pennyroyal22
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Reviews 3
Approval 76%

Soundoffs 20
News Articles 14
Band Edits + Tags 0
Album Edits 1

Album Ratings 90
Objectivity 72%

Last Active 11-30-09 8:07 am
Joined 04-13-08

Review Comments 163

Average Rating: 3.71
Rating Variance: 0.76
Objectivity Score: 72%
(Fairly Balanced)

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5.0 classic
311 Music
311 Transistor
Built To Spill When The Wind Forgets Your Name
Built To Spill Perfect from Now On
Howling Giant Crucible & Ruin
O'Brother Garden Window
Pile Green and Gray
PUP The Dream Is Over
Thrice Beggars
Thrice The Alchemy Index Vols. III & IV
Thrice The Alchemy Index Vols. I & II
Thrice Vheissu
Thrice Major/Minor

4.5 superb
311 311 Day 2004 - Live In New Orleans
311 Live In New Orleans
Chat Pile Cool World
Chevelle NIRATIAS
Downward (USA-OK) Downward II
Impeccable production and taut, inventive songwriting that never overstays its welcome -- if anything, some of these songs could have squeezed another minute or two out of their conceits and still not have worn thin. The back half of this album may be the strongest five-song run I've heard since the first half of O'Brother's "Garden Window".
Interpol Interpol
Pile A Hairshirt of Purpose
Pile All Fiction
PUP PUP
SUMAC The Healer
Thrice The Artist in the Ambulance
Thrice Horizons/East
Thrice have demonstrated once again that having their own studio space to experiment and branch out (without the creative input of an outside producer) is where they thrive. Horizons/East at its most inventive moments is unlike anything else being made right now, and make for sublime listening. The album is weighed down by some of the more conventional elements they sometimes lean on (namely the more power chord-driven singles) but the great far outweighs the tame. The production and mixing is on point; this is the best-sounding record they've released. The diversity of their palette, tones familiar and new, is on full display, and it makes for a breathtaking experience.

4.0 excellent
311 Grassroots
311 Uplifter
311 Mosaic
A really great smattering of the many versatile styles 311 is capable of. The album is marred somewhat by some collaborations with John Feldmann which mixes like oil with the water of the rest of the songs, but the musicianship and songwriting on display is truly remarkable. 'Stereolithic' was hailed by some as a return to form but after Mosaic it's clear it was more of a sign of things to come.
Built To Spill You in Reverse
Chat Pile Live at Roadburn 2023
One of the best-engineered live albums I've ever heard, and keeping all Raygun's idiosyncratic stage banter intact really puts you in the vibe of their live show, though at 9 songs it's a rather slim live set, and I'd gladly have given up the stage banter for an additional song or two. I also wish they'd put out an album with some cuts from their most recent album as well but what can you do
Chat Pile God's Country
Cloakroom Further Out
Elder (USA-MA) Liminality/Dream State Return
...there it is. I bitched in my review of Elder's previous album because to me, their new drummer has had a bit of a tendency to get locked into grooves that didn't really complement the rest of the instruments and songwriting, and I felt this led to something of a lack of impact compared to their releases with their previous drummer. This EP gives me hope that perhaps Georg Edert has fully assimilated with the band because he has finally dialed in, and plays with swing-laden aplomb that makes the music feel impactful, huge, momentous, unstoppable. Even the second track here, the kind of instrumental studio faffery that I generally don't go for, is a lot of unpredictable fun thanks to the syncopation of rhythm and melody Elder achieves. A great release and a promising sign of the future if this is any indication of Elder's future.
O'Brother Endless Light
Ovlov What's So Great About the City?
Ovlov Great Hits Vol. II
Pedro the Lion Santa Cruz
Pile Sunshine and Balance Beams
Pile is a strange beast and their albums shift in my estimation seemingly year to year -- I doubt this will be any different. That said this album benefits from what is (to my early impression) much better production and mastering than any of their previous work. Kris Kuss' drums sound sublime, guitar tones and their dischordant, serrated jangling is moored in the mire deliciously, the bass is ugly and heavy and beautiful, and Rick's vocals sound great without the slapback cranked up to 11 the way it was the last couple releases. Add in some excellent touches with violin and additional strings and it makes for what may be the best 'mature' Pile album to date. (I would say 'mature' starts with 'Hairshirt of Purpose'.)
Pile Magic Isn't Real
Pile Hot Air Balloon
Sum 41 Chuck
Sum 41 Does This Look Infected?
Thrice The Illusion of Safety
Thrice Horizons/West
Thrice shed some of their recent bluesy trappings in favor of the cinematic atmosphere of earlier works such as Alchemy Index and Vheissu, for a stirring and largely successful companion to H/E. Even amongst a discography and sonic palette as diverse as what Thrice has established this is quite the eclectic smattering of styles, experimentation, and genre-blending: there is no shortage of creativity and inventiveness on display here.rIt's not a perfect album. While H/W avoids H/E sin of sometimes songs dragging on a bit long, most of the tracks here could have benefited from at least one more section to really achieve their full potential (looking at 'Dark Gloom', 'Vesper Light', 'Holding On', and 'Gnash' -- for comparison, 'Distant Suns' in my opinion is the only track that really hits the sweet spot of not over-staying its welcome but also providing a much-welcomed final reprisal of the chorus). This album also demonstrates a somewhat annoying tendency towards an extremely stripped-down bridge of Dustin crooning over a single guitar part, which tends to kill all momentum the song had built up.rAnd so it's an album that proves to be more of a sibling to, indeed, Vheissu and Alchemy Index, while perhaps unfortunately lacking some of those albums' grandeur.
Trust Company Dreaming In Black and White
Truth Club Running From the Chase

