Streetlight Manifesto - Somewhere in the Between

If there is a soundtrack to my turning eighteen, it would have to be Streetlight Manifesto’s Somewhere in the Between. Streetlight’s extremely technical yet thoroughly delicious brand of ska-folk-punk was the dominant sound of my last year of high school. The complex, multifaceted, and most of all catchy compositions inspired me to shoot beyond power chord progressions and straightforward lyrics in my own music, sensibilities that continue to inform my own writing.

Truly, Somewhere in the Between was a pivotal listen for me in those days. And yet, with my eventual distancing from ska, a solid five years had passed since I had actually listened to it front to back. So when I shoved the scratched, burned copy into my car’s CD player a month ago, I felt a twinge of fear that perhaps I wouldn’t really like it, or even understand it, anymore. Yet as the explosive first notes of “We Will Fall Together” pealed through my speakers, my anxieties dropped to the floor as the glory that is Streetlight washed over me.

Though they try their hardest to come off as uncaring goofballs, Streetlight Manifesto is an act unfamiliar with the term “good enough,” instead whittling down each composition until it as cerebral as it is beautiful. These seven men load each song with nuance, the rhythm section peppering in syncopated hits and massive dynamic shifts until every song plays like a symphony. The four-piece horn section furthers this by taking lead singer Tomas Kalnoky’s hummed suggestions and turning them into intense collages of harmony and counterpoint. On top of all this musical majesty, every member of the band contributes to the singing in some way, taking the ska cliché of gang vocals and elevating it to the echelon of a punk choir.

The band’s technical approach alone on Somewhere in the Between is enough to get the head spinning, but Streetlight also chooses to explore a plethora of sound palates. Refusing to be labeled as simply ska, they instead give the listener a veritable buffet of musical flavors: Pete McCullough’s running bass lines suggest a heavy jazz influence, while Kalnoky’s raking guitar chords simultaneously draw from punk and Middle-Eastern folk. The horn section’s melodic structures go even farther, calling to mind the music of gypsies in “We Will Fall Together” or the early days of big band with “The Blonde Lead the Blind.” As Kalnoky puts it, he wanted Somewhere in the Between to breathe with “a world influence,” and with seven members exploring seven different musical backgrounds, they easily succeed in unearthing a whole new continent of sound. 

One of the best examples of this married complexity and catchiness on Somewhere in the Between is the thunderous “Would You Be Impressed?” Sporting a Spanish influence in the composition, Streetlight races like a bull through each verse. Chris Thatcher’s snare drum blasts as he holds the insistently insane rhythm at a speed that would spell death for a less-cohesive band. The song eschews a traditional chorus, opting instead to end each verse with the punctually shouted line “It’s not my fault,” intermingled with ever-varying horn arrangements that explode in juxtaposition with the vocals. Virtually no part of the song features a true repeat, the band instead taking each idea and turning it on its head the next time it occurs, suggesting continuity while continually evolving. “Would You Be Impressed?” flaunts every aspect of Streetlight worth acknowledging, an intricate masterpiece that truly blooms in the ear.   

The instrumentation on Somewhere in the Between received borderline obsessive attention in its creation, and the lyrics are no different. As his break-neck singing style demands, Tomas Kalnoky fills each song with tons of lyrics, but not a single word seems facetious or accidental. He wields both repetition and alliteration with the skill of a famed poet, such as in the vehement line “So fuck the flocks of sheep that keep amassing masses / asses being led so far astray.” Additionally, his continuous use of small, gripping refrains, such as “mercy, mercy, mercy me” in “Watch It Crash,” create a constant stream of moments for his listeners to latch onto, so that no matter how long or complex the tune, some part is guaranteed to seize both attention and heart. And even when his lines appear to make no sense—“Little Miss Dismiss cannot miss like a detuned radio”—well, damn, they sure are fun to sing.

Each song on Somewhere in the Between is as distinguished as a snowflake, yet some Kalnoky also manages to tie them all together thematically. A major motif in his writing involves man’s destiny to fail: “Forty Days” references the Fall of Man with the line “What a way to begin, we inherit sin,” while “Down, Down, Down to Mephisto’s Café” calls on the futility of man’s battle against his nature: “No matter what we do we’ll be wrong.” Another prevalent image is that of a sinking ship, referenced in both the last two tracks on the record as well as visually in the music video for “We Will Fall Together.”

With his effective synthesis of flourish, depth, and honesty, Tomas Kalnoky proves himself to be a powerful writer, and no song says it better than the album’s opus “The Receiving End of it All.” Above a maelstrom of heady instrumentation and perhaps the best breakdown ever written, Kalnoky tears through a tale of lost connection, reminding his dear “Marigold” that “though sour grapes will turn to wine, it’s all just vinegar with time.” He flirts with the image of an innocent romance fading away with the lines “We used to be in love (my love!) but now we’re just in like,” before finally placing the blame on himself: “When you needed someone most, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t even…” The entire troupe that is Streetlight pours their broken hearts into the performance of “The Receiving End of it All,” backing Kalnoky’s hectic, earnest tale with their own sincerity to create a song that to this day gives me chills with each listen.

