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.
By definition, slacker rock can’t come off as too effortful.
Exemplary takes on the subgenre, stuff like cootie catcher’s recently released third album, Something We All Got,1 are awash in mundane detail and personal peccadilloes. It’s music that’s both hung up on myopic interiority and defined by shrugging acceptance of the odd tributaries and arbitrary eddies that push the flow of life forward without a clear capital-D Direction. (There’s often a literal sense of orientation with paths typically leading to a corner store, tour stop, or a crush’s abode.)
Cootie Catcher guitarist Nolan Jakupovski, one of the Toronto quartet’s three songwriters, is being facetious when he sings “A little effort goes a long way/ Oh, it’s too much to ask,” on late-album highlight “Puzzle Pop,” but it’s a succinct summation of the atmosphere. That’s highlighted and underlined when Jakupovski’s voice is joined by the band’s other voices, Sophia Chavez and Anita Fowl, in almost-harmonizing, “Let’s just let nature run its course.”
To work slacker rock has to make it sound like the simple act of existing as a thinking, feeling person is as momentous, perilous, perplexing, heartrending and potentially joyous as any epic journey set to music. The best version of it crystallizes the labyrinth of obligations to self and the state that, at any given time, occupy the space between the singer and comfort. It’s a reflection of an overly complicated reality that also serves as a balm for the same.
Too much obvious competence, professed confidence or audible ambition wrecks that effect. Urgent guitar solos are paradoxically a slacker-rock staple, and call attention to the “aww shucks” artifice inherent to any band that doesn’t want to seem like it’s trying too hard. But slacker rock’s guitar solos are not the arena-demolishing fireballs cast by Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads.2 Slacker rock’s guitar solos are more like the equivalent of screaming into a pillow — explosions of emotion, but slightly abashed and barely restrained. Doug Martsch of Built to Spill might be the best at that, but Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus is undeniably slacker rock’s name-brand guitar god.3 Despite the latter spawning enough bro-flavored toxicity to take a good-natured jab in Barbie,it’s ultimately a genre of first-day nerves, skinned-knee vulnerability and shambolic perseverance.
Something We All Got nails that. Across 14 songs, cootie catcher cycles through tones, voices, tempos and textures, all while maintaining both a sense of guileless emotional availability and a relatively high level of quality control. A few songs could have been jettisoned to make for an ultra-tight, overall stronger listen, but a slightly too many woolly, woozy, relatively short songs are hardly much of a negative. Plus, the LP is always at least somewhat interesting, at least partially because it is so stuffed with ideas.
Within the album’s first two songs, listeners will encounter jangly guitar, gentle harmonies, real drumming, programmed percussion, and distorted, glitchy noises that sound like guest vocals from K.K. Slider. By the end of the album, DJ scratching, churning electric guitar, and deadpan lyrics that could be from a torn page of Heather Lewis’ notebook and are sung like it, too, are part of the whole.
It’s a fun blend that is at its best at its most chaotic. “Puzzle Pop,” with its sticky acoustic guitar, referee whistles, discordant gang vocals and warbling samples, is a catchy peak and spurs Something We All Got to a strong finish. “Quarter Note Rock,” which mixes spry guitar, an under-inflated basketball bounce of a bassline, and scribbles of weird, whining noise, all while living up to its title, is another winner.4 While not every song reaches those peaks, the relatively docile soupier stretches — apologies, “From here to Halifax” and “No Biggie” — do provide a contrast that makes the best songs pop a little more.
Besides, shrugging off the unfocused or less-than-stellar moments of the album and moving on to the next track feels like meeting Something We All Got exactly where it’s at.
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?
The Kids In The Hall, Season Five, Episode Seven
Dave Foley sitting in a fury is funny as hell.
“I think we should break up.”
“Well, you’ve ruined my meal.”
“I will save my sadness and anger for another day, for today I must be practical.”
“You see, I’m not a man who deals well with failure. I am, however, a man who is independently wealthy.”
“I talked to the bowl of peanuts all night… if you know what I mean.”
“I found no love burning the bottom of my feet with a Cigerello, just artistic satisfaction.”
“What are you talking about? Are you completely breasts?”
“Sincerely yours, walking hard-on.”
“So that’s it?”
“You just ruined our joke.”
“What were you going to do with that?”
“Mercy Christmas, I don’t know.”
“They love me in France.”
“He will go the zee significantly less popular point C! Simply because zee baguettes are fresher and less expensive.”
“Didn’t you used to have five members?”
“They still do.”
Doctor Who, “The Web of Fear,” parts 4-6 – The Great Intellgence’s plan for the Doctor revealed. The Doctor’s plan for the Great Intelligence revealed too late as Jamie had his own plan. Really solid serial with a chilling attack by the Yetis on Lethbridge-Stewart’s men that leaves only the future leader of UNIT standing. And wow, the Brig emerges almost fully formed here, instantly that mix of pragmatic and phlegmatic, not sure what to make of the Doctor but giving him room to work right away. Also, Deborah Watling was short. Next to her dad Jack (playing a scientist) she is tiny.
Sirat – an odd one. If I’d caught this at the cult / genre film festival I go to most years then I think it would have been a pleasant surprise, a tense Sorcerer-influenced road movie that isn’t afraid to go to some dark places. But I went into it knowing it was one of the five nominees for Best International Picture at this year’s Oscars, so I was perhaps a little surprised that it abandoned most of the deeper themes it sets up early on to function almost entirely as a turn-your-brain-off thriller by the end. Enjoyable but it’s in weird company in that group of movies, for sure.
