Tag: rock

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

Good morning!

This past Friday I went to a political rally lightly disguised as a stop on a book tour. It was a Q&A with Ben Wikler and Pete Buttigieg, and a couple of other local/state politicians and activists. I was really there to see “Mayor Pete” (I’m an unrepentant infrastructure geek), but if I’m honest, it was far more engaging and entertaining than I thought it might’ve been.

I’m terminally online and far too plugged into the WI political landscape for my own good. It’s easy to get jaded and check out, but this was a great antidote; a bulwark against the tsunami of political ads that are about to swamp every channel.

One of the points made was a quote: Hope is not the cause of action. Hope is the consequence of action.

I admit it’s a touch pithy—something very much at home on a Successories poster—but I also couldn’t help but frame it in terms of records, writing, and any creative pursuit. People take their time, treasure, and talent and put something out in the world. They hope people like it, of course, but that’s an aftereffect.

The TL;DR of the evening was that success comes when we (collectively) decide to tear down existing models and speak truth to power. Those walls come down slowly at first and then all at once. It starts with a conversation, or making a single phone call. Or making a small ask of someone (in my organizing days we would call these pressure tests, and the equivalent might be asking them to sign an A-card). You do this over and over—you put in these reps—and eventually something new and better emerges.

On the way there, we drove by what was once Smart Studios, and as each person spoke, I couldn’t help but map their points to the past and current music landscape.

Writing about the building a few years ago, I noted:

Today, Smart Studios stands stoically on the corner as the world rushes by. Boarded up and on the market, it stands sentinel over an era long past, but whose legacy lives on.

In the ’90s, people took existing models and bent them to their will…or they just tore them down altogether and built something novel.

And we did it together. People collaborated long before your Instagram timeline was polluted with spammy “DM to collab” comments from bots. It felt like everyone was in a band. And if you weren’t playing, you were writing. And if you were writing or making a ’zine, you were doing art for record covers or T-shirts.

When people took to the streets in PDX, it wasn’t performative or for the ’gram. The crowds built a person at a time. One person asking another to join them. And another. And then another.

It was a fantastic time. And it was the result of small steps adding up to something much larger.

No wonder it gave us so many good sounds.

On to the music…

This week, I’ve been listening to a ton of The Church. Ditto R.E.M. and Yo La Tengo (some of you may have seen that those are the two frontrunners for which discography Sam Colt and I work through next- stay tuned for the results!). There’s also some INXS and Shonen Knife, the latter of whom used to soundtrack a lot of my drives into the city for shows, We also lost L7 bassist Jennifer Finch late Saturday. L7 of course recorded at Smart Studios. Fuck cancer.

I promise this isn’t a nostalgia account; I might be an 80s/90s kid, but the music of 23026 gives me just as much hope as those records did back in the day. This week we’ve got some killer new sounds from Sweeping promises, Ceylon Sailor, Inland Years, and many more.

Side A is tracks 1-14. Side B is tracks 15-27.

The Playlist:

Other sources: | Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been in heavy rotation in your world? Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Some Thoughts on Dave Kendall and the Magic of MTV’s 120 Minutes

by KevinLeave a Comment on Some Thoughts on Dave Kendall and the Magic of MTV’s 120 Minutes

I miss my 120 Minutes CDs.

Like many people, I was lured in by the iPod. I could have all of my music on a little machine? I wouldn’t need to store anything? Sign me up! In the early 00s, I was already sick of moving boxes around. I did brisk business offloading them-interestingly, a lot went to APO boxes-and I never really looked back. The future was bright, and it belonged to these cool new devices being sold to us by impossibly cool ads.

We didn’t think much about the second-order effects of offshoring all these things. Or how putting “earbuds” and later AirPods in would seal us off from other music fans, both literally and figuratively. This shift wouldn’t be the death knell for IRL music discovery, but it certainly put it in the ICU. Being able to access music online, on our own terms, also meant the end of relevance for shows like MTV’s 120 Minutes. None of that will be news, of course.

The big news this week is that former 120 Minutes host Dave Kendall has passed away.

I’ve touched on this before, noting:

It’s always a tell when someone makes a snide remark about remembering when MTV actually played videos. The channel answered the siren song of more eyeballs and pivoted away from music to other content, resulting in more people associating the channel with reality TV, outnumbering those who knew it for music videos. This is why Gen Xers regard MTV as a vehicle for music discovery, and Millennials regard it as where they discovered Snooki.