After returning to this record like a prodigal son, I can’t believe how silly I was to think it would mean anything less to me. Somewhere in the Between is a phenomenal album, ten intensely crafted songs that awaken mind and body with their energy and intelligence. And even now, after a month of non-stop spinning, I am still discovering little moments of nuance or integrity, moments I had missed again and again in my younger years. Somewhere in the Between remains a seminal record for me; I did not have to grow to love it, and with the way it continually proves its worth and wonder, that will never change.  

Tunes to Check Out:

1) The Receiving End of it All

2) Down, Down, Down to Mephisto's Café

3) Somewhere in the Between

Song Spotlight: "Blue Boy" by Texas is the Reason

My musical fascination for the last year and a half has been post-hardcore and emo from the 90’s. Since falling in love with the music of At the Drive-In, I have continued backwards through the rabbit hole to find the bands they toured with, or the bands that share their influences. I’ve encountered many monster acts on this journey, becoming caught up in single songs or whole albums of melodic madness. But for the past year, one song in particular keeps rising to the top of my queue, a truly beauteous composition: “Blue Boy” by Texas is the Reason.

Two tenuous guitars open this tune, Garrett Klahn’s simple melody mixing with Norman Brannon’s wavering chords. The rest of the band sidles in behind the strings, until Texas is the Reason explodes into the song proper, layering distortion and wailing bends over the chaos. There is a subtle heaviness to the song, hiding in the drop tuning and Chris Daly’s quick drum fills, that colors the initial feeling of melancholy into something darker. Amid this prismatic instrumentation, Klahn begs for a chance to prove himself to a distant lover, struggling to keep her near with the line “maybe with you on my side / I’ll be able to reach the sky.”

“Blue Boy” is one of those tunes that grip me right at the beginning, leading me like a small child through an emotional journey. The lilting and tilting intro is laden with trepidation, not unlike the feeling buried in the stomach before talking to a crush. Yet the subsequent explosion of overdrive, crash cymbals, and earnest vocals suggests a newfound confidence, a statement of intent and purpose. Where once there was only nervous energy, suddenly the band finds a conviction, a belief in itself that is perfectly summed in the refrain “to me, this is for real.”

This new and confident identity is not just a feeling I’m imposing on the song, but actually a representation of the band members themselves during this time period. While initially released on a split EP with The Promise Ring, “Blue Boy” was one of a few new songs written for Texas’ next full-length, one intended to be their major label debut. As Norman Brannon states, these songs show the band finally “[figuring] out what Texas is the Reason sounded like.” The band truly felt that these songs “actually were” Texas is the Reason, showing their sound evolving into one both original and progressive, and thus Garrett’s exclamation in the coda of “you finally found me” suddenly seems far more personal.

That evolution from boys in a band to men making music is what lies at the heart of “Blue Boy.” The “reactionary spirit” inherent in each vibrating string, each thumping drum hit—that is the goal of music, to capture the human journey in a succession of notes. As Texas is the Reason’s only true sophomore release (the other two songs written at the time were only recently recorded), “Blue Boy” is the notch carved into the doorframe of this band’s house, the only true testament to that moment in their existence.

To lead singer Garrett Klahn, “Blue Boy” is a song that “pinpoints exactly where [Texas is the Reason] were and where we were maybe going.” For me, it testifies to the strength of soul-searching in a band, in discovering what truly makes up the experience and putting it out in as faithful and honest a version as possible. Those first few notes of “Blue Boy” strike my heart with truth and excitement like few other songs can, a feeling of which I could never grow sick. They are notes laden with uncut integrity and pure potential, and I have no doubt they will ever get to me.

Stone Temple Pilots - Core

While riding shotgun in my mom’s minivan at age thirteen, I had my second ever musical “a-ha” moment (the first being my discovery of Goldfinger). After some begging, my mother let me put on the local rock station for the remainder of the ride. As I turned the dial, booming vocals began to pulse through the speakers along with a massive guitar riff laden with distortion and reverb, and in that moment, I knew that this—whatever “this” was—was definitely how rock’n’roll was supposed to sound.

I later discovered that the song was “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots, off of their debut Core, an album somehow even bigger and more “rock” than the single. Released in 1992, the record’s production calls back to the 70’s in its enormous sound—Eric Kretz’ snare drum booms like a mortar shell, while Dean DeLeo’s guitar chords sound the product of forty instruments rather than just one. The composition is largely straightforward, all pentatonic scales and 4/4 timing, yet STP really guts that simple formula for everything it’s worth, piling soaring solos and bombastic basslines into each piece until it seems about to burst.  

The sound of Core screams rock’n’roll, yet it isn’t all loud guitars and reverby drum fills. Stone Temple Pilots explore a very diverse sound palate on their debut record, shaping a classical landscape in “No Memory,” playing with an eastern-tinged bridge in “Sin,” and being all-out goofballs on the improv’d “Wet My Bed.”

 

Similarly, while much of the record is definitely loud, the band proves to have a fantastic understanding of dynamics as well. “Dead and Bloated” may be explosive in its syncopated hits and distorted riffs, yet “Creep” carries just as much power, albeit in a different form. The acoustic guitar meanders through gentle open chords, Robert DeLeo marks changes with atonal bass fills, and Kretz wields his sticks more like paintbrushes than hammers. Core is an example of a band in control of its sound, four musicians able to turn their intentions into audio without compromise.

