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.
Feeble Little Horse’s third album, bitknot, could have been a victory lap. Instead, it seems to have stumbled out of the gate.1
A muted reception is not reflective of the album’s considerable quality, but it is understandable considering feeble little horse’s music is a somewhat niche proposition to start with, and the noisy pop band from Pittsburgh surprise-released the LP last Tuesday.2
It’s a trend reversal after feeble little horse built hype with the release of its 2023 sophomore LP, Girl with Fish. That LP was well received by listeners and feted by critics. On Rate Your Music, Girl with Fish has a 3.62-star rating on a five-star scale based on 7,183 reviews. On Album of the Year, it sits at a robust 78-out-of-100 based on 16 reviews from critics, including a once-coveted Best New Music distinction from Pitchfork. Bitknot has been similarly praised by people who have heard it, but so far, that’s been a much thinner slice of the music-listening pie.
On Album of the Year, bitknot boasts a super-solid 80, comparable to recently ballyhooed albums from Vince Staples (81), Dry Cleaning (81) and Lip Critic (80, on the dot).3 It’s even ahead of vaunted efforts from the likes of Kevin Morby (79), Friko (78), Fcukers (76).4 However, feeble little horse’s average is based on a meager three reviews. Its critical comparators all received at least double-digit write-ups.
That seems to have limited the LP’s reach. According to Spotify data-tracking site Music Metrics Vault, in the week since feeble little horse released its first album in three years, the band added about 4,000 followers on Spotify. That represents a 4.6% overall boost to its follower total. It’s not nothing, but it’s also indicative of a good, new album that’s not finding very many new listeners.
It’s hard to know how much of that outcome is due to the atypical rollout. It is easy to say a feeble little horse album was never going to set the world on fire, especially one that arrives three years after the band’s relative breakthrough and doesn’t represent a drastic change in approach. It’s a reasonable outlook, but also an oversimplified and outdated way of looking at how music is heard. In the hyper-fragmented, very online music-listening climate, anything good and attention-grabbing has a fighting chance to find its audience. Bitknot is both of those things.
We’re living in a world where Geese played SNL, Black Country, New Road generates legitimate hype wherever music is discussed online, and even so-called pop girlies take a few years to release new albums. Neither being an odd noise band nor taking time to make music is as openly antagonistic to commercial prospects as it once was. Still seems, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, feeble little horse simply isn’t popular enough to be different.
Those who decide to check out bitknot based on strong word of mouth, positive but limited press or pure happenstance are in for a thoughtful, noisy treat. It’s an album that opens with an abrasive blast of feedback and is preoccupied with the odd intersectionality of existence.5 Harsh noise, sing-song melodies, pneumatic bounce and all manner of glitched-out electronic fractals are part of the frequently shifting, sometimes hostile soundscape.
Album opener, “Doorway,” for example, starts with a droning din that feeds into pounding bursts of guitar before improbably segueing to softly talk-sung snowy surrealism.6 “Rewind” uses a blend of twangy plucking and a quivering sound that could form a barbershop quartet with a Furby, Animal Crossing character and an Otamatone to create an atmosphere of off-kilter nostalgia. “DMT,” ends the album with an odd exclamation point, although it’s less of an interdimensional trip than its initialism might suggest. In feeble little horse’s world, “DMT,” stands for the prevailing forces of death, money and tech.7 It’s a song that starts with weird noise squiggles and closes with a shouted chant of “Death, money, tech/ DMT, check.”
There are some moments of levity and a few straightforward pleasures, too. The ultra-catchy, almost club-friendly “Shopping,” which deploys a snappy beat and heavily manipulated vocals to great effect, is chief among them. “And would you fuck with these shoes?/ I wanna look just like you” works as a commentary on parasocial social media relationships and an earworm. “Dior,” a beefy serving of riff-forward, deliberately paced alternative rock, is the other side of that easier-to-categorize coin. While little more than a brief, chiming interlude, “Paris” is a pretty pause in the action.
