After 4.5 years together, I have never dragged my boyfriend to a metal show, despite it being a frequent pass time of my college years with loansonlineusa. The allure of slumming it with my metalhead peers in my usual haunts lost its luster a long time ago, admittedly. Combine this with a 9-to-5 career and a general antipathy towards being in crowds and the show outings slow down to a near halt.
Yet sometimes it’s still nice to get out and go to a show. Generally on Saturdays my boyfriend and I tend to do ‘whatever,’ with this day in particular being filled with fall outings and zip-lining. I’m not on Facebook so when my boyfriend skimmed his suggestions on what to do he noticed a show starting in a couple of hours.”Have you heard of these bands?” he asked. “Um, yeah, absolutely” I replied. When I showed some excitement at the prospect of seeing Imperial Triumphant and Pyrrhon, he decided he wanted to be cool and take me (which was cool, of course).
“It’s going to be pretty intense,” I warned, “they’re fairly heavy.” I know he can hang, he’s been to a fair share of punk shows in the past, and his penchant for 90s and alternative music like the Pixies, Pavement, Husker Du, and Sonic Youth mean that he’s got good taste. I mean, the first song we danced to was “Venus As A Boy” (at his request), so again, he can hang.
If the first half of Brand New’s career is what brought them into the public eye, then it was the second half that elevated them into the conversation of of being one of indie-rock’s greatest new millennium bands. While Your Favorite Weapon and Deja Entendu saw them master the art of pop-punk/pop-rock, it wasn’t until 2006 that many began to view them as serious innovators. For as large of a maturity leap as Deja represented on the heels of its relatively juvenile predecessor, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me marked an even more colossal evolution. Gone were the cheap feeling pop-punk chords and tongue-in-cheek self awareness, replaced with long, winding song progressions that culminated in and seething, searing riffs and lyrics that represented both an existential crisis and a total loss of innocence. It was the band properly coming into its own; the logical if unanticipated destination of Your Favorite Weapon‘s anger and Deja‘s biting cynicism.
The trials that the band endured during the recording process only fueled the record’s overarching sense of anger and depression: from a multitude of deaths and illnesses that befell band members’ friends and families to the leaking of a good portion of the album’s material midway through, it was probably the most difficult record that Brand New recorded. The album title itself came from a conversation Lacey had with a friend regarding Daniel Johnston, a musician who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Lacey and the rest of the band felt…
I had to ask myself yesterday: ‘Why?’ I was curious; stood inch deep in the quagmire, sniffling, giggling, losing my hair, losing my mind, and damn near losing my patience with the gurning bastard stood next to me, pestering me for a piece of Wrigley’s so he didn’t get lockjaw, I could not understand who might possibly enjoy this, and if they could enjoy it, how many pills I would have to have taken to do so. Granted, it was springtime, and I’d stand on human shit just to see Future, but the point remains; ‘Why?’
You see, in Australia- or at least Perth- we like to have our festivals in the summertime, when it doesn’t rain and it is generally more conducive to standing outside for hours at a time. It wasn’t until a cursory Internet search that I discovered and realized that the rest of the world isn’t quite as hard, fast, or as hung up on all of that bother as we are. Apparently, there’s mud at Glastonbury. And apparently, this is something people will pay £238 for; better yet, something they will endure across 5 days so they can watch Ed Sheeran, Halsey, and Clean Bandit. Apparently, that’s entertainment.
I make the exception for wet weather festivals because Splendour in the Grass, a pilgrimage, rite-of-passage, and waste-of-money for self-described ‘elite’ sandstone university students countrywide almost always transpires as the ground turns to mud and the sky goes grey. It’s a miserable experience all up,…
Editorial Note: This was originally written and posted as five separate album reviews. It functions as a retrospective and a discography review.
Link to Matt Aspinwall’s side of the split: https://bandcamp.com/download?id=2141216390&ts=1504398671.1591462948&tsig=2dbe75dc5beab0611396d08fe9aa5dbc&type=album
Demo?
