Heartbreaking Bravery

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Tag: Just Another Day

September 1, 2016

Sat. Nite Duets – Attached to the Lamp (Stream)

satniteduets

Yesterday saw the release of memorable music videos from Cherry Glazerr (who nearly nabbed this post’s featured spot), Diners, Diamond Hands, Molly Burch, Headwaves, and Jenny Hval. A trio of full streams from the camps of Radar Eyes, Chris Farren, and J&L Defer tied everything up in a neat bow, providing a dash of energy in the process. While all of those releases are worth exhaustively exploring, this post’s feature spot was claimed with brash confidence by Sat. Nite Duets‘ exhilarating career highlight, “Attached to the Lamp”.

Heartbreaking Bravery was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of Air Guitar several months back and “Attached to the Lamp” has been in near-constant rotation since its initial play. From the song’s epic-ready intro onward, “Attached to the Lamp” cranks out an astonishing amount of genuinely great moments, never once slowing down or bothering to look back at the carnage left in its wake. The band’s lyrics have never been sharper and the guitar leads echo the most sweeping moments conjured up by the likes of Titus Andronicus and Diarrhea Planet at their very best, elevating them with the narrative’s ridiculously effective tongue-in-cheek humor.

“Attached to the Lamp” may come as a shock to the system for anyone who wrote the band off as a Pavement retread several years ago (an unfortunate tag that never really did what the band was doing any kind of justice) or anyone who was expecting something more along the lines of the excellent “TAFKA Salieri“. More than anything the band’s done in an already impressively storied career, “Attached to the Lamp” is a frantic, all-out blitz of a song that showcases a band with a serious amount of assurance in their identity.

Sat. Nite Duets are typically at their very best when they’re at their most unhinged and every second of “Attached to the Lamp” feels like a definitive example of that aspect of the band’s stylistic makeup. Tearing away at a breathless pace, the song winds up nearing the three minute mark but feels less than half as long (and more than twice as complete as most songs that run a similar length).

The band find an unteachable amount of joy in reveling in snark, expertly doling it out at a rapid pace in the song’s opening stanza:

I don’t wanna pick up the phone when it rings
‘Cause I know who it is they wanna talk about things
Oh yeah, I prefer the silence of nothing at all
Just the books on my shelf and the shit on my walls

The quips don’t let up from that point forward, including an absolutely perfect and absurdly clever stanza that retells the story of watching an opening act get picked up by his dad providing an unexpected twist with the repeated insistence that “it’s happening right now”, which paves the way for all kinds of painfully honest moments when the band takes this on tour. All of the sly lyrical moments ultimately culminate in an unforgettable final verse that abruptly switches gears from comedic distancing to open sincerity, providing “Attached to the Lamp” with one last grace note that ensures its status as one of 2016’s most outstanding moments.

Not a second of “Attached to the Lamp” is wasted and the band coaxes maximum effect out of every scintillating solo, turn of phrase, dynamic moment, and snare hit they can muster. Whether it’s the final bridge that finds the vocals dipping to match the sudden recession of intensity or the intuitive bends of the soaring main riff, Sat. Nite Duets seem hell-bent on making a mark that lasts. By the end of “Attached to the Lamp” one thing’s very clear: they have themselves one hell of a little motherfucking rock n’ roll band.

Listen to “Attached to the Lamp” below and pre-order Air Guitar from Father/Daughter here.

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August 19, 2016

Eluvium – Rorschach Pavan (Stream)

eluvium

Over the course of the past few days, a host of impressive streams have surfaced from the likes of Death By Unga Bunga, Cory Hanson, Cheap Girls, Goon, Super Unison, Mannequin Pussy, Sofia Härdig, Totally Sl0w, Kiran Leonard, The Tallest Man On Earth, Two Houses, Suburban Living, Chasms, Racing Heart, Roses, Kadhja Bonet, Belle Mare, Diamond Hands, Astro Tan, and Kynnet. A bevvy of music videos emerged as well, including impressive new clips from Mozes and the Firstborn, Annabel Allum, Sam Evian, Marching Church, Billie Marten, Odonis Odonis, Eleanor Friedberger, Austin Lucas, The Body, Sunshine & the Blue Moon, Peter Bjorn and John, Cinemechanica, and The Pooches. Outstanding full streams from Band Aparte, Channeling, and Kaz Mirblouk rounded everything out in stylish fashion.

While all three dozen of those entries are worth a hefty amount of investment, it was Eluvium‘s characteristically breathtaking “Rorschach Pavan” to earn this post’s featured spot. Following on the heels of the spine-tingling “Regenerative Being“, Matthew Cooper once again demonstrates what’s made his discography one of the richest — and most celebrated — in ambient music.  “Rorschach Pavan” is one of Cooper’s finest offerings to date.

Once again, there’s an air of tranquility that permeates through “Rorschach Pavan” as well as a genuine sense of peace. Cooper’s stated that False Readings On is meant to be a meditation on cognitive dissonance and that thread reveals itself in patches throughout the course of this track but never overwhelms the proceedings, acting as a brief reprieve from the aggressive punctuation of “Regenerative Being”. Even with feedback and white noise swirling through its veins, “Rorschach Paven” registers as one of Cooper’s more calm, cerebral works.

The structure of the bulk of Eluvium’s music demands the songs to slowly unfurl, revealing themselves in layers while simultaneously adding new, overlapping themes, motifs, and instrumentation. Here, that approach hits an apex just after the 3:40 mark as a bass suddenly lifts the melody skyward in what’s one of the most beautiful sequences of music anyone’s likely to hear all year. That specific moment winds up being the definitive one for “Rorschach Pavan” as the gentle climax slowly cedes and the track begins to calmly disintegrate.

Otherworldly, intimate, and unfathomably gorgeous, “Rorschach Paven” is classic Eluvium, through and through. Beyond that, it’s one of the most awe-inspiring songs of recent memory. If the rest of False Readings On can live up to the standards set by its precedents, it’ll likely stand as one of the most beautiful records of 2016. Until then, “Rorschach Pavan” should be more than enough to tide anyone over. Fall under its spell and drift off on a sea of muted bliss.

Listen “Rorschach Pavan” below and pre-order False Readings On here.

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