Bitknot is not an overlooked masterpiece. A penchant for inconsistent sound makes for variable immediacy and not every musical detour, incursion of sonic weirdness or softly delivered vocal totally pays off. Plus, it’s a fairly slight album, clocking in at just 25 minutes over 11 songs. More room to play, rage or explore seems like a safe bet to yield interesting results in light of what the band actually recorded.
However, Feeble Little Horse’s third album deserves at least as much acclaim and attention as was meted out to the band’s last LP. It’s absolutely its predecessor’s equal in experimental pop charm.
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.
Year of the Month
A new Iceage album is now treated like a Capital-E Event. That wouldn't be the case without Plowing into the Field of Love.
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 One, Episode One, “Pilot”
“You are heterosexual, right?”
“Are you allowed to ask that?”
“No.”
“Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that she’s walking around with a bag of crystal meth?”
“Do we have any kind of training? I’ve just been wandering from department to department looking like I have purpose.”
Ah, another ‘nice’ sitcom. This wasn’t necessarily chosen because my partner likes it – actually, I picked it because the idea of jumping from one end of Mark McKinney’s career to the other amused me, with the payoff of that being how he looks so goddamned old here – but I do see how they like it, because it has the same everyone-is-silly-and-everyone-will-make-up sensibility as Bob’s Burgers. I found myself comparing this to my own experiences in hospitality – which is only a hop-skip-jump to retail – and realising not only does it not fit my experiences, I don’t think any TV show or comic quite has.
To an extent, it’s that most people I’ve worked with are actually trying to be good at their jobs; it struck me how much this show and many like it have more of that dreaded theater-kid energy than actual working energy (I think of the character Angel in Nope, where Brandon Perea played him as checked-out and irritated because that’s what he saw in reality).
The one person I know who’s anything like the characters here is also the most competent person I’ve ever worked with – granted, she’s only ever like that when the work is slow and there are no Tasks to Complete – and she’s in Amy’s position. And come to think of it, I think the closest I’ve ever seen to an Amy is me. Granted, I’ve only ever worked for small businesses with less than a dozen employees; whether the owner is good or bad, you don’t really actually see weak workers rise to the top the way Glenn has through, I’m assuming, sheer inertia.
So much for realism – emotional or otherwise – how about the show for what it actually is? Unlike a lot of pilots, this doesn’t feel like a single movie setting up a show – it already feels like an Episode Of Television, with a carefully crafted emotional arc that hits all the necessary beats. In fact, it feels like it hits them a little more efficiently than most; scenes feel fast, both in cutting and in being shorter than I would expect. It’s not quite powering through – the imagery is too imaginative for that, like the stars at the end, the rap-proposal, or, my favourite, the cart race – more to say, it’s refusing to slow down and risk wasting our time.
Cheyenne has almost the exact same makeup as Mimi on The Drew Carey Show, but to convey a completely different character.
You get more of the “just working” energy as the show gets going, and it’s also extremely funny, most importantly.
Columbo, “The Most Crucial Game”
Slightly weaker episode, even with the return of a murderous Robert Culp (always welcome, always cherished). Culp plays the ambitious, driven GM of a football team who decides to kill its disinterested young owner (Dean Stockwell). His plan is clever enough–in fact, it only becomes apparent how clever it is partway through the episode, when the bugged phones are revealed (this is a well-constructed turn, because before that, I was wondering why he bothered keeping the radio on when he was calling the victim)–but somehow the episode lacks sparkle. Columbo’s eventual explanation for why he zeroed in on Culp is a great detail, though, and the performances are as strong as usual. It’s also good to see Valerie Harper as a high-priced escort (whose evening gig Columbo ruins) who’s been moonlighting as a PI’s assistant.
I do really like how the end plays here, though, with Culp realizing his fatal fuck-up but keeping his reaction contained: it’s as if he’s already thinking about how a good lawyer could get him out of this, so he’s not going to say a word. It lends a slightly pessimistic realism to the final moments in a way that works for me.
