The Sounding Board
A new, 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.
Pulsing bursts of grainy noise can apparently evoke nostalgia.
The shrill, staccato tones that open “TDOS,” the sixth song on Rotary Club’s kickass new album, Sphere of Service1 will be a reunion with a long-lost acquaintance for anyone over 30.2 They’re the panicked pings of a landline phone’s off-hook tone with a pleasing layer of grime and grain.
Mercifully, it’s a short opening that successfully sails through the uprights of novel and grating. In a matter of seconds, drums creep in to fill the space in the frenetic frequency, guitar plinks keep pace with the phone tone, and coolly detached vocals intone, “overloaded limitation, telephonic degradation,” before sludgy bass rumbles through like a semi down a residential street. From then on, “TDOS” hits its herky-jerky stride with a careening melody formed by searing guitars and menacingly languid group vocals poetically detailing how a telephone denial of service attack works.3
It’s bizarre, but it rocks in a first-wave hardcore sort of way4 and it’s emblematic of the pleasures and challenges that comingle on “Sphere of Service,” a kinetic collection of searing songs that are inescapably preoccupied with landline phones.
That phone focus is sort of the raison d’être for this Reno, Nevada, band,5 who use the old tech as a jumping-off point and a lens. Telephone lines are both binding tendrils and safety lines. Connectivity is constant, but communication is rare. The world has never felt smaller, or more blanched of its distinguishing characteristics.
Stretched to prog-rock length, these ideas could become bloated and insufferably ponderous. However, on a lean, mean, album that practically shoves you out of the way to pogo past, they work. Almost every song on Sphere of Service is under three minutes long, several are under two minutes. Most of the time, choruses are just the song title shouted tunefully. There’s a lot of thought percolating under the surface of these oft-raging tunes, but there are also ample surface-level pleasures in the form of pounding drums, guitar screams and memorable hooks.
Plus, sometimes, a phone is just a phone.
That’s the case on album standout, “My Landline,” a delightfully feral rave-up built around a surf-y riff.6 It’s a 100-second ode to its titular device that carves out some of its brief runtime for a blistering guitar song. The album’s richer for engaging thoughtfully with its chosen theme, but few things in life are as much fun as a tear-the-roof-off rocker without much on its mind.
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?
Kids In The Hall, Season Two, Episode Five
“I don’t like this jury.”
“The jury? What’s wrong?”
“It’s made up entirely of my ex-girlfriends.”
“Tell ya what. I’m gonna run around the back and see how big the yard is.”
“About six months ago on my birthday (none of your business).”
“The judge was a closet case who was threatened by my openness.”
“I don’t have to pay rent and I’m in love.”
“HE NEVER ENDORSED THAT CHECK.”
There’s a lot more extras this season.
“Gee, I never took that literally. I never took ‘chicken lady’ too literally.”
Exactly how Dave didn’t see the omlette from the chicken lady coming is a bit much, but it was worth it for the extended look of frozen horror on his face.
“Gotta get laid, gotta get laid.”
Turning the black-and-white section into a gag is a very forward-thinking gag, reminiscent of Terry Pratchett playing with the form.
“I can’t smoke hash, I’m an asthmatic!”
“And that’s when you locked your keys in the car?”
Bringing together multiple sketches into one at the end is great.
“Oh, and by the way, I’m a great fan of your monologues.”
Anna Karenina – a bit of backlog clearance between Coen movies. I think my ex bought this or I got it for her, either way I’d never seen it before. I enjoy the style of Joe Wright’s films but this one started to lose me in the second half, the cool theatrical aesthetic kept me engaged for a good while but the romantic melodrama lost me eventually. I’m not averse to this sort of storytelling but I could have used some more interesting characters or sharper dialogue to keep me invested to the end. Take that, Tolstoy!
The Simpsons, “Bart the Murderer” – this isn’t one of the funniest classic-era Simpsons for me, but it still has some great moments (“What’s a murder?” “Don’t play dumb with me!”) and the story is fun.
Heh, interesting characters and sharp dialogue is one thing the novel has in spades. Too bad the movie simply doesn’t have enough space for most of it. Also, the casting is exact for some roles (Knightley, Macfayden, Gleeson, Law) and just too bland in others (Johnson, Vikander).
