The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely underheard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Many artists have shown an appreciation and respect for punk and post-punk in recent years. Even more have displayed a craven awareness of the genres’ appealing balance of cool cachet, relatively broad appeal and versatility.
It’s become somewhat rare to give a rock or pop album a spin and not hear blatant echoes of Gang of Four, New Order, the Fall, Television, the Smiths and/or the Cure. Vigorous bass, nervy drums, sloshy, sometimes harmonious guitar and shimmering synths are nearly omnipresent. Sometimes the real Robert Smith shows up to lend legitimacy and gravitas.
While demonstrative love for punk and post-punk is roughly as widespread as could be tolerable, few artists show their affinity with as much transparency and sincerity as Ceremony. The long-running California punk band recently released Tell Me Your Dream,1 and if the quintet’s New Order-alluding name isn’t a clear enough signal of Ceremony’s influences, the music on its seventh album makes it even more plain.
Tell Me Your Dream, Ceremony’s first long-player in seven years, is a brisk 10-track circuit that includes exercises that evoke the light, deliberate and flexible sound of the band’s namesake, Minutemen-esque heavy calisthenics and some odd static motions that owe something to each category.
Even when things get a little disjointed, like on “Madness,” which is defined by effects-mutated panning guitar and a strutting bass, Ceremony credibly pulls off everything it attempts. However, there also isn’t much to leave an indelible mark or truly elevate the material. “Other Hells” is a pleasantly pissed-off burst of California punk. “Antenna” is a breezy, sing-along built around synthesizer and bass. Both are pretty good, show obvious fondness for great bands of yore and would be pleasant additions to a relevantly themed playlist or mixtape. However, neither song is the sort of transcendent, heart-immolating work that established the tropes Ceremony put to solid use.
Tell Me Your Dream is an extremely competent modern rock album made by a well-practiced band. Ceremony’s improbable 21-year-and-counting existence makes it clear that this sort of project remains important to its members. It’s not Earth-shattering, but in 2026, 30 minutes of sincerity and professionalism is fairly appealing.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
This week I'm breaking format to rank the albums I've written about this year.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Superstore, Season One, Episode Ten, “Demotion”
“I didn’t know Dina was into fancy little porcelain dolls.”
“I know I’m gonna miss your constant criticism of me.”
“I’m gonna miss that too.”
The extra basically feeding a guy little sausages made me laugh.
“I don’t wanna be assistant manager.”
“You didn’t even look out the window!”
“Since when have you been in this for the money?”
“Pretty much from day one.”
“I love how you observe things.”
“I was getting a stress rash in the shape of Abraham Lincoln.”
“She would not have been cool about the whole… how do I say it… Jewishness of the equation.”
“I like just about everybody I meet. I have no standards.”
“People love hearing good news from me!”
“Yeah, totally unique in that way.”
“So what was the point of that?”
“I dunno. I’m bored.”
“Don’t look at her! She can’t help you right now!”
“Have you ever held a dying man’s hand in yours, while you tell him that we don’t accept rewards points for his medication? Literally dying while I was holding his hand.”
“This one’s eyes are dead. But this one’s eyes are alive.”
“Now my demands are doubled.”
“Amy? Are you leaving or just peeing?”
“I think you can go bigger.”
“That phone has a really good speaker on it.”
“Am I doing this to help someone else? Or to make myself feel better?”
[customer puts bread products back on the shelf]
“Though it has dramatically increased my respect for Ben Affleck.”
Tales from the Crypt, “Lover Come Hack to Me” and “Collection Completed”
Surprised by how little I got from “Lover Come Hack to Me,” since the script was by veteran horror writer Michael McDowell, whose work I generally love. But this tries to squeeze too much story into its runtime, crowding in not only an over-the-top Gothic house and the family drama to match but also ghosts and premonitions. There’s a good potential core here in the slimy, mercenary husband sealing his doom not through his obvious faults but through doing too good for a job convincing his wife he’s sincere, but it gets bogged down. Amanda Plummer is a lot of fun when she gets to go fully bananas, though.
“Collection Completed” works better as a story, even if I’m one of those people who can find dead pets hard to take. (Very happy the glorious Mew Mew made it out okay.) But the swing-around in sympathies is well-done, as M. Emmet Walsh, though dickish, starts off pretty sympathetic–a man now fully in a home life that doesn’t feel like it has any space for him, in ways both mundane (the bathroom scene) and absurd (the steak vs. cereal, the aspirin in the brownie)–and then becomes a maniacal pet-killer taunting his wife with the taxidermy-restored bodies of her beloved animals. His compromise between their interests doesn’t work, but hers does, and the only thing that drags this down is the neighbor discovering the stuffed Walsh at the end. Nah, let this madness go on with no interference.
Agreed, “Collection Completed” is a blast; Walsh is perfect at this kind of madness and selfishness. I honestly bought that he was so head down about the job that he never thought once about his wife’s home life or love of animals.
He didn’t even know one of the dogs was named after him! Truly a next-level disconnection from his wife’s life. And yeah, Walsh is so much fun here.
I’m also a sucker for the world’s most obvious Chekhov’s guns, and that sledgehammer is a beauty: I cracked up the second it appeared on screen.