Yet for all its exploration and diversity, Core is foremost a hard-rocking record, and no song drives that point home harder than “Piece of Pie.” The tune is composed of riff after monstrous riff, the guitars chugging in a drop tuning over a visceral drum beat. Singer Scott Weiland growls his microphone into submission, using his voice to build the intensity of each verse until the chorus goes off like a grenade. “Piece of Pie” is Stone Temple Pilots in top form, the band’s huge and heavy sound employed to full effect. 

 

As a whole, Stone Temple Pilots creates a gigantic monolith of rock, but it is lead singer Scott Weiland who truly demands attention. He brandishes his voice with extreme discipline and power, which allows him to produce multiple different timbres, a true anomaly amongst rock singers. His vocals boom loud and deep in “Plush” and “Where the River Goes,” yet in “Naked Sunday” he hones an edge onto his notes that is sinister and yet endearing. Similarly, in “Creep” his words take on a gentle and mournful rasp as he sings “I’m half the man I used to be.”

Scott Weiland commands a vocal style simultaneously methodical and multidimensional, the secret weapon that makes Core such a potent and evocative record. Like its instrumentation, the lyrics are largely simple and unadorned, yet the writing certainly fits the intensity of the album. Weiland describes his lyrics as “small, sick poems” which explore the macabre: “Plush” relates a piece of news describing the discovery of a murder victim’s body, while “Wicked Garden” touches on the loss of innocence. Weiland has stated that he finds “the darker shades of life more attractive than the yellows and oranges,” and the lyrics of Core certainly dive right into that darkness.

Weiland shies away from no topic or perspective, and no song exemplifies this better than the first single “Sex Type Thing.” For this song, Weiland pulls from a deeply personal experience in which a former girlfriend was raped by a group of men. And as if that very idea wasn’t dark enough, Weiland takes on the perspective of the rapist, using lines like “you shouldn’t have worn that dress” and “I know you like what’s on my mind” to embody the sociopathic sense of entitlement the man feels for the woman’s body. Weiland’s fearless personification of a heartless, misogynistic criminal in “Sex Type Thing” draws attention to the intense wrong of the situation without giving him an ounce of credibility or quarter, using the position of power in this scenario to take away any and all justification or excuse.

 

Stone Temple Pilots use colossal instrumentation and dark subject matter to give their album serious weight, and almost twenty-five years after its release, its imprint remains firm and defining. To me, Core is through and through a fully-formed rock record, and one that I’ve returned to countless times since that day in the minivan. It is both a staple of 90’s alternative rock and my own music library, and no matter how many times I’ve heard “Creep” or “Plush” thump through my car’s speakers, each listen remains fresh and monumental as the first.

Tunes To Check Out:

1) Wicked Garden

2) Piece of Pie

3) Sin

Album Autopsy: The Presidents of the United States of America's Self-Titled

Disclaimer: The following piece is a super-in-depth look at one of my favorite records, and as such, it is riddled with personal opinions and praise for said record. This cannot be helped.

I make arbitrary and impulsive decisions very regularly, decisions that brighten my day by having no other purpose. Whether it’s an afternoon iced coffee, a $0.99 in-app purchase, or an evening drive without a destination, I try to allow spontaneity into my life to break up the general monotony of work and responsibility. The effects of these snap calls rarely last beyond a few seconds of elation; however, there is in my memory one completely random decision of mine that has had a truly lasting effect on my daily life, one from which I still regularly reap the rewards.

During my first semester of college, I found myself with $15 and zero intention to save it. While pondering a use for this money, the video for “Peaches” by The Presidents of the United States of America cycled onto my TV, a tune with which I was familiar but that I had not given very much attention. Impressed by the band’s twangy rock and goofball attitude, I promptly jumped into my car, drove down to my local FYE, and with that $15 picked up their eponymous debut record, an album that has since become one of my all-time favorites.

Every time I pop The Presidents of the United States of America into my CD player, I am baffled and amazed by how natural the music mixes energy and beauty. PUSA combines the thrashing and speedy tempos of punk rock with riffs reminiscent of the golden age of rock’n’roll, weaving a wave of sound that is seriously infectious. “We Are Not Going to Make It” and “Lump” fire off with the tempo and dynamics of a bottlerocket, while “Stranger” and “Candy” opt for pretty strings and funky beats. PUSA lays technical skill over thoughtful aesthetics, creating a sonic stream that takes not a single wrong turn. 

Between fluid dynamics, explosive energy, and the occasional time signature swap, The Presidents’ composition shows serious skill. However, their greatest weapon lies not in the shape of their songs, but the instruments they use to create them. Rather than playing a conventional bass, Chris Ballew employs a custom 2-stringed basitar, while Dave Dederer rocks a 3-stringed guitbass. These two hodgepodge creations are woven together in intricate chords and melodies, letting PUSA delve into sonic territory that is wholly their own. And as if that wasn’t enough, drummer Jason Finn even plays an unorthodox kit, prominently featuring a cowbell and a block while absolutely devoid of ride or crash cymbals. PUSA uses ingenuity and audacity in their instrument choice, further separating their hectic and oddball sound from any other act.