The Brave Little Abacus is hard to pin down. They were eclectic, energetic, experimental, odd, off putting, and above all else, they were remarkable. What The Brave Little Abacus is not, however, is well known. Self-releasing almost all of their music, playing in legion halls, and forming slightly ahead of the emo revival scene, TBLA were mostly overlooked and underappreciated during their time. Creating some of the most challenging, intimate, and delightful music ever put to tape for half a decade somehow wasn’t enough – the band never broke out of their local New England scene, and sadly released their last record and played their last show in 2012. Combining mathy, sporadic, and unorthodox music ripe with complex song structures and a distinctive use of keyboard, TBLA filled a niche that The World Is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid To Die would later capitalize on. But outside of the fact that both bands are from New England, and have a keyboard player, there really isn’t any way to compare TBLA to The World Is… or any other band for that matter – they occupy a space all to themselves. Since their demise in 2012, The Brave Little Abacus has since been discovered by many internet music listeners hungry…
Thousands upon thousands of albums, EPs, mixtapes, compilations, and songs are released weekly. You might not be aware of the existence of 99% of those releases, but they’re there. So when each song released to the public is simply a drop in a pool that dwarfs even the Pacific Ocean, it can be hard to navigate the current music scene: it’s always moving and impossible to keep up with its speed. That’s where Share Some Singles comes into the picture. This series was formed to highlight songs released in 2017 that might not have been discovered by other listeners otherwise. I, alongside other Sputnikmusic users, have pulled together dozens of singles released in the recent past that we felt needed to be heard by the world. Or at least the Sputnik reader base.
Artists are listed in alphabetical order with corresponding YouTube, Soundcloud, and/or Bandcamp links. A Spotify playlist is also embedded below if the singles are available through that service. Enjoy! –wtferrothorn
Blue Hawaii – “No One Like You”
Not even the slightly out of place vocals could dampen the wonderful instrumental conjured up on “No One Like You”. Everything from the funky synth bubbling under the main ingredients for the entirety, to the grade-A bass grooves, to the disco-soaked strings that chime in quite a few times to remind you how stellar of…
Anyone on this site is, by now, well aware of my affinity for melodically-inclined music. There’s just something effortless and uplifting about songs that don’t require you to completely submerge yourself within them – and dedicate considerable time and emotional resources to – in order to understand. That isn’t to say that I haven’t spent tons of time getting lost in music with real, gritty depth and meaning, but lately the line between the genres I’d expect to pack that punch and those that I’ve traditionally viewed as reprehensibly artificial have actually begun to blur. From my perspective it feels like pop music is getting better, but that’s pretty clearly a hypersensationalized hot-take based on the opinion of someone who has ignored quality pop music for the better part of his life. As recently as three years ago I recall scoffing at the genre, aligning myself to a more elite standard as I’d quickly turn off the car radio to plug my ipod in and get lost in the music of The Antlers or The National. The reality, of course, is that quality pop music has always been there…I’ve just been isolating myself from it out of a fear of being subjected to the worst that the genre has to offer. But that’s no way to critique music, because by the same standards I ought to be repulsed by indie-folk considering the remarkable attention that bands such as Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers attract.
Or maybe I’m just getting old and my music taste has regressed to…
For me, it was “In the End”. Hit play on that sampled piano riff and damn, I’m immediately lost inside a thousand memories; pretty much all of which consist of either trying (and failing) to rap the verses with my high school friends, or sitting in front of the MTV channel wide-eyed, annoying my parents while I waited for that one video with the awesome moving statues in it. Pretty much everyone will have a different jumping-on point, though: were you drawn in by “Faint”, and its hyper-cool video where we only saw the band’s silhouettes from behind? Or “Numb” with that absolute monster of a chorus, potentially even the Jay-Z-ified “Numb/Encore” remix for extra cred? Could be you’re an obsessive fan who trawls through the LPUnderground catalogue in their spare time and names “QWERTY” as their favourite Linkin Park song, or maybe you missed the train on them entirely and roll your eyes at the rest of us buying in on this cheesy rap-rock trend. Wherever inside that spectrum you land, it’s cool, because love them or hate them, it was pretty damn impossible to ignore Linkin Park at the beginning of the new millennium.