What did we listen to?
Heavenly – Highway to Heavenly
It’s really everything you could want from a comeback album from former members of
Talulah Gosh. Bright, light and not cloying, plus all sorts of throwback keyboard sounds. I really liked it, but had slightly more to say about cootie catcher.
Effectively Wild
This is an extremely nerdy baseball podcast I’ve been listening to off and on for about a decade at this point. Its hosts, one of my favorite baseball writers Ben Lindbergh and Fangraphs editor Meg Rowley, are currently working their way through season previews for each MLB team with local beat writers providing additional insights. It’s helping me get my bearings after a long offseason.
Other Stuff
I also checked out new records from Nothing, Baby Keem, Gorillaz and Mitski and worked through some advances from Pope, Gladie, and This House for consideration for a future edition of this column. All of the above is worth a listen!
Black Hayes by Isaac Hayes, 1971: Very good though not quite Hot Buttered Soul, but what is? Gonna give it another listen later.
Blame The Clown by Twisted Teens, strong recommend. A mix of The Men, Meat Puppets, and other indie/punk bands that start with M, with surfy rhythm guitar giving support in the background.
Adventures in Musicals: Listened to bits of Shrek The Musical and while I would not say I want to watch the entire show – clips definitely share a certain Playing To The Audience syndrome, even if this *is* for children – the music, in part because it’s by Jeanine Tesori (who will later co-write masterpiece Fun Home) and David Lindsay-Abaire(!!), is way, way better than it has ANY right to be. “I Know It’s Today” works completely outside of the show itself.
Merrily We Roll Along is pretty great but is so depressing, especially in my thirties, that it’s hard to listen to a lot other than “Franklin Shepard Inc.” More musicals should be driven by resentment, perversion, or despair.
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder is totally my current obsession, with it’s pastiche of music hall, Gilbert & Sullivan, and other British operettas hard to resist. Here are some lyrics to give you an idea of the wit and sense of play put into the language: “What am I doing here? This could be dangerous/If I’m discovered, imagine the scandal!/And I couldn’t handle a scandal so risible…/I’ll stay invisible; still as can be…/If it’s that cousin, it might just be business/It’s family business, and none of my business/But why is she here, in the home of a bachelor?”
Will plug The Isaac Hayes Movement, lengthy soul jams with the definitive treatment of the mid Beatles track “Something.” And these Teens sound like my jam.
Definite recommend!
I also checked out cootie catcher and Heavenly from last week’s new releases and enjoyed both. I’ve got a ticket to see Heavenly in a couple of weeks although it’s on an insanely busy weekend and I’m not sure I’ll actually make it. Also checked out the Mitski album – I’m not her biggest fan but every so often she seems to put out a song that connects with me. The lead single for this album, “Where’s My Phone?” is the opposite of that – I think it’s maybe the worst thing she’s done and I was baffled by it as a single choice, but if that was a marketing ploy to make me dig deeper than it worked. I thought the rest of the album was pretty good! And it has multiple songs about cats on it!
Podcasts – finished off the Hawke / Linklater episode of Screen Drafts, made me wonder if I should revisit the Before… trilogy at some point and see whether the ravages of time have changed my opinion of them… although I think Before Midnight is already my favourite so maybe not.
Just under an hour of Blank Check on Die My Love left, I thought this might be a case of them loving a movie I didn’t really care for at all but they’re actually a little mixed on it and I’m enjoying the discussion, also the Nolte segment was hilarious. Looking forward to them moving on from Ramsay though, just not really my thing. Already annoyed at their March Madness poll, I don’t want Scorsese to win because he’s the most boring pick (even though it will be a good series), also F. Gary Gray beating Truffaut? What? Gimme that French goodness.
Road tripping! The Men, Laughing Hyenas, YOB and Clutch for a heavy way out, a somewhat lighter ride home with Warren Zevon’s Mutineer and the Pogues’ Pogue Mahone but also my old buddies The Whore Moans and their aughts aggro, such a great sound. Mutineer is an odd one, a few weak tracks and some very weird arrangements (“Piano Fighter” in particular) but also stone classics like The Indifference Of Heaven and the title track, which is as vulnerable and beautiful as the man can get.
Good question re: the Replacements, I’d say the ‘Mats are more “fuck up rock” which is where I prefer them to a lot of slacker bands. They try so hard and still fail.
I wouldn’t say the Replacements are slacker-rock, no – agreed with your verdict!
In terms of the other ones mentioned above, I definitely would say that Dinosaur Jr fit the tag, and J. Mascis might beat Malkmus in a slacker-rock guitarist battle royale. I’d include Sebadoh too, on a linked note.
Superchunk I would say not, their stuff is a bit tighter and more propulsive for me, although I guess their sound has varied a bit over the years – I’m mostly familiar with “Majesty Shredding” which is full of non-slacker bangers.
Superchunk is explicitly against the slack motherfuckers of the world!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz1nqnHQOZo
The ‘Mats are known for fucking up. But they were also one of the unluckiest bands in recent times. See, for just one example: https://powerpop.blog/2021/04/05/replacements-the-ledge/
It was a weird mix of bad luck and also snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Ha, I appreciate your recognition of the Eric Bachmann fans in the comments! I think Malkmus may actually take the title on volume, his solo stuff is certainly more guitar-heavy than Crooked Fingers and he’s not bad, but gimme that Archers aggression.