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.
To be honest, I didn’t notice Allo Darlin’ had gone missing, but it’s good to have the stalwart indie-poppers back.1
From 2010 to 2014, the UK-based Anglo-Australian foursome were good for a smart-but-breezy release every other year. They broke that biennial pattern in 2016 by calling it quits. As the band notes, it’s not easy to make a living making music, and it’s even harder to stake your livelihood on the kind of music — warm, well-crafted indie pop— that Allo Darlin’ makes. Still, as the pandemic retreated in the rearview mirror in 2023, the band announced a series of reunion shows with the stated intent of also recording new music. Bright Nights, their fourth album overall and first LP since 2014’s We Come From the Same Place, makes good on that goal.
Any rust, weight or baggage you might expect to hear in light of that background is completely absent. Elizabeth Morris Innset (vocals, guitar and ukulele), Bill Botting (bass, vocals, guitar and piano) Mike Collins (drums, percussion, guitar, piano, Hammond and synth) and Paul Rains (guitar) pick up where they left off over a decade ago with 10 new tuneful indie pop songs. Bright Nights is light, bright, spry and charmingly guileless.
While much is the same for Allo Darlin’, there are, of course, signs of change and growth. Bright Nights leans away from the chiming twee of some of the band’s past records and into folksy sounds that have long been an undercurrent in their work. The grounded, twangy sound is paired with big-picture concerns that border on existential. While the twee impulses that colored the band’s early releases aren’t totally extinguished — multiple songs include lyrical references to fireflies, for example — the album has life, enduring love, looming mortality and what it all means are on its mind.2
Bright Nights can be a bit treacly, but its thoughtfulness and sincerity are nonetheless charming. Sometimes the combination and sentimentality can be stirring. It’s impossible to hear the maternal love bursting out of “My Love Will Bring You Home” and not feel moved. The gentle country-rocker is the most urgent song on the LP. While the song’s lyrics acknowledge uncertainty and worry (“Every night when you’re asleep I still check that you’re breathing before I lay my head/ And I’ll never know just how it feels to be your flesh and blood/ But you’re a part of me”), its animating force is a deep and abiding well of unconditional affection (“So throw your arms around me darling let me be your rock/ There’s a cold winter coming for us let me warm you up/ And if ever you get lost my love will bring you home/ My love will bring you home.”)
It’s not especially complicated, but it’s genuine and sweet while staying just shy of saccharine. That’s true of the album as a whole, too.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
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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
This sounds good to me (minus those worrying fireflies). Always like some twang, and that last excerpt of lyrics is lovely.
What did we watch?
The X-Files, “Little Green Men” and “The Host”
“Little Green Men”:
Scully and Mulder have been split up, and they’re meeting in murky parking garages that have them both thinking of Deep Throat, whose death and last words still hang over everything. Mulder’s uncertain, a new mode for him, and one that feels borne of depression, more than anything else. He’s had (as Scully points out) a tremendous amount of confirmation–hell, even the constant surveillance he’s under further suggests how close he’s gotten–but right now all he can see are the absences: the evidence he couldn’t keep, the witnesses who wouldn’t come forward, the source he lost, the partner he’s missing. He’s feeling defeated, and he thinks he might as well spin that into being disillusioned, into interpreting his past ideas as illusions.
But luckily, he’s down but not out (of belief), and an old mentor, Senator Matheson, points him towards trouble at a SETI site in Puerto Rico. (I appreciate both the reference of Matheson’s name and the fact that he’s played by Raymond J. Barry … though since I’d heard in advance that Mulder’s dad would appear this season, I had a glorious few seconds of thinking Barry would be playing him. Wrong kid got abducted!)
The case is eerie and unsettling. (We’ve had a lot of white lights before to indicate alien events, but I think this is the first time we’ve had warning red mixed in, either from in-scene sources or from the extraterrestrials themselves, and it’s tremendously effective at amping up the terror.) One of the most unusual aspects of The X-Files is how many of their investigations have no conclusion–not just no pat conclusion that proves everything, but no chance, period, to wrap any of this up, because the full force of the conspiracy comes down and smothers everything. My wife and I joke that Mulder’s instinctive response to other government agents is always, “Cheese it, it’s the fuzz!”, but this is one of the episodes that shows why: the case “wraps up” with Mulder and Scully having to abandon their evidence and flee from authorized (but off-the-books) gunfire.