Just like the instrumentation, the lyrical content of this record is skill laced with insanity. Chris’ lyrics are almost entirely nonsensical in nature, and all but four songs feature references to animals. Few compositions step into the real world, and if they do, they are loaded with self-deprecating humor that tears down whatever human image Chris may have. Yet beneath the silly and whimsical language, Chris builds layers of sincerity, of emotion and intelligence, using word craft and plenty of literary devices to mirror the thematic images that his songs construct. There is plenty of crazy to be found on this record, but so to is there honesty and intellect.

Between the instrumentation and the lyrical madness, each song on The Presidents of the United States of America is much like an oddity at a carnival—enticing, mythical, a spectacle. So please forgive me as I pull back the curtain these peculiar yet wonderful tunes to give every one its due.

1.    Kitty

It takes a certain audacity to open up your debut record with your most bizarre song, but the Presidents are nothing if not ballsy. While the chorus is infectiously catchy, the verses of “Kitty” move in a sleek groove punctuated by incessant “meows.” Chris’ character first invites a poor cat into his house, only to quickly suffer a scratch attack before finally dismissing it with the lines: “fuck you kitty / you’re gonna spend the night outside.” The speaker’s excitement seems to double for the cut-time coda, as he belts the excited “Kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty touch it” like a seven-year-old with ADHD. PUSA kicks off their eponymous debut with a song that both rocks and perplexes, giving the listener a straight-away shot of their humor without any qualms.

2.    Feather Pluckn

As if the opener wasn’t silly enough, The Presidents hardly pause before sliding into their next tune, “Feather Pluckn.” Chris and Dave play as a unit here, bending their strings in a goofy progression that bounces through the verses before diving into full distorted rock for the choruses. Jason Finn’s drumming drives the song, dominating syncopated hits and using his hihat to control the dynamics. 

But perhaps the most effective part of the song is Chris’ vocal melody, which somehow manages to give life and vivacity to his nonsensical lyrics. The focus appears to be animals sharing secrets, painting scenes of “birdies…talking in codes to clams in the clouds.” Chris’ gentle, bopping verse melody sounds like he is trying to stay out of earshot, yet his chorus vocals explode as he exclaims “ten million monkeys all pick up guitars / nobody taught them how,” the secret finally bursting from his lips. Using emphatic vocals to tell this silly tale with enthusiasm and grace, Chris lets the humor and insanity of “Feather Pluckn” shine against the tight instrumentation.

3.    Lump

The first punk banger of the record, “Lump” is the result of Chris Ballew’s “trying to write a Buzzcocks song” with his band’s unique instrumentation. While initially inspired by a benign tumor in his head, Ballew tossed everything of the “too depressing” idea except the title, instead using his language to relate the tale of a woman lying in the mud. He plays with sound in his lyrics, weilding alliterative phrases like “Lump lingered last in line for brains” or “life limped along at subsonic speeds.” His spirited delivery and simple but catchy language choices expertly complement the driving drums and screaming strings, creating a perfect mix of punk and pop that, when released as a single, helped launch them into the public’s eye.

4.    Stranger

Though the lyrics are full of clumsy pick-up lines like “you seem pretty cool for a naked chick in a booth,” for this record, “Stranger” is perhaps the song most grounded in reality. Jason pulls his drums far into the background on this one, letting Dave and Chris pine away on their strings as Chris’ vocal awkwardly asks out an exotic dancer. “Stranger” provides us an excellent glimpse of how these PUSA ties the guitbass and basitar together, each melody complementing the other both theoretically and emotionally. The verses would seem almost innocently romantic if they weren’t spoiled by the creepy chorus and the absurd mumbling of the outro. With “Stranger,” Chris reveals to us a touch of his amorous side before drenching it in his humor like a throwing a glass of wine in our faces.

5.    Boll Weevil

The first tale of the record to directly personify an animal, “Boll Weevil” wobbles into a world rife with ridiculousness. Chris spins the yarn of a fat bug that refuses to leave his house, simply content to melt in front of the TV while getting high. The groove is as funky as the melody, the band mixing classic rock’n’roll rhythms against their punk thrashing. Though the vocal harmonies really shine, it is Jason Finn’s diverse drumming that really moves the tune along: his verse beat is syncopated and slippery, while his chorus pattern cuts the 4/4 into 12/8 and turns the intensity up to eleven. “Boll Weevil” shows PUSA pull the funk forward in their sound, giving Finn a space to flaunt his beat building skills.

6.    Peaches

The hit song that gave the Presidents’ their platform, “Peaches” is an excellent example of this band’s ability to harness pop sensibility. The tune is split into two distinct suites, one soft and one heavy, taking the listener on a leisurely walk that quickly ramps up into a full-on adventure. Chris’ melody begins sweet and succulent, strolling over wavering strings and soft hihat work from Finn. The chorus pick up the pace a bit, before the song slides into the chugging coda, pushing a dissonant chord progression and crashing percussion.

The dichotomized composition also reflects the hidden themes built into the lyrics. According to Chris, “Peaches” is about his time beneath a peach tree as he worked up the courage to ask out a crush. The first half of the song reflects optimism and positivity with lines like “moving to the country / gonna eat a lot of peaches,” not to mention more than a bit innuendo with “poke my finger down inside.” Yet Chris never did speak to that girl, as reflected in the second half, where he acknowledges that out there are “millions of peaches / peaches for me,” rather than just the one he had been craving. While “Peaches” initially seems cute if not vapid, closer inspection reveals deep layers of meaning in every choice the Presidents’ make.

