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. I’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
After listening to an album by the Armed, my brain always feels tenderized. Maybe a little too softened, to be honest. When I finish a long play by the Detroit hardcore collective, I’m pretty sure I can tilt my head and have runny pink goo, not unlike the substance purportedly fashioned into McNuggets, leak out of my ear.1
The Armed, whose precise membership was obscured for most of the project’s existence, make layered, noisy music.2 They play it loud, and typically, they play it fast. Every one of their albums is both impressively cool and just a smidge frightening — especially if some part of your soon-to-be-pink slime associates yelling with the unpleasant sensation of being in trouble. There’s a lot of yelling in the Armed’s discography. A lot. And yet, they may have reached new heights in that area with The Future is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed, the project’s sixth and most aggressive album to date.
The Future is Here…‘s connective tissue is weltschmerz, a German word for the feeling that accompanies the realization that the real world will always fall short of idyllic expectations. It literally translates to “world pain,” and is often described as a weary, melancholy feeling.3 The Armed take a more high-energy approach and choose to express it via incandescent, burn-it-all-down-and-do-better-next-time rage that befits the album’s title. That makes for a listen that’s turbulent, cathartic and grim, particularly when lyrics are both comprehensible and audible over the din. It’s the sort of album that opens with the shrieked words “Fools, liars, heathens, traitors/ Repent, be saved” while a world-flattening cacophony stampedes along. Its catchier songs include lyrics like, “The liars in the void/ My only friends are fucking scum/ How are we as thick as thieves and still alone?/ In the noise we are all just ghosts,” and “Can’t you see I’m on the edge?/ Broken plans in tangled webs/ Bleeding tongue inside my head/ Losing faith I never had.”
Those catchier songs, however, are legitimately catchy. The Armed have always managed to push their skull-churning sonic onslaught in surprisingly melodic directions, but “Kingbreaker,” “Sharp Teeth” and “I Steal What I Want” are three of the most tuneful songs in the band’s entire discography.4
“I Steal What I Want” sounds like an irresponsibly souped-up Lullabies to Paralyze-era Queens of the Stone Age song. This tracks since Troy Van Leeuwen, who is a recurring contributor to the Armed and plays on The Future is Here..., has had a presence in QOTSA since they were touring behind Songs for the Deaf. Although even in the Nick Oliveri days, none of those desert rockers screamed with quite as much bloody-throated intensity as the Armed vocalist Tony Wolski. “Kingbreaker” is a two-minute blast of grungy garage rock that successfully incorporates banshee wailing and the kind of breakdowns you’d expect from a collective that includes Kurt Ballou, the guitarist from Converge. “Sharp Teeth” turns lead vocal duties over to Cara Drolshagen, who kicks it off with a wordless and delicate “do-do-do-do-dah-do.” Her voice is shortly thereafter joined by bursts of crunchy, compressed noise and pounding percussion. The song detonates as it heads into its Wolski-screamed chorus. Swirling eddies of sound propel the barely recognizable words “I’m far from heaven” skyward like ash carried upward by searing-hot volcanic gas. The song somewhat resets, and it erupts again. Through it all, the wordless melody that began “Sharp Teeth” remains the song’s foundation, resulting in one of the year’s weirdest earworms.
There’s no shortage of chaotic instrumental implosions and feral seething on The Future is Here… Album-opener “Well Made Play” seems to fall apart amid the loud, loose clatter of drums and the wail of a saxophon before it congeals back together like a T-1000 and sprints with arms pumping through the finish line. “Broken Mirror,” which features the high-octane Michigan band Prostitute, is especially vitriolic, taking aim at “yacht club socialists,” “patriot grifters,” “Leninist landlords,” among other creative epithets. These moments are interesting and enjoyable, but it’s the unexpectedly catchy moments, like the high mechanical whine that finds a synth-rock groove on “Gave Up,” that make an extremely persuasive case for repeat listens.
After repeatedly acting on that audio argument and spending considerable time with The Future is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed, my mind has once again been pulverized by belligerent melodies. It is viscous, raw and ready to be reformed into a cogent meat patty. I heartily encourage others to seek out this experience.
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?