It started with Hybrid Theory in 2000, an album that somehow manages to sound fresh and vital despite coming from the heart of the most dated genre to ever exist. It’s all in the energy of the thing, of course – “By Myself” with those copper-wire metallic shrieks, “Papercut”…
Friends and neighbours, I’ve got a theory. My thinking is this: pop songs, when executed to such a high degree we can basically round up to saying they’re perfect, achieve a level of embedded, canonised love in the minds of the public that no other genre can really hope to accomplish, partly due to pop’s pre-established advantage of being ever-present on radios and TV. In other words: perfect pop songs are better (or at the very least, more effective) than perfect songs of other genres. Of course the very thing that gives good pop songs their boost is the same thing that makes bad ones so insufferable – the fact that radio will pound them into the ground for months after release, their seemingly simplistic or shallow arrangements, and the ability (if not explicit goal) to stay stuck in your head for days on end. Pop has maybe the largest gap of any genre between its good stuff and its “Shape Of You”‘s, and this dichotomy is what causes ‘pop’ to be a dirty word in the minds of many even in the year of our Lorde 2017. But when a tune is done perfectly, with respect to the form and real feeling, it can become a symbol to represent entire periods of time, feelings or entire sub-cultures of people in a way that puts other genres to shame. Go on and have a small list of perfect pop songs, then, and tell me how hard you disagree.
I was going to say that I’m not even sure why I’m writing this, but I’d being lying. After all, if you’re a metal fan with an internet connection, you’d need to have been sleeping under a rock not to have heard of Wintersun’s crowdfunding project, as well as all the reasons why you should hang onto your cash. The truth is that I just love playing Devil’s Advocate; also, I really want to hear Time II.
So, if Jari and co. are to be believed, the proceeds are going towards building a sauna private studio – dubbed the “Wintersun Headquarters” – which will in turn benefit their fans, giving them with new material graced with ideal production values, released with regularity. Now, if that’s all you’ve been told, it doesn’t sound like too bad an idea, unless you’re categorically opposed to crowdfunding, in which case I’m sure I’m going to infuriate you. Of course, the objections aren’t without merit; Jari hasn’t exactly been considerate towards his rather dedicated fans. Even I noted after the release of Time I that his behaviour “practically reduced his fans to mules eyeing a dangling carrot” – that was five years ago. Time II was due at some point in 2014, and now we’re approaching the twilight of the decade without any concrete word on when we can actually expect it, if at all. If you’re a Wintersun fan, casual or devout, it’s hard to interpret…
It goes without saying that Brand New are a staple “Sputnik” band, and I mean that less in the sense that the site in any way gave rise to the band’s popularity and more in the sense that we’ve unquestionably worshiped them as a deity since 2006. They’re not the only band that we’ve collectively fawned over, but even out of the site’s most highly respected artists, they are still near – if not at – the pinnacle. With The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me receiving well over 5,000 ratings while maintaining a 4.5 average, their reputation around these parts is so high that speaking negatively about the band – and even more so, this album – is heresy. Part of this hysteria can be chalked up to the age group and genre fans that populate this site, as Brand New undoubtedly speaks to younger generations, but as a whole it’s difficult to deny – through any scope – the record’s status as a modern day classic. On November 20, 2006, the world of alt/indie rock was forever imprinted with the mark of Brand New’s depressive and highly existential work of art; their unquestionable magnum opus. Ten years later, it’s time to revisit this towering achievement and take a quick look at what it now means a full decade removed from its release date.
It all started with immense pressure to follow up the band’s sophomore smash hit, Deja Entendu, with something worthy of the band’s rising reputation. High expectations aren’t easy…
Greetings fellow users! As some of you are aware, I’ve started a little user review competition in which the winner receives an automatic feature, as well as a “user spotlight” session. It basically consists of an informal chat in which I ask some personal questions as well as some silly ones.
From the review: “Unlike any typical concept album, How To Be Human Being doesn’t stick to a single story or theme. In fact, it does the exact opposite. A song about a mother lamenting her son’s young death and all the memories he could’ve made later in life is followed by a track dedicated to lazy stoners. But this lack of solidarity answers a question very similar to the album’s title: what’s it like to be a human being? It’s funny, sad, sexy, and gleeful. It’s filled with mental illness, social awkwardness, standing in lines, and cookie coasters. It’s all of these things at the same time. This is why How To Be A Human Being might understand life more than most albums in 2016. Life isn’t all pain and suffering, nor is it always a blessing. It’s a mixed bag, and you’re going to have to deal with the good and the bad.”
