Heccubus.Blog

Bauhaus – Volume One: 1979 – 1983
This is actually almost entirely because I bought a Bauhaus T-shirt and suddenly felt the need to listen to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” afterward. Additionally, it seems to mostly be the first half of this disc that I enjoy the most, save for their dreadful cover of T. Rex’s “Telegram Sam”. “Double Dare”, “In The Flat Field”, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, “Stigmata Martyr”… The first half just rages up until that T. Rex cover with so much brooding attitude that it’s a wonder anyone can listen to it without feeling like going out and picking a fight with a vampire.
What’s more, here, is that I’ve always considered myself to only be a casual Bauhaus fan. I just had the two Volume compilations for years and assumed that was more than enough to keep me satisfied. It wasn’t until the past year or so that I really began to delve into their music and explore it more thoroughly. Still, however, whenever I have a craving for Peter Murphy and co., Volume One is the disc that I turn to most often.

Joy Division – Permanent: Joy Division 1995
Another compilation. In this case, probably the most underrated of all the Joy Division compilations I’ve heard. Permanent tends to get pushed aside in favour of Substance a lot, which I’ve always disagreed with. Substance showcases the rougher, more punk-influenced Joy Division with dashes of their startling pop sensibilities added to sweeten the load for inexperienced listeners. Permanent, on the other hand, gathers what could arguably be the band’s most accessible material onto a single disc, though with a pointless and unnecessary remix of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” tacked onto the end. This album has everything I could possibly want, short of making my own Joy Division mixed tapes; “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, “Transmission”, “She’s Lost Control”, “Shadowplay”, “Dead Souls”, “Atmosphere”, and pretty much every Joy Division track that I’d count among my favourites. I have always recommended this as an ideal starting place for people who are curious about Joy Division, and will continue to do so. Much like Bauhaus’ Volume One, this one seems to be the disc I turn to most often when I feel like listening to this band.

Hot Water Music – Caution
I can’t explain why, but this is by far and away my most favourite Hot Water Music album. Lately I’ve been turning to it a lot specifically for “Remedy”, “I Was On A Mountain” and “Trusty Chords”. For some reason those first three tracks on the album just hit me more than anything else on it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the entire album is great–hence my reasoning in calling it my favourite Hot Water Music album, you see–but that opening trio floors me every time. They’re the perfect mix of everything I love about HWM: aggression, melody, and Chuck Ragan’s poetic, damaged vocals. A great album by a great band (who is also a great loss to the punk rock community; a trio of greatness).

At The Drive-In – Relationship Of Command
I seem to be in a nostalgic mood as of late, revisiting things like At The Drive-In’s simultaneous breakthrough and swansong. This album came out when I was in high school and changed my fucking life (expect a “Records That Changed My Life” feature on it at some point when I have the time). The manic energy and power here is nearly untouchable, and imagining the live clips I’ve watched of them just makes me wish that much more that I’d had a chance to see them live. What gets me about this record, though, is the way no one can ever seem to agree on what the best track on it is. Everyone always seems to have a different opinion. Personally, my vote goes to “Enfilade” and it’s plodding drum-machine verses and insanely powerful, driving choruses. This could stand among my favourite songs from that period of my life, and perhaps of all time. The whole record is equally as good, but that song in particular has always stood out to me.

Death From Above 1979 – You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine
Continuing with the nostalgia a bit here, sort of. This album is only a few years old, but I still listen to it when I feel like revisiting a different place and time in my mind. Whenever I hear this album, it’s 2004, I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and life is actually pretty okay for a change. With the exception of “Black History Month” (don’t ask, I just really dislike that song and don’t think it belongs on this album) this album has always been near-perfect to me. It’s pummeling sound just drives your head straight into the ground and then stomps all over it. It’s pretty widely-known at this point that they said their sound was the result of wanting to sound like a herd of elephants stampeding through your living room, and I still say there couldn’t be a more accurate description of what listening to this album is like. It’s like a break-up album for noise-rock kids.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? There’s a very good explanation for my extended absence from the world of writing (some of you spry types might notice that I have not contributed any material to Mondo Magazine since 2008 either), but considering its somewhat personal nature, I’ll dumb it down to a few basic points:

• My fiancee left me, and I have been cripplingly depressed as a result.
• My family is in the midst of some pretty lousy shit right now, and that as contributed to the aforementioned depression.
• I became utterly obsessed with the television show “Dead Like Me” and it has left me teetering between “Why would God do that?” style depression, and fits of hysterical laughter.
• I saw “Watchmen.” Twice.
• I drank. A lot.

