Only YC release I didn’t have in my collection – sale at SRC let me pick it up for $5. Damn good deal and they ended up sending me two copies. #vinyl
This showed up today. My weekend just got a whole lot more fun. Thank you so much to Fall Out Boy and Crush. #falloutboy #whiskey
Review: Against Me! – Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Transgender Dysphoria Blues is the record Laura Jane Grace has been screaming to get out for many years. Two May’s ago, the Against Me! front woman revealed her lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria and came out as a transgender woman. After a flurry of press and support followed by a desolate and bleak recording process that almost killed the band rises an album that shuts out all the white noise and delivers the best Against Me! album ever. Laura Jane Grace has a lot to get off her chest, so it’ll be best if you give one of the most essential punk records of our era your full and undivided attention.
Read More “Against Me! – Transgender Dysphoria Blues”Review: Young the Giant – Mind Over Matter
Chalk this one up to pretense.
The highly anticipated sophomore follow-up to Young the Giant’s juggernaut self-titled debut is a mixed bag of awkwardness, superfluous breathiness and more brain-wracking lyrics. Plenty might find album opener “Slow Dive,” gorgeous and inviting but really it’s a waste of 40 seconds that serves no purpose. Ditto for the punchy “Anagram,” which has a cheery chorus and a sun-drenched vibe but does very little on repeat listens. Sure, there’s moments of prettiness and the song does have its share of pleasant moments but it lingers for far too long and is only rescued by Sameer Gadhia’s otherworldly vocals. First single “It’s About Time” is even more confused as it seems to stretch the band into a genre they’re not well suited for. Equal parts garage-pop and avant-garde indie, it sounds way too much like a band trying too hard.
Read More “Young the Giant – Mind Over Matter”Review: Hailey, It Happens – Under the Brilliant Lights
It’s a weird thing about being a music “critic”: you’re consistently comparing the songs and albums you hear to other icons and indices from your own listening experience and trying to decipher individual influences within an artist’s sound, but in most cases, you have no real idea whether those influences were there at all or whether the similarities you noticed were intentional. Instead, you’re left driving blind, projecting your own musical history and preferences onto the work of someone you’ve never even met or spoken to, let alone traded records with. But that’s what makes it such a pleasure when someone you know unleashes a remarkable musical work. You get to hear the music they’ve been championing to you for years – the songs you’ve shared, the musical moments you’ve both remarked upon – reflected back at you in their own musical creations. In essence, you hear the person you have gotten to know encapsulated in the words and chords of the music they write, and in doing so, you get to know that person a little bit better.
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Review: You Blew It! – Keep Doing What You’re Doing
Revival my ass. Sure, there has been a handful of think pieces and reviews lately about the “reemergence” of emo from the type of music journalist who jumps from trend to trend (or hashtag to hashtag) but honestly any fan from the scene already knows that 1. emo never went away (or will go away – just check the AbsolutePunk.net homepage the last ten years) and 2. Florida’s You Blew It! have been cranking out emo-flavored pop-punk jams over the past four-plus years, as the group’s latest album, Keep Doing What You’re Doing, expands on the band’s so-called “1999” sound.
Hell, it was only two years ago we jokingly gave this style of music the absurd moniker “twinkle daddies.” But You Blew It! has emerged from 2012’s Cap’n Jazz-influenced Grow Up, Dude and last winter’s split with Fake Problems louder and bolder with Keep Doing What You’re Doing. Produced by Emo Mayor Evan Weiss, YBI!’s knack for loud, dissonant power chords boom throughout the record without its essential fuzziness being compromised. In fact, the production is very reminiscent of Weiss’ 2011 release, Proper, a record that did a bang-up job of balancing its stripped-down, raw moments with the louder, more frenetic ones while remaining sonically pleasing. “Match & Tinder” is a callused, aggressive opener that twitches between the rough anguish of vocalist Tanner Jones’ rasp and the wistfulness of Andy Anaya’s frantic guitar work. The pop from Timothy Flynn’s relentless snare drum paces “Award of the Year Award”’s driving heaviness as an exasperated Jones yells, “Consider me a friend, but only in the past tense.”
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