The Benja-man Is Verbose

According to Wikipedia, the reason Laugh Track exists is that the band wanted to find a home for "Weird Goodbyes," the thing they did with Bon Iver that I guess was felt not to fit in with the material on First Two Pages Of Frankenstein because reasons.  So, to a degree, one could say that the band released two records in the same year because of "Weird Goodbyes."  But to be clear, it also does sound like they had some half-written songs kicking around too, and got to road-test them, the way rock bands used to write, back in a different era.  I guess there could be an essay in that point, too, dissecting the fact that the National are enough of an institution that their place the music world is totally secure.  You know you're a legacy act when you talk about writing on the road and during soundchecks as a change-of-pace choice; that's the only way to work when you're a hungry up-and-maybe-comer using touring to sustain your music habit.  I'm not...

Never particularly wanted there to be such a long gap between writing about First Two Pages Of Frankenstein and Laugh Track , especially since they came out so close together.  Part of it is that life gets in the way, and blogging takes time.  I gotta admit, though, one thing that's never changed about this particular project is that I'm listening more out of a sense of commitment to the bit than because, at any given time, I'm not really that excited to hear any more new music from the National.  Usually once I get to know a National record I do get in the mood to hear more of it.  It's the getting started that actually requires a little bit of motivation.  Is the National doomed to be one of those bands that I spend a fuckton of time with but am just not excited about? To the extent that I'm a National fan, it's that I've come to find their records comforting rather than exciting.  Once I actually started listening to Laugh Track , it felt... homey....

[These "early impressions" posts are generally going to be after listening to the record twice, give or take.] Past exposure to this band/record :  None other than half-listening to a track on YouTube when designing this project.                            To add to the above, I had somehow never even heard of Manilla Road, despite their clearly big shadow across a fairly large plain of metal.  This prolific band from Kansas was the last addition to my list of bands to cover in response to a Reddit comment suggesting that some semblance of "epic metal" should get some love in a survey of power metal.  I will not attempt to regurgitate my brief reading about how exactly epic metal is defined, and how it has a heavy overlap with but is not completely nested within power metal... suffice to say that the bands that got tagged with this power-adjace...

I throw around genre labels often as adjectives.  They're a convenient way to summarize a certain collection of elements.  As far as actually listening to music, I usually don't so much to pick a particular subgenre to explore, though.  It's more to find someone I love, either from a new release or a specific recommendation from someone, and then follow them through their career.  Sometimes this results in a deep fandom wherein records get spun over and over.  Sometimes I fall off because someone only nails it once or twice but not consistently.  And sometimes there are the near-misses, wherein I listen to someone a lot, I like them, I clearly see that they're good at what they do, yet there's a distance to the fandom. *   Over the years I've come close to falling in love with a few bands that have certain elements in common that leads them to be labelled "power metal." At one time I thought SERENITY, the power-adjacent symphonic metallers from Austri...

By far the oldest record I've ever tried to blog about!  I think the only explanation necessary for "why Zevon?" is that I know his music in a greatest-hits sort of way, always liked it, have been meaning to do a deep dive for years, and am now doing so. Anyway, in 1970 some singer-songwriter nobody had ever heard of who went by the name "Zevon" put out a record, playing most of the instruments and doing most of everything.  It achieved minimal success and was mostly forgotten.  To the extent that it was ever rediscovered, it's as a footnote to the career the guy ended up forging later when he reemerged, with his album sleeves now calling him "Warren Zevon." Track One:  "Wanted Dead Or Alive" Well, this is not a bad start to a career.  WDOA * immediately hits with a riff that's basically three notes, strummed but downtuned to pack the sort of muscular heft that I don't really associate with most music from the era.  Z...

Rather than shoehorn genre labels into sentences, this year's schtick is that the list will instead include "listening notes," akin to wine tasting notes - a few words summarizing what one can expect to hear if checking out one of these records.  And this year I'm also forcing myself to include one, and only one, song to check out with each entry. Before we begin, as always: a few records of note from 2023 that I didn't mention in my 2023 list because of lack of my listening to them in 2023. Adjy - June Songs, Volume I Buffalo Nichols - The Fatalist Danny Brown - Quaranta Grace Potter - Mother Road KNOWER - KNOWER FOREVER On to 2024, then.  Now, this year was an embarrassment of riches for my musical tastes.  I don't know if I'm just better at hunting down metal that I like, or it was a uniquely good year, but when I already had fifteen hopefuls for my list by June, I knew it'd be a special twelve months.  I didn't even get to do as muc...

One of the more challenging music writing exercises I attempt on this blog is an explanation of why I don't really click with music that's doing a lot of things well.  The traps include spouting unsupported subjective opinions as though they're fact, "supporting" subjective opinions with a boring list of "evidence" as though explanation of taste could be proved, or falling into boring rhetorical patterns.  I feel like there's a lot of "I just don't feel this" in my writing.  I further worry that too many of my reviews end up devolving into "I don't want to just be critical, and I kind of like this, but... [list of things I dislike]" that end up sounding more negative than I want.  I hate to write that way, but, here's a list of things I don't like about Tales From A Thousand Lakes ... Yeah, I'm not mad at Tales , but I'd be lying if I said I was feeling it.  Normally when not for blogging purposes I have a ...

Although pop songs by definition each are self-contained pieces, I have become something of an album person, like many of us (virtual ink elsewhere has been spilled about the unexpected ways in which streaming has pushed people towards, rather than away from, listening to whole albums).  When getting to know a piece of music, I almost always listen to and digest it as a single work, with its tracks played in order.  Certainly these posts reflect that.  Some people are real nerds for track sequencing, and think about how alternative tracklistings might enhance a record, help some songs be their best, and so forth, while others - and I've usually been one of them - tend to figure if a song is good, it'll be good no matter what's before or after it.  If it sucks, same thing.  Specifically in regard to the National, discussing the moody unsettled run that makes the second half of Sleep Well Beast so special is really the only time I've ever considered the sequencing...

Before I start my next long-term metal blogging project, I'm experimenting with formats here.  The shtick is, describe the experience of listening to an accepted metal classic for the first few times as neither a pure first-listen where I can barely remember what I heard (like in the National posts) nor waiting to say anything at all until after I've fully assimilated it (like in the Eluveitie posts).  Hopefully that'll let me show my evolving reaction, from early listens to later listens, whilst actually having something to say each time.  We'll see.  Let's test-drive this and provide a total newb's early impressions about Tales From The Thousand Lakes , the second record from legendary progressive death metal band Amorphis.   At first, with the moody intro of "Thousand Lakes" into the smooth introduction of the chugging riff of "Into Hiding," I'm feeling this record.  Atmosphere in spades, a central sound that could be a slower track fr...

I've devoted paragraphs in multiple previous posts to the idea that National songs have layers.  They have the knack for adding in just enough elements to inspire the listener to take a deeper look at what seemed to be just another mid-tempo song with a guy mumbling about relationship issues.  Well, we have a record that could be a bunch of mid-tempo songs with a guy mumbling about relationship issues.  In my mind, my early impression is that most songs on First Two Pages have one element that makes them a little bit more than they first appear, and just might be that last missing ingredient that puts a song over the top to becoming a favorite.  Or not.  But here's a list of the potential special sauces: "Once Upon A Poolside" - The aah-aah-aah backing vocals during the climax. "Eucalyptus" - Actually gonna go with the lyrics!  At first I was turned off by the device of starting every line with "what about the..." until halfway through the second ...