The Chorus Music Club Society • Page 359

There's no rush, Rothfuss isn't even finishing anything any time soon. Which is a shame.

 

Hey! So happy you ended up loving this one. Enter Shikari has been one of my favorite bands since the Take To The Skies era, and their career has been incredible to witness. I'm one of those fans who had a hard time getting into their new sound, and it's only a few listens later that I appreciated it.

Samesies, 'Undercover Agents' is the clear standout, and without a doubt one of the best songs they have ever written. In a perfect world, this one would put them on the mainstream realm of pop music.

Yeah the amount of diverse sounds and influences is the best thing about this band. This time, they toned down the silliness and the System Of A Down influence, and I love how well they replaced it with a kind of new wave, James Bond-y, spy movie like sound at times, especially on the guitar tones and riffs. They always know how to catch you by surprise.

My only gripe is the relative lack of Chris and Rory's vocals. Rou did most of them, which is a first.

Great review, I hope we'll get to trade albums again in the future! My reviews will come soon.

 

I've really grown to love The Spark over the past few months after not liking a huge deal on release. Take My Country back has slowly turned into one of my fav Shikari songs too over that period.

I think the album has a really great run from the beginning all the way up to The Revolt (which I'm not huge on). The run of Take My Country back, Airfield and Rabble Rouser on that album in particular is just glorious. I'll also echo that Undercover Agents is an amazing track. Also Rabble Rouser has a huge grime influence on it imo, especially in the vocal delivery, that song particularly went off when I saw them live the other week.

Anyways glad you dug the album @Bad Frequencies and great review as always, while it's certainly heavier I hope you're enjoying A Flash Flood of Colour too this week.

 

Oh and you'd probably love 'Common Dreads', which I think is the spiritual prequel of The Spark in terms of poppiness and vibes. It has a lot of heavier tracks as well.

 

Common Dreads and The Mindsweep are where they hit their peak for me. AFFOC was good but not entirely for me. Couldn't get on with the newest album but maybe I should give it another go, it has been a long time.

 

Oh man! You loved this album for all the reasons I hoped you would. I "love" every Mew album to varying degrees, but this album really gets me because, exactly like you said, it's Mew's POP album. Sure, it's their own deranged and wacky version, but it's also impossibly beautiful and catchy for at least small (yet memorable) portions of every song.

Heck yeah. Reading this got me so stoked. Now I need to go listen to it again! hahah

 

Flash of Colour is my favourite followed by The Mindsweep. The Sparks jumped right up there though after that Trees set. Common Dreads is my least favourite personally but I get why people gravitate to that one.

 

@xapplexpiex other recommendation for me is:

of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (2007) Polyvinyl



of Montreal is an indie pop band from Athens, Georgia and was founded by front man Kevin Barnes in 1996. The name of the band stems from a failed relationship between Barnes and a female from Montreal. Hissing Fauna...is the 8th studio album by the band and was written, recorded and performed entirely by Barnes. The album as a whole is considered a concept album detailing Barnes' transformation into his alter ego, Georgie Fruit.

This album has A LOT going on and may be easier to understand if taking mind altering drugs. Barnes states that the album was created while he was prescribed antidepressants and goes on to state he felt "chemically unbalanced" while writing the record. I would have to agree that the sound coming out of this record feels like someone who is experiencing something mind altering. When speaking to @xapplexpiex about my first impressions of the album, this was my description: Sgt. Peppers era The Beatles meets Phoenix the band on acid. It reminds a bit of The Avalanches last album released in 2016 as well.

I am not going to attempt to decipher the lyrical themes because I feel like I would go down a rabbit hole of someone's drug induced mind. As I said, the album is a mix of trippy, electronic, synth based sounds that could actually cross over into trap beat territory. Barnes reminds me a lot of Phoenix's Thomas Mars and fits the synth dance based sound. He does actually mix in some funk and I am a huge fan of Chromeo so when he does go this route, I was totally on board.

The album is an hour and three minutes (exactly the same at Mechanical Animals) and is divided into two parts and I much prefer the front half. As I mentioned before, it is concept album about becoming this alter ego and the second half begins with the aptly titled: The Past is a Grotesque Animal which is a 12 minute mind trip and is him shedding his skin and becoming Georgie Fruit.