7.    Dune Buggy

Kicking off with the most dissonant riff on the record, “Dune Buggy” juxtaposes dark, rumbling strings with the sunny tale of a spider taking a little joyride in his tiny dune buggy. Dave and Chris slap a cool groove beneath the vocals, as Chris describes this diminutive vehicle that rocks a “squishy transmission” and a “sassy chassis.” The very idea of a small bug tearing across the sand, hitting jumps and showing off for his spider woman, is both imaginative and adorable, but the Presidents’ choice to partner it with brooding instrumentation helps the imagery to stand out even further. While initially my least favorite tune on the record, “Dune Buggy” has since won me over, and with every listen leaves me wishing there was an extra seat for me in that “little blue dune buggy.”

8.    We Are Not Going to Make It

Another punk rock essential, “We Are Not Going to Make It” takes The Presidents’ preposterous sense of humor and turns it in on themselves. Above a pounding and simple progression, the Presidents’ openly admit to sucking, stating “there’s a million better bands with a million better songs.” Jason Finn lets his drums sound clumsily against the strings’ power chords, mirroring the self-deprecating tone of the line “we don’t have the talent.” The song even features a false, faltering start that is perfectly in tune with their out-of-tune concept. “We Are Not Going to Make It” batters the band and the listener alike, flauting faux ineptitude and humor without a hint of remorse.

9.    Kick Out the Jams

A half-bastardized cover of the proto-punk anthem by MC5, “Kick Out the Jams” is PUSA at their most punk. Finn’s drums are driving, Dave’s guitbass screams through a fuzz pedal, and Chris howls against the tide of his pummeling bass notes. His rewritten lyrics are utter nonsense, his language referencing the band’s name with phrases like “This is my term” and a barking promise of “I solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution,” yet not an iota of the original version’s infectious energy is lost or misplaced. The whole affair clocks in at less than 90 seconds, giving the listener a quick distilled injection of The Presidents of the United States of America before exploding into silence almost as quickly as it appeared.

10.  Body

If “Dune Buggy” puts darkness and light in the same room, “Body” forces them to sit face-to-face and have a conversation. Dave and Chris tie their strings together in a creeping, almost disturbing riff, mirroring a vocal melody that feels so unhinged, it might as well be seeping from the mouth of a sociopath. The choruses burst forth from quiet verses, Jason Finn jostling his hihat and rolling along his entire kit, while the coda blooms outward like a furious mushroom cloud.

The instrumentation may be unequivocally dark, but Chris’ lyrics hold far more ambiguity, as he somehow simultaneously evokes themes of pet love, sexual desire, and death. The verses call out to “little” animal friends, following their cute little lives to unfortunate ends: “Little salamander, where did you go? / Edge of the yard / I found you, you know / All brown and hard.” But the prechorus refrain of “I can’t get your body / out of my mind” dumps the platonic feelings for something more obsessive and sinister, leading to the strange erotic chorus line “She goes smooth through my body.” Chris melds together three completely antithetical ideas in “Body” with a level of craftsmanship unattainable by most other acts, adding a truly dark edge to PUSA’s normally humorous music.

11.  Back Porch

My favorite tune on the record, “Back Porch” is a ditty spun in the key of a backwoods bumpkin. Chris alternates to fifths in his bassline, while Finn is glued to his snare, the twangy country verses punctuated by full-on punk choruses. Between images of a goofy animal band serenade, Chris places multiple references to other songs on the record, his character “slurping on a peach” with a “kitty at my foot.” He even calls out to Finn, the “chicken on the drums,” who responds with a tiny yet heartfelt fill. Topped off by perhaps the best mid-song rant ever written, “Back Porch” is the Presidents’ flexing their absurdity, drenching the instrumentation and the lyrics with completely nonsensical and hilarious fun.

12.  Candy

Continuing the carnal tone launched in “Peaches,” “Candy” this time applies the sexual directly to the edible. Chris invokes the orgasmic quality of his sweets by personifying them as a woman, describing her “red rope hair, gumdrop lips / cotton candy thighs,” attributes that leave him and his teeth “worn and useless.” Accompanying this overtly erotic imagery is instrumentation that is wholly hypnotic, the strings linked in perfect unison over Finn’s metronomic drums. The band slips from 6/8 in the song proper to a subdued 4/4 bridge, letting Dave rip a quiet but evocative solo on his guitbass that gives me chills. “Candy” is the sleeper hit of The Presidents of the United States, prioritizing feel and sound over humor and showing just how hard this band can hit, even when they lean back into gentler territory.

13.  Naked and Famous

Brandishing another expertly knotted string section riff, The Presidents’ tie a bow on their debut record with “Naked and Famous.” Dave and Chris work as one player in this, practically finishing each other’s musical sentences. The song starts by wandering through lyrical images that appear to have no meaning whatsoever (“3D billboards and big / thirty-foot smurfs”), but the song truly comes together in the second half: the tempo is fired up, the gain pushed to 100, and guest musician Kim Thayil of Soundgarden tears the tune apart with a face-melting solo. “Naked and Famous” firmly shuts the book the Presidents’ eponymous first release, crashing to an end with all the grace of a train on a blown-out bridge.

