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.
Alternative country’s tendrils have moved like kudzu over indie rock — first probing exploratively and then blanketing the genre with surprising rapidity and totality. That is a mixed bag.
The alt-country boom means there is an ample supply of rich, warm, enjoyable music that provides substantive counterprogramming to the reliably bankable force that is mainstream country,1 but it’s also become overly pervasive and sometimes asserts its presence in areas that would be best left without a guest pedal steel player. In 2016, it was novel that a label like Third Man Records would put out an album by the supremely talented Margo Price. A decade later, it’s a surprise when a young band’s singer enunciates their g’s and doesn’t find a way to work in pedal steel on a couple of tracks, or when an established artist doesn’t dabble in rootsy sounds.
Still, in a world where every other band sounds like Songs: Ohia, Convinced Friend’s second album, Nowhere Songs,2 manages to stand out.
The Providence, Rhode Island, trio’s sophomore LP is simply a well-executed take on the genre and comes across as especially authentic and heartfelt. And yes, a Rhode Island band’s alt-country album registers as particularly genuine. Austin “A.S.” Wilson, who began Convinced Friend as a solo project, is the trio’s lead singer, sole credited songwriter and plays guitar is a major reason why. Wilson grew up in an oilfield town south of New Orleans, has an unvarnished-but-not-overpowering voice, and a knack for empathetic songwriting that leans into the rockier side of alt-country.3
However, on Convinced Friend’s second album, Wilson isn’t going it alone, and his songs get a major boost from the expanded iteration of Convinced Friend, which includes Nate Halda on guitar and bass and Casey Belisle on drums. A robust roster of guests adds richness, texture, harmonic complexity, and the requisite pedal steel, too.
These are the ingredients that ultimately provide Nowhere Songs‘ songs about nowhere their defining characteristics and flesh out the strong skeleton provided by Wilson, Halda and Belisle. Pedal steel renders appropriately spacy “Robitussin,” guest vocals streak “Big Score” with fatal optimism and violin grants an ironically sweeping scope to “Little Life.” Things get a little thinner when Convinced Friend is pared down to its core members, and it’s a perception that’s not helped by the relative brevity of the album. However, “Shrine” proves even the trimmed-down version of the band is still capable of delivering satisfying crunch.
While there are currently many, many bands working within the same milieu as Convinced Friend, only a handful of heavy hitters are doing it significantly better.
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
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Superstore, Season Two, Episode Three, “Back To Work”
“Actually, I think that cockroach in the light is new.”
“No, Ernie’s been here longer than me.”
“I act like this every day! Not just today!”
“Yep, this is easier.”
“I lost track of the point I was trying to make.”
“Wow, that was spot on.”
“It’s like Amy just disappeared.”
“I want to see that appendix on my desk tomorrow, young lady!”
“Oh, you can just say hangry now. It’s a new word. My cousin made it up.”
“I need this thumb for driving, work… doorknobs!”
“I watch a lot of dog trainer videos, and it’s a lot easier to train a bitch who loves your scent.”
“I stubbed my toe picking up the thumb.”
“Now I had to order thirty of those, so you have any gay guy friends…”
“You’re going too fast, I’m not following you.”
“Nope! I hate cupcakes.. coz I’m a meanie.”
“So grab a cupcake and continue your slow march to death.”
“But what if something happens with strawberry jam?”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
Futurama, Season Fourteen
Caught up on this so far. It’s definitely the best season of the Hulu revival – it’s very close in tone to the original run, with even Billy West’s voice sounding pretty close to how it did twenty-five years ago. It also builds on the ideas of the revivals pretty well; one episode brings back both Marianne – who was desperately wanted by the fandom, for some reason – and Hermes’s dad. It’s fascinating to me that each iteration of the show tends to get better and better as it goes along (outside the movie era), like it builds up steam.
Is fourteen the current season? I think I agree from what I’ve seen so far that it’s been better than the previous two Hulu seasons. (The numbering for seasons really is all over the place.)
That’s the one.
Oh, one note for myself that I forgot: they’ve officially overplayed the Whale Biologist. He’s not funny anymore.
The Crimson Pirate – Burt Lancaster is the titular pirate, who gets caught up in a revolt against some version of the British Navy by locals who apparently are Hispanic. Ignore this total inaccuracy and instead focus on Lancaster and his circus partner Nick Cravat putting their acrobatic skills to good use and Lancaster having a lot more fun than he usually does, and on some really good set pieces, most filmed on location on the island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples. Does this get silly at times? Yes, and occasionally lets the gags and set pieces run long. But overall, it’s a bit of fun pirate nonsense that is cut from the same cloth as The Court Jester and a clear antecedent to Pirates of the Caribbean.
Spider-Noir, “The Man in the Mask” – The series finale (as alas Amazon announced there will be no second season), and a pretty well done one as well. It ties up things well enough that I might even wonder what a second season might have done without repeating the first. We get one last fight, some very solid performances, and that oddly entertaining mix of noir and superheroics. The show won a few technical Emmys over the weekend, and I would say it earned them. So fare thee well, Ben Reilly, private eye.
The Twilight Zone, “The Purple Testament” – Not a great episode, but solid, and maybe best seen as Serling once again reflecting on his time at war.
Barney Miller, “Hot Dogs” – Two uniformed policewomen go undercover on a college campus to find weed dealers without permission from anyone. This is a bit of a mess since it’s trying to show how hard it is for women to get ahead in the male dominated police force, but one of the women falls back on tears to get Inspector Luger to go easy on them. Meanwhile, a man reports his wife is missing, but apparently doesn’t actually have a wife since the photo of her is Jean Harlow. David Lander guests as the student arrested for possession, very much unhappy about being singled out.