3.5 great
311 311
311 From Chaos
311 Soundsystem
Built To Spill Untethered Moon
Built To Spill There Is No Enemy
Built To Spill Keep It Like a Secret
Chat Pile Who Loves the Sun
More of what we've come to expect from Chat Pile, and the consistency is admirable, but I for one am pining for a little more stretching insofar as production and sonic palette. I also frankly miss some of the playfulness and storytelling on display from "God's Country" and "Cool World". And they are seriously held back by the gauzy DIY-production aesthetic -- like they should at least experiment with using the electric kit samples as triggers for better samples or something. Some of these songs would benefit massively from some genuinely huge sounding guitars and better-layered vocal doubling... this gets pretty muddy.
Elder (USA-MA) Through Zero
Pile Dripping
Pile Jerk Routine

3.0 good
311 Omaha Sessions
311 Evolver
311 Don't Tread On Me
311 Stereolithic
American Football American Football (LP4)
Built To Spill Ancient Melodies of the Future
Cloakroom Time Well
Cloakroom Last Leg of the Human Table
I liked 'Dissolution' less than everyone else seems to because, outside of a few songs on that album, it felt a bit hodge-podge filler-y. This album cranks up the hodge-podge to quite an extent to where it sounds less like a cohesive attempt at some kind of artistic statement (a criticism which I don't think can be leveled at their first two LPs) and sounds more like a collection of random demo songs that some garage band has spliced together and called an album -- it's too full of weird curios and non sequitur stylistic discursions to ever build any kind of presence or momentum, and at 8 songs (there's 10 tracks but two of them, on Joy and [x] are 1-minute ambient filler tracks that unfortunately are also possibly my favorite, if only they'd been fleshed out further!) feels too fleeting to make much impact any way whatsoever. The songs don't lack merit and the album isn't without achievement, there are perhaps three really solid songs, but the work as a whole ends up feeling underwhelming and half-baked.
Conjurer Unself
Cursive Devourer
Cursive's signature gnarled, knotty songwriting is buoyed more than the last two albums by exceptional production and mixing -- however this album is especially front-heavy so far as sheer invention goes, and gets just a bit samey-sounding by the time the final song brings everything whimpering to a halt.
Deftones private music
A band that is a bit over-rated releases an album that seems likely to also be over-rated. Look, I like Deftones, but if I?m honest the most impressive thing about them is how they?ve milked the same riff and melodies at least twice per album (and any attempt to deviate tends to kinda come apart at the seams) yet not get called out for it. This one?s got some cool unique jams, the harmonics on infinite source are tight (if maybe over utilized) and ecdysis is a sweet enough bassline, and milk of the Madonna is a refreshingly catchy guitar riff for the (pre?)chorus. But a lot of this falls back on the same old tricks of Chino falsetto-mic-distorting notes over a chaos of 8-string chuggery and Cunningham doing the Cunningham thing. That said, Chino?s experimentation with a more nu-metal delivery in the second half is nice, if not a total success in my opinion. I think This will go the way of Ohms ? hyped to high heaven and then, once the dust has settled and post-nut clarity kicks in, it?ll find its rightful place in the mid-tier pantheon of the Deftones oeuvre.
Elder (USA-MA) Innate Passage
Failure Location Lost
Both Wild Type Droid, now, this, feel a bit like Failure is overthinking things. Relatively bereft of hooks, energy, riffs. Songs are structurally all over the place. Ken's vocal melodies are rather droll and unmemorable, and he sounds tired. Some of the production is cool but that's not enough on its own. The arpeggiated guitar chords get tiresome. It feels like the band is leaning rather hard towards Radiohead-esque esoterica but that was never really their strongsuit, in my mind. The album's not bad or anything but the songs fail to meet their potential and cool sections are mired by boring sections within the same song. It's all just rather mid-tempo unmemorable.
Foxing Foxing
La Dispute No One Was Driving the Car
For a few songs La Dispute's singer drops the whole shout-three-varying-notes schtick and those are the highlights of the album. The rest of the time is generally typical La Dispute, for better or worse. That said, the rhythm section is a consistent standout from track to track, and there are a number of songs that really itch that mewithoutyou scratch stylistically.
Menomena The Insulation EP
It's exciting that Menomena might be back in the game, however the first two songs here, while solid, are B-sides from Mines, and the third track (the only new one) is really pretty weak.
Pile You're Better Than This
PUP The Unraveling of PUPTheBand
PUP goes all in on gang vocals and really intricate guitar work, which is all unfortunately muddled by really awful engineering and production.
PUP Morbid Stuff
Queens of the Stone Age In Times New Roman...
Shellac To All Trains
It's tragic and a damn shame that Albini is gone, and before this could be released. However in my opinion his death may color this release as something that it's not -- a masterpiece. There are some tasty, very Shellac-y jams here to be sure, and the production is clean and refined (perhaps, restrained?) to a degree that past Shellac releases were not. But that same restraint is apparent in the songwriting which is not particularly ambitious... not that it needed to be. I'm glad that there's more Shellac in the world, I am sad it will be the last, but this is unfortunately not an amazing addition to the discography.
The Gaslight Anthem The '59 Sound
Thrice Identity Crisis
Tigers Jaw Lost on You