Everyone has a set of bands or musicians that they hold dearly for some reason or another. Oftentimes, it’s not even an artist that you listen to anymore. Time placed a wedge between whatever it was that connected you so directly to their message and the place that you currently reside in life. It’s like losing touch with an old friend; you never actually stopped caring about the person, it’s just that life has led you in separate directions and it no longer makes sense to spend more than the occasional holiday catching up with them. For all intents and purposes, your friendships become ones of convenience. But just like those time-tested relationships, there’s this unspoken understanding that anytime or anywhere, you’ll be able to return to that album/song/artist and everything will return to being exactly like it was before. It’s a comfort that very few bands have been able to bestow upon me: Brand New, Yellowcard, and others do come to the forefront of my memory first – but then there’s Jimmy Eat World – the band that I too often tuck away, saying to myself, “I’ll give Clarity another listen once I’m finished with the new Sufjan.” Well, I’m here now to say thank you to a band that I probably haven’t listened to nearly as much as I’ve always wanted to.
We’ve all experienced that crystallizing moment when you hear an artist’s message and everything seems to click – it’s almost as if that…
It’s a little cliche at this point to begin a review of a track on the Monstercat label with a general broad-brush description of the label – wildly hit-or-miss music (stemming, of course, from the fact that they release at least three original tracks a week), obscenely devoted fanbase which formulates one of the most impressive YouTube hiveminds around, yadda yadda yadda. To understand how Karma Fields’ newest LP, New Age | Dark Age, is one of the most interesting releases the label has put out in a very long time, though, it’s worth characterizing its reception within the confines of the label’s usual fans. “Stickup,” one of the album’s pre-release singles, was released on YouTube to one of the highest dislike-like ratios on any video from the label. Similar ratios exist for other songs from the album – the excellent “Greatness” (featuring the inimitable Talib Kweli on vocals) has about 1 dislike to every 10 likes as well. Suffice it to say, then, that Karma Fields is dividing the label’s core fanbase.
All this is to say that Karma Fields, in deviating from what many people involved in the community find comfortable, is actually doing really interesting things with their music. The currently-anonymous artist, at best, has dropped some of the most fun tuneless, staticky electro bangers around, picking…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of March 4, 2016. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. In addition, you may notice more “track of the day” posts on this site, a feature that we hope to maintain with some level of consistency in the future. If you have a track you would like to see covered, let us know in the comments below.
Atrament – Eternal Downfall (Argento Records)
Baklava – Dane On (Grimoire Records)
The Big Pink – Empire Underground (B3SCI Records)
Big Ups – Before a Million Universes (Exploding In Sound Records)
Casket Robbery – Evolution of Evil (Mortal Music) Circle of Dust – Circle of Dust [Remastered] (FiXT) — Trey Spencer
Coppersky – If We’re Losing Everything (Uncle M Music)
The Coral – Distance Inbetween (Ignition Records Ltd)
Cub Sport – This Is Our Vice (Nettwek Productions Ltd)
Dead Procession – Rituais e Mantras do Medo (Labyrinth Productions)
Dead Stars – Bright Colors (Weird Tree Records)
Esperanza Spalding – Emily’s D+Evolution (Concord Music Group Inc)
Face to Face – Protection (Fat Wreck Cords)
Gadget – The Great Destroyer (Relapse Records Inc)
Guerilla Toss – Eraser Stargazer (DFA LLC)
Heel – The Parts We Save (No Label)
Hero The Band – Bleach (Nova Love Records) Inverloch – Distance Collapsed (Relapse Records…
I’ve been mulling a review of David Bowie’s most recent album, Blackstar, which, if you’re reading this, no doubt you’ve realized was released mere days before his passing on January 10th. He died in peace, surrounded by family, so we’re told by his publicist. Could there be a better way to go for a man who made himself so private? For all his fame and public adoration, Bowie died simply, in the company of family. It seems fitting that, for whatever reasons were, Bowie’s prolonged battle with cancer (over 18 months, from the brief obituary provided) was hidden, and his music was allowed to speak for itself. In my mind, that’s how David Bowie would want to go out – not on his knees as the subject of tabloid spectacle, but on his feet, shouting one last opus to the world. How grand a man, to suffer in silence and let the grandeur of his work tell his tale. That’s David Bowie.
I can’t claim to remember all that David Bowie had to offer the world – I’m no historian and Wikipedia and Rolling Stone and others who lived through all phases of his career can, no doubt, provide history lessons and the emotional impact of what it felt like to be there and see Ziggy Stardust in concert. The experience, for me, is far less grand, but still as personal, and if only to personally say “thank you” to one of the greatest musicians to have ever lived, I’d like to share those…