Ah that makes sense. I quite liked how it threw me into the story early on without any hand-holding but it definitely felt like it fell short of making me care enough before the Various Tragedies.
Half the “popular” reviews on Letterboxd just seem to be listing after Aaron Taylor-Johnson so I guess they did SOMETHING right there but he definitely didn’t have much going on beyond “handsome aristocrat”.
Insanely stacked cast though. So much so that people I’ve loved elsewhere turn up and don’t even get to speak!
“Insanely stacked cast though. So much so that people I’ve loved elsewhere turn up and don’t even get to speak!”
Emily Watson, Olivia Williams and Bill Skarsgard are in this and I totally forgot until checking Wikipedia right now.
Cara Delevingne and Vicky McClure are the two I spotted who don’t even get lines. And then there’s Kelly MacDonald, Shirley Henderson… the list goes on!
“Bart the Murderer” isn’t necessarily one of the funniest classic-era Simpsons, but it is one of the better season 3 episodes.
“And what if your family don’t like bread? They like… cigarettes. Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away?”
Doctor Who, “The Macra Terror” – Another lost adventure revived via animation, which if nothing else makes the giant spider-like monsters a lot more menacing that they apparently were in the actual serial. Due to some rights issues, we don’t get the first two stories with Jamie, so this will serve as his debut for me, and he arrives fully formed (or as fully formed as companions got back then), full of beans, Scottish accent and kilt in place. The story is standard issue Who with a few interesting touches in portraying a colony world were everything is brainwashed to be a happy worker.
Superstore, “Workplace Bullying” and “Lottery”
My wife picked out the first one and I forgot how much I fucking hate it– which is ironic, because she’s the one who works in retail. I know there’s comedy to mine and all, but in any job, there are lines. If Dina was bullying Jonah like that, and then when she got called out and written up for it, her response was to escalate the bullying, she would get fucking fired. But it’s all treated for laughs. I can’t deal with that. (Especially because, let’s be clear, Dina could quite easily beat Jonah up.) So I cut it off partway through and picked another episode. “Lottery” is pretty funny, between Jonah making an idiot of himself with Kelly, Amy accidentally hitting the regional manager with her golf cart, and Marcus talking about his weeks-long lobster.
The Office, “The Dundies”
Speaking of people doing things that would get them fired, Michael handing out half the awards based on looks and bodies. But, on the other hand, second drink!
The Kids in the Hall, season 2, episode 8
Talking to our man Tristan last night, I realized, it’s been way too fucking long since I watched this show. And I didn’t want to watch any more Superstore. I NEVER LEARNED HOW TO PLAY THE PIANO
It’s so funny to me when trad dudes fantasize about going back to the 50s where men could be men, because Gordon is much more what those men were actually like and what they would be like if they went back.
The People’s Joker – A wild time that surprisingly retains its Adult Swim-style energy throughout – Tim Heidecker and Scott Aukerman make voice cameos, and Vera Drew doesn’t seem like someone sinply mentored by their output but a full progeny born of the borderless greenscreen aesthetic. In the relentlessly shifting styles and locations, often mixing multiple mediums within the same scene, the Batman legally-defined parody plot is, barely, a lifeline to hang onto through the ride. Actually, considering my merely general familiarity with Batman lore, the most comprehensible element is Drew’s emotional journey which is a clear Bat-signal throughout the inside jokes and restless mosaic of techniques. The earnestness of the personal memoir elements cuts through the noise – no, it clarifies the noise, makes it a triumphant call rather than a cacophonous symphony of players who all brought their own sheet music. It’s a great moment in DIY filmmaking, another reminder that there are no rules, not even IP law has to be our master. I’m remain skeptical that filtering everything through Batman is the path to sustainable art, but on the other hand I never expected to be genuinely touched by a Mister Mxyzptlk parody.
The People’s Joker: Folie à Deux
Wooooo The People’s Joker!
TNN American Sports Cavalcade – Swamp Buggy Racing from 1993! The amount of pride these people take in their custom buggies, like pod racing for Florida rednecks. Also love the “90’s Middlebrow” aesthetic on full display in the commercials. And commercials for things poor people use, like Greyhound! What is this madness?
More new music! This sounds sweet, and the noise-to-rock opening of the lead track you describe is bringing to mind Pere Ubu’s “Non-Alignment Pact,” a good thing to have in mind.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Leax63ullPE