2.5 average
Balance and Composure with you in spirit
Cloakroom Dissolution Wave
Greet Death Die In Love
Kind of a let-down. I find the songwriting and arrangements to be bloated and repetitive, drowning in reverb that just makes the whole production sound murky and diffuse. There are entire passages where guitars just play one note like they weren't sure where else to go, or they beat a chord progression or vocal melody absolutely to death. There are certainly some highlights where they overcome these tendencies -- Logan Gaval's singing remains admirably unique and tonally pleasant while Harper Boyhtari's vocal style has improved much since their previous full-length, but it's overall an underwhelming miss. 'Emptiness is Everywhere' is the quickest microcosmic way to hear what is wrong with this album as a whole -- the production lacking dynamics, boring chord progression and vocal melody, uninspired and timid lead guitar runs, and nearly six minutes of this drudgery.

Addendum: To be clear, I think the good songs are really very good -- 'Same But Different Now' in particular is a really strong track, and I like 'Die in Love' (for the most part, I do think the vocal melody is overdone by the end). But the bad (like I said, 'Emptiness is Everywhere', which is just a simply awful, awful track in pretty much every regard in my opinion) just drags the album down to average mediocrity as an experience, and while that is far and away the worst offender, almost all of the songs to some degree suffer from being overly repetitive and drawn out in one way or another.

2.0 poor
311 Voyager
With both Mosaic and, to a lesser extent, Stereolithic, 311 has teetered on the edge between bland generic poppy bullshit and some truly brilliant songwriting and musicianship, so it's disappointing that they've slidden down the hill of the generic side of things a bit with this release. There are a few glimpses of that same brilliance but they are fewer, further between, and less radiant that they were on their other two releases. Here's hoping for the next one they drop Feldman and focus on what they're actually good at -- groovy jams that meld equal parts reggae and rock and funk, with percussive (not melodic) lyrics and, punchy drums, spacey guitar tones.
Chevelle Bright as Blasphemy
Chevelle in my opinion is at their best when they contrast pretty, atmospheric, emotion-rending harmonies with huge, intense, ugly ones. This album is more the speed of La Gargola and North Passage where they are pushing unrelenting momentum, churning guitars, and pounding drums without a lot of interest in things like dynamics or variety or memorability. Pete's high-pitched yowling and rambling lyrics don't lend the songs much of hook-factor and so what we're left with is an incessant noise floor and songs that lurch into existence and eventually kind of just sputter out rather than go anywhere interesting. I'm all for band evolution but not when it means the band is sloughing off so many elements that made them enjoyable in the first place.
Moving Mountains Pruning of the Lower Limbs
If you liked s/t, you'll like this. I find that and this to be just the most derivative, milquetoast music, basically bereft of any characteristic other than 'pretty' -- perfect muzak for a Hallmark store or something.
Queens of the Stone Age Villains
Spoon Lucifer on the Sofa

1.5 very poor
311 Full Bloom
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