From the Funhouse #1
by Owen Neaman, Arts & Culture Editor
Illustration by Adi Horodniceanu, Contributor
Hello, I’m Owen, and I love yapping about music. I’ve resolved to actually write my thoughts down before I bug all friends (and others) in earshot with nonsensical rambling. This is by no means a completist column for new albums but I wanted to carry on the tradition of Sebastian Cruz’s review column Gold Soundz. Considering the amount of summer albums to write about and the amount of space I have, these albums are from the past two weeks or so. There’s a disproportionate amount of indie rock for this one, so this one’s for the dads (and what they think you listen to).
Oi!
Neaman
Chat Pile - Who Loves the Sun
Chat Pile attempt to do the same thing for both sludge metal and leftist politics, finding an accessible sweet spot that they continue to tap for their fifth project in four(!) years. Their textures ring out fear in equal proportion to anger: the bass and drums that evoke a trash compactor, the nightmare-fuel guitar work that twists between guttural riffage to ear-tingling drone, and vocals that sound like they’re being screamed from the bottom of a chasm or menacingly whispered by a voice inside your head.
The instruments and vocals have more clarity than ever, but Who Loves the Sun lacks the sheer terror of Chat Pile’s previous albums. “PEN I S MALL” (ahem) is pummeling enough and offers eerie lyrics about the experience of a construction worker (“Greg is a man/He never drinks water/Greg drinks black coffee and Pepsi”), but most of the songs here have agonizingly on-the-nose messaging. Trying to guarantee the slogans get across results in the band’s viscerality being reined in to the point of genericism. The eerie guitar noises that could fit in an art horror film are gone, so too are the animalistic vocal deliveries, which now sound like from-concentrate rage. For a band that has mastered frescoes of late-stage capitalist hellscapes, Who Loves the Sun waters down the paint too much.
Listen to: “Same Rules”, “PEN I S MALL”
For Best Listening Experience: Turn on CNN for like, 15 minutes or so.
Westside Cowboy - It Goes On
The male vocalist is going for MJ Lenderman’s drawl and the female vocalist sounds like a dead ringer for Adrienne Lenker, so it throws you off when you learn that their respective names are Reuben Haycocks and Aoife Anson-O’Connell and they’re from Manchester, UK. I can’t get mad at them for pulling off the accents so well, and they directly reference plenty of influences on this album (Bob Dylan, T. Rex, some in between). The confessional songs don’t have the lyrical zingers that Lenker and Lenderman have, though. The muggy atmosphere of the instrumentals sorta recall Cameron Winter and co. with dry, twangy electric guitars and (even drier) bass. At their strongest, they’re a tight and buzzy band that you can play in your co-op kitchen when you need to crew faster. At their worst they sound like the stock alternative roadtrip playlist you skim through.
Listen to: “Big Wheels”
For Best Listening Experience: Take that roadtrip from the English Isle to Ashville, NC. Right side of the road.
Lex Walton - Ultimate Love Forever
A Sub Pop signee with a brutally cynical and internet-fried take on the world crams seven trashy rock songs into 20 minutes. In an era of endless indie trends like laptop twee and internet grunge, Ultimate Love not only keeps up, but outpaces the ADHD of an entire generation. Songs bounce between discordant garage rock, ethereal noise pop, club music, sometimes all in the same song. The ensuing ridge feels like a Ritalin high that never ends, and the dense, trashy production sounds like a satirical progression from Car Seat Headrest and Ezra Furman. Walton’s lyrics depicting the sore reality of a trans musician in America right now fit between one-liners about “Title IX cowboys” and “shitgaze landlords,” but beneath the self-consciousness and cringe is empathy, and beneath the trainwreck of noise is a remarkable pop album.
Listen to: The whole thing, and then listen to her EP about Daniel Ek on Bandcamp.
For Best Listening Experience: Do continuous laps between Feve-‘Sco-jazz party and time yourself.
Dinosaur Jr. - There Near
Considering that their original audience of slacker kids are now old enough to retire, these guys should get credit for putting out a cohesive album’s worth of material. They remain faithful to their formula of country twang run through a fuzz pedal or three, but these are their catchiest (and strangely cheeriest) songs in a while. J. Mascis doesn’t try to pull off anything unfamiliar on the guitar, all the sputtering solos could fit on songs from their 30-year-old records and all of the instruments sound far more compressed than their haywire masterworks, which gets tiresome. Be that as it may, there’s an innocent charm to the first half, and J. and Lou Barlow might be joining the ranks of Guided by Voices in just making noisy pop songs for the love of the game.
Listen to: “Everything at Once”
For Best Listening Experience: Bike north to the cattle farm off the bike path and sit down in the center of the barn. They’ll let you. I checked!
