Weird Science, Family Curse, Fake Surfers

May 28, 2013 • Café Bourbon St., Columbus, Ohio

Yep, two concerts in one night. An unprecedented affair, but I couldn't say no to this one even though I'd already bought my Melvins ticket. I was invited by my cousin Chris of This Moment in Black History fame, who has been playing with Family Curse in Brooklyn lately. Café Bourbon St. itself is a tiny hole-in-the-wall place like Carabar or Kobo, grimy but with just the right amount of punk charm to it. Unfortunately I arrived too late to hear the first band, Goners, but was in plenty of time to catch the remaining three bands. (Sorry Goners; I'm sure you were great.)

Fake Surfers

This band was a real nice surprise. Hardcore punk with a very minimal setup—just drums and guitar—but it turns out you can do a lot with that. Though they aren't a terribly unique band, their show was still very impressive. Special props to the fantastic drumming; fast, raw, and a bit technical.
7 • Second-Longest Hair Award

Family Curse

Really awesome stuff, not that I expected any less. Family Curse does a garage punk thing that's actually pretty similar to This Moment in Black History, but with a bit more of a New York sound, obviously. Less screams, but the same knack for intensity and melody. Very awesome rhythm section, especially; they definitely ripped it up over their whole set. It helped that the audience was obviously there to see them specifically and really got into the set, too.
8 • Best Spontaneous Drumkit-Smashing Award

Weird Science

The low point of the show for me, though they weren't terrible. They seemed to start off as melodic punk like Hüsker Dü or Sun God, but they also had a bit of a hard rock (almost metal) edge to their stuff, going so far as to cover a Steppenwolf song (ugh). It might have been a better show if more people stuck around, but that's what happens, I guess.
6 • Most Unnecessary Amount of Guitars Award

Baroness – Yellow & Green

July 17, 2012 • Relapse Records

I've been following Baroness since their first album, finding out about them through their similarity to Mastodon (probably like a lot of other people). I haven't listened to them much since their second album Blue Record was pretty disappointing, but Baroness has now gone in a totally different direction and gone are the crunchy metal guitars and sludgy aesthetics. I'm not sure if I'm totally sold on what Yellow & Green is offering but the end product is admirable, if nothing else.

From sludge metal to grooving hard rock—is the change good or bad? or neither? I don't know. They still have the same southern twang and the same penchant for writing some pretty catchy hooks, and there are more than a couple memorable choruses throughout. However I find their sound to be relatively tame and safe—I don't want to say "poppy", because it's not, but it's headed that way. In fact you could still say they're paralleling Mastodon's career with the increased accessibility (though Mastodon has still kept things pretty heavy, but that's neither here nor there). To me, at least, the songwriting is still good on a small-scale level—individual riffs and whatnot—but on a large-scale level it's a bit of a bore and some songs are really predictable.

Not to mention that even Baroness can't escape the curse of the double album. Nine out of ten double albums I hear are always half-crap and could be easily trimmed down to one good disc; Yellow is significantly better than Green so it seems at first like the whole thing is constistently good, but unfortunately it's not so. Only "Green Theme", "Board Up the House" (which wound up being my favorite track across both discs), and maybe "The Line Between" are particulary good on Green and could easily replace a few not-as-good tracks on Yellow for one killer album. (And no, it's not just because I prefer the heavier tracks. "Board Up the House" really isn't heavy.)

However despite my personal preferences for the individual songs, they still succeed decently enough at a double album—moreso than most bands—since they have really expanded their musical repertoire; Yellow & Green isn't just two discs of straight-up hard rock and there's plenty of psych, folky stuff, and some metal thrown in. Depending on the listener this can come off as inconsistent and patchworky; others might consider it ambitious and a display of Baroness' songwriting talent. I fit somewhere between those two and I can see it both as being a good thing and a bad thing.

