I can see the parade

Sol Invictus, the 7th studio album by Faith No More (5th with Mike Patton on vocals), was released on May 18th/19th 2015. I was so excited that I couldn't wait for my preorder copy to show up - I printed out a coupon that Ipecac Recordings had stuck up on FaceBook and drove to the store to get the album after realizing that it wasn't in my mailbox at home. Then I didn't even want to wait to listen to it - I peeled the plastic off in my truck and drove around until "From the Dead" had finished, then started the album again.

My initial response was disappointment - every member of Faith No More is tremendously talented and ground-breaking in his own way. And this album wasn't - it had none of the experimentation of Angel Dust, lacked the steel-and-spit core of Album of the Year, was missing the sneers and flourishes of The Real Thing, and was too homogeneous to recall the delightful genre-dabbling of King For a Day. It didn't feel like my favorite band.

It still doesn't, really.

Oh, there are elements. Some songs have that fucked-up carnival sound that's so common to Mike Patton's catalogue. There's an operatic quality to the piano that you can tell Roddy Bottum was trying to introduce to the music back in the early 80s and is present in nearly every FNM song between now and then. Billy Gould is showing off his impressive chops with virtuoso speed and consistency, but none of the sloppy, sticky funk that hooked me in the first place. Puffy Bordin has put together some nice fills without being flashy (and while being HARD as FUCK). Jon Hudson is, as ever, competent and (perhaps unfortunately) unassuming, not making a mess of anything and occasionally pulling off a very neat technical trick. There are very good things in this album, and to be honest it was still my favorite record last year. It's an incredibly decent forty minutes of rock. It isn't the moody, fussy, face-shredding, irreverent Faith No More we last heard from nearly two decades ago, but the album certainly isn't an embarrassment after all that time. Faith No More may not be the same as they were in the 90s, but only in the sense that they're now elder statesmen and have better things to think about than being naked in front of the computer. Sol Invictus is tidy, it's got a cohesive sound and it all tells basically the same story - a pretty significant departure from the manic genre-hopping FNM is known for. But there are plenty of parts of the album that sound like the old days.

Separation Anxiety and Cone of Shame are brilliant, heavy, perplexing songs that recall hints of tracks like Jizzlobber and Collision; the hilarity and drama of Sunny Side Up mimics the funniest moments of Land of Sunshine and Be Aggressive; The cold country sobriety and warm nostalgia of From the Dead make it seem like a descendant of Take This Bottle.

Sol Invictus is 100% for sure worth a couple of listens, and is fun to return to once in a while, but it's not the kind of album you can't leave behind. Where much of FNM's discography is unforgettable and arresting Sol Invictus is ignorable but contemplative. There's a lot to be examined but you might not care enough to start that examination in the first place.

For an exhaustive song-by-song look at the album, please see the remainder of this incredibly long post. If you don't want to do it then I'll just get to the point: I'd score this album at 80-83 out of 100. At the very least it's a reunion album that doesn't fall victim to rehashing old material and certainly is much better than anyone had any right to expect.

"Sol Invictus"
Sounds like: Lusty monks singing a repentant dirge from a cave slowly filling with saltwater.
Feels like: The opening dance of a tragic ballet.
WTF?: The piano-driven melody and distorted vocals (sometimes half-whispered, sometimes sounding like they're bubbling up from underwater) give an unearthly feel to this track while the half-time tattoo makes it feel like a dirge. I get a strong "Black Hole Sun" vibe off this song, but instead of the intensity of youthful emotion  you hear in BHS, Sol Invictus is a song by a band stained with age and stooped to study the twisting path that brought them to this juncture.
Best Lyric: "Peace ain't coming our way, but the sun keeps burning my face, where's my faith? My blasphemy?"
Score: 7.8/10

"Superhero"
Sounds like: An engine running really well on a bright morning drive.
Feels like: Winning a pissing match against Superman.
WTF?: This is a high-energy song with a call-and-response feeling similar to "Be Aggressive" - it's the meanest track on the album, with lines snarled and drawled and spit into the microphone. That does not, however, make it the hardest song on the album; it's pretty hard though.
Best Lyric: "Leader of men get back in your cage."
Score: 7.6/10