Clearly, Barnes is very talented and imaginative with an audience of people that really enjoy his music but it is not exactly for me personally. I can definitely see myself enjoying it over time but his discography is EXTENSIVE at 10 studio albums and 15 EP's which seems a bit overwhelming.

Favorite Songs:
Tracks 1-6

RIYL:
Sgt. Pepper era Beatles
Phoenix
The Avalanches

 

This is a great cover and works perfectly with the album reviewed recently in here:
PREMIERE: Brightside cover Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" | Substream Magazine

 

Love when this happens! There have definitely been a handful of times that reading a review got me hyped to go relisten to an album. Glad my review had that effect!

 

Man, what a good cover. The vocalist did a great job and love that turned up bass! As always though, never heard of these guys before haha.

 

So as some of you are aware, Alkaline Trio has a new album coming out and a fall tour looking to launch soon. Today I was met with an interesting premise. For me, it’s been a while since I listened to some of their older albums. @ComedownMachine has only ever listened to Good Mourning and Crimson. Because of this, he and I decided to do a discography run starting tomorrow night from their first album to their most recent. This has led me to an idea I am going to test run.

CMCS DISCOGRAPHY RUN
ALKALINE TRIO


As he and I go through the albums, I am going to record his first impressions of the albums and my refreshed impressions/opinions, and do write ups of each album. Unlike album reviews this will be more of a loose structured mini review in a sense.

Looking forward to giving this segment a trial run. Stay tuned

 

Nice idea! I do full discography runs of bands from time to time and it would definitely be an interesting thing to read/write about in this type of format (though I agree with the more relaxed structure given the large amount of material being covered).

 

Yeah, that’s also why I’m going to ask if this works and anyone else wants to do one please ask me first; we don’t want the thread flooded with several discography runs at once. Gonna try to keep it to one person at a time

 

Can I make a suggestion that its a separate thread? I think it’s a great idea but it’s going to be hard watching the thread if it’s mixed between album reviews and the discography runs. Thoughts?

Maybe something like:
The CMCS Presents:(insert band for run)
Or something along those lines.

 

My thoughts and plans for this is that FOR NOW, they stay here. I don’t think it will interfere with the normal club running. IF these take off and become a thing and it’s too convoluted here then that will definitely be the route taken

 

Sløtface - Try Not To Freak Out (2017)



So @SamLevi11 and I traded albums last week and gave each other a band we saw at 2000 Trees that the other hadn't. Sam gave me this, the debut album by the Norwegian indie punk band Sløtface (pronounced slutface). A couple of my mates caught this band at the festival and were raving about them so I was looking forward to checking this out.

So Sløtface sound like if you took a indie band from the 00's and added a whole slab of grunge guitar tones and punk vibes into to the mix. They're fronted by a charismatic frontwoman in Haley Shea who I think has a great pop tone to her vocals while still having lots of attitude at points and reminds me of some of female fronted indie bands from the 00's like Be Your Own Pet. Her lyrics on this album cover a number of topics like feminism, gender equality and daily anxieties, which is always awesome to see.

The album in general bangs from start to finish (it's only 32 mins so goes real quick). It has various styled songs throughout from the sub-pop grunge vibes of Sun Bleached and Pools to the more indie leaning stuff like Galaxies and Pitted. I'll focus on a couple of my favourite tracks though in this review.

The first track Magazine kicks off the album, which has a really super fun pop meets grunge vibe to it. It also has such a great pre-chorus with "Patti Smith wouldn't put up with this shit" repeated which gets stuck in your head for days. The lyrics to this song tend to focus on body image and how magazines really don't help with how people feel about themselves.

Pitted is a slower paced more indie punk styled song which focuses on social anxieties and not wanting to go to parties where you feel out of place (which I can def relate to).

Night Guilt has a almost refused (New Noise) styled guitar throughout which eventually leads into those sub-pop grunge sound again. Lyrically this song's about insomnia and being kept up at night by remembering mundane crap from years ago (again something I relate to a lot).