Lots of beautiful Mulder and Scully material in this episode too, like they’re even more demonstrative and intimate with each other on a soul-to-soul level when they can’t be together every day. I love her touching his hair. And Mulder–revisiting and revising Deep Throat–has a great, poignant line: “Before I could only trust myself. Now I can only trust you.” And then over the course of this night’s viewing, he regains his footing enough to trust them both.
Great shot of the smoke rising up from the ashtray the Cigarette Smoking Man has been using in Skinner’s office (Skinner: “I don’t smoke”). Even after he’s gone, everyone’s still smelling him, still breathing him in.
“The Host”:
Flukeman, my beloved.
Extremely fun Monster of the Week case. Mulder assumes he’s been assigned to a dead body in the sewers as part of some punishment/humiliation Skinner’s meting out–his sheer aggravation here doesn’t quite gel with him witnessing Skinner saving his job at the end of the last episode, but eh, he’s been getting very frustrated doing Bureau scutwork–but it turns out (as Skinner suspected) to be a would-be X-File, with mutated flukeworms killing their human hosts. And of course it all comes back to Flukeman, a human-fluke hybrid with Chernobyl-related origins. (Sometimes using real-life tragedies as the source of horror works and sometimes it doesn’t; here, coming in at the end of the episode and looping in at least ostensibly real Chernobyl disaster photos, it doesn’t, at least not for me. But everything else does.)
A+ makeup, prosthetic, and puppet work in this episode, as we get not only the transcendently amazing Flukeman but also a grotesque, rotting, bloated dead body and a gross bite-wound and a wriggling fluke and a vomited-up fluke that squirms down the shower drain. As a horror and practical effects fan, I felt very well-served by all this. And the scares aren’t limited to the effects, because there’s also a lot done with the water and the sense of something lurking unseen beneath it, ready to grab your ankle and pull you down. All really well-done.
Some extremely endearing Mulder and Scully stuff too, with Scully being so excited to request the autopsy on Mulder’s case and also getting caught up in the moment when the two of them are riffing about possible theories.
Unintentionally (?) hilarious bits include people carrying on a normal conversation minutes after first witnessing Flukeman (if I ever see Flukeman, that’s all I’m talking about for a week, especially if he’s only a few feet away!) and a doctor taking the “jab” slang for injections literally by sticking this poor fluke-infested schmuck with the exuberance of a kid popping a balloon.
I have spent a lot of time since watching this singing “Flukeman!” to the classic Batman theme song.
Tying together two points you’re making, this was an early point where I could feel the show’s premise and desires creaking against each other; it never really wants to break through and go into genuine science fiction with Mulder breaking the Conspiracy wide open to the public because, well, that would be hard to write and it would break a runaway success of a show (mostly it reads to me as Carter too anxious to go outside a comfort zone he’s created for himself). By this point, I knew Flukeman would never really get out to the public, and indeed after a while you really get to expect that this will have the same outcome over and over. Not that it ruins individual episodes, of course.
Yeah, the show obviously doesn’t want to break its own structure (the conspiracy also can’t be too effective–at the end of last season, Deep Throat hand-waved that no one can kill Mulder because he’s become too high-profile, but eh, I feel like they could manage it and would ordinarily be trying to, by their own internal logic; it’s Doylist reasoning keeping him alive, not Watsonian), and therefore none of this can ever make a major difference, even if smaller changes are possible.
This all works best when any given defeat or petering-out is sold well enough to feel upsetting in the moment, of course, which, as you said, the series can manage in individual episodes.
The Kids In The Hall, Season Three, Episode Thirteen
“Gotta tell you boys, I find some of these girls… almost attractive. Although criminally underage!”
“Can you ever really love a small man?”
“Hey! Quit tryin’ to break us up!”
“If I was stuck on a desert island, and I could only have one person, one record, and one book with me, I’d probably die of exposure.”
“I’m in your blood, Harry! I’m in your fucking DNA!”
“For years, I’ve had this reoccuring dream where I have a moustache. I know it doesn’t sound so bad, but I swear, I’m afraid to go to sleep.”
“I… dropped my shampoo.”
Heh, did you notice that’s Neve Campbell in the pizzeria sketch?
I also love the “Boxing” opener. “And then, innovation!”
Actually I pretty much like this whole episode. Took me a second to remember the “Harry” line was the Andy Belli sketch. “What do we have to do to get through to this guy, change the name of the city to Los Andy Belli’s Got the Part?” “Andy, if you have to blow him to get the ride, just don’t tell him who you are this time, okay, ya moron?” Dave playing Andy Belli as just a big dumb friendly gay himbo is great.