MTV had shows back then, of course. Yo! MTV Raps introduced a whole generation to the world of hip hop. 120 Minutes did the same for alternative/indie music, and this was when the term alternative still meant, well, alternative. NBC might’ve coined the term Must See TV, but for someone like my fellow travelers and me, this was the show to watch, even if it was on impossibly late. Sometimes that meant taping it and watching the next day after school (no internet = no spoilers). I got rid of those tapes, too. They’d be fun to watch, though.

They often let musicians from your fave bands host, and things would often get… interesting…I mean, does anyone else remember when Greg Dulli and Donald Logue hosted 120 Minutes?

For that matter, does anyone remember when MTV would just give 2 hours of airtime to people who’d do things like reenact scenes from The Godfather before teasing upcoming videos from “The Radiohead & The Pavement?”

Those were fun, of course, but the regular hosts were what made it great. Kevin Seal was as irreverent as anyone. Matt Pinfield’s encyclopedic knowledge was his superpower, and to be fair, one he only ever used for good. That would’ve made lesser men interminable.

But in between them was Dave Kendall. An affable guy with cool hair and a cool accent, both of which lent him more credibility than any other VJ, though I imagine metal heads felt the same way about Headbangers Ball hosts Adam Curry and Riki Rachtman.

Week in, week out, he would introduce legions of indie/alternative/goth kids to their new favorite bands. Alternatively, his would often be the only chance their fave current-band videos would ever see the light of day airtime.

In 2026, YouTube exists. In 1992, this was it.

“Dave was one of the true believers. Long before alternative music found its way into the mainstream, he was there every week on 120 Minutes, introducing people to bands that would go on to define an era. He didn’t just host a show. He gave a home to music that deserved to be heard. He loved the music, respected the artists, and connected with fans in a way that always felt authentic. “That’s a rare gift.”

~Matt Pinfield

It’s possible that Kendall was just reading cue cards or parroting what an A&R exec had handed him to read, but I doubt it, and if that’s the case, don’t tell me. He was a TV host, sure, but this was also a show whose idea he pitched and sold to the network. More than that, he was the man introducing us to a world of new bands and sounds. For those of us not yet in college, he was the substitute for the cool kid down the hall with the crate full of cool shit.

Today, you might get lucky and have the algorithm serve you up that sort of thing, but I doubt it. You can, of course, get anything you want anytime online- including links to every 120 Minutes episode and a list of hosts. This morning, I listened to a playlist I made via Qobuz. You can usually find “The Pavement” on there. You won’t find “The Radiohead.” It’s wild what you can build with 1’s and 0’s. That’s today’s version of the mixtape, but a lot of the tracks on there are bands introduced to me via 120 Minutes that later spent a lot of time on Maxell cassettes in my car. I watched the show and picked up copies (and later, picked up a pen). Others watched and picked up guitars. Those descendants often make these playlists, too.

It all makes for an incredible time to be alive, but there’s an electricity missing there. If you’re intentionally looking something up, it’s not the same lottery. Ultimately, that’s something people like me attributed to Kendall, and where much of that affinity lies. That his stint on the show neatly coincided with my peak music-discovery years doesn’t hurt. I hammered out a proverbial shitty first draft on Wednesday morning shortly after seeing news of his passing online. It would’ve been better to hear it via MTV News, but that too exists only as a memory now. I guess it’s cool that he outlived the network?

CDs are making a bit of a revival, so there’s that. Kendall would probably dig it. I’m taking some liberties here, but I like to think he was a CD guy, outside of DJ’ing, of course. Looking at the Nevermind the Mainstream comps now (online obvs.), the track lists for Volumes 1 & 2 read like who’s who of my favorite bands. To say that’s down to the influence of 120 Minutes and Kendall is not assumptive. I’m also confident there are a lot of people out there who would say the same.

If there’s any justice in the world, by now you’ll have seen many well-written obituaries, fueled by memories of people like me who used to stay up late just to see what Kendall would gift us next.

Thanks, Dave, and rest easy.

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

Good morning!

