Irish post-punk band, M(h)aol (pronounced “male”), wrote and recorded their debut full length album, Attachment Styles, over the course of seven days in one rehearsal room using a sparse set-up with “no headphones, minimal drum mics, and only a PA for vocals.” The album was produced, mixed and mastered by band member Jamie Hyland. The superb result is a truly eclectic record that rages against patriarchy and heteronormativity, while also reveling in the transcendent power of finding joy despite oppressive sexist bullshit. The Tulle Collective (a women-led independent record label focused on working with and for underrepresented voices in music) released Attachment Styles and describes it as “a record about social connection, queerness, and healing.”
The eleven songs explode and whisper in turn, featuring vocalist Róisín Nic Ghearailt’s intense lyrics, which are both contemplative and defiant. The band shares: “When Róisín was writing the lyrics, she used the theory of attachment styles as an overarching theme which is a theory that looks at the impact our inter-familial relationships and society have on how we relate to one another.” As Attachment Styles shows, our society and inter-familial relationships hurt us plenty, but if you’re like M(h)aol, you’ve got good friends to create raucous music with, and thus, you’ll not only survive, you’ll thrive.
The album is “a journey of healing,” beginning with “Asking For It,” a song exploring the pain, self-doubt, and anger survivors of sexual assault have to navigate. It’s the one track on the album that existed before the group came together to write and record the album. Ghearailt started writing the song years before to attempt to process her feelings about rape culture: “I wrote it initially in 2016 then revisited it in 2020. I was shocked by how much internalized victim blaming there was in the lyrics. I rewrote it, then we recorded it and it was released to raise money for Women’s Aid in 2021. The album version is a lot angrier than the 2021 one and almost satirical insofar as it’s highlighting how ludicrous the notion of anyone ‘asking for it’ is.”
The song also has a beautiful and moving video directed by band member, Zoë Greenway (who also created the album’s haunting cover art), and she shares: “This has been the most difficult video I’ve made for M(h)aol to date. There’s so much power and emotion in Róisín’s lyrics and performance, so we worked really hard to create a responsible and sensitive portrayal of this experience she’s conveying, do it justice and make people care.”
Other standout songs on Attachment Styles include the spoken word “Bisexual Anxiety,” where, Ghearailt speaks honestly over simmering noise and subtle distorted guitars: “I’m worried I’m doing this wrong. The other day when you asked me was I just gay…oh honey, I’d love to be gay. Or straight even. I mean, not really. I’d love to be anything other than what I am. Fluid. Ambiguous. Subversive. If you’re being kind…greedy, indecisive, untrustworthy, if you’re not.” I’ve never heard declarations of the realities of bisexual experience that were so direct and true, all over such a mysterious soundscape.
Attachment Styles closes with “Period Sex,” which smashes all taboos about shame connected to menstruation. “Let’s have period sex / It’s time to make a mess…I’m in a mood to eat,” Ghearailt purrs. The seductive and triumphant mood echoes in the danceable drums from Constance Keane that build to a frenzy within a storm of guitar sound, a slinky bass line, and intermittent spikes of synthesizers. Like all good sex, things reach their climax, and the afterglow shimmers with sounds of a broken piano that the band members found in the days leading up to recording the album.
Ghearailt shares that “Prior to writing the track I’d had a lot of eye-opening conversations around period shame with people of all genders and from all walks of life, and I wanted to write almost an anthem for everyone who had ever had a period or loved someone who had one. It felt like a hugely powerful thing to be in a position to create a song as a band that was unequivocally sexy. I’m a cis bisexual woman in a queer, sapphic relationship. Periods and period sex are a part of my reality, and my girlfriend actually helped me with the lyrics in the first verse.”
Only 16 months after releasing their stellar debut EP, Gender Studies, M(h)aol’s Attachment Styles now brilliantly continues their defiant feminist post-punk style (no small feat considering that the quintet live in five different cities, including Dublin, Bristol, and London). The group will be at SXSW this year, and hopefully will grace the rest of the United States with a full tour soon. In the meantime, those of us stateside can work toward freedom, equity, and joy for people of all genders and sexualities while listening to Attachment Styles.
Attachment Styles is available now via Tulle Collective and on all major streamers.