"Sunny Side Up"
Sounds like: A face-melting cereal commercial.
Feels like: A real FNM Song - only song on the album with any funk but still has lots of great piano and howling metal-screaming.
WTF?: One of the great things about Faith No More is that you're never really sure what they're on about. Is this song about fucking? Literal breakfast? Aging? Fuck if I know, and fuck if I care: it's fun to listen to, silly, theatrical, but somehow wistful. It's odd for a song this full of growling and pounding guitars to sound so sweet and open but somehow it manages.
Best Lyric: "Sunny side up, such a lovely way to start the day; sunny side up, dance the night away like Fred Astaire"
Score: 8.9/10

"Separation Anxiety"
Sounds like: Auditory assault.
Feels like: Getting put in a blender where all the blades are Billy Gould's angry black bass.
WTF?: This is four minutes of relentless rythym on the part of Gould, Hudson, and Bordin with lovely decorative/melodic touches from Patton and Bottum.The lilting vocals and solemn keys are a brilliant contrast to the heavy music and abrupt vocal shifts. The song is paranoid and snarling and simpering and writhing; I actually feel it's a pretty good representation of anxiety (and thus it manages to calm me down when I'm panicking).
Best Lyric: "I can't let you go 'cause you're a part of me, not apart from me."
Score: 9.5/10

"Cone of Shame"
Sounds like: Being relentlessly followed down an abandoned midway by a screaming axe-murderer.
Feels like: Angry masturbation
WTF?: The first time I heart this song it confused the fuck out of me - is it a story song, is it a torch song, is it a revenge song? What story is it telling and who is it telling that story to? Then I realized I didn't particularly care - it's got an incredible spooky sound (including samples of Patton's growling dog) and some wonderfully angry lyrics and I love it; it mourns, it howls, it snarls, it hisses, and it pounds its way into your brain where it takes up residence and doesn't ever want to leave.
Best Lyric: "I'm only happy when I'm pissing you off."
Score: 9.8/10

"Rise of the Fall"
Sounds like: A drunk Frenchman became a carnival barker who was then kidnapped by sailors and is singing on deck.
Feels like: A confusing scene in an early Tim Burton film
WTF?: ...That's unfortunate. I'm pretty sure it's the lyrics that kill this for me instead of the music but the lyrics kill it hard - they just don't seem to scan ideally and they're a little too... Expected? Predictable? something. It's nonsense but it isn't good nonsense, which bugs me because I KNOW FNM can produce good nonsense.
Best Lyric: The lyrics suck in this, but the piano and accordion are BITCHIN'.
Score: 6.7/10

"Black Friday"
Sounds like: A mariachi band joined forces with a thrash metal band to write a product jingle.
Feels like: Mike Patton howling all of the sins of conspicuous consumerism out of the world.
WTF?: This is like getting a dildo from your aunt for your 16th birthday. Maybe you wanted it but were surprised to get it and don't quite know what to do with it. You like it, kinda, but it doesn't really do anything and takes a lot of effort on your part to be fun. But for reals, this is a fascinating song that goes to all sorts of odd places - it's got a few moments that are legitimately surprising and entertaining, but the song as a whole is a very strange inclusion.
Best Lyric: "Buy me a future regret, a shrink-wrapped fantasy that I'll want to forget."
Score: 6.8/10

"Motherfucker"
Sounds like: Misanthropy
Feels like: We've probably let everyone down with this whole civilization thing.
WTF?: So it looks like a band that first had a hit with a politically-motivated sneer song is still doing the same thing thirty years later and it still works for them. Motherfucker is full of loathing for the mess we've made of the world and is a subtle demand to fix it.
Best Lyric: All of them are good but the prize of this song goes to the soaring guitar bridge and stuttered "Get-the-mot-ther-fuck-er-onthephone" just past the midpoint. That's a solid fucking moment.
Score: 8.9/10

"Matador"
Sounds like: A melodramatic 80s hair-metal ballad with more distortion.
Feels like: Somebody got a bit too serious with the rock-opera concept.
WTF?: Look it's not hard for lyrics to ruin a song for me and "we will rise from the killing floor, like the matador" both doesn't scan and is too expected; the whole thing just makes me very uncomfortable and there's not much else going on for this song other than a cool ominous bell sound, the rest of it is pretty generic and makes me sad.
Best Lyric: "We will rise from the killing floor," and "let the dead live" - gotta give some credit for snarky self-awareness.
Score: 5.8/10