Saturday, I talked a little bit about two music “hot takes” I have. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (sorrynotsorry), there’s a third: I’m not especially fond of Nirvana’s In Utero.

Writing about the record in 2023, I noted:

Part of that incuriosity was down to my insufferable gatekeeping mindset back then, but the reality was this: I had first heard the songs from Bleach live before I heard them on cassette. I can remember how “Negative Creep” was introduced as something that “would be coming out soon” and how it felt like the best kind of kick to the head. The rest of the record was more of the same.

Nevermind came out not too long after, and, well, we all know what happened next. It was the end of a brand for Mennen and the beginning of an era for “alternative music.” And let me say this: In short order, “alternative” would become a punchline, the music being more mainstream than whatever it was supposed to be a substitute for that would come soon enough. In 1991, Pearl Jam’s Ten and this were a vicious 1-2 combo for a world not quite ready for it, but in hindsight, better for having had them both happen.

There was also a period where I soured on Nevermind, mostly, I think, because it became so inescapable. Time has largely softened that, and while I still (subjectively) think Bleach is the best release of the lot, Nevermind is a very close second — and objectively the top pick. Ask 10 people what their favorite track is, and you’ll likely get 11 answers. If that’s not the hallmark of an excellent record, I don’t know what is. If you have, if you need.

That line’s from my pick, “Breed,” but “Lithium” is usually at the top of the leaderboard too. And I mention all of this because it was released as the album’s third single on this day in 1992.

Tell me, would “Lithium” be your pick? If not, what is?

KA—

On to the music…

Besides Nirvana, we’ve got tracks from Sugar and Fugazi, both of whom were also feeding my ears back then (and anyone within a 5-6 block radius of my car). Also, more Fleetwood Mac, but not from Mirage. We’ve also got killer fresh sounds from Jack White, The Strokes, Brothertiger, feeble little horse, Twin Bloom, and Jodacki. There’s also a new mix from New Order, because of course there is.

Side A is tracks 1-15. Side B is tracks 16-29.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been in heavy rotation in your world? Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July, in whatever form it took. If nothing else, I hope you were somewhere that didn’t feel like the inside of a vast furnace.

I think it’s safe to say that the wave of mid-year reviews has crested. I know some people have a distaste for such things, but I love ‘em. Maybe you do too? Here’s a good one, and a couple of others here, here, and here. Finding new records- or a new spin on one of my own faves- is always a delight, but I think my favorite part is that these lists invariably include the phrase “so far” in the title. Yeah, I know that makes sense, given where we’re only halfway through the year, but it’s also a signal that (maybe) the best is yet to come? That maybe our new AOTY is just around the bend, waiting for us to catch up.

Speaking of lists, through a combo of old age, provenance, and shifting priorities (read: not being able to stay up late, not wanting to drive more than 10 miles in any direction), there are very few bands I want so see play left on my bucket list.

Spoon was one of the few left standing…until this past Friday, when we got to see a stripped-down, mid-day set. It was only Britt and Alex Fischel, but it was fantastic and well worth the drive to Milwaukee. I also got to see Lake Michigan, some ships, and watch Cape Verde almost pull off the upset of the century, so it was just triple 7’s all the way down. We should all be so lucky.

KA—

On to the music…

It’ll be no surprise that this week’s list is extremely Spoon-coded, and a bit longer than usual (see also: 3 hours in the car on Friday). There’s plenty from them, but also new stuff from Kristen Hersh, Mike D, Milwaukee band SPF-150, and more.

Also, a few tracks from Wire’s Colin Newman. Nothing this time from his Immersion project, but they also have a record coming later this year. Having heard a preview, I’m pretty confident it’ll be on more than a few AOTYs come December.

Side A is tracks 1-17. Side B is tracks 18-37.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music|

Now it’s your turn.

Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

This past week, I was on vacation. When asked, the easy answer would be “I didn’t go anywhere,” but that’s not entirely true. We went all over the place; we just never left the state.

I’ve mentioned it previously, but even after living here for over 20 years, I still don’t have to go too far to feel like I’m in another country (and depending on how “red” it is, another universe). Go far enough afield and even the radio stations can feel foreign in their own way.

Even where we were, there were plenty of choices, including one that seemed purpose-built for Parrot Heads that got lost on the way to living their best (salt) life and wound up on Lake Michigan instead. I like Buffett, but man, I heard more than my share.