The Crimson Pirate was one of my Swashbuckler Summer entries! Good silly fun, even if I think I prefer my swashbuckling humor more breezy and bantery than goofy. Still solid entertainment.
TCM is doing swashbuckler Fridays this month. Interesting pick is The Exile, A pirate film directed by Max Ophuls, of all people. Wondering if we’ll see swordfighting choreographed to long deep focus tracking shots.
Live Music – Ratboys came to town again, and played exactly the same venue they did last time. Kinda feel like a band that should be a bit bigger by now but I’m not going to complain about getting to see them play in another small room with good sound. Their set was really strong and the crowd was really responsive. I didn’t expect much from the opening act, Salarymen, as their bandcamp bio is bland and their press photos have an odd vibe, but they were actually pretty great – an Australian band with 70s pop-rock influences (and good hooks) but also some kinda Beach House-esque dreaminess.
Twilight Zone, “The Purple Testament” – impressive production values, but the story lacked something for me. More on Thursday.
Woo, live music! Haven’t cottoned to Ratboys, I should give them another shot.
I think their latest album might be their best. I really liked their early stuff, then they lost me a bit with “Printer’s Devil”, but the last couple have won me back around.
Friday night I went to a Fringe show and…hoo boy. The first act, opera singing combined with distorted harp, was okay, but the second was torture. This was in essence everything people make fun of with performance/interpretive art: screeching voices, malfunctioning equipment which made the debacle go even longer, clown makeup, weird elongated dancing, and a vaguely anti-capitalist message that didn’t cohere with the presentation. It was very West Philadelphia in the worst sense, which is to say (1) I knew two of the people performing here and (2) theater kids gone amuck in a city that actually doesn’t have much theater kid energy. My friend and I didn’t stick around for the last part.
What did we listen to?
Finished Blank Check on Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which was pretty okay but how many times did we need to be reminded about the sitcom spinoff? And then looped back to the one on Scorsese’s first films. I think they really are trying not to be too zany for this series, but it’s not easy for them now.
Ford Focus covered Clear and Present Danger, and this podcast is really finding its footing as a reasonably long, moderately energetic, and occasionally repetitious show. They have also added a brief discussion of the “cars in the movie” since the series title makes it sound like a car show and not about Harrison Ford movies.
1001 Albums, etc.
Sepultura – Arise: I put this off for quite a while as I kept having headaches and thrash metal didn’t seem to be the answer. But when I did get around to it, I was pleasantly surprised – much more enjoyable to me than Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax etc. I think mostly due to the production, which is satisfyingly punchy.
Slint – Spiderland: a long-time favourite, I set aside some time for this one and got my vinyl copy out for a proper revisit, still absolutely love it and in context of the list it does kinda feel like it came out of nowhere. In the inimitable words of Steve Albini, “Ten Fuckin’ Stars”.
U2 – Achtung Baby: perhaps the least objectionable of the U2 albums on the list and yet it still pissed me off. I just do not get on with this band.
The KLF – The White Room: good fun, although the non-single tracks are a little forgettable. Probably more interesting as a concept / story than a real band to me, but still an enjoyable listen.
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Screen Drafts – Mel Brooks draft was fun, I’ve only really seen the big ones and should really make the effort to see a few of the others at some point, Silent Movie and High Anxiety seem far more relevant to my interests now than they did many years ago when I was watching Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein for the first time. Jordan Hoffman is fun… in fairly small doses.
James L. Brooks draft was interesting, I think I’ve only seen two of his films and they came in in first and last place, I guess I shouldn’t let the horrors of “How Do You Know” put me off checking out a couple of his other films at some point. Specifically “Terms of Endearment” which I’ve always found an offputting title but it does sound like something I’d enjoy. Eva Anderson is a very fun guest and I admire her commitment to “fuckery”.
Eh tu on U2, vomas?
If I was a lawyer, I would feel too conflicted to work “pro Bono”.
” Jordan Hoffman is fun… in fairly small doses.” This. He aligns with me a lot in terms of his tastes and as a fellow nerdy Jew (and he is also bizarrely the slightly more manic lookalike of an old friend who is a sci fi writer), but the idea of listening to one of his podcasts on a weekly basis exhausts me.
I’ve never understood why Silent Movie has fallen into such obscurity. It’s probably his most inviting, if least subtextually complex film, and the gags are incredibly sublime. It ranks awfully close to WHAT’S UP, DOC as a slapstick farce of that era.
Finished the new Gary Stewart biography by Jimmy McDonough so I went back into Stewart’s first two albums. Just excellent honkytonk country and he really did have one of the best voices in the genre, able to slither and plead even better than obvious inspiration Jerry Lee Lewis. (Try out “She’s Acting Single, I’m Drinking Doubles.”) Looking forward to listening again to the live material McDonough has discovered.
That’s an incredible title, I do love a wordplay-focused country song.
It’s great!
I spent hours yesterday listening to a playlist of all the new songs I’d heard this year and wanted to consider as far as being favorites. I’d been thinking this year wasn’t as strong at the top as the last few, and that’s kinda true, but man, it’s deep, and especially with bands I hadn’t listened to much before. There’s a chance they could nearly entirely crowd out the bands I had. I’m not sure. I guess we’ll all find out at the end of the year.
Year of the Month updates:
This September, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1937.
Sept. 18th: Gillian Nelson: Pluto’s Quin-pup-lets
Sept. 20th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Hobbit
Sept. 22nd: Lauren James: Stage Door
Sept. 25th: Gillian Nelson: Donald’s Ostrich
And here’s all the movies, albums, books from 1998 you can sign up for this October!
Oct. 3rd: Gillian Nelson: Movie Surfers
Oct. 4th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Pi
Oct. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Mighty Joe Young
Oct. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Who Moved My Cheese?
Oct. 30th: Gillian Nelson: Halloweentown