"From the Dead"
Sounds like: A really grumpy Beatles song, actually - lots of harmonizing and acoustic guitar.
Feels like: A hug from someone you thought you'd never see again.
WTF?: Of all the things that feel like shoutouts to fans in the course of the album this song is the biggest nod. It has musical merit (but it really sounds nothing like Faith No More), sure, but the song isn't about the song, it's about the fact that you got the chance to hear the song.
Best Lyric: "I can see the parade, welcome home my friend, we come back to history in present times, watch your watch unwind" followed by unremitting sobbing because oh my god it's been 18 years and you just weren't expecting this and I'm sorry but I'm just so happy I'm going to need a minute.
Score: 8.1/10

Subtotal: 79.9/100

Bonus Points: 

Reunion album that isn't pure shit +5
No inane solos or self-indulgent jamming (tight shit all the way through) +2

Demerits:

Somewhat cautious, could be more daring -1
Frustrating simplicity of lyrics & bass, unusual for the band -3

Grand Total: 82.9/100
Final Score: B-

I wish I could rate this album higher, it's FNM and I love them and I want everything every member of the band does to be perfect for all time. But that doesn't always happen. Sol Invictus isn't a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, but it isn't in the same league as any of the post-Mosely albums (it's probably fair to put this offering on a level with Introduce Yourself). I'm reviewing Sol Invictus a year late specifically because it took me a while to warm up to it; once I had I wanted to listen to it to the exclusion of all other music for about two months, and now nine months later I can happily listen to the whole thing a couple of times and then forget about it (as a whole) for months. There are a few good songs that stand out on their own and have worked their way into my heavy rotation playlist (mostly "Separation Anxiety" and "Cone of Shame, though "Sunny Side Up" is my weekday alarm) but overall Sol Invictus is a decent, listenable, replayable, and largely forgettable album. I want so hard to love it, I hope that other people out there like it, I hope they love it, I hope the same songs that speak to me speak to them and more, but "pretty okay, good to hear once in a while" is the best that I think this album will ever be for me.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Cult status

Romances by John Kaada and Mike Patton is probably my favorite album of all time. I love it enough that it inspired me to script a comic book about it (though the comic book in question was depressing enough that I've yet to finish drawing and inking it). So when the pair announced another collaboration for release in April 2016 (12 years after Romances) I was excited and delighted and ordered it immediately. And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

Ipecac Recordings is a good record company. They have a great stable of artists and the music they put out is always fantastic and beautifully presented. But they seem to sell most directly through Merchaye, which leaves a little something to be desired. I ordered my CD in early February (along with two other albums), thinking that pre-ordering Bacteria Cult meant that I would get the album on its April 1st release date. Wrong! My order didn't even ship until April 5th, by which point I'd contacted Merchaye to see what was going on (I didn't pay for express shipping so I waited until I was sure that the 4-day delivery time wasn't screwing with anything). Thankfully there was a stream available on February 25th so at least I didn't have to wait to hear it until it was finally delivered on the 11th.

So that was the saga of getting the thing, was it worth all of the trouble? Well that depends.

(It doesn't depend on anything for me - it was totally worth it for me and I love it.)

If you like Patton exclusively because of Epic then you probably won't like Bacteria Cult. If you're into Fantomas because of the heavy sound you probably won't like Bacteria Cult. If Mister Bungle is appealing to you mainly because of explicit lyrics and funk-metal bass lines you probably won't like Bacteria Cult. If you like film scores for their ability to tell a coherent story through sound you probably won't like Bacteria Cult. If you like classical music for its relative length and ability to fade into the background you probably won't like Bacteria Cult. If you enjoyed the depth of sound and resonant singing on Romances you may like Bacteria Cult, but I make no promises.

Romances sounded like a broken western, full of vistas of sound and howling voices; Bacteria Cult sounds like a symphony of arachnids, all strings and shrill with whispered vocals and backgrounded by a dissonant hum. It's rich and thick, layered with muddled motifs and unfettered malice. Romances is easy to sink into and to love, but I think Bacteria Cult wants you to hate it. Bacteria Cult is like Copeland for nihilists.

The music doesn't soar, it waddles and wallows; the vocals are almost completely nonverbal (and maybe completely nonverbal - I may be falsely identifying words where there are only screams) and come together in a jumble of cooing, humming, and nonsense that is barely identifiable as human; there are sweeping trumpets undercut by guttural grunts and precise strings drowned in faint electronic echoes.