You would also be (pick one: horrified/surprised/delighted) to know that Bon Jovi is still in heavy rotation in some spots.

Miss the Slippery When Wet era? NE Wisconsin’s for you!

But!

In an era of automated playlists and robo-DJs, these stations feel anachronistic…and like sweet relief. Yes, even the ones that are, in theory, talk radio, but in reality just an angry guy shouting into the void from the antenna on the horizon. No matter how much iHeartRadio (or Brendan Carr) tries to tell you otherwise, the airwaves still belong to the people, and there’s still some people-powered stations, too.

Stations like this are the last stand against the Telecommunications Act of 1996. These over-the-air Alamos holding the line against automation and misinformation are usually found on the left side of your dial, and traveling through their range is all the better because of ‘em—even when they play “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

KA—

On to the music…

No Bon Jovi, but this week’s human-powered playlist features brand new tracks from Hazel English, Office Dog, The Tubs, Wishy, and more. Wisconsin’s well represented (in a good way!) with sounds from Red Pants and Heavy Looks. Our friends Tamara Casey and Patrick Fellows are also here with “Bad Decisions” and “Seen it All” respectively.

In other words, everything you need for your morning commute or for when you’re getting nothin’ but static.

Side A is tracks 1-17. Side B is tracks 18-35.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |

Now it’s your turn.

Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

100 lifetimes ago, I worked in a record store. The manager wouldn’t let us play Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville, and instead tried to helpfully suggest…Shawn Colvin.

In hindsight, it wasn’t the worst choice. But at the time, it seemed kinda awful? Colvin just wasn’t writing stuff like this:

And the license said you had to stick around until I was dead
But if you’re tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am
But you’ve never been a waste of my time
It’s never been a drag
So take a deep breath and count back from ten
And maybe you’ll be alright

Look, there’s no denying Phair’s talent, but when Exile came out, owning it felt like a very performative thing to do. Girls liked it because it represented the “f**k you” they’d wanted to say for years. Guys bought it ’cause they wanted those girls to… like them.

None of that is fair to Phair, whose only crime was putting together a record with an openness, vulnerability, and ferocity we’d never seen before. Lost in titillating lyrics about BJ queens and f’ing and running were a searing indictment (and mild hit) about the music scene (“Never Said”) and a track about the fine line between being friends and lovers and how that often becomes a tripping hazard (“Divorce song”). Not for nothing, Hrishikesh Hirway’s Song Exploder podcast did a great episode breaking down the latter.

We all caught up with her eventually, and Exile In Guyville long ago earned its rightful place in the alternative rock canon. The record turns 33 today and still seems a bit ahead of it’s time.

Tell me: what do you think?

KA—

On to the music…

Besides Phair, this week we’ve got a few old faves from VU, Material Issue and The Police. There’s also a ton of fresh tracks from the likes of Hawk and Steel, Kelz, Julia Jacklin and feeble little horse.

Side A is tracks 1-16. Side B is tracks 17-33.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |

Now it’s your turn.

Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Best Record of 2001: Day 61

by KevinLeave a Comment on Best Record of 2001: Day 61

Lovage vs. Unwound

Good morning!

Today we’re taking a quick look at records from Unwound and Lovage.

Mike Patton contains multitudes. For every weird or abrasive track he’s been on (i.e. anything by Mr. Bungle), there’s been an equal number of straight up rockers, ballads, or smoothed out tracks.

He’s also no stranger to concept albums (see again: Mr. Bungle). Nor is Nathaniel Merriweather aka Dan the Automator, aka one half of Handsome Boy Modeling School. The two of them team up with singer Jennifer Charles and Kid Koala to record the one and only Lovage release, Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By.

The record’s as low key as you might assume, with a lovesexy vibe, some sensuous beats, and Cinemax-level lyrics. It’s also a record that attempts to straddle the line between sincerity and comedic irony. You can’t go more than a verse or two without tripping over a double entendre. it’s louche all the way down, including the cover art inspired by none other that Serge Gainsbourg’s Nᵒ 2 LP.