I can tell I won't ever come to enjoy this album as much as I like their first two, as my appetite for this style of music was pretty low to begin with. On the other hand Blue Record was a step down and another sludge album probably wouldn't have been particularly good. Yellow & Green seems like an album you really have to sample for yourself to know if you'd like it or not since it's so different and almost seems like it's aiming at an entirely different audience. I dunno. Like I said, like it or not, it's still a pretty impressive album.

6

Torche – Harmonicraft

April 24, 2012 • Volcom Entertainment

Sometimes it sucks to be a fan of a band, especially when they have one particular album you really love. No matter what else that band releases, it'll always be compared to that one album, and you'll never find it to be as good even if it has its own merits. Meanderthal was that album for me; I loved its unique style with the catchy yet heavy and complex riffs, upbeat mood, and soaring chord progressions. Harmonicraft is basically more of the same, and while it's not as good as Meanderthal it's still one fine album.

For the most part, Torche isn't breaking out and trying anything new with this album, so if you have heard anything by them before you're getting more of the same here. There is a bit more melding of the short, punky sound like the tracks on Songs for Singles and chugging riffage, so there's a nice bit of variation there. Maybe it's my attention span, but here I'm really getting into those short tracks, those tiny nuggets of riffage that are practically over as soon as they've begun, such as "Walk It Off", "Sky Trials", or "Kiss Me Dudely". I think they show off what Torche does best; it's tough for music to actually get me genuinely pumped but those songs do it for me.

My singular gripe with is album is that it's a touch too long. There are a couple blander tracks hiding in the middle that don't seem to do anything but make me long for the opening few tracks again and delay the awesome closers. I do have a personal preference for releases with lower song counts (regardless of length), as shorter, more cohesive albums almost always sit better with me. That's why I love the "Healer" / "Across the Shields" EP so much; four great tracks and that's all you need. Here, maybe cut "Roaming" and "Skin Moth" for a nice, more cohesive little half-hour package. Perfect.

Really though, there's not much here to be critical about. Sure, maybe Harmonicraft doesn't live up to my rose-colored-glasses standard Meanderthal set. So what? It's still good, I still enjoy it, and that's all that matters.

7 (A high 7. Might go up one day.)

Boris – Heavy Rocks

May 24, 2011 • Sargent House

After 2008's Smile was such an awesome release, I was pretty excited for three new Boris albums in 2011. This throwback to their identically-named 2002 album was an awesome addition and just what I was hoping for from Boris. Even if they are branching out into pop with the other two albums, this one shows that Boris has still got an edge to them when it comes to straight-up stoner rock and they aren't done yet.

As expected, this album shows a nice mix of songs in the style of 2002's album and their recent poppier stuff (for example, "Leak -Truth,yesnoyesnoyes-", which is decidedly poppy, especially coming after the monster rocker "Riot Sugar"). There is a lot of music in the style of Pink (such as the punky "Galaxians"), which is also nice to heard if you like that album (I do). Like Pink and Heavy Rocks, it's a very fun album when it tries to be, and the mellower long songs are also quite good; "Aileron" especially brings the doom in a really good and satisfying way—a bit reminiscent of Smile's closing track (which is one of my favorites of theirs), making it the standout song on this album.

If I had to pick something to complain about, it would be that 2002's Heavy Rocks, Pink, and Smile are all still better albums, and this album isn't really treading any new ground and as such it does sound a bit tired at times and it just makes me want to listen to their older stuff instead. (It doesn't help that a couple of these tracks can already be found on New Album.) That's not really a problem in and of itself, since I don't want to listen to those albums because this one is bad; rather it's just because it reminds me of them. The songs are still decent; they simply sometimes serve as reminders that Boris has made music like this before, and it's still there to be listened to.

But regardless of the fact Heavy Rocks is, for the most part, nothing new, it's still good. It's still the same old Boris we know and love, full of nice riffs and melodies and textures; even though it may be a bit rehashed it's still a really enjoyable album.

7