SOUNDTRACK: DARK THOUGHTS-“Anything II” (2018).
At the end of every year publications and sites post year end lists. I like to look at them to see if I missed any albums of significance. But my favorite year end list comes from Lars Gottrich at NPR. For the past ten years, Viking’s Choice has posted a list of obscure and often overlooked bands. Gottrich also has one of the broadest tastes of anyone I know (myself included–he likes a lot of genres I don’t).
Since I’m behind on my posts at the beginning of this year, I’m taking this opportunity to highlight the bands that he mentions on this year’s list. I’m only listening to the one song unless I’m inspired to listen to more.
This has got to be the first time I knew of a band before Lars Gottrich introduced me to them. (although it sounds like he’s known them for quite a while). I learned of Philadelphia’s Dark Thoughts when I saw them open for Sheer Mag. They were fantastic.
Gottrich mentions The Ramones as a touchstone, and that’s certainly there. But I also hear some good old British punk in the vocals (which are not quite as melodic as Joey Ramone’s).
Jim Shomo loves The Ramones, from his bratty punk affectation to the bubblegum punk hooks. But the Philly band also knows that there’s still so much to learn from punk’s tradition, heard in the ridiculously catchy two-minute-or-less songs and a leather-worn physicality of At Work. You feel every power chord and drum kick in your bones.
This two-minute song is one of the longer tracks on the disc. And its a bit of a departure from the standard two chords punk song because there’s a distorted “ooh oooh ooohs” that sound a bit like a synth (but are just distorted) and which return later in the song).
There’s no solos, no flash, just fast pop-punk. The songs aren’t happy but nor are they angry, they’re more disaffected. And the disaffected often make great music. But as he says in the episode, seeing them live is the real key—they are dynamite.
Check out their bandcamp site.
[READ: December 3, 2018] ”Good Mother”
This is an excerpt from a novel called Now, Now, Louison. It was translated by Cole Swensen. In this novel, he writes in the voice of artists Louise Bourgeois who was famous for her enormous sculptures of spiders.
It begins with the idea that sculptures are made out of frustrating–trying to weave connections.
Then there is the warehouse in Brooklyn, gotten for a song where the sculptures grew larger: “Spiders, spiders, you never tired of remaking them bigger and bigger. More immoderately maternal.” So why not tell your own story with your sculptures–not the one they’ve told you–you have to be precise or say nothing at all. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 