Sometimes it works, sometimes the punchline fails to land. Did we really need yet another fucking record with skits in it? Long time readers may recall that this is a pet peeve of mine, and in the land rush to CDs taking place in the early aughts, somebody somewhere thought this would be a great way to fill out the newly available space on LPs (Spoiler: It’s not). “Love that Lovage, Baby” at least has Damon Albarn on it, so there’s that, I ’spose. And it borrows heavily from Donna Summer’s Love to Love You, which is great. Nevertheless…

(exhale)

Going the other way, the chemistry between Patton and Charles gets harder to ignore with each track. Is this a bit they’re both really committed to? Maybe it started out that way and blossomed into something real? Beats me, but it’s smoldering like lava the whole way through the record. Even at the end on “Archie and Veronica,” which is about (*checks notes)… banging a corpse?! Okay then.

All that aside, the record’s real superpower are the beats. When it comes to taking samples and building a soundscape, Dan the Automator is one of the best to ever do it.

Shame that Lovage was a one-and-done project. The premise only has so much runway, but these three (and friends along for the ride) are clearly in their element and having a good time. And with a title like this how could they not be? You were expecting a dirge?

You know that internet trend where someone’ll post “Don’t ask me to explain it, but…”?

Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it, but Leaves Turn Inside You couldn’t have come from anywhere but where it did. It’s extremely Olympia-coded and feels like the latest model to roll off the K-Records factory floor. That’s neither derogatory nor regressive.

I happen to like that sound and Unwound’s got it for days.

There is a certain melancholic detachment that comes with existing in a place where it rains a lot. I don’t mean the overt, back of hand on forehead type stuff. It’s just how a lot of PNW’ers are (I say this as a native). Whether it’s the minutes-long drone on “We Invent You” that kicks things off, or the icy synths (synths! from Olympia!) on “Treachery” that reframes things, that mood is all over the record and well, it fits.

For all the jangle (again: Olympia) and subtle vocals, there’s an undercurrent of tension that the listener can never quite shake—this is not something to play when you’re out on the water with the boys! But it is something you’ll want to have close by when you’re in the mood for something brooding and engaging in equal measure. It’s heavy without feeling oppressive.

In ’01 I was in a dead era as far as going to shows, but I could swear I’d seen them before. there was an time where I basically lived at the X-Ray Cafe and they had a ton of shows there in ’91-’92. Surely I’d been there for one of ’em? I wish I could remember! Time seems to have faded my memory (along with my hearing). No matter. Unwound is a great PNW band and Leaves Turn Inside You is an easy record to fall in love with. Just don’t ask me to explain it.

Bottom Line:  After a few days of records not quite landing, we’ve arrived at what’ll be a tough call for me. Lovage strikes me as the sort of band we’d listen to on the way to see Unwound. On my bracket I cheaped out and went for the latter as they’re the higher seed. My vote today? I honestly don’t know. It’s gonna be a game time decision…

Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my take? Sound off in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

A Monthy Python castmate, Elvis, and several world cup soccer players all walk into a $100 million cage…

It sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn’t it?

If I told you they were there to play in a 3v3 8-team single elimination goal tournament, all to the sounds of a (then) 34-year-old song remade by a Dutch artist best known for working on Tomb Raider, it’d just get weird, right?

But24 years ago, that’s exactly what happened. Henry, Ronaldo, Scholes; they were all there, and they were all there to sell shoes.

Or, more specifically, Nike shoes.

The Scorpion KO tournament was part of an award-winning ad campaign, with star players competing in a secret tournament onboard a ghost ship.

Former Manchester United Star Eric Cantona was more emcee than referee, and the entire thing was directed by Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam.

That tournament spawned local versions worldwide, with an estimated 1–2 million kids participating worldwide.

The campaign was a huge success, with Nike president Mark Parker commenting, “This spring’s integrated football marketing initiative was the most comprehensive and successful global campaign ever executed by Nike.”

The game might’ve come easy, but the soundtrack? Not so much.

“The music was a real monkey wrench. We just could not land the right track to pull it together. If you turn the audio off and try to follow this thing, it’s pretty hectic beyond the colours of the jerseys. There was just no obvious tone or tenor. We tried rock, metal — dark, intense stuff — but it didn’t really underscore what we were seeing.

“We talked to all sorts of music producers, contracted a band, some hot producers. They brought in stuff to play, and we were very polite, but I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is a disaster’.