Despite eschewing really any conventional sound palette, it’s pretty obvious that The Presidents of the United States of America have mastered the technical aspects of their craft. However, their music also communicates to me (and based on the record’s commercial performance, many others too) on a much more personal level, largely due to the band’s refusal to take any of it seriously. As Chris puts it, The Presidents are “entertainers, not artists;” the response of the crowd, laughter and joy, are the currencies they deal in.

For the band, “entertainment is job one,” and the fact that they can manage to bring so much absurd happiness to their fans with such a well-polished machine is truly admirable. Best of all, this silliness is not manufactured or a shtick; it’s who these guys are. Chris had apparently been making silly music long before he started The Presidents, and the fact that he now makes music for young children only proves his commitment to his crazy craft. The humor is inherent to their sound, and just as pivotal as the guitbass or the snare drum. There can be no PUSA without it.

What The Presidents of the United States of America offers to the world is wholly unique and wholly the Presidents. Their music is catchy, rockin’, visceral, and often hysterically funny. I picked it up on a completely unprecedented impulse decision, and still find every spin to be refreshing, exciting, and fun. I may never understand what prompted me to scoop up this seminal and inspiring album, but I will always know it to be $15 very well spent.

Armor For Sleep - What To Do When You Are Dead

Just like with metal, I was the antithesis to all things “emo” during high school. I holed up in 90’s punk and ska, shunning almost anything that deviated from my favorite sounds, defaming any band sporting the label “punk” without meeting my ridiculous and retrospectively uninformed definition. Even when a mix CD of various emo and skramz bands fell into my possession, I saw it only as silly, as worthless, despite the fact that some of those songs were actually really, really good.

There are few songs left in my head from that gifted mix of emo, but one tune, "Basement Ghost Singing" by Armor For Sleep always stood out to me as the top track. And when I stumbled upon a $3 used copy of that song’s parent record, What to Do When You Are Dead, I picked it up as a joke, assuming that I would again be delightfully disappointed by how bad it was. But when I popped it into my CD player on the way home, I was immediately overwhelmed by how good, by how real, the music felt to me. I found myself addicted to its heady, emotional tunes, and much to my chagrin, I loved every second of it.

Primarily composed by lead singer Ben Jorgensen, What To Do When You Are Dead sounds like the inside of a manic-depressive’s diary: the guitars rage through distorted power chords, Nash Breen wavers between gentle beats and crash-ridden grooves, and Jorgensen howls in a voice familiar with despair. While almost every song follows the same structural formula, there is a great variance in dynamics across and even within those songs, spacing valleys of emotive breakdowns and melodies between mountains of sound and fury. And when Armor For Sleep does reach for loud and fast, they give it their all, throwing themselves wholly at their instruments.

Just as Armor For Sleep employs heavy dynamic changes across the record, so too do they vary their sound palate. Between punk thrashers like “The Truth About Heaven” and “The More You Talk, The Less I Hear,” the band inserts gentler pieces, delving into post-hardcore melodies on “Awkward Last Words” and “Walking at Night, Alone.” They further explore sound by genre-hopping a bit, tacking on an orchestral outro to “Awkward Last Words” and filling out the closer “The End of a Fraud” with a gospel chorus. For “A Quick Little Flight,” they even eschew the rock aesthetic completely, opting instead to voice the song entirely with a droopy keyboard and an electronic beat.

 

On What To Do When You Are Dead, Armor For Sleep expertly steers their brand of pop-punk through vastly different sonic territories, but no more so than in “Basement Ghost Singing,” the song that introduced me to this act. Floating into existence on a spacious guitar and an ethereal vocal, the band layers electronica and emo in their sound, adding programmed drums and layers of reverb and delay that soundscape a lonely afterlife. Even Anthony Dilonno’s bass seems dialed into a more synthesized tone to reflect the atmospheric shape of the song, which unexpectedly explodes into a finale of pessimistic punk. According to Jorgensen, “Basement Ghost Singing” shows the band taking a chance at being different, and while most other acts would have flopped hard trying to blend two antithetical sounds, this band absolutely nails it.

 

Armor For Sleep absolutely knocks their instrumentation out of the park on this record, but when listening to the lyrics, I remember why my younger self had such a hard time appreciating this style of music. Though the record’s title gives it away, the writing on What to Do When You Are Dead is ridiculously depressing. Jorgensen’s lyrics are loaded with a combination of self-pity and self-loathing; his final moan of “I would still die for you” in “Car Underwater” is more melodramatic than the lead in a high school play. Similarly, the lines “I started feeling bad for myself today / But then I stopped ‘cause I don’t care” in “Stay on the Ground” are so dripping with angst that it’s difficult to give Jorgensen’s complaints any credence.

The vocal tone of What to Do When You Are Dead is blatant despair and zero variation, and I can sum up my initial assessment of the record’s lyrics with an exaggerated eye roll. Yet, the fact that WTDWYAD is in fact a loose concept record really helps justify the outward depressive self-indulgence. As Jorgensen describes it, the concept combines “death and heartbreak” into one scenario that the album explores simultaneously, taking teenaged torment and applying it to a much broader topic.