Wise Blood – A shockingly scrappy, idiosyncratic work for a director in his seventies who made some of the best studio system movies, John Huston, it’s also a project that comes close to the sheer weirdness of the Flannery O’Connor novel in part because O’Connor was friends with the costume designer Sally Fitzgerald, and she babysat the screenwriters, her sons, Michael and Benedict Fitzgerald. (Star Brad Dourif notes that “the movie was a family affair,” to the extent that they changed Huston’s mind about what the ending meant.) But you’ve also got a murderer’s row of good actors like Dourif, Harry Dean Stanton, Amy Wright, and some Southerners effectively playing themselves such as sex worker Betty Lou Groover as Leora Watts. A strange story of the need to worship SOMETHING and to connect, but not really knowing how to without impulsive, sometimes hilarious action and violence. Love the plaintive Alex North score too.
Hell yeah, great, weird movie. Stanton is so sleazy and Dourif is incredible, refusing to admit he’s haunted. “Love the plaintive Alex North score too” — you know Conor, in some ways we are very different people.
Dourif has to give such a tricky performance, religiosity without actual Christ in his heart. Also his interview about the movie is on Criterion Channel and worth watching. Lol, it’s a good score!
Still baffled by the cheery Dukes of Hazzard music when Dourif wrecks his car
The Practice, “Race the Devil” – Bobby’s priest conducts an exorcism on a parishioner (who suffers from mental illness and thinks she is possessed), and the woman dies of a heart attack. Bobby then races to line things up so that the priest is not arrested and faces no investigation. It’s a bravura performance by Bobby but one that leaves his priest (the wonderful Robert Prosky) reeling from seeing all the legally ethical and morally questionable twists and turns. And all of the stuff about the exorcism is played straight. For comedy, we look to a bizarre situation where a litigious client refuses to let his proctologist pull out a probe and Eugene is stuck negotiating an exit strategy, and to Jimmy filming a commercial against the wishes of the rest of the firm. Guests also include John DeLancie as the proctologist and Aida Turtorro as the director of Jimmy’s ad.
MASH, “The Late Doctor Pierce” – An army screw-up declares Hawkeye dead, which his father learns about before Hawkeye does. Ever more desperate as Hawkeye can’t reach home by phone or by telegram – we’re in December 1952 and Ike is making his pivotal visit to Korea – and can’t get paid and can’t get any release, and he’s about to just go along with being declared dead when wounded arrive and just barely snap him out of it. Dark comedy turns into just plain darkness for the first time on the show. Well directed by Alan Alda, from a script by Glen and Les Charles, later of Taxi and Cheers fame. Richard Masur plays a cheerful but ghoulish morgue officer sent to take the not so dead body.
Frasier, “The Seal Who Came to Dinner” – Needing to host dinner to impress members of his gourmet club, and unhappy with the tiny chip in Frasier’s balcony window, Niles makes unauthorized use of Maris’s beach house. Which would have gone well except for the corpse of a seal outside. A seal that no matter how hard they try to dispose of at sea keeps washing ashore and making things worse. Not entirely as successful a farce as previous attempts, but we’re much closer to the usual levels of humor than we have been. Inspired by actual events at a vacation house rented by producer Christopher “Not THAT One” Lloyd. Playwright Christopher Durang has fun as an imperious world class chef named Sebastian Melmoth (Oscar Wilde’s alias after he left England following his release from prison).
Love Hawkeye’s exhausted, delayed rise to his feet at the end of “The Late Captain Pierce.” The show does a good job pushing his resistance just a little bit past where I reflexively expect it to stop, and it hammers home how worn-out and sick to death he is of all this, and how badly he needs an out … and then, of course, his fundamental morality prevents him from taking it. He can’t ever check out as much as he’d hypothetically like to.
And oops, I got the title wrong, sorry.
I didn’t even notice!
This is another good episode for how much Hawkeye loves his dad, which always gets to me.
The X-Files, “Irresistible” and “Die Hand Die Verletzt”
Two strong but unconventional monster-of-the-week cases.
“Irresistible” is “X-Files does Criminal Minds,” where an unnerving serial killer has no whiff of the paranormal about him (aside from Scully repeatedly getting flashes of him as a demonic cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Master from Buffy, a jump-scare that feels like the series lacking confidence in its non-SFF premise* but, more interestingly, could also be lingering trauma from her alien abduction). Nick Chinlund hits all the right eerie notes, and the episode is also good at supplying technically mundane but nightmarish-in-consequence details, like Pfaster always asking for clarification about what kind of shampoo to use. The exploration of Scully’s character and fears doesn’t feel as natural to me here as it does in some other episodes–more like this could have been plopped down in almost any storyline, though it does make sense that she’d be less inured to this kind of horror than former profiler Mulder–but I can’t argue with how great Anderson is with a showcase episode.