Somehow it all worked out in the end, with the song’s remix charted in dozens of countries, hitting #1 in several.

The song? JXL’s remake of Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” originally released in 1968.

The official theme song was actually by… (checks notes) Vangelis, but no matter. For all intents and purposes, this was it.

Note: It will surprise absolutely no one, that for my money, this is the best World Cup song of all time.

Do you remember this commercial (or the 2002 World Cup)? Who ya got for this tourney?

KA—

On to the music…

This week what’s old is new again with a killer remix of New Order’s “Spooky.” We’ve also got some (actually) brand new tracks from Wishy, Vienna, The Mountain Goats, and Boston’s Good June. A great setlist to either liven up your commute, play on a road trip or soundtrack your next soccer tournament.

Side A is tracks 1-14. Side B is tracks 15-29.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |

Now it’s your turn.

Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

A Good Band Is Easy To Kill

by KevinLeave a Comment on A Good Band Is Easy To Kill

Best Record of 2001 Day 58: The story of an unappreciated pop masterpiece and the demise of a great band that never got their due.

Cover art courtesy of Velocette Records

Good morning!

For the last guest post in Round 1, Matty C takes the wheel and shares his take on Beulah’s The Coast Is Never Clear.

If you ask him, Matt Carlson will likely answer that he’s “a musician.” That’s of course very true-I’ve been lucky enough to hear him play. But he’s also a writer, podcaster, hosts a radio show, runs a record label, and more. And that doesn’t even touch on the work he does here on the platform with What Am I Making. If you ask me, he’s someone who’s work you should check out- there’s something there for everyone.

The words—and work— below the jump are all his, and I’m beyond grateful he let me share this article with everyone! I think you’ll dig it. When you’re done here, please be sure to check out more of his work!

KA—

2001 was a pretty damned good year in music.

The charts were littered with a variety of styles from Radiohead, Jay Z, The Weezer, and more. There were breakout records from The Strokes, Aaliyah, The White Stripes and The Shins. Radiohead’s Amnesiac topped many best of lists for the year.

What Am I Making is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It was an exciting time of variety and energy. There was bandwidth for all of these records to coexist with one another in a vibrant ecosystem of diversity and experimentation.

Your local college station very liked played new songs from Low, Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Missy Elliott, Gorillaz and Muse. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Seeing this landscape for sounds getting attention in 2001 makes it all the more puzzling how a record as brilliant as Beulah’s The Coast Is Never Clear could be missed in its own time, and then simply forgotten.

Beulah first came to prominence in the indie rock boom of the mid to late-nineties. Formed in San Francisco, CA by Miles Kurosky and Bill Swan, the band forged a sound from the sun soaked harmonies of The Beach Boys, syrupy melodies and the voice of an unreliable narrator weaving us through the California twilight at the end of the century.

Robert Schneider of Apples In Stereo heard a cassette of some early demos and offered to master the band’s first album Handsome Western States, which was released in 1997.

The lo-fi affair was a nice debut effort, but was bolstered by Schneider’s connection to the Elephant 6 Collective, and the blossoming success of Elephant 6 label mates, Neutral Milk Hotel. The connection with Elephant 6 would stick for better or worse, despite the fact that Schneider mastering the album and a 7” single were band’s only affiliation with the legendary collective.

The follow up, a decidedly more mid-fi sounding effort, When Your Heartstrings Break arrived in 1999. In addition to better sonic quality, there was a leveling up in the songwriting and arrangements on this second record. Instead of a sophomore slump, Beulah seemed to be surging.

Lost Classics: Beulah "When Your Heartstrings Break" - Magnet Magazine

The opening strains of Hello Resolven set the scene of The Coast Is Never Clear in cinematic fashion. Sickly sweet strings and a ghostly ethereal bell ring out to the vocal refrain,

“Wake up the king/Wake up the queen/Everybody laugh, everybody sing/It’s over . . . it’s over.”

What follows is a Southern California sunshine record that feels as though it were ghost written by Raymond Chandler. Despite overt poppiness oozing from nearly every note and arrangement, The Coast Is Never Clear is the perfect example of what Tom Waits once called, “Beautiful melodies telling me terrible things”.