I always wonder how many of Columbo’s arrests lead to convictions. Are their confessions admissible? Are his techniques always legal? And just how many of these very rich men hire F. Lee Bailey and get the charge reduced to manslaughter and time served, or less?
The guest casts are always fun. Culp was familiar to audiences from I, Spy but no longer a big name; Stockwell would be remembered for his work as a child actor but is years from Quantum Leap and BSG fame; and Harper is in the midst of her weekly scene stealing moments on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
I’ve wondered that before too! He often catches them doing something that looks suspicious and would be hard to convincingly explain, but I’m sure the right lawyer–and all of them could afford the right lawyer–could invent some excuse for it all. And he not infrequently turns up on people’s property without invitation or, seemingly, a proper warrant. I’m happy to just go with it, but endings like this seem to deliberately invite you to speculate about how it will all turn out, which does add some nice texture.
Elementary, “The Hound of Cancer Cells” – I don’t think they came up with cute episode titles inspired by the original Conan Doyle stories, but who knows? The title refers to a device capable of simulating the purported ability of dogs to smell cancer cells. The inventor of the device seems to commit suicide after being discredited but it’s clearly not suicide. What it is a complex and interesting case involving, among other things, a spy who dated the inventor, corporate malfeasance in Big Pharma, and a messy divorce. This is very much your typical Elementary mystery, and like most it works pretty well, once you accept things are never straightforward. But there is a more interesting B plot, involving a pregnant teen who witnessed a murder by a drug dealer, her very dedicated teacher (Ron Canada), and Det. Bell. This feels like it comes from another, grittier, cop show, and it works well.
The Twilight Zone, “Escape Clause” – The protagonist is so unlikable that it’s hard to care about his fate, but the acting is good. More to come.
Frasier, “High Holidays” – Freddy shows up for Christmas as a goth. Which everyone tries to accept as teen rebellion, only for Niles to realize that he never rebelled, so he decides to have a pot brownie and make up for that. But it’s Martin who eats the brownie! Some improbable elements, like a tourism ad for Seattle using Frasier’s voice coming out of Eddie’s mouth, combine for some very funny moments with stoned Martin, not-stoned-but-sure-he-is Niles, and confused Frasier. The stuff with Freddy as goth doesn’t really add up to much, but in the end father and son bond over rejection by women. This is the last we see of Frederick Crane (not counting the ill fated and ill conceived revival), and while he was never much of a character, his final appearance could have been a bit stronger.
Tuner – an indie thriller about a guy with hyperacusis whose hyper-sensitivity to sound has curtailed his potential as a pianist but makes him a natural as a piano tuner. When he finds that he needs to obtain a lot of money quickly, to settle the debts of his boss / surrogate father (played by Dustin Hoffman) he puts his disability / superpower to more questionable goals and becomes a safe cracker. I was really impressed by the first half of this, the characters are well-written and it feels like it’s going to avoid some of the big cliches of the heist movie / “reluctant criminal” narrative. But in the second half it kinda ends up leaning into those cliches, the criminal characters feel more like stereotypes and there are a couple of belief-stretching coincidences – the kind of thing I might have found easier to forgive if this had been a dumb comfort-movie thriller from the start, but it starts so well that I couldn’t help feel a little disappointed by the way it ends up.
Three Tales From The Crypt episodes! “Four Sided Triangle” makes great use of Patricia Arquette’s weird, moony energy, especially when she’s young, though I wasn’t sure what to make of the ending. I didn’t know if I actually LIKED “Ventriloquist’s Dummy” either, starring Don Rickles and a very young Bobcat Goldthwait as a guy who discovers the ventriloquist he loved as a kid has a fucked up secret even I couldn’t guess at. Richard Donner directed though and I enjoy how the show evidently releases this manic energy in him his movies don’t possess. “Korman’s Kalamities”, of these three, was my favorite; there’s some latent misogyny to the episode yet I laughed gleefully at the ending, and the creatures in this rule, like the overbite monster who outright chews a guy’s head off. Plus, Harry Anderson, as a comic book artist whose fertility pills start bringing creatures to life, is so charming that he makes said nasty ending work.
