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 under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Dunes rocks.
There’s no reason to gild the lily, employ sweaty metaphor or work in a zig-zagging lede. It’s that simple. Dunes, a three-piece band out of Newcastle, U.K., make music. That music rocks.
Dunes traffics in the sort of unapologetically hard-nosed alternative rock that ruled shit-kicking corners of the airwaves during the 20th century’s death rattle. Think back to when a song like “Would?” by Alice in Chains, “Dead and Bloated” by Stone Temple Pilots or “Slaves & Bulldozers” by Soundgarden could get occasional radio play, or even become outright hits.1 Then, sprinkle in a bit of Kyuss-style stoner-rock stomp.2 Imagine what that combination sounds like. The desert sand-blasted kaiju rumble you just conjured in your mind’s ears is pretty much sound that Dunes are going for, and their latest album, Land of the Blind, is an excellent example of the form.3
Throughout Land of the Blind, bass rumbles, drums crash like primordial toms and muscular guitar riffs roll in like choppy waves. It’s really wall-to-wall rock in that regard. There’s no token ballad, nor is there a rave-up that pushes the pace. Some songs, like “Cactus” or “Fields of Grey,” opt for more epic structures and runtimes, but they’re not drastic departures so much as elongated versions of the tectonic riff-based rock found everywhere else on the album. Save for its dirge-like closing, Land of the Blind is nonstop roiling rockers featuring legitimately pretty harmonies that should be played loud as hell.4
It’s the sort of thing that could get dumb and/or tiresome fast in unskilled hands, but Land of the Blind is a consistently entertaining and can hold a listener’s attention for its duration.
That’s partially because Dunes lean away from the most meat-headed aspect of this sort of music and into the spookier, witchy side of it. Tracks have titles like “One Eyed Dog” and “Voodoo,” and lyrics ruminate on topics like sweeping disaster or the unstoppable grim march of time. Plus, like the best of the best of Dunes’ hard-rock progenitors, they have no qualms about getting melodic. “Voodoo,” “Riding the Low,” “Tides,” and “How Real is Real,” could all legitimately be described as catchy.
These tunes are buttressed by frequent soaring harmonies. Alice in Chains is a daunting comparison, but it’s apt. Sometimes these are non-lexical vocables — oohs and ahhs — sometimes they’re a layer that adds extra punch to a chorus. Always, they add value. “Tides,” a rollicking standout, features both types, which grants it both a shout-along chorus and an interesting bridge.
They’re not especially complex vocal arrangements, but they fit nicely with the churn of the music and make Land of the Blind a worthy heir to alt-rock greats, rather than a well-executed pastiche.
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.
Tags for this article
More articles by Ben Hohenstatt
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?
Kids In The Hall, Season Two, Episode Fifteen
– The sketch about Scott not being gay anymore is so funny to me.
– “But then he was irritatingly gay.” / “I don’t recall that one, Kevin, no.”
– “Great. Coz I bought a condom.”
– Mark McKinney is disturbingly good at playing an awkward teenage girl.
– “Sal, send in someone who looks vulnerable.”
– “I believe in the product.”
– “What a non-conformist.”
Buy poo!
Doctor Who, “The Mind Robber” – For all the cleverness here in having the Doctor running into fictional characters and making the low budget work, the plot doesn’t really hold together at the end. But just having a swordfight between Cyrano and D’Artagnan is worth the price of admission.
Frasier, “An Affair to Forget” – Frasier thinks a caller has accidentally tipped him off to an affair Maris is having with her German fencing instructor. After accidentally telling Niles, the latter goes off to confront the man in question. And hiliarity does indeed ensue, in the form of a conversation between translated from English to Spanish to German via Niles’s maid, and a very fun duel between Niles and the fencer. Does it all make sense? No, especially the notion that Niles could even pick up a rapier. But this deserved its writing Emmy.
There’s an episode of cheers where frasier indicates he knows German, yet he could not speak German in this episode. I hope someone got fired for that blunder.
Conversely, he’s a lot more fluent in Spanish than the last time he tries to speak it. Blunders abound.