I love it but there are things I might love more if they were done somewhat differently. It's just like Patton, widely recognized as one of the greatest and most versatile singers in the world, to put out an album full of tracks that you'd be hard-pressed to call songs. I would really have liked it if Bacteria Cult had at least one song with words just so I could feel a little more equal to it - the album is hard to approach since there's no way to know exactly what it's saying. But such is the life of a Patton fan - if Suspended Animation didn't chase you away nothing will. The other thing I'd like is MORE. After twelve years Kaada and Patton put out a brilliant album that has only eight tracks, none of which are over five minutes. There's barely more than half an hour of listening here and I feel a tiny bit cheated. It's not that the album doesn't stand up as a complete piece - it does - but I was hoping for a novel rather than a novella. It's a beautiful story, I wanted to live in it a little longer.

Official music video for Imodium - CW for Incest, Gore, Nudity. NSFW

Cheers,
     - Alli

No mistake

 (ugly crying)

Let's get the obvious out of the way - I'm obsessed with Mike Patton and I'm a huge FNM fangirl. No problems with that, no shame - he's a fascinating musician and FNM is a bloody fantastic band. Now. Patton's been busy. After the release of Sol Invictus with FNM last year Patton's label put out Nevermen, a self-titled album, created by vocal trio Mike Patton, Dosone, and Tunde Adebimpe only six days before the experimental vocalist announced that his second record with John Kaada was going to come out in April.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck I can't begin to tell you how excited that makes me.

But anyway. Nevermen. It's out, it's a great album, the tour is cancelled (which is making me miserable) and if there's a second album it's probably going to be a decade in the making. Which sucks because, again, it's a great album.

I've been hearing the sound described as industrial (and deranged, and electronic, and hypnotic) doo-wop, which is certainly accurate but also doesn't do justice to the complicated vocal layering that is present through every single minute of the record. My favorite song on the album (and also the first single released to tease the whole brilliant thing), "Tough Towns," is spine-tingling and melodic and full of snapping and spoken word in addition to the multi-layered melodies and harmonizing and just this tremendous, dizzying DEPTH to the sound. This song aches, it begs to be heard and demands your attention through the plaintive voices of the three powerful singers and the relentless praise-inspired beat.

The whole album sounds haunted. It sounds like sad voices moving down empty alleys or echoing off abandoned auditorium walls. Sometimes it's celebratory and bright, cheerfully marching along and cooing to the listener in a grating falsetto (as in the second single, "Mr. Mistake" - the only song on the album with a music video as of this writing), sometimes the music is sardonic and the singers sarcastic - "Non Babylon" is a great example; it's a song sung by a vocal trio, who insist there's no lead in their band, all about deriding frontmen (and I can't help but imagine that Mike Patton is envisioning The Real Thing era Mike Patton as the target for all the digs in the song).

There's some beautiful nonsense going on in the lyrics that doesn't seem so nonsensical while you're listening to the album. "Wrong Animal, Right Trap" has a mindless refrain of "this will simply not work, like barbed wire on pollen" that is repeated enough to almost make the words themselves lose meaning but since it's a song about containment it doesn't quite mesh as nonsense - after all, barbed wire IS a terrible method of trapping pollen. It's hard to describe - I can't properly discuss the non-nonsense in the songs without sharing the lyrics but as yet there aren't any lyrics available so I suppose you'll just have to go listen to the song above, then watch the "Mr. Mistake" video, then check out "Hate On," and then start getting into the remixes that Nevermen have shared.

Or you could go to the Ipecac Recordings merch site and buy the CD but it sounds like you might have to do a lot of searching and it might be hard if I hadn't turned this sentence into a direct link to buy Nevermen. Which you should do. Because it's a great album.

Cheers,
     - Alli

It's nice to be excited about the radio

My sister gave me Of Monsters and Men's My Head is an Animal for Christmas; I'd been hearing Little Talks on the radio for maybe two years at that point and had decided that the song absolutely kicked ass. Their other singles, Mountain Sound and My Head is an Animal, hadn't impressed me nearly as much but at least solidified my belief that OMAM had a defined sound and that I liked it.

I finally got around to listening to the whole album yesterday and I remain impressed. I don't know exactly what the hell is going on in pop music these days but I am aware that there's a bizarre electro-folk movement going on and I've got to say I approve. My Head is an Animal is folk music if folk musicians had access to affordable mixing and unusual instruments.

