different, but a few songs are swapped out (one song is retitled and reworked slightly?), there’s not a single cuss word to be found on the thing, and some tracks and vocals were rerecorded to great effect. Both Will Toledo and I, Will LaPorte, were very different people in 2016, and this retrospective view of an iconic album ten years on felt mutual, like we were both looking back, cringing slightly, but still honoring and loving ourselves for who we were. While I definitely prefer the original line ‘I felt like a walking piece of shit’ to the new ‘I felt like a dying alien’ in “Drugs With Friends,” I’ll never begrudge someone for trying to swear just a little less. There are kids present, guy! The next generation of little weirdos who will grow and have grown up with Car Seat Headrest like how I grew up with Weezer.
Luther Vandross’s Never Too Much
More specifically the title track. I was sitting in the overstimulation nightmare that is Dekalb Market with Em, I was eating wings, they were eating sushi, we were trying to talk through the basement marketplace’s penchant for several simultaneous dueling DJ’s, when one of them put on Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much.” It’s a song we’ve all heard ten thousand times, probably at weddings or in supermarkets (if you somehow haven’t, change that). However, that particular oasis amidst the typical noise of the market had me telling Em all about the song, the incredible bassline, the tasteful moments of tempo slowdown, and how it’s the kind of song that would make my dad say ‘you don’t know nothin about this rekkid.’ Em pointed something out to me that I never realized, which is that my dad is why I say ‘rekkid’ all the time. I guess I don’t know nothin after all, except that people love Luther Vandross and this banger for a reason.
Hilary Duff’s luck…or something
Unashamed to say I really dug this, especially “Future Tripping” and “Holiday Party,” which will be a lovely complement to summer beach days.
I was recently listening to the One Song podcast’s episode on the Killers’ song Mr. Brightside and encountered something somewhat familiar: host Luxxury’s extreme pettiness toward The Killers finding international success with ideas he was trying to hone in on himself, only a little too late. I felt deeply seen in trying to push down this bitterness and failing, seeing a vibe that matches yours open for and be opened for by all your favorite bands while you struggle to get a gig in your own neighborhood. youbet is a band Overheard had once shared a bill with in a tiny shop in the middle of nowhere, and we all instantly knew they were good, felt our sets were quite complementary, and honestly, they were a great hang! In my dreams we’d all lift each other up and gig in NYC a bunch together, get drinks, hang out. Not exactly how it went down! They kinda blew up. I really felt what Luxxury was talking about, being so adjacent to these same people who go on to make scene-shaking art with tonal and songwriting vibes not entirely dissimilar to your own. However, with the help of some therapy and talking with friends, I have tried to curtail my penchant towards these bitternesses, with some success! A success that allows me to say that this new youbet album is, in my opinion, fucking incredible, if not perfect. A sprinkling of sourness isn’t gonna stop me from playing these rippers loud, or unabashedly telling these folks how god damn good this record is when I inevitably see them next.
In an effort to go to more shows and see more new bands this year, I’ve been riding the wave of my friend Dennis’s suggestions. When he sent me a northern European gibberish band name earlier this year for a date this past weekend, I bought a ticket sight unseen, because I just wanted to see what they were all about. I was not expecting to have my mind rended apart entirely. After a sort of americana black metal opener named Wayfarer, Oranssi Pazuzu took the stage, manic, unhinged, yet extremely calculating. Their guitarist thrashed about without running into a keyboard stand or smacking a fellow bandmember with a headstock, which was impressive in itself. The time signatures were just wonky enough to have me counting along for fun, but just consistent enough as to not be tedious. The sounds were oppressive even behind earplugs, with guttural screams from multiple members, walls of noise underscored by a piano’s gentle timbre or a synth’s heart-monitor-esque beep. During the encore, I gave myself the requisite break from earplugs to be completely awash in the sound, and was met with the familiar, beloved feeling of being alone in the crowd with the band as they yelled, flailed, added chaotic color to a dreary, downpouring day. I bought their CD and will be lending it to everyone I’ve ever met once I’m done laying on my living room floor and letting it melt me once again, like it did in the dark dungeon of Le Poisson Rouge.
some more music, singles I like, etc:
Xiu Xiu’s Eraserhead-inspired EP and its lead single, “In Heaven"
Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Dim Stars”
Converge’s “Doom In Bloom” and “Hum of Hurt”
Porches’ cobbled-together four-track 9 track mixtape MASK;
Jessie Ware’s Superbloom;
The can’t-believe-it’s-upcoming new Boards of Canada record Inferno!!
Other Stuff
My friends Brendon and Pablo made a website to track basically all games news ever, overworld.vg! Happy birthday Brendon!
A number gacha I dare not engage with myself…
This Song Exploder Episode on the Hot Chip song “Boy From School”
A stack of film yaps: Carrie, The Sheep Detectives, Blue Velvet, Mortal Kombat II, Days of Heaven, & Dunkirk (aka Dunkirks of H-Evan). Yaps on I Love Boosters, The Master, and Obsession to come.
And one more film yap not by me: my friend Jawn’s review of Disney’s Mulan [1998].
Watching Em play Pokopia has been a joy, when I am able to get my backseat gaming tendencies in check.
A guy Em and I saw “Naruto biking” (you can picture it) through Prospect Park with a sign affixed to his bike reading “NO ICE. ONE LOVE.” I did not get a picture, but shoutout that guy.
And finally…the long-awaited return of:
Today: a reckoning.
This is the one that started it all. I never understood the hype on Mug and Barq’s, and was always a Coca-Cola diehard. When I learned about Boylan I stuck with their Cane Cola, never even entertaining the curiosity of this marigold label, turned off by my attempts at enjoying their Creme Soda and Red Birch Beer. One day though, Adam’s Fairacre Farms was sold out of Cane Cola and I decided to try something different. I sprung for a root beer, and soon enough left all forms of cola behind entirely. It would straight up ruin my day if I went to a store where I normally get these and they were out of stock. It was delectable, dark, and sugary…maybe too sugary.
I saw a random reddit thread comparing root beers and was shocked to see Boylan rank extremely low, and had to see for myself if they were right. I went and got the one in the picture. I sipped, I realized: the years passed. I’d tried all manner of root beer I could get my hands on, and the Boylan Bottling Co. root beer, once my standard, fell out of favor. Against the bitternesses and complexities of Keegan Ale’s tap root beer in a frosted glass, a tried and true Maine Root Root Beer, the hated root beers that brandish an unwanted honey in their mix, and an old classic, Dad’s Root Beer, nasty as a candy but delectable as a drink, Boylan Root Beer fell down to…average. Maybe even below average. Not offensive, but nothing special. The thrill of its sugars, the crack of its black glass, didn’t do much for me anymore, save for sate a craving for a mouth-punch of sweetness. It’s heartbreaking, but as we go on, we’ll remember, you were the one that started me off, and I’ll still return for the familiarity of that label, if not for the uncomplicated flavors that lie behind it. It still absolutely kicks ass for my parched mouth after a sweaty show. ALSO, Dr. Boylan, their version of Dr. Pepper, is an underrated gem, a stealth competitor for the Root Beer Rodeo Queen.
Boylan Bottling Company Root Beer: 5/10
Thanks for reading, y’all. I’ll be back, with something, eventually, probably. I am trying to get back into longer form essays and whatnot, and reinforce in myself the idea that writer’s block is a myth and you just gotta buckle down and do it. So I will! Or my name isn’t…
- Will