Beginning with a hidden pregap track, the album tells the story of a distraught lover who takes his own life, only to find his soul stuck on earth. He spends his afterlife pining for his unrequited lover, while finding ways to accept the consequences of his rash decision. When read on a whole, the lyrical concept actually suggests a journey through the Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief, painting the protagonist’s journey of dealing with his own death as well as the loss of his loved one. Thus, the whiny line “I wanna live again” in “Awkward Last Words” suddenly becomes a plea for reversal, while the statement “You can’t turn off that you’re dead / You just deal with it” in “I Have Been Right All Along” communicates an acceptance that only this journey could bring. While Jorgensen’s lyrics are immediately drenched in angst and whine, a closer look at their internal narrative puts that feeling into perspective, sewing them together to show us a boy making a serious mistake and having to cope with the consequences.

 

Between the violently emotive instrumentation and the comprehensive lyrical concept, What To Do When You Are Dead is overall a very complete record. There is no lack of depth on this CD, of subtlety or of feeling, and I still find myself endlessly discovering new beautiful moments within its confines. It still baffles me that my only reason for ever picking it up was to dig for nostalgic laughs, and further still that this record turned out to be so damned good. Never has the bittersweet taste of eating my words been so fulfilling.

Tunes to Check Out:

1) The Truth About Heaven

2) Stay on the Ground

3) Basement Ghost Singing

Suicide Silence - The Cleansing

My college years were my first real foray into the genre of metal. I had been surrounded by it during high school; but it had been the plague then, and I’d wanted nothing to do with it. Yet just with as every doe-eyed college student, I felt my horizons widening as I got older, musical tastes included. Suddenly, metal wasn’t so unintelligible or inhuman, and I found myself enthused to dive into this dissonant genre that so many of my peers loved.

It has been more than a few years since metal started making sense to me, and while my tastes again align more towards catchy music, I still have a soft spot for some metal records. Recently I revisited Suicide Silence’s debut, The Cleansing, remembering when its grinding power riffs and growling screams made me clench my jaw in excitement. But while this record still holds up as brutal and energetic, I was more than a little let down by the lack of substance in between its notes.

When I first encountered The Cleansing about five years ago, I was immediately sucked in by the sheer brutality of the instrumentation, which has not faded in the least. Recorded live rather than in separate studio tracks, there is an absolute energy falling off these songs like an avalanche down the side of the mountain. The guitars are loud and blasted with distortion, the drums fast and unrelenting. Suicide Silence avoids lots of repetition in their song structures, using just enough to create themes without bludgeoning the listener endlessly with the same riff, often while switching between time signatures. And while tremolo picking and blast beats abound, songs like “No Pity for a Coward” and “In a Photograph” slip slow, trudging tempos in between the speedy parts, creating swirling moments of chaos that help break up the stream of continuous notes.

Even now, listening to the instrumentation on The Cleansing still leaves me pumped up pretty hard, but if I lean even a little closer for a better look, I find that there really isn’t much to see. As vocalist Mitch Lucker stated in an interview, Suicide Silence “wanted to get our first record out as quick as we could,” and that rush is reflected in the composition. For most of the record, guitarists Mark Heylmun and Chris Garza appear to be playing the same exact parts, piling chugs and fuzz on top of each other, making Mike Bodkins’ bass virtually inaudible, if not completely unnecessary. And while each song obviously has its own flair, the overall submersion in heavy guitar and light speed drumming makes each tune practically indistinguishable from the other.

Suicide Silence certainly nails the death metal aesthetic they are striving for, but fails to provide any variety or surprise for their fans. The guitars are a true wall of sound, blaring through the speakers almost endlessly; Mitch Lucker’s death growls are enlivened and wholly real, but he remains forever at a 10, providing no dynamics whatsoever. Alex Lopez’ drumming is perhaps the most effective part of the instrumentation, as he isn’t afraid to slip back under the rest of the band, pulling up in tunes like “The Disease” to set the stage before he lays into those bombastic blast beats.

This severe lack of variability is just as prevalent in the lyrics on The Cleansing. In line with the demands of their genre, Mitch Lucker overlays the brutal instrumentation of Suicide Silence with lyrics equally as vicious. Violence is his main weapon, and he wields his vehemence like a club with lines like “more of your family’s dead tomorrow” in “Hands of a Killer,” or the heavily spotlighted threat “doctors won’t be able to recognize your fucking face” in “Bludgeoned to Death.” And if violence is Lucker’s sword, then anger is the hand that grips it: Mitch sprays profanity and fury like viper’s venom, unabashedly imploring the subject of “No Pity for a Coward” to “put that gun to your head” and “pull the trigger bitch.”

One of Lucker’s strongest thematic elements is the idea of religion, or more specifically, his own militant atheistic response to religion. Songs like “Unanswered” and “Eyes Sewn Shut” provide direct assaults on the idea of religion and anyone who chooses to follow such beliefs. Lucker even invokes God directly at times, shouting “You let them fall” in “The Fallen” or offering a challenge in “In a Photograph:” “were you just going to sit back / and watch him die?” The Cleansing heavily chronicles Mitch Lucker’s distaste for all things religious, using Suicide Silence’s death metal as a backdrop to champion his lack of faith.