* I looked at Wikipedia and saw Carter’s justification for it, but I don’t think the episode puts that idea across with any real power, especially since it is a show that commonly traffics in the paranormal: it feels like a fake-out, not an expression of the human mind struggling to grapple with something horrific but sadly human.
“Die Hand Die Verletzt” is pure supernatural horror, almost as much of a break from the show’s usual genre stomping grounds as “Irresistible.” It’s a lot of fun. There’s an anaconda! (They tell me it’s a python, but I feel sure they’re lying.) There’s a rain of frogs! There’s some funny satire about devil worshippers who are just going through the motions, not showing up for their black masses in the woods, getting soft about getting their kids fully involved, more interested in suburban power jockeying and the cushy life than in serving their purported master. And in the midst of all that, it manages some good horror imagery (snake eyes!) and disturbing moments, like Shannon’s recovered memories–although apparently exaggerated and influenced by media coverage, they’re nonetheless real to her–or the antisemitic news article. Effective and creepy as a procedural-meets-Satan setup, but it doesn’t feel quite X-Files-y to me, and I find it hard to believe Mulder and Scully wouldn’t have more questions about how all this was unfolding.
So, two interesting experiments with the show’s usual approach. I liked both, even if they aren’t exactly what I’m here for, but I probably would’ve liked them more if I hadn’t had a splitting headache when I was watching them.
Taken, “Taken”
Miniseries finale. I’ll save my thoughts for the TV round-up, but I teared up at least twice.
I remember the team said that after “Die Hand Die Verletzt” they wanted Mulder and Scully to have a more active role in the stories, as they felt too passive here.
Letter to Brezhnev – spotted this on a streaming service and had never heard of it, a low-budget 80s British romantic dramedy featuring a young(ish) Alfred Molina in a supporting role. It’s a pretty fantastic time capsule, so many glorious 80s haircuts and ridiculous fashions, it’s also a love-letter to the city and people of Liverpool while otherwise being pretty scathing about the state of the UK in the mid 80s. It’s about two working class girls who meet a pair of Russian sailors on 24-hour shore leave. One of them is content with a one-night stand but the other couple fall for each other even though their respective situations make the relationship seem doomed. It’s a sweet film with a wonderfully caustic sense of humour, which is a fun combination. I suspect the sheer levels of Scouse accent would make it near-incomprehensible to non-UK audiences without subtitles but that’s part of the fun! A real gem, happy to have found it.
Poker Face, episodes 1-4 – fancied some more high-concept crime / whodunnit action and had been meaning to check this out for a while. It’s both very impressive in terms of the cinematography and high-profile guest stars, and also loads of fun. Lyonne’s character being a “human lie-detector” is a fun premise – seeing her puzzle out mysteries with that superpower but no other real crime-fighting experience or power to take action works well. Loved the fourth episode with the hook of “is it still wrong to kill a drummer if they’re really annoying?” – very relatable.
Live Music – did a day at Supernormal festival, which is a small weekend fest where the musical remit is basically “experimental”. Broad range of stuff but no band ever gets to play twice and they’re 15 years in which is quite impressive. I saw some all-female sludge-metal, live-looping cello, a violin / drum duo and closed on an intense IDM / techno set so it’s definitely a diverse bunch of stuff, it also has a really nice chilled-out vibe with good food and drink and plenty of visual art as well as the music. Will definitely try for a full weekend pass next year, I’ve had friends sing its praises (and my cousin was an organiser for years) so it’s ridiculous that it’s taken me this long to check it out, really.
Woo, live music festival!
Wooooooo live chill-out vibes and good food and drink!!
I gave up on S2 of Poker Face, but I still really like S1, and “Rest in Metal” is one of my favorites. Both those songs are legitimately catchy! And John Darnielle sadly singing, “You can’t unmurder someone,” makes me laugh whenever I think about it. (I’m seeing The Mountain Goats on Friday, I should yell out a request for that.)
Haha yeah, I love how blatantly he implicates himself in song. And the music is really well done throughout! Great call from them on the casting.
Woo live weird music! Fewer woos for Poker Face, I absolutely was rooting for drummer death there but also felt that despite the great cast the vibe of the band seemed to be a bit off, in terms of their previous success and sub-Spinal Tap booking skills.
Yeah that’s fair, definitely some major clunky band stuff to overlook in the name of enjoyment.
The Kids In The Hall, Season Three, Episode Sixteen
– I love that Scott Thompson sketches are one step away from arrogance, like his list of celebrities he looks like. Self-obsessed without being a dick (or worse, unfunny) about it.