The Queens-based alternative soul singer Nick Hakim cast a seductive spell over an adoring crowd at Brooklyn Steel this past Saturday night. Born and raised in Washington DC to a Chilean mother and a Peruvian father, Hakim grew up surrounded by a wide variety of musical influences. He started singing in a friend’s church choir and taught himself how to play piano at the age of seventeen, eventually attending the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He recorded his first two-part EP Where Will We Go in 2014 while still a student at Berklee, and has continued to develop his own unique style of R&B ever since, releasing his third full-length album, COMETA, this past October. To promote the record, Hakim has recently toured to London, Paris, and Acapulco’s Tropic Fest. But on Saturday, he was making a triumphant return to New York City, and his hometown fans could not have been more enchanted.
The evening began with Temporary Residence Ltd. artist June McDoom working her own sonic magic on the crowd with whispery soft vocals over a unique mix of folk-rock, soul, and reggae. I’m a big fan of June McDoom’s eponymous EP (also released this past October), and her live set more than lived up to the beauty of her recordings. She began with “By June,” a wafting, texture-filled ballad with lyrics of pure devotion: “I can’t even find my way / without your hand in mind.” After the first song, her guitar pick-up battery died, but she kept her cool and bantered playfully with the audience through the technical difficulties. A new battery was located, and Nick Hakim joined his opening act onstage after McDoom spoke effusively about how much his 2020 release, Will This Make Me Good, meant to her during the early months of the pandemic. It was during the lockdown that she and partner/collaborator/guitarist Evan Wright began to write and record the gorgeous collection of songs they shared on Saturday, including the lilting dancey vibes of “Babe, You Light Me Up,” which closed their set.
When Nick Hakim returned to the stage with his own band (bassist Kyle Myles, guitarist Joe Harrison, and drummer Vishal Nayak), the fans up in the balcony VIP section erupted into cheers of adoration, in both Spanish and English. Hakim smiled and launched into the first half of his set, featuring songs from COMETA, and a few older selections, including “I Don’t Know,” a favorite from his aforementioned double EP, Where Will We Go. At his set’s midpoint, Hakim invited McDoom back onstage, and she provided perfect harmonies to his soulful crooning for the rest of the show (excluding the encore). Other special guests were Hakim’s brother Danny, who played guitar on “Perfume,” a seductive song about a lover’s lingering scent. Multi-colored lights swirled as the couples in the crowd held each other close and Hakim’s velvet falsetto drifted over it all.
Both June McDoom and Nick Hakim entranced on Saturday, and it was a joy to see how much all of the musicians onstage respected and enjoyed, getting blissfully lost in playing music together, bringing an ecstatic audience along for a very smooth ride.
Scroll down for pics of the show (photos by Emilio Herce)
In 1990, They Might Be Giants released their third album, Flood, on Elektra Records (their first release with a major label). Flood went platinum, and I spent my sophomore year in high school singing impromptu a capella versions of “Birdhouse in Your Soul” or “Twisting” or “Particle Man” in three-part harmony with a selection of other choir nerds. (Shout out to my friend Caden who put a whole bunch of excellent songs from Flood on one of her magical mixtapes, back when making a mixtape for someone was the ultimate gesture of love.)
TMBG made (and continues to make) smart, funny, and eclectic rock and pop that is completely unique. Founded by John Flansburgh and John Linnell (yep, two Johns, love it) back in 1982, They Might Be Giants have released twenty-three studio albums to date (five of them for kids), and have developed a devoted fan base that attend their much-lauded lives shows almost religiously and it’s not an uncommon thing for a TMBG fan to have seen the band live upwards of fifty times. And while I wouldn’t describe myself as a rabid TMBG fan, I’m not a casual admirer either, but I had never seen them live until this past Friday at the Bowery Ballroom, and I could not have been more satisfied and delighted.
Friday night began a three-night stand for TMBG at Bowery Ballroom that was celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Flood. The shows had been originally scheduled for 2020, but due to the pandemic (and other complications—John Flansburgh suffered injuries in a car accident in 2022, but thankfully recovered), the celebration tour was postponed by almost three years. The fans began to line up outside the club early, and by the time They Might Be Giants took the stage for their first of two sets (no opener), the venue was packed with the sold-out adoring crowd, many of them wearing colorful headdress headbands spelling out “THEY” in bobbing letters over the fans’ heads.
The Johns took the stage with their longtime band collaborators (Danny Weinkauf on bass, Dan Miller on guitar, and Marty Betler on drums), and were greeted with rapturous applause from the get-go. They launched into “Letterbox” (from Flood), followed by “Synopsis for Latecomers” and “Bronosaurus,” tracks from their most recent album Book (2021). And then, boom, the aforementioned “Birdhouse in Your Soul” came at us, and I sang along, and danced, and maybe got a little weepy. Forgive me…it was my first TMBG live experience, and long overdue!