There is no doubt that each of Lucker’s growls is fueled by an inner roiling hate, but the words he rattles off in unintelligible growls lack enough substance to be interesting. He endlessly reworks metal tropes of gore and horrific violence, all without bringing a new flavor to them, or more importantly, providing a new and wholly more realistic perspective on those topics. He derides religion in typical metal fashion, bringing no argument to the table, only loud antagonism. His lyrics regularly trivialize serious human issues like murder or even rape, spinning violent and tasteless scenes into existence for the sake of shock and brutality that apparently are considered comical. The lyrics of The Cleansing revisits again and again the worn out, dark-for-the-sake-of-darkness imagery that pervades the genre of metal, leaving me rather disappointed and more than a bit disgusted.

After spinning this record for the past month, I have to say that The Cleansing has lost much of the luster it once held in my eyes. While I still find Suicide Silence’s thrashing, brutal grooves to be invigorating, I now can’t help but trip on their mistakes. Furthermore, the overall weakness and general insensitivity of the lyrics has left a bad taste in my mouth. And while I have no plans to throw my copy of this record out, that taste has me wishing more than a little that I’d left the CD on the shelf.

Tunes to Check Out:
1) No Pity for a Coward
2) The Disease
3) In a Photograph

Song Spotlight: "Bbtone" by Pinback

Being in a band with two bass guitars has been a fascinating experience, especially since it is a territory so rarely explored. It is only in the past six months that I have become aware of other acts trying out the same palate. After a recent Hiss the Villain show, a very kind fellow musician compared our sound and setup favorably to Pinback. I’d not yet heard of this band, but I immediately sought out their music to see how they applied two bass guitars to their songs.

As it turned out, what I took as an offhand suggestion turned out to be an extremely generous compliment. Upon my first listen, I was instantly drawn into Pinback’s gentle, melody-driven compositions, and was delighted to see this duo effectively and intelligently compose pieces that wove bass parts together. Yet the song that cemented me as a Pinback fan was not one featuring dual bass work, but rather an arrangement just a hair less eccentric: a bass and a baritone guitar, the two main forces at work in the darkly delicious “Bbtone.”

Though the title is simply atruncated combination of the two instruments that drive it, the actual tune shows far more complexity and effort than its name implies. Multi-instrumentalist Rob Crow takes the rhythm in the song, laying out a winding background on his baritone guitar. This allows his partner in crime Zach Smith to tease from his four strings gorgeous yet brooding phrases, building complicated chords across open-position intervals and adding a bright bass harmony to the vocals.

The two string parts in “Bbtone” are tailored to fit together like pieces of a suit, Zach dominating the higher register while Rob focuses on the lower. Above a programmed beat that ticks repetitively like an old clock, these two instrumentalists react to each other’s parts like well-worn gears, Zach’s colorful trebles bouncing and turning with Rob’s guttural picking. This is capped by the duo’s interlocking vocal parts, Rob finishing his phrases just as Zach chimes in. The composition places each person in juxtaposition, their separate vocals conversing, telling two sides of the same story their instruments strive to paint in music.

Between the wavering strings grooves and the incessant metronomic beat, there is a strange sense of tedium bubbling over in the instrumentation, which is heavily reflected in the lyrics. Lines like “Steadily we climb down / Step into a hidden room / Searchin' for another out” reflect a languid movement to the song that suddenly becomes frantic with the lines “The walls close in around me / Old habits fade far from me.” This changing pace continues throughout the song, reinforced by the two separate voices: Zach’s vocals maintain the detached, slow rhythm of a person resigned to his circumstance, while Rob’s rush through phrases at a dizzying speed, as if searching for a way out.

The strange but extremely effective alternation of mood in “Bbtone,” built on the band’s alternating vocals, fortifies the theme of futility that also pervades the lyrics. The song proffers a tale of suffering built on the ineffectiveness of change: there is a nihilistic ennui in the image of a  “Bucket and a shovel / on a sand dune / Building castles / Knocking them down,” commenting on the pointlessness of attempting to alter the world. This is further reflected in the line “Forever pushing / Sisyphus would know,” referencing the mythical figure whose eternal toil is always for naught. In “Bbtone,” Pinback uses gorgeous composition to breathe life into the banal nature of a life without meaning; never before have the celebratory and the disaffected been such close bedfellows, in music or anywhere.

Besides being a breathtakingly beautiful piece of music, “Bbtone” is a piece of art that manages in so many ways to mix dichotomous ideas. Between the unique instrumental approach, the alternating vocals that are at-odds in sound and pace, and the thematic collision of two ideas utterly unlike each other, Pinback has enough material for two songs here. Yet, their intelligent approach to composition manages to sew them into one beautiful, harmonious piece, reflecting the conflicts of being human, of being able to approach the same situation, the same life, with both love and loathing.

With all this in mind, its become increasingly clear to me that Pinback is an artist that deserves my utmost respect and attention. The swirling, cyclical strings of “Bbtone” keep my head spinning in delight, imparting both beauty and boredom while using a sound palate that is after my own heart. I am truly grateful for that kind comparison of my band’s music to this monster act, and I have no doubt they will continue to influence my own writing as I continue on this two-bass journey that is Hiss the Villain.

(Speaking of which, check out my band Hiss the Villain through the links below!)

hissthevillain.com

hissthevillain.bandcamp.com

facebook.com/hissthevillain