Later on in the album you get to the track Slumber which is one of my favs, it has a lot slower paced of some of the other songs. Haley trades vocals with a male vocalist on this one (I'm guessing one of the other band members). This track tends to focus on the vocals at the beginning of the track with a subtle picking of guitar in the background, slowly bringing in the drums and bass. it keeps building and building throughout before busting into life at the end. The lyrics themselves are about slumber party's you had when you were young and how important these friendships were (again these lyrics really resonated with me):

"Even as a child I know
That I'll never have friends like these again
Even as a child I know
And I'm giddy with companionship"

So as you can tell I loved this album it was a great rec from @SamLevi11 and I'm really kicking myself for going and getting a pizza rather than catching this band the other weekend haha.

RILY: Bands like Be Your Own Pet, Milk Teeth or just that sub-pop era grunge with some great pop hooks then check this album out.

Favourite Songs: Magazines, Pitted, Slumber, Nancy Drew, Backyard

​

 

...that font wat

 

As for this discog thing, seems like a cool idea, I think Kevs suggestion of see how it goes and if it starts to get into too many posts for the thread then revisit moving it to another thread then is fair. I'd imagine they won't all get posted at once so it'll prob just seem like a quick review most of the time.

 

Haha I copied the slotface text to get that funky o in there, must've kept the font lol.

 

That’s my plan. Just review them as I listen. And obviously I won’t be listening to every album in one day that’s just asking to be burnt out on them

 

As for the Alk3 talk Maybe I'll Catch Fire is their best album don't @ me

Seriously though I think any of their albums up to and including Crimson have a fair shout for best Alk3 album, what a band

 

Glad you enjoyed it, they're a great band, and we have two of the same favourite tracks (Magazines & Pitted). My review will be soon!

 

Rory - We’re Up To No Good, We’re Up To No Good



First off, I really like this album cover. Secondly, Rory is another band I had no idea what to expect as I had never heard of them. This album was a lot of fun and I enjoyed all my listen throughs quite a bit. It’s hard to nail down their sound as they have pop punk, rock, punk, and ski moments. Not really a heavy band but the singer has a yelly singing voice that mixed well with the faster paced songs. If I had to describe them, I’d compare them to Fidlar with way better instrumentation, singing and horns mixed min haha.

The first track is just a short, fast track that acts like an intro, blending right into Typical. There isn’t any track I consider filler but I feel like the band really finds their groove on the 5th track Doin’ Lines of Conga, starting with an awesome string intro that leads into one of their catchiest pop punk style tracks. With every track after, you don’t know what you are getting. Another pop punk song with Tonight I Just Don’t Care ? A fast paced rocker with Nice Planet, We’ll Take It ? A jazz break down in the middle of a screaming punk song in It’s On Senor…GO !?

If that wasn’t enough, the album closer Everyone Stabbed Me and It Didn’t Even Hurt clocks in at 15 mins and is wild. After about 4 mins it just seems like a normal full length song, but it ends with a bass solo in leading into what sounds like an extended outro for the song. That then leads into a musical jam adding in horns. Even at min mark 13 long (the last 2 mins is ambient noise and what sounds like them messing around in the studio) it doesn’t feel like it drags.

Overall I really enjoyed this and am sad to see that this is their only full length album. These guys were a lot of fun. Thanks @Jim Morgan for recommending a group I never would have come across on my own!

Highlights: Nice Planet We’ll Take It, Hey (parts I,II & IV), Doin’ Lines of Conga

 

Turnstile - Time & Space

This has been a hell of a year for female artists. Amy Shark is no exception. I've never even heard of her until this week and I was pleasantly surprised while listening. I was researching her singles and I guess they've gone platinum or at least hit gold status in Australia. I can see her being big in the states. Her songs are pop brilliance. "The Idiot" sounds like a Tegan and Sarah track and "I Said Hi" channels Lorde. Her songs are catchy beyond belief. While listening to "Middle of the Night", I remember thinking the lyrics were amateurish, but shortly after while walking in a CVS, I kept singing to myself " fuck my liiiiiiiiife." I really enjoyed this album and plan on making others listen.

Thanks, @Nate_Johnson, I'll have the other review up in a sec.