Perhaps the best example of this can be found in the chorus of album highlight, Gene Autry. The song is ostensibly the tale of a journey to the west coast in a quest for self discovery and renewal. What follows is a conclusion summed up by the hooky chorus, “The city spreads out, just like a cut vein/Everybody drowns sad and lonely, alright”.

We can change the scenery but we cannot change the core of ourselves by relocation alone. The echoes of loneliness and desperation are littered within the words of these songs, all while the grooves pour out easy to swallow melodies and harmony.

On A Good Man Is Easy To Kill, Kurosky sings,

And when they cut out your lung
You said we could all breathe easy
The hole swallowed your heart
When they drilled holes in your skull
And screwed that halo to your head
Did you think you could fly?

It’s hard to know if the song is about Kurosky’s own personal health struggles, of which he has had many, or if this the tale of a friend, a partner, or complete fiction. In the end, it’s a song of survival and refusal to go quietly into that good night. Something Beulah is also struggling to do. Maybe the band itself is the hole in the heart.

The song title is of course a nod to the great southern gothic master Flannery O’Connor, and her famous story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Much like O’Connor, lyricist Kurosky takes a normal form, and turns it on its head.

For O’Connor the form was the short story. For Beulah, it’s a sunny pop song inflected with a stark honesty and darkness that is both jarring and easy to overlook. It’s a crafty way to deliver a brilliant and multileveled work. It’s also easy to miss just how brilliant it actually is.

After some label mergers, and various corporate machinations, Velocette Records released The Coast Is Never Clear in America on the auspicious date of September 11, 2001.

It’s unlikely that the unfortunate timing of the album’s release led to its under—appreciated status, but it cannot have helped. It was also lost in a sea of great records by bands with more momentum and greater resources than Beulah.

While this record holds its own against great albums of the era like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, The Soft Bulletin and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, this was a band without the necessary foundation in place and the proper amount of luck and resources to get their just desserts.

The film A Good Band Is Easy To Kill is an unflinching, but fascinating look at the final tour for Beulah. The tour takes place in the wake of the band releasing their fourth and final album, Yoko. It’s a make or break moment for Kurosky, Swan and co.

Spoiler alert: They don’t make it.

It’s a great look at a very good band making terrific records and still not being able to make it work. And this was in a time when it was far easier to make it as an independent musician than it is a quarter century later.

Kurosky went gone on to release an excellent solo record called The Desert of Shallow Effects in 2010, but Beulah has remained dormant since 2004. There has been recent talk of a follow up to that record on varying social media accounts, but nothing has surfaced as yet.

As a songwriter and singer, I am in awe of The Coast Is Never Clear. It’s a masterwork of storytelling, soundscapes and songwriting. It’s a record I wish I had been a part of. My band The Stick Arounds even recorded a version of Gene Autry and we play it often at our live shows.

They say that “if you build it, they will come”. Beulah is living proof that they might not, but it’s worth building it anyway.

Cheers,

Matty C

Thank you again to Matty for today’s post! Please be sure to check out more of his work over at What Am I Making! Any thoughts on this record? Agree/disagree with his take? Sound off in the comments!

Check out the full bracket here.

Info on the tourney, voting, and more is here.

Amnesiac: Radiohead’s Fractured Aftershock to Kid A

by KevinLeave a Comment on Amnesiac: Radiohead’s Fractured Aftershock to Kid A

Best Record of 2001: Day 57

Cover art courtesy of EMI Records.

Good morning!

We’re in for a treat today, as Sam Colt takes the wheel and shares his take on Radiohead’s Amnesiac LP.

If you’ve been here for a minute, you’ve seen Sam’s work before. He and I did a Top 100 Series, are part of a group that shares our year-end lists, and, of course, have a monthly series on, well, whatever we find interesting.

You likely also know my feelings on Radiohead, and Sam’s quest to get me to come around on them. The TL;DR for new folks: he loves ‘em, and I don’t. But he’s also a helluva writer I’m lucky to get to “collab” with every month, and for as much as I give the band shi*t, I can’t think of anyone who’ll give the record its due more than him.

The words—and work— below the jump are all his, and I’m beyond grateful he let me share this with everyone! I think you’ll dig it, too. When you’re done here, please be sure to check out more of his work at This Is a Newsletter!