The rest of the euphoric two-set evening featured every song from Flood, as well as other choice selections from Book (including “Moonbeam Rays”), and a variety of other early TMBG favorites, including 1998’s “Doctor Worm” (released on the live album, Severe Tire Damage, as a single, and on compilations), which closed out the first set. In the midst of the fun, between songs the Johns delivered snappy banter, including a bit about how they kidnapped the real They Might Be Giants, and were actually incredibly accurate TMBG impersonators. If so, I was happily fooled. The hijinks continued with “Stiloob,” a backwards version of Flood’s “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love,” which TMBG recorded a video of during the first set (with a lot of audience shots), and then played back the video to kick off the second set.
Among the many highlights of the night was the outstanding arrangement of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” which closed out the second set and featured extended and delightful solos from the horn section. Both Dan Levine on trombone and Stan Harrison on saxophone gave introductory solos to the song, and a giddy call-and-response trumpet solo from Mark Pender concluded the song (the audience sang back everything he played—he essentially traded fours with around four hundred happy voices).
I have no adequate excuse for why it’s taken me over thirty years to get to see They Might Be Giants live, but I am so overjoyed that I’m now among the privileged and wise. Let’s hope TMBG continue to record and tour for many years to come! I’m now among the devoted.
Scroll down for setlist, fan shot videos, pics of the show (photos by Kate Hoos)
TMBG Setlist, Set One: Letterbox, Synopsis for Latecomers, Brontosaurus, Birdhouse in Your Soul, Twisting, Someone Keeps Moving My Chair, Women & Men, Let Me Tell You About My Operation, Whistling in the Dark, Hot Cha, Stilloob, Minimum Wage, Moonbeam Rays, Road Movie to Berlin, Doctor Worm
Set Two: Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love, Dead, Man It’s So Loud in Here, Your Racist Friend, We Want a Rock, Number Three, Don’t Let’s Start, The Darlings of Lumberland, Lucky Ball and Chain, Particle Man, Museum of Idiots, Wicked Little Critta, Damn Good Times, Theme From Flood, Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (The Four Lads cover) Encore One: 2082, When Will You Die Encore Day: New York City (Cub cover)
The Tokyo-based trio Boris celebrated thirty years creating music and sound together this year, and what better way for them to revel in their epic legacy than by releasing three full-length albums in 2022? (Read our reviews of W and Heavy Rocks.) Fade is the latest, which came as a surprise release with no prior announcement, and the six tracks ignite a listener’s imagination, plunging you into a sort of psychedelic meditation. Through their three decades as a band, Boris have either defied categorization or over-inspired it. Their music has been described as experimental rock, noise, avant-garde metal, doom metal, post-metal, drone metal, sludge metal, psych rock, shoegaze, dreampop, and crust punk, among many other possible sub-genres and their sound often changes album to album. Fade also resists simple classification, and is most certainly experimental, with elements of many of those genres woven throughout, but with a distinct focus on drone metal.
The album’s six tracks are presented in “chapters,” with a prologue and epilogue, and an unrecorded afterword that exists only as sensation (at least to this listener). Just like enjoying a surreal novel, Fade invites you to explore other worlds. So close your eyes, listen, visualize, and get lost in the layers of Boris’ sound.
The first track, “Prologue Sensaro” (Sensaro means “three-forked road” or “junction of three roads” in Japanese) immediately immerses you in an undulating wall of guitar noise and electronica. Wata, Boris’ much-lauded guitarist holds court, joined by Takeshi, who usually plays bass (or switches between guitar and bass), but here both Wata and Takeshi are unleashing a swirling curtain of guitar sound feeding back on itself in pulsing waves. Atsuo (who on other albums also offers masterful metalesque vocals) is primarily adding to the soundscape on electronics, with occasional bursts of drums establishing momentary rhythmic grooves within the sonic maelstrom.
“Prologue Sensaro” also has a gorgeous and hypnotizing video featuring camera work and editing by Ryuta Murayama. The video sees Wata in a stunning Bjorkian costume made of what looks like moonbeam cellophane. The original fifteen plus minutes of the song are cut down to just over nine minutes, but you still have plenty of time to sink to the ocean floor and swim just under the surface with a scantily-clad-yet-very-goth female figure who may be the sexiest sea witch this planet has to offer.
The thick layers of guitar noise continue in “Howling Moon, Melting Sun