The Icelandic group recorded the album at Studio Sryland and, while I don't read Icelandic well enough to really tell, it looks like the studio did them a good service; it seems like their various studios are all pretty large and may be the reason for the big, glassy, echoing, ethereal sound of the album. The music is technically sweet but also otherworldly and soothing - it makes sense that these are songs about the sea and magical animals and adventurous love because they sound like they're supposed to be. It's a great combination of lyrics, composition, and sound that comes together to make a wonderful album that takes you away from wherever you are.

A fun note here: one of the only reasons that I saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty last December is because of the heavy use of My Head is an Animal in the promos and the movie - it's exactly the right music to match up with a quest for yourself through wide open spaces and strange adventures.

Thumbs up, A Plus, and right on - Of Monsters and Men made a really strong debut album with My Head is an Animal and I'm really looking forward to whatever they put out next. I'll be listening for it and I bet I'll be happy when I hear it.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Stirring and soaring, as it should be

I like the How to Train Your Dragon series way more than I ever thought I would. The films are beautiful and full of good messages - they're one of the better options for children's fare out there in the wide world of cinema. My sister was the first person to convince me to watch the original movie and I'm glad that she did because I found it immensely entertaining and well worth my time.

A couple weeks ago I went to see The Signal with my husband. The night after we had seen it some friends asked if we wanted to see it again - my husband was interested but I decided that I'd be the strange lady alone in the kid's movie instead. I had a great time watching HTTYD2 and walked out to meet up with my friends and my husband still humming the main theme and announced on the way home that I thought I wanted to get the soundtrack.

We ended up at WalMart (it's just the sort of thing that we do on Friday nights) and my friend pulled a copy of HTTYD2 soundtrack out of a discount music bin. I couldn't quite justify buying the soundtrack for myself but I did get it as a present for my sister and ripped it to my computer before wrapping it up.

The music is delightful - it's moving and exciting and John Powell did a really wonderful job of crafting themes for scenes that wove together to make a sonic texture for the film as a whole.

The best (or at least my favorite) track is "For the Dancing and the Dreaming," the only song in the American release movie that isn't a modern piece meant to run over the credits. It's a song for lovers and adventurers, it sounds beautiful and traditional while still having a modern edge to it. And it makes me cry every time I listen to it. It's the kind of song I want to memorize and sing as a lullaby to my children some day and if you can make music that touches people that intimately you've accomplished something quite impressive, so hats off to John Powell.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Powell, John. Music from the motion picture How to Train Your Dragon 2.
     Relativity Music Group. 2014.

The Roar of the Chains and the Cracking of Timbers

I am more than a little obsessed with Sting, a fixation that goes back to seeing him as Feyd in David Lynch's Dune. But in spite of the fact that I love The Police I am always a little leery of Sting's solo efforts; some of his solo songs are amazing (Fields of Gold springs to mind) but most of them are forgettable at best and irritating at worst.

In spite of that caution I asked for his most recent album, The Last Ship, for Christmas and my lovely little sister gave it to me. I held off on listening to it until now, and I'm very sorry that I did.

The Last Ship is a concept album that deals with the shipyards and poverty in the small town where Sting grew up; it's being turned into a stage musical that I'm now quite looking forward to seeing.

The album is just great. It exceeded all of my expectations. It is well rounded and sweet and funny and heartbreakingly sad sometimes. Of the two discs in the set the first is probably the strongest and has three of my favorite songs on the album, The Last Ship, What Have We Got?, and The Ballad of the Great Eastern.


The music is interesting throughout the record, playing with jazz, rockabilly, and Celtic traditional sensibilities from song to song. What Have We Got? is probably the best, cheeriest drinking song that I've ever heard about terrible poverty; A Practical Arrangement is cool jazz and full of mourning. The Ballad of the Great Eastern is a ghost story told in a song, and is completely delightful.

This is an album that I'm happy to own, with songs that get stuck in my head and make me think of gray waters and dirty streets. If you're looking for anything that feels like Outlandos D'amour or Regetta De Blanc you won't find it here, but neither will you find the synth-y overproduction that infected so much of Sting's work in the nineties. If you're a fan of Sting, or if you like songs about the sea, or if you're just looking for some really fantastic songwriting The Last Ship is well worth a listen.