What did we listen to?
Nearing the end of Blank Check on Master and Commander. David loving this movie so much gets to be a drag on things after a while, since apparently it’s a perfect movie and no one is going to challenge him on this. (It’s a very good film. It also is maybe too accepting of things like “12 year olds should go to war and lose their arms.”) Hodgman is a very good guest and his knowledge of things really helps ground everything nicely.
This is the one remaining Weir episode where I’ve seen the movie, but I’m not in a great rush to listen because I don’t particularly care for it. Is there any dissent from Griffin? He mentioned in another episode that he wasn’t that keen on it.
Griff is very muted with any criticism. I think he’s afraid to step on anyone’s toes.
Thanks, sounds like an episode I might struggle with.
Lots of Screen Drafts. The recent Patreon episode on the five films Charlie Chaplin made as the Tramp was terrific, and I need to pick up the two I haven’t seen yet (The Kid and Circus, but especially The Kid). Excellent conversation on the Gay ’90s Draft, as well, including some interesting discussion of how the films of that era worked in terms of general audiences vs. queer audiences and what it meant to see them at the time.
Only one 1001 album this week, since I’ve been stuck in so many meetings:
Depeche Mode – Music for the Masses: I think the only DM album I’d heard in full was Speak & Spell, because of my general fondness for Vince Clarke and his bright, chunky synths. I’m mostly familiar with the later Mode Sound from big singles like “Enjoy the Silence” which I like a lot, but the general gloomy, goth-y vibe has never really led me to explore further. Based on this, maybe I should – despite the lack of familiar songs here I thought this was consistently strong, if maybe a little samey.
In podcasts, finished up the Blank Check episode on The Truman Show, which was a lot of fun. Good movie discussion, enjoyable tangents. Now working through the Screen Drafts “Fourquels” episode which is a lot of fun.
New Iceage album has been growing on me! “Star” and “True Blue” especially rock. Also the Captain turned me onto this fantastic power pop song “Never Been In Love” by Lo Fi Ho Hum. The rest of their seemingly only EP from 2024 didn’t grab me aside from the rather funny “Open Mic Night”. I guess that little rock bands have always killed it on one track, ala the Nuggets compilations, and the rest of their output can often be mediocre to merely okay.
Podcasts: The Worst of All Possible Worlds does really good pop culture criticism using “notes from a dying empire” as the thesis and unlike other podcasts of their ilk, they do strong episodes on theater and musicals, including Sondheim, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and A Chorus Line.
Year of the Month update!
This June, you can write up any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1958.
Jun. 5th: Gillian Nelson: Paul Bunyan
Jun. 12th: Gillian Nelson: Grand Canyon
Jun. 14th: Tristan Nankervis: Vertigo
Jun. 19th: Gillian Nelson: Elfego Banca
Jun. 23rd: Bridgett Taylor: Basil of Baker Street
Jun. 25th: John Bruni: Mon Oncle
Jun. 26th: Gillian Nelson: Disneyland Gay Days
Jun. 28th: Tristan Nankervis: Touch of Evil
And in July, we’re opening up submissions for your writing on any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1979.
Jul. 14th: Lauren James: Flowers in the Attic
Jul. 29th: Lauren James: Ghost Story
A bit off topic, but I attended the launch for James Ellroy’s new book RED SHEET. James was in fine form and was more energetic than I’ve seen him since the 200s, even breaking out into an off-key version of the banana boat song. Despite evidence in recent interviews that he was taking a more Reddit oriented approach to marketing this book (proffering, for examples, contrarian opinions about the Blacklist) he reiterates, via reading the preface to American Tabloid, that the book is straightening the crooked lines of American history through employing a reckless verisimilitude. The opening scene, set at a celebrity strewn civil rights rally, proves this in an explosion of surreal energy worthy of Pynchon. Can’t wait to get started on this.