But worth it for the discovery that Maris’s maid speaks German because “apparently she worked for a German family that turned up in Guatemala… just after the war.” Grammer’s delivery of that last phrase is perfect.
One of the great Frasier gags and deliveries!
Yet another blunder! The Arevalo and Arbenz governments would not have been very welcoming. Right after the war is the only time in the 20th century the government wasn’t pro-fascist.
God, I love that Frasier episode. Marta struggling with pronouns has lived in my head rent-free since I watched that episode.
The Empty Man – Came into this cold only knowing it was quickly gaining cult status and, according to its one ubiquitous promotional photo, would offer at minimum one big spooky skeleton. In the first twenty minutes I was on board with the cult appraisal, a spooky folk tale with a single cut that made my blood run cold (and didn’t even need an annoying music sting to bring the fear, bravo). So I was surprised and annoyed by a sudden cut to seemingly a different, though related, movie with much more conventional pieces – an urban legend, a retired detective, old teenagers getting killed – culminating in a somewhat surprise ending that nonetheless has a lot of overlap with another horror film that just prior had achieved the kind of notoriety this film missed out on during the pandemic. I let out an audible sigh when the word “Institute” came up. All the familiar elements all have been rebuffed into fresh looks – the teen stalking doesn’t resemble old slasher formulas and as self-loathing former cops go our protagonist is at least partly his own thing. It does successfully save a lot of its gas for the final minutes, so if I’m not quite signing up for the cult, I at least am happy to have checked out the newsletter.
Felt similarly about this. A few really excellent moments but I didn’t much care for the connective tissue.
Live Music – German-based, Swiss-born art-pop genius Anna Erhard, whose songs are catchy, have killer basslines and are also frequently funny as hell. Her brilliant accent helped with some wonderful line deliveries and her band was tight as hell, this was an early gig-of-the-year contender. Excellent support from Nyssa, a Canadian songwriter who did kinda witchy synthpop and seems to write songs on a lot of similar themes to me (in a very different style, obviously).
Wooooo live German-bases Swiss music!!
Wooo live music! The ‘w’ is pronounced like a ‘v’ in this case. And killer basslines, eh?
This bassline is already pretty great but the live version really added some punch to the sound.
https://annaerhard.bandcamp.com/track/hot-family
Nice! Also, this family sounds pretty hot.
Companion. Between this and Subservience it’s never a good idea to get a sex robot. (I’m returning mine immediately). The reason I watched this movie is because it was filmed in Dutchess county, NY, just a quick jaunt across the Hudson River from where I am. All of the action takes place at a large country estate in the woods. There are twists, there are turns, there’s some gory kills and an underlying sense of humor that makes it a fun watch.
Really enjoyed this one. Just the right balance of humour, horror and sci-fi.
So what I’m hearing is a pre-owned sexbot is available for purchase?
For sale: Sexbot, never used.
Grimsburg, “Granddaddy Issues”
Marvin hits it off with a woman who turns out to be Kang’s great-great-something-granddaughter. Kang has a problem with this. Also, I’ll leave it to you to discover what the “Virgin Games” are. Anyway, I enjoyed it.
The Great North, “Silence of the Dams Adventure”
“Honeybee revives an ancient curse.”
There’s what appears to be a flashback in the beginning three witches or some such doing some kind of ritual, and one of them is clearly voiced by Mark Prosch, as a very Colin Robinson-like character. One of my favorite parts of the episode. (Also, my perception of “flashback” and “witches” may have been skewed by the episode description.)
Pretty funny and with a clever bit of plotting to explain the “curse,” too.
Boat gag: The Haunting of Gill House
Wolf’s T-shirt gag: Fart Around and Find Out
Also, to clarify, “Notary Public: The Game” has been replaced by “DMV Line: The Party Game” this season.