Elementary, “Down Where the Dead Delight” – Someone plants a bomb in a corpse in order to destroy another corpse at the morgue, killing an EMT (Amy Rutberg). The reason for all this is a bit murky. Indeed the whole mystery is a bit convoluted, which hasn’t been happening much this season. The highlight is a very smart use of NYC geography I was not aware of: the first corpse is found in a place called Idlewild Park (near the former Idlewild Airport, now called JFK), the second was found in the same park but on the other side of the Queens-Nassau boundary and thus legally in another jurisdiction and in North Woodmere Park. (They did not, however, film there but in Forest Park, one of my favorite parks.) Meanwhile, the cop who was harassing Joan asks her help in finding a suspect, only what the cop really wants is Joan’s help in making the suspect pay for a crime he wasn’t arrested for. A friend on another message board, commenting about why he likes Sherlock but not Elementary, cites among other things the level of copaganda here. And it’s there for sure. But every so often, the writers acknowledge that cops are not always the good guys, which I doubt happens on Blue Bloods.
The Twilight Zone, “I Shot an Arrow in the Air” – Generally solid episode but with gaping plot holes. More to come.
Barney Miller, “Vigilante” – A local resident is going around beating up perps, and our guys are not sure how they feel about that. Until they decide to look the other way. Not sure how I feel about this, either. Meanwhile, a man is arrested for crossdressing – I wonder when that sort of law finally came off the books – and the show is not sure how to treat him, either, though there is maybe a bit of sympathy in there. And James Gregory makes his first appearance as Inspector Frank Lugar, Barney’s maybe-boss and an old school lunkhead of a cop who is the usual James Gregory character but played for laughs.
The “I Shot an Arrow into the Air” write-up contains certain complaints about these probably being some of the worst-trained, worst-screened astronauts in history, unsurprisingly.
What do you expect? Their three best trained men ceased to exist, and the first one in the program was still recovering from his 20 days in isolation.
Genuine LOL. When I originally reviewed these episodes, I often attached an Astronaut Survival Rating to any space-related episodes, and you can certainly already see why!
Pearl (2022) – The only Ti West film I really like and not coincidentally the one not influenced by Seventies slashers or mumblecore or whatever the fuck he’s masturbating about usually. It looks gorgeous, lush with color and strong lighting choices. (Didn’t love the split screen stuff near the end that seemingly breaks the rules the film created for itself.) Where the glacial movement of his movies often drives me nuts, the structure (which is strong!) and the pacing decidedly fits a character study and an empathetic one, raising difficult questions about a psychopath’s desire to be loved. Pearl wants to create her own reality, as do many people who love the movies and want to get out of a hard life. Trouble is that this reality is violent and poisoned. The final tableau and Goth’s heartbreaking, bone-chilling face indicate that she is trying, with Howard, to present her truest self, rotten and sick and repulsive, and isn’t that what we all want? To be understood?
What did we listen to?
Blank Check, interview with Andrew Stanton – Wow, over and done in 90 minutes! Well, not done since they also interviewed him later at a screening of John Carter. But done in the sense that I didn’t need to block out more time. And it was an interesting interview at that. Stanton deals well with Griffin the Pixar fanboy, and has some really good insights into the Pixar process.
The Kinks, “Something Else” – The YouTube channel Parlogram did a feature on this, and I figured I should listen along. It’s a good solid album but I am not as into their 60s stuff as their 70s stuff.
The Light In The Piazza – Planning to see the pro shot but this is a fabulous musical score, centered on a mother, Margaret, and her grown daughter, Clara, visiting Italy in 1960, where Margaret once spent her honeymoon. Clara falls in love immediately with a handsome and sweet Italian boy, Fabrizio. This in theory sounds lovely. Here’s the rub: Clara was kicked by a horse as a child and is developmentally disabled. Margaret, certain Clara can’t live independently, and perhaps not ready to let go of her daughter given her now loveless marriage, wants to stop the romance from developing.
Some of the songs sound like what Rodgers and Hammerstein would have written, sumptuously orchestrated and epic, which tracks given that Adam Guettel is Rodgers’ grandson. Guettel has his mentor Sondheim’s mastery of psychological realism and tension to boot, and one song, “Hysteria”, is the best evocation of a stress-induced meltdown I’ve ever heard in music. The plot sounds antiquated but what’s interesting is that Clara has mental and sexual agency, able to express astonishment and joy over her love, as well as the exhaustion with condescension that is familiar to any disabled person who gets talked down to. This is a subversive love story in two senses – Clara and Fabrizio’s love appears more mature and sincere than anyone expects, and Margaret is more dependent on her daughter than she thinks, and the beauty of the final song, “Fable,” is Margaret wishing her well on her journey as a grown woman, not just a helpless child. Love does not always last; we need to discover that for ourselves. Would highly recommend “The Beauty Is” and the title song, which brings me to tears.
Pink Floyd
Eight Tracks – Basically a new greatest hits package. But with some interesting segues with One Of These Days going into Wot’s The Deal? and Wish You Were Here into Time. The big release here is the full Pigs On The Wing with Snowy White’s solo, which was his audition for the band, connecting the two passages from Animals. For completests.
Is There Anybody Out There, The Wall Live 80-81 – This has been my go to album for this material since its release. It’s much more full sounding with a separation in the instruments whereas the studio version is claustrophobic and muddled. Richard Wright’s keyboards are buried on the studio album but at the forefront on the live disc. There are some extended Gilmour solos and some connective instrumental passages not on the studio album. It still dips for me at the start of disc two when Waters carries a string of songs but finishes strong.
I’m a Rohnert Park loyalist – even saw them live in 2011, incredible show – so I’ll give this a shot. However, Ceremony really lost something imo when they largely went post-punk and moved out of hardcore and powerviolence. Felt like some hardcore bands going metal in the Eighties where they made a wrong choice somewhere along the line.