– “I waited a month, you prick!”
– “There is no bird, I was just miming you prrrick!”
– “It’s a fact that Vanilla Ice’s career crashed so badly that he’s back to selling vanilla ice cream. […] Wow, life is an ironic river, isn’t it?”
– “How’s your Mom?” / “She’s great. Her arm grew back.”
– Bauer looking for pot was a very Lynchian sketch for this show.
– “Have you got any pot?” / “No way! Makes me red!”
– “A great jean jacket just takes time, you know? But brain cells are gone forever.”
Ahh, great episode, a few classics here, including the Bauer sketch.
Also, while Val Kilmer was not one of the celebrities Scott Thompson compared himself to, I had the thought the other night that Thompson would have also killed it as Gay Perry.
Police Squad! Ep. 1: “A Substantial Gift (The Broken Promise)”
The first episode of the show that went on to become The Naked Gun series. Zany wordplay (“I shot Twice”), visual gags (“Little Italy”), and a memorable scene of physical comedy in a dentist office.
A few other folks have been watching this recently, and I love to hear how everyone has different favorite lines and gags. There are just so many good ones!
The new King of the Hill, which I’ll have more to say about on Thursday, but folks… it’s good.
What did we listen to?
Decided that today I’d go through the Talking Heads discography. I rarely sit and listen to a band’s catalog album by album, but there’s real satisfaction in hearing a group evolve and push their sound like this. Onto More Songs About Buildings and Food and there’s more reverb and tension/release factors at play in the tracks (“Thank You for Sending Me an Angel” and “Warning Sign”). Byrne more than ever sounds like a proto-Nathan Fielder, utterly autistic in his bafflement as well as his simultaneous comprehension of how fucking weird civilization is.
Also, while I suspect Byrne IS a jerk, I really want a neurodivergent writer to interview Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz because sometimes journalists take what they say at face value and…well…did you ever *try* to connect on his level?
I have an article out about David Byrne, autism, and Frantz’s views on Byrne as an autistic person: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ought/vol4/iss2/5/
I read that and have appeared in that journal! Excellent work.
I’m the music and film editor of that journal – and I encourage everyone to consider submitting work. We welcome contributions from scholars, researchers, writers, and artists.
I think the only album from the 1001 Albums, etc. list I’ve played this week is Peter Gabriel’s solo debut which I’ve heard before and don’t massively care for, there’s something about his music I find slightly annoying when it doesn’t hit me right. Solsbury Hill is admittedly a rather lovely tune though.
New Music – the Pacing and Fortitude Valley albums are both strong examples of the fizzy / punky indiepop I find mostly irresistible and will be getting more plays.
Blank Check, Barton Fink – got about 45 minutes left but this is another good one, really enjoying the Coens chat. Chris Weitz is a good guest as usual, and the opening section discussing his struggles in the studio system was interesting and a smart tie-in to the film of the week.
Hilarious that the Coens hadn’t HAD actual issues with the studios at that point in their careers and just thought it’d be funny to create this schmuck writing a wrestling picture.
Haha yeah, I love that their default response to any question about mysterious elements of their films seems to be “well, we kinda just thought it would be funny to do that”
Indeed, some of my best artistic work has come from “I thought it would be funny or cool to do that.”
Studio-wise maybe not, but the writers block aspect was very real! I do like how ruthless they are about it though.
Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair
Groovy. I’m always worried dance music won’t click with me, a veteran non-dancer, but this is a fear that’s been disproven many times, most recently by this. This is a fun, delightful, immersive ride. I’m already in the mood to put it on again, and I feel like I’ll be in that mood a lot.
Shake the Sheets, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Great stuff, and I’m now excited to encounter more Ted Leo and the Pharmacists further on up the list. Energetic and catchy. “Heart Problems” was a highlight for me, but there weren’t any misses here.
Boy in da Corner, Dizzee Rascal
Started off just a touch too frenetic for my tastes, and then the album settled down a little and I became more appreciative of its brilliance. Kickass energy here, along with a very distinctive feel–Dizzee Rascal himself, Black British street culture, the electronic tinge. “I Luv U” wins out as my favorite track, especially since it’s the song that first grabbed me, but there are a lot of highs.
Ta det lugnt, Dungen
I’m enough of a lyrics person that I often can’t completely gel with music in languages I don’t speak (i.e., most languages), but this won me over anyway. (And hey, an occasional word in English does make it through!) I can’t say I know what any of the songs are about, but I enjoyed listening to them and will revisit them. Hopefully Dungen won’t mind too much that I’m projecting probably inaccurate ideas on their discography. This just really rocks.
