Tag: alternative

Tonight Alive – Underworld

My first thought when cracking open this album was, “since when did Underworld play rock?” Indeed, had I realized that Underworld was the name of the album and not the artist, I probably wouldn’t have listened. That’s no diss to *double-checks artist name* Tonight Alive, it just means that I have my listening predilections just like anyone else. This is exactly why I listen to as much music as I do—it often forces me into strange new corners that lie outside of my musical comfort zone.

My second impression was that this was a pretty decent Christian rock band (wrong again). The hyper-slick production quality, conventional song forms, square riffing, and vague lyrics about love and spirituality all seemed to point to one of the world’s most despised genres. Again, I need to temper this by saying that I myself don’t mind Christian rock, it’s just that those who don’t like it seem to hate it passionately. Once religion gets added to a musical idea, it opens a whole can of worms that incites opinions far beyond the music. I personally respect people who use music as a vehicle of praise and worship.

This, however, is not Christian rock. Somehow, knowing that a band sounds like this and doesn’t even have a divine mission is especially disappointing.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Wrong Creatures

You would think that there are certain rules you have to follow if you’re going to name your band “Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.” These four words, much like “Wolf Trident Eclipse” in yesterday’s album, seem to evoke something very particular—here I imagine thick beards, loud engines, and an endless highway. What happens instead is comparatively… tame. This music comes as more of a moan than a growl, plagued throughout by the passivity of understatement. It’s not bad music, it’s actually well-played alternative rock. But because motorcycle culture is rife with stereotypes of AC/DC and Judas Priest, this band’s music inevitably pales by comparison for its soft corners.

Maybe this is the music that motorcyclists dream to… Full of decadent reverb, luscious hooks, and just enough attitude to get through the night. I’ll never know, though–I don’t ride a motorcycle.

Weedpecker – III

Stoner rock is a fun genre of music, for more than just the drug references. It seems to occupy a peculiar harmonic space that toes the line of many other genres, all the while maintaining its unique identity. Weedpecker is one of the best at this—they can sound like Soundgarden, Pink Floyd, Tool, and King Crimson, sometimes all in the same song. Unfortunately, I think that many people ironically treat stoner rock they way they do Christian rock, with a stubborn derision owing more to a dislike of the underlying principles than to the music itself. Those people are missing out, though, on an epic musical ride, contained here in five monumental songs of equal merit.

On top of all of the rock influences you can list here, there are also distinctive folk elements. Where does this come from? Modes! “Liquid Sky” and “From Mercury to Mars” contain the Dorian mode, which is sort of a minor-major mix, and “Molecule” is in Mixolydian, more of major-minor mix. Both of these modes are common in rock music, and offer a soft reprieve to the hard blues scale seen in more traditional rock music.

Jeff Rosenstock – Post-

Post-

For music nerds, the album title couldn’t be any more evocative. No matter what comes after that hyphen, it’s surely something that Jeff Rosenstock is has had enough of already. This isn’t exactly post-punk, or post-pop, or post-rock. It’s just post-. Well, even that title implies a bit of post-modern, and you hear that especially while listening through the long repeated sections in “USA” and “Let Them Win.” What with the chanting about being tired and poor. No matter about being poor though, this man is offering downloads for this surprise album for any price on his site.

This album went by quickly, only 9 tracks. There’s a 6-second intro featuring his best friend, breaking the fourth wall right out of the gate. This is, after all, an album that’s being made by a human being, not just a product made by a machine. The process is more important than the product in this “post-“ kind of thought, and Jeff Rosenstock buys into that philosophy. From the beginning to the end of this listen, he is here just to let us know that he is here for us, and any excess that would distract us from that is cast off in favor of a clean instrumental attack. This runs contrary to the progressive ambitions of other post-genres, or even the simpler repetitive forms like post-rock or post-bop. So it’s really not post-anything. It’s just post-.