The Practice, “Dog Bite” – Case one: A juror talks to Lindsey in the elevator and tells her the jury will vote not to convict. Lindsay and Ellenor decide not to tell the judge since this would result in a mistrial. Only this utterly backfires and they face disbarment. Case two: Eugene has to let his client, a one legged Black man, narrate his story since the client admitted to committing the crime. Ethical dilemmas everywhere, and Ellenor confronts Bobby about the “do whatever it takes” attitude of the firm. And in the third case, Jimmy has his first chance to argue a case, sort of, as he squares off about the titular dog bite, a little girl who was bitten by a rottweiler. This case is presented as the sort of thing the firm should be doing, maybe a bit too blatantly. An entertaining episode but everything is spelled out too squarely, and I can’t for the life of me remember how Ellenor and Lindsay aren’t disbarred. Guests include Michelle Hurd as an ADA who makes bets with Eugene and is also into him; Robert Carradine as the dog owner; and Willie Garson as another ADA. He was already pretty bald back then.
Fraiser, “Bad Dog” – We’re apparently in the dog days already! Bulldog is feted for stopping a robbery at Cafe Nervosa, but Frasier saw that he in fact stopped it be accident AND used the pregnant Roz as a human shield. Fraiser obsesses over getting Bulldog to confess for his lies, but just cannot break through. The plot is pretty good but the best gags are incidental things like Daphne not once but twice going off on weird but funny tangents and Niles getting a SeaBee nomination for best guest but being sent to the craft awards. Yes, this is a SeaBees episode and Roz honors the connection to Mary Tyler Moore’s Teddie Awards by showing up in a gown on par with Mary’s worst.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Triggers in Leash” – More Thursday, but I liked the ending but found the rest a bit mannered and slow.
Women of The Resistance – A Liliana Calvani made-for-TV doc that is by turns harrowing, inspiring, and a bleak reminder that even though history happens in cycles, there will always be people working to fight the forces of repression and darkness. One thing that struck me is how this resistance to fascism is described not in terms of ideology – no one mentions “praxis” or “dialectical materialism”, though one woman calls her fellow partisans comrades – but pragmatic irritation/refusal, like how you’d swat a fly because it bit you. Early on, a woman describes getting a compulsory invitation to join the Party and she simply will not because the war killed her brother. Still didn’t feel good to know this IS happening again, but perhaps the partisans can as well.
The Rehearsal S2E4 & 5 – Once again the difference between Show Nathan and Real Nathan becomes porous, as there’s clearly a joke going on that Show Nathan doesn’t know he’s autistic (the long pause when he asks the Center for Autism doctor, “Everyone rehearses for social situations, right?” and “Most people” is hilarious and speaks volumes), but he seems to be genuinely uneasy about bringing children back onto the show. This show is to some extent made for me – I’ve also always wanted simulacras of certain social situations and even looked up good messages to send women on dating apps via Reddit and other sites, and the running gag of the camera revealing Nathan spying/watching actors in rehearsals is funny, and it also conjures up a weird longing. How many times in my life have I observed people just to learn how to behave “properly”, then either botched it or felt I could never do this? Too many!
Notes: Wait, the kissing/eye thing is real? The senator in the autism committee does not know anything about autism. Nathan insisting he doesn’t need to have rehearsals irl then botching the senator meeting is very funny. (I have also sat there not knowing that I’ve just gotten a social cue that a meeting is over.)
The Shrouds – Ahem: David Cronenberg and M. Night Shyamalan are operating from the same instincts these days. Sure, Cronenberg has more decades of coolness cache to spend, but this particular version of a high concept tied to personal distractions with broad acting styles and pulpy plotting doesn’t stack up to Trap or Old. More relevant, it doesn’t have the intrigue of the similarly uncanny Crimes of the Future aside from a few striking images. The first fifteen seconds will have you prepared for the headtrips of The Fly or Videodrome, and the movie keeps returning to a mutilated corpse like a particularly enticing mouth sore. But there’s also some ridiculous computer effects – as in effects made by computers and effects of supposed computer displays – and thoughts on future technology that don’t quite line up with the actual modern experience of technology. Worst, there are long stretches of inertia and the last thing a movie about technograverobbing should be is dull.
some doctor who
Season 1 finale-season 2 premiere.