So that’s sort of the gist of it. I don’t mean to come across as overly self-absorbed or self-pitying, but suffice to say the world has kind of dealt me a hell of a blow in the past couple of months, and I needed some time to recover and get my head back on straight. Or rather, as straight as it could possibly revert itself to.
ANYWAY.
I have a few things I wanted to address here today, on this lovely overcast Wednesday morning. Firstly, is it just me, or has 2009 been a really lacklustre year for music so far? And before anyone starts hopping up and down, let me say that no, I was not that impressed with Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s okay, but seriously, a fucking album comes out at the dawn of the new year and everyone’s already got ten foot erections and calling it the “album of the year.” The best album I’ve heard so far has been The Hazards of Love by the Decemberists, and on repeat listens, it’s already begun to lose some of its initial appeal. Something tells me my year-end top 50 is going to be excruciatingly hard to put together, as I’ve yet to hear anything that I’d even consider for the list, never mind definitely put on it. It’s somewhat saddening to think of when you consider that by this time last year I was so up-to-my-neck in awesome albums that I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Secondly, anyone here should be aware of the fact that I use Twitter quite often. I mean, if you direct your eyes to the right ever so slightly, you can see my Twitter feed right there, so you’d have to be particularly inattentive to miss it. What is not immediately obvious, however, is that I’ve also launched a bit of an experimental Twitter account. Essentially, I start playing an album, switch TwitterFox over to this account, and post reviews of the album track-by-track. So far, I’ve done the Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love and Swan Lake’s Enemy Mine. It’s been pretty fun, and I’m told by others that it’s pretty entertaining to read, so if you’re on Twitter, follow TweetRecordReviews and tune in for new reviews every so often.
Now, then, the reason I initially sat down to start writing: the first in another of what I plan to have become a reasonably regular feature (and yes, I know I haven’t done a “Records That Changed My Life” spot in a while, I am working on a new one). This is called “Lately Listening” and mostly just provides me with a means to list off some of the stuff that I’ve been listening to as of late for the sake of friendly recommendation, or just spouting off opinions on what I feel to be worthwhile albums. So let’s start:

Ceremony – Disappear
I can understand why some people wouldn’t enjoy this. It veers back and forth between walls-of-sound shoegaze and post-New Order electro pop pretty often, and all throughout the vocals pepper the mix with some admittedly awful lyrics. That said, however, if you enjoy the modern wave of My Bloody Valentine worshipers armed with pedal boards and reverb-soaked vocals, then Ceremony probably has a few things to offer you. For starters, as I said, they subscribe to shoegaze outfits like MBV or the Jesus and Mary Chain as much as they delve into the world of 80s electro pop like New Order or Depeche Mode. Given that somewhat eclectic mix, the end result is an album that can be immensely enjoyable for someone with wildly varied tastes (like myself) who can manage to ignore the somewhat trite, cliche-ridden lyrics.

A Place To Bury Strangers – A Place To Bury Strangers
A Place To Bury Strangers is another of those bands who seems to get lumped into this shoegaze revival that we’ve been going through over the past couple of years. The thing that, to me, sets them apart from most of their peers, however, is the reckless abandon that seems to permeate most of their songs. Their self-titled debut LP is loud and abrasive, but also soft and delicate. They seem to be one of the better groups in this little revivalist genre. “To Fix The Gash In Your Head”, “Don’t Think Lover”, and “I Know I’ll See You” have been some fairly standard go-to tracks for me lately, but the entire album is worth looking into.

The Gaslight Anthem – The ’59 Sound
Anyone reading who talks to me in real life has likely heard me mention this band at least once in the past three or four months. Throughout most of January and pretty much all of February, I was utterly obsessed with this album. So much so, that I considered going back and revising my Top 50 Albums of 2008 list in order to place it at least in my top ten. I didn’t, of course, but even the thought of doing so indicates that this album grew on me considerably. Ordinarily, I would never consider doing something like that. This album, the band’s second, is a remarkable improvement over their earlier material. They’ve continued to create vintage-hued, Springsteen-lovin’ punk rock anthems while simultaneously working in some other outside influences (see: the practically-a-country-ballad weeper “Here’s Looking At You Kid”) and smoothing out the rough areas of their sound that kept their debut from being a truly great record. This one got me through some pretty tough times both last year, and this year. It’s more or less set to become a standby record for when I’m feelin’ blue.