Medúlla, Björk
Gorgeous and unusual. There’s an intimacy here that you don’t feel with all a capella work–maybe some of the warmth comes from the beatboxing, or maybe it’s just Björk’s own sensibility coming through and pulling me into the fold? But this is all the perfect example of how chasing your particular artistic vision can take you to somewhere weird and sublime.
LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem
I love this opening with “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” just immediately hitting the gas with a cool song with great beats, and the rest of the album does indeed live up to that. It’s impressive and cool–the darker tones of “Tribulations,” the personal nature of “Losing My Edge,” the almost spooky pinball game intro to “Disco Infiltrator” before it hits the harder bounce–and I appreciate it a lot, even if it doesn’t quite hook my heart the way some of these albums do.
Blueberry Boat, The Fiery Furnaces
I sank into this rather than trying to figure it out, and I don’t regret that, though I’ll have to go back and poke at it more later. It was a pleasure to just take in the complex, clever, rich strangeness here. Surprised to find this actually reminded me a little of Blue Cathedral, at least in terms of the dense, surprising song construction where you’d get false endings within a track.
Screen Drafts, “Standalone Sci-Fi,” “2024 Mega Draft,” “Internet Horror,” and “1999 Mini-Mega”
Technically, that’s over the last two weeks, but I forgot to mention these last time. “Standalone Sci-Fi” is an instant classic for being positively aghast about what’s been left off, but it was still fun; “Internet Horror” was really solid, and I’m delighted my beloved Cam made it on. “2024 Mega Draft” stands out for the outrageous gamesmanship involved in keeping many people’s bulletproof #1 off the list completely. I’m always adding movies to my Letterboxd watchlist after these; the competitive-cooperative ranking is entertaining, but the big plus here is just hearing all the film discussion. And again, I’m even more sympathetic to the drafters’ plight after trying this with a friend and us both accidentally boxing out a stone-cold classic.
That’s a pretty eclectic run!
Ted Leo did a collaborative album with Aimee Mann under the name The Both about a decade ago that might be the best thing in each artist’s discography.
I’d give it a strong endorsement if you’re enjoying Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.
I’ll have to check that out! I’ve liked what I’ve heard of Mann, too.
I grew up on Aimee Mann’s solo stuff (yes, my dad was depressed, how did you know) and had no idea she was in famous Boston band Til Tuesday until I was maybe 26.
#66-60.
I’m curious now what the most seemingly random stretch of 5-7 albums on the list would be.
Great, I’m gonna have to try to so hard not to spend all afternoon looking through the list and picking out a candidate stretch for that.
Look at me hiding behind an “I’m just asking questions” shtick like any other asshole while I deliberately provoke this. 😀
Just imagine I posted the Tracy Jordan “I’ll kill you, white devil!” image here.
That’s gotta be up there as far as album runs go. 52-46 or 46-40 could be contenders, too. Maybe something like 30-24? Oddly, given the indie-rock prevalence on the list, the 20s and 30s were tougher to choose from because there are stretches there that are heavy on rap.
Looking forward to checking out the Standalone Sci-Fi episode, that sounds like great fun. I just listened to the Syfy Original Movies episode which was really fun even though I’ve seen none of them and can’t really be bothered to do so – having insiders as the guests still made it a really interesting listen.
Oh, I need to listen to that one. Maybe not as great for grabbing movie recs, but it should still be a lot of fun. (I certainly remember boggling at a lot of the promos for those movies back when I regularly watched Syfy…)
Alas, I don’t have much to add in terms of additional commentary on these albums, but you are pretty much correct. “I Luv U” is fire, Hercules and Love Affair are fun, LCD Soundsystem is fun, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists are great (and going to get better), etc.
Year of the Month update!
This August, we’ll be covering 1959. Check out all these movies, albums, books, et al
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Pillow Talk/Some Like It Hot
Aug. 8th: Gillian Nelson: Noah’s Ark
Aug. 15th: Gillian Nelson: I Captured the King of the Leprechauns
Aug. 18th: Sam Scott: Imitation of Life
Aug. 2oth: John Bruni: Shadows
Aug. 22nd: Gillian Nelson: Khrushchev Goes to Disneyland
Aug. 29th: Gillian Nelson: The Monorail
Aug. 31st: Tristan J. Nankervis: North by Northwest
And in September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
Sept. 22nd: Sam Scott: Holiday