The 6 year old spent the whole time during the first tenant episode wanting the old doctor back. The doctor regenerating has required less explanation for her than that the actors are playing make believe and the monsters / robots aren’t real. Upon reflection, this makes perfect sense to a child—you have no idea what the limits of possibility are and things are changing all the time. How do I know daleks aren’t real? Everytime I go a few weeks without seeing someone they look different to me (and I to them); how do I know faces don’t change?
Also some of season 8 with the 12th doctor and season 7 with the 11th. The clara-12 dynamic is a lot better than the clara-11 dynamic. Adding romantic energy to the doctor-companion pairing is probably the worst thing davies has done. The doctor should be old or otherwise not interested in women so they can have a banter that is superficially flirty but not romantic. The Amy-11 dynamic is also better with Rory than without. “Heaven Sent” remains my favorite episode of Doctor Who, and I think it would cheapen 12’s four billion year quest to save Clara if he was doing it because she was hot. Unless you’re going to really lean into the doomed aspect of a romance (which they do for River Song, who is a recurring character but never actually the companion) then it doesn’t really work.
What did we listen to?
Finally got through the penultimate Blank Check on Amy Heckerling, in anticipation of being way behind on the next four months of Coen Bros stuff. (Have they said if they are doing the one brother only movies?)
“Rocky Road To Dublin” from Sinners came onto my random playlist, and I have listened to almost nothing but that for five days. I’ve decided to try memorising the lyrics, and I’m just about through the first verse.
Oh same. Irish folk at this speed and velocity simply fucks, like verbal ownage.
I had to research the song because it was driving me
crazy. It’s a 9/4 meter which is not used basically anywhere else. It is catchy in a very specific way.
Listening to How Music Works by David Byrne so accordingly Remain In Light and Fear of Music are back in rotation, great stuff and I didn’t Robert Fripp is on “I Zimbra” though this makes perfect sense. Generally love Fripp and Belew outside King Crimson while remaining not a huge fan of the band. Also listening to this cool dread-inducing seventies band Univers Zero, speaking of prog, and Cassius Clay’s I Am The Greatest! which is a fun spoken word album (yes that can be a thing).
Yeah Fripp’s playing on Bowie’s “Heroes” (the album) and Belew’s playing on Lodger are fantastic.
Also love his big mammoth leads on Scary Monsters – he’s really carrying “Teenage Wildlife.”
Quebec, Ween
“It’s Gonna Be a Long Night” is an absolute banger–Nath tells me it was used on The Shield, too, which doubles my fondness for it. Most of the songs are fun and playful and groovy, providing a delightful middle-ground for the album’s sound, and then there are other particular standouts like “The Argus”–somber and beautiful–and the moving “If You Could Save Yourself.”
A Place to Bury Strangers, A Place to Bury Strangers
Loud, immersive. Very textured sound. This reminds me a little of Nine Inch Nails. It’s apparently also shoegaze, a genre I’d previously thought I wouldn’t click with, but I got swept up in this.
Riot on an Empty Street, Kings of Convenience
Dreamy, quiet, contemplative, melancholy, beautiful.
Tunnel Vision, Beach Bunny
Someone else’s therapy is way more interesting when it’s set to power pop: it feels like Beach Bunny’s Lili Trifilio done a lot of thinking on how her mind works, but she makes that the driving force of these songs rather than the centerpiece. You occasionally get a bit that goes too far–few songs need the word “maladaptive”–but mostly this feels like it’s taking a traditional subject (one’s own messed-up state) and taking a fresh, energetic, and focused perspective on it. And that really works. My favorites are still singles “Vertigo” and “Tunnel Vision,” which are what made me pick this up in the first place, but the rest of this is good too.
Rounds, Four Tet
Really enjoyed this. It has some cool, weird texture, too, like how the smooth relaxation of the concluding “Slow Jam” gets interrupted by what sounds like a squeaky toy. There are too many surprises for this to ever feel ambient: it’s present and constantly interesting.
Underground Kingz, UGK
Highlights: “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You),” “Chrome Plated Woman” (love song about a car, very linguistically playful), the easy rhythm of “The Game Belongs to Me,” the cool groove of “Cocaine” (mellow for that particular drug!), and the intense beat of “Like That.” Terrific sound to all of this.
Labor Days, Aesop Rock
There’s so much specificity here, with a density of ideas and references to match the density of words. (Not only is there a Warriors reference, the Baseball Furies themselves get name-checked!) Fantastic chorus in “Daylight,” and I also particularly love “No rEgrets” as a story song. A lot of this is darkly funny, too.