Gladiator II: Xerox – Starts as a copy of the first film but its villains turn it into something else by the end, even though a couple are clichés of the mad Roman emperor. We get two Caligulas! I didn’t mind cgi baboons, sharks and motorized cars. This is a Ridley Scott film and any adherence to historical accuracy goes up like a burning sail on a trireme. Like many legacy sequels the accomplishments of the previous hero must be lessened for the new hero to exist. Paul Mescal is better than Sam Worthington and Taylor Kitsch but he is nowhere near the presence of Russell Crowe and he brought the film down. It was Denzel, Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger who kept my interest as they act in an entirely different film than the why so serious lead. There is also Pedro Pascal in the xerox “weary champion for tyrannous rulers” role that was still more interesting than Mescal. But really the most egregious choice for me was cutting May Calamawy down to a non-speaking cameo possibly hinting at at what was left on the cutting room floor. At 2.5 hours this still felt rushed with no room to live and breath. Still, Scott knows how to make an historical epic look good.
Righteous gemstones
int., warner bros. headquarters: mcbride: “hey david, it’s me your pal donny. I make dick and weed jokes. let’s smoke some of this cush mother fucker.”
zaslav: “get out of my office.”
mcride: “hey listen davy, If you’re not too busy shelving projects for tax credits I want you to give me the budget for two civil war action set pieces, a hundred extras, a bunch of new location scenes, and oh yeah, bradley mother-fuckin cooper.”
zaslav: “only if you promise to put at least one flaccid penis in the episode”
mcbride: “you know it baby!”
——
Just an incredible episode of tv. We see Bradley Cooper as Elijah Gemstone, the probably great-grandfather of Eli, and the start of a generational curse and blessing on the gemstone family.
In all seriousness, the donny mcbride oeuvre warrants serious analysis as a long meditation on sin and redemption, as well as faith and masculinity. But our erstwhile Kierkegaard loves weed and jokes too much to do it in a book and tie all these threads of subtext into a single coherent thesis. It’s a two-edged sword; the idea that he’s approaching obliquely, flopping around without nailing it, is ineffable, even though donny is trying to eff it. Reducing it to a single coherent expression would be less interesting or enlightening.
Definitely what I groove with on his shows, there’s a real grasp on grace and salvation that is easy to miss.
danny! Not donny. Oof. Yet another fire-able blunder today!
This played in my head like the Kenny Powers M-F CEO of K-Swiss bit, thank you!
I loved this episode too. Like you say there’s a kind of intangible, un-quite-graspable something at the heart of Danny McBride’s work, and it’s beautiful. Bradley Cooper was so good, too, and I love the detail that apparently he had never seen Gemstones before, and refused to watch any until after he had finished shooting, so as not to be influenced by it.
What did we listen to?
Blank Check on Temple of Doom – Fairly entertaining and sometimes very funny episode, though they run out of what to say fairly fast. A lot of interesting tangents, though saying that Olivia Craghead should consider retiring from the show now that’s been on six times and saying this is her “Welcome to Mooseport” clearly lands differently now.
Captain Nath’s Top 40 of 2024 – I can finally begin the new year! I’m still a sucker for (some) pop, the dance tracks are the ones that will probably stick with me the most, though. I’m grateful to be introduced to La Luz, who will be accompanying my working hours in the future.
Hell yeah, La Luz are great.
1001 albums etc. – only actually managed one this week but will be getting fully back into the list now. I thought “Solid Air” by John Martyn was “bad” which wasn’t the best way to get back into things but there are some far more interesting artists coming up next. Interesting that Martyn gets grouped with Nick Drake so often because comparing them only made me dislike this guy more, this album is clearly influential but all of the people influenced by it make the kind of music I try to actively avoid because it bores me to tears.
Various Jesus Christ Superstar soundtracks. The 1992 Australian production is standing out at the moment with some very different arrangements from the standard, not all of which are pleasing (and anyone who dislikes the current tendency to autotune will probably cry at all the effects laid over these vocals). But John “You’re the Voice” Farnham as Jesus is marvellous – his Gethsemane arranged to not even bother the super high note screams, but still absolutely beautiful.
Just a reminder: Media Magpies will be hosting its first Happy Hour this Thursday, March 13th, starting a 5pm Pacific. If you have not participated in any of the Solute soirees and are interested in attending send me an email at [email protected] and I will put you on the Zoom Call. See Ya there.
Tragically, I will be calling bingo at that time!
Multitask! Maybe we can all bring cards.
Immediately sold by a Kyuss comp, will be checking this out later.