KA—

Supposedly made up of tracks that were recorded during the Kid A sessions, Amnesiac has been derisively called “Kid B,” and while there’s some truth to that statement, it’s also underselling the album a bit. In the aftermath of releasing a decade-defining alt-rock masterpiece, Radiohead spent years tearing apart their sound, reconstructing it, then found themselves with a deluge of material once the pieces started to fall into place. Kid A was the spearhead of their reinvention, carefully assembled as a statement of intent—one of alienation, disillusionment, and paranoia in an increasingly digitized and atomized world.

As a companion album, Amnesiac is the schizophrenic inverse: While it’s not Frankenstein-ed out of discards, it does serve as a catch-all repository for everything that didn’t suit the more controlled tracklist of its predecessor. The band once described Kid A as the equivalent of starting a forest fire from a great distance, while Amnesiac is standing at the center of the blaze. This is certainly not an immediately appealing album like The Bends or In Rainbows, but it pushes Kid A’s electronic experimentation to more anxious lengths. Amnesiac fills the vacant, desolate void within Kid A with a harrowing and offbeat freneticism. It’s more of a dark nebula than a shining star, reminiscent of Joy Division’s Closer, David Bowie’s Low, or other atmospheres of gloom.



For a band with an impeccable record of providing quality album openers, “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” is particularly noteworthy, kicking off with these clanging hollow percussions and cold, desperate synths before Thom Yorke’s droning voice repeats “I’m a reasonable man, get off my case.” The transition to “Pyramid Song” is a bit jarring, but it’s an all-time Radiohead track; disquietly haunting and depressingly beautiful, and the way it descends with ghostly falsettos and ethereal strings is spine-tingling. With its razor-sharp groove, “I Might Be Wrong” is Radiohead’s interpretation of dance music, a nerve-wracking, anxiety-inducing bassline complemented by a jerky, jangling guitar riff. “Knives Out” is somewhat of an olive branch to everyone who thought the band had abandoned guitars completely, but because of its relative normality, it sounds the most alien of any track on Amnesiac, despite it being an odd endless rush forward without a chorus and seemingly beginning mid-riff.



Some of this is Radiohead at their least compromising. The backing track for “Like Spinning Plates” is a backmasked version of another song that hasn’t been released yet, and Yorke’s rising vocals syncopate with the abstract soundscape, making it feel apocalyptic and strikingly moving. “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” is the skeletal backing track as an attempt to record the already-fabled “True Love Waits,” but with all its melody stripped out so it sounds like a robot repeatedly banging its head against a wall. The jazz-tinged “You and Whose Army?” and “Dollars and Cents” have crescendos that carry the same gloomy power as OK Computer but reshaped into something more of a free-form jam sesh.



Amnesiac isn’t necessarily a challenging album as much as it’s disorganized and dense, flipping itself around and over its head with every subsequent song, taking you through the gamut of Radiohead’s different sounds. There’s no convenient cohesive harmony, just a collection of screams colliding into one another and forging a new context through the cacophony. It pulls the listener from one extreme to the other without pause, except for the interlude “Hunting Bears,” which offers a moment of quiet amid the maelstrom.

This album certainly deserves at least some of the criticisms directed towards it. It’s an unhinged mess that swings wildly in quality, endlessly compared against its big brother and losing in obvious ways. But even a lesser Radiohead project—it ranks sixth in my personal rankings—is still a very good album. Even at its most alienating, meandering, or downright messy, much of it is perversely interesting and positively bewildering, making for an enjoyable and revelatory listen.

Amnesiac isn’t really a grower as much as it’s a grab bag of fragmented ideas that offers something different each time you put your hand in it. It’s the release that most explicitly states that Radiohead was done with being a straightforward rock band, or anything other than some guys trying to make the most interesting soundtrack that reflects the tenor of its time.

Bottom Line: Amnesiac is the #6 seed in this tourney, and is up against Whiskeytown’s Pneumonia, which sits at #123. I might not like Radiohead, but I am a fan of a sure thing. Thom Yorke & co it is.

Thank you again to Sam for today’s post! Please be sure to check out more of his work over at This Is a Newsletter!

Any thoughts on this record? Agree/disagree with Sam’s take? Sound off in the comments!

Check out the full bracket here.

Info on the tourney, voting, and more is here.

As always, thanks for being here.

KA—