Aesop Rock reminds me a little of Tristan.
Version, Mark Ronson
Fantastic horn throughout; love how funky this is. Highlights include: “Stop Me,” “Toxic,” “Valerie,” “Apply Some Pressure” (those four are all in a row, making for an incredible stretch) and “Just.”
Night Ripper, Girl Talk
I love mash-ups, so this was a treat. (And picking out the theme to The O.C. in “Too Deep” made me very happy.) It was fun listening to this after having seen Girl Walk // All Day, because I could easily imagine people dancing to this all throughout NYC. Just a ton of energy here, with the upbeat delights of the blended songs flowing into each other so smoothly and with so many break-into-a-grin surprises.
This finished off the first installment of Nath’s favorite music of the 2000s, so have my unordered favorite 15 out of his bottom 35 (why am I doing this? Who knows): Rubber Factory (The Black Keys); Fever to Tell (Yeah Yeah Yeahs); Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (TV on the Radio); The Disintegration Loops (William Basinski); Our Endless Numbered Days (Iron & Wine); Thunder, Lightning, Strike (The Go! Team); Silent Alarm (Bloc Party); Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (David Byrne and Brian Eno); Picaresque (The Decemberists); Let It Come Down (Spiritualized); Accelerate (R.E.M.); Quebec (Ween); Underground Kingz (UGK); Labor Days (Aesop Rock); Night Ripper (Girl Talk).
Screen Drafts, “Time Loop” and “True Crime Documentaries”
Got some good recommendations from “Time Loop”–already checked out and liked River, now need to watch Source Code–and loved where they were talking about the ridiculousness of Groundhog Day getting left off: “Someone just crashed their car.”
That fat bass line on “Chrome Plated Woman” just owns everything.
It does.
Currently listening to De Stijl for the second time today, by the way.
Shoegaze is the best, strong recommend for My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless where the sheer texture is overwhelming.
I’m actually a little surprised A Place to Bury Strangers gets called “shoegaze”; I think it’s much more abrasive and aggressive than I would expect from the genre.
I’ll see if I have any other quick thoughts while I have a minute…
I dunno if you’ve ever listened to any other Ween but I think Chocolate and Cheese and The Mollusk are generally regarded as (or at least, I think they are) their best work.
“Apply Some Pressure” – I always liked Maxïmo Park although I didn’t make a lot of effort to listen to them and couldn’t identify much else besides this song.
“Aesop Rock reminds me a little of Tristan” is something I’ll be thinking about and find extremely funny, even though I don’t think it was intended as a burn or anything.
Not too much else on my mind at the moment, anyway. I guess I need to give that Beach Bunny album a listen, too. Sadly, I missed them when they came here in May, but a)the show was already sold out and resale tickets were very expensive, and b)they played the night after the Momma show, and that might have been a little too much concertgoing in a short time for me.
More Ween is definitely on my list after how much I loved this album.
“Aesop Rock reminds me a little of Tristan” is something I’ll be thinking about and find extremely funny, even though I don’t think it was intended as a burn or anything.
Certainly not a burn! (Although I’m now a little disappointed that you didn’t spin this into “I don’t know, I bet Aesop Rock would’ve liked Andor.”) It’s more like I wound up feeling like their minds might work in similar ways. Now my side-project for the rest of this project will be to place the rest of us as the artists on the list.
Back to back Momma and Beach Bunny would’ve been fantastic in theory, but yeah, that would be a little too much in too short a time for me too.
Ah, me, every time I’ve made yet another list, possibly including the article in question here in the first place.
In a lovely coincidence of timing, The Betoota Advocate released a podcast episode revisiting The Castle, reflecting on its making and impact with several key cast members. (The coincidence part is that only the other day on the Discord, the topic of ‘most Australian Australian films’ came up, and The Castle is right up there for that discussion).
Only partway in so far, but already lots of details brought up I had forgotten about – the sense by the cast and writers that they were trying to celebrate the working class, and how much pleasure they got out of the way people recognised the characters and the way of life. One of the actors spoke quite forcefully about how his family couldn’t afford to eat out when he grew up, and so yeah, you do make a big deal and celebrate the home cooked meals. Another example was just the fact that one of the sons of the family was in prison as a detail that resonated with a lot of people.
And of course, the ‘you couldn’t make it today’ discussion. Which I think is true. But I have it high on my list to try and rewatch this weekend.
(Fun fact- when this was released in the States it was rated R because of all the swearing. You people.)