Envy: "Recitation"

I saw Envy last night at Harper's Ferry; a review of the show is forthcoming.  In the meantime, I can't resist saying that their new album, "Recitation", is fucking unbelievable.  This is why I listen to music.  Imagine all the beauty and emotional weight of your favorite Explosions In The Sky song, combined with the viscerality of hardcore.  The melodies are gorgeous, the guitars are crushingly heavy, the vocals are throat shredding.  This is looking like the best album of 2010, and it's on a fast track to become one of my favorite albums, period.

Absolutely stunning.  Go buy it.

Emo vs. Post-Hardcore

A user on Quora asked about the difference between emo and post-hardcore.  Here's a slightly modified version of my response:

Tough one to call, since the emo label has a lot of negative connotations these days.  Lots of bands that would have fallen into the emo bucket now self-identify as post-hardcore.  Lyrics are the key identifier.  Emo lyrics are, well, emotional: that's kind of the point.  Post-hardcore doesn't have any associated lyrical themes: it's just as likely to be political as it is to be romantic.  Musically, emo and post-hardcore can be pretty similar, since they both have roots in the late 80s hardcore punk scene.  Post-hardcore tends to be a little more adventurous and progressive; emo often has ties to pop punk.

Post-hardcore bands that aren't emo:

• Fugazi
• Refused
• Q And Not U
• Fucked Up
• Nation Of Ulysses

Emo bands that aren't post-hardcore:

• Sunny Day Real Estate
• Taking Back Sunday
• The Promise Ring
• Mineral

Four Tet: "The Motion Makes Me Last (Eluvium Remix)"

This one's been posted online for a while, but it's so good that it merits its own blurb.  Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) might be the only artist who can successfully remix post-rock.  Even excellent solo artists are generally unable to turn others' material into anything worthwhile: Justin Broadrick is a notorious offender, washing otherwise good songs into boring drones.  Hebden, however, has a remarkable talent for identifying the underlying emotional theme of a song and elaborating further.  He did this to great effect on Explosions In The Sky's "All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone" bonus remix disc, and does it once again for this track from Eluvium's most recent long player.  Well worth a listen.

http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/14764-the-motion-makes-me-last-four-tet-remix/

Bad Religion - "The Dissent Of Man"

Bad Religion is an institution.  By now, reviews are nearly pointless.  If you've enjoyed any one of their fourteen previous albums, you'll certainly enjoy this one.  If you don't like them, "The Dissent Of Man" won't change your opinion.  And if you haven't heard Bad Religion, you probably don't care about punk at all.

It's obvious that Graffin, Gurewitz & Co. have figured punk out.  They make compelling songs so frequently that it seems almost effortless.  The template works incredibly well: folky melodies, multi-part vocal harmonies, and compelling and erudite lyrics that reward close inspection.  This is the formula they've followed since "Suffer," and there's certainly no reason for them to change.  I'm certain they could pump out another fifteen albums that sound just as good as this one.

Yet there are signs that Bad Religion is starting to take a different path.  This album feels a lot more introspective than recent efforts.  There are the obligatory superfast melodic hardcore songs, but it doesn't seem like they got the attention of some of the slower numbers.  That's fine, though.  Apart from prodigy drummer Brooks Wackerman, the band is pushing 50.  Graffin is a professor, and Gurewitz runs one of the most successful indie labels on the planet.  I'm hesitant to say that the fast songs were overlooked or that Bad Religion is slowing down, but if that were the case, I'd hardly have right to complain.  I could last a long time on a supply of midtempo rockers like "The Devil In Stitches" or "Cyanide."

The songwriting and the lyrics are both classic Graffin.  Gurewitz keeps this from turning into another "No Substance," but the songwriting is still reminiscent of the band's late 90s efforts.  The lyrics are intense even by Graffin standards, reaching a level not seen since "The Process Of Belief."  The two preceding albums had their share of political lyrics, but here Graffin returns to his favorite topic of religion.  There's no single song with the lyrical weight of "Materialist" -- a song that has had a serious impact on my view of the world -- but there are many that come close.

A few weeks ago, Graffin made an unfortunate comparison: if the previous three albums "The Process Of Belief," "The Empire Strikes First," and "New Maps Of Hell" corresponded roughly to "Suffer," "No Control," and "Against The Grain," then this would be analogous to "Recipe For Hate."  This was not reassuring: I consider "Recipe" to be their weakest album by far.  Fortunately, there's not a strong resemblance.  While there are similarities -- the guitar tone on "Cyanide" recalls "Man With A Mission" -- there are many such references to other albums.  "Meeting Of The Minds" is essentially a rearranged version of "Germs Of Perfection."  The "yeah yeah yeahs" in "The Resist Stance" are straight out of "21st Century Digital Boy."  The whoa-ohs on "Cyanide" are identical to the chorus in "The Watchmaker's Dial" on Graffin's most recent solo effort.  There are dozens of other little moments and phrases that instantly make you flash back to another Bad Religion album. 

This album won't impress anyone who thinks that Bad Religion just continually rips on their previous efforts.  Fortunately, their collected works comprise some of the best punk rock ever written.  A band could do a lot worse.

David Mitchell - "Cloud Atlas"

It's tough to begin a review of "Cloud Atlas" since it's only a novel in a technical sense.  Rather than having a single unified plot, it's written as a cycle of six novellas.  Each novella is interrupted in the middle, only to be resumed later: A, B, C, D, E, F, E, D, C, B, A.  Furthermore, each novella is written in a completely different genre from the others. 

This might sound obnoxious, pretentious, or gimmicky, and it would be in the hands of an author without David Mitchell's talent.  But Mitchell is almost infuriatingly gifted.  He manages to pull everything off.  The first part could be Melville.  The third is a straight-up pulp paperback page turner.  Part Five could have been written by Aldous Huxley, or perhaps Philip K. Dick.  At no point does it sound forced or contrived.  It never feels like he ran out of ideas, and is merely filling in the novel's predetermined structure.

"Cloud Atlas" is not a humble novel.  Mitchell shows off quite a bit.  Very few writers can pull off what he did, and he knows it.  The book is thrilling to read, since Mitchell's brilliance is apparent on every page.  Unfortunately, it sometimes feels like Mitchell wrote the book merely to demonstrate his skill.  There's little in the way of continuity between stories, and my attempts to discern a robust underlying theme were not too successful.

I'm willing to let Mitchell show off, though.  He's shown that he can write circles around most other authors -- now I'm curious to see what else he has done with his talent.  I'm looking forward to picking up his other work.

So I'm updating this thing again

Or at least thinking about it.  Thought it would be fun to write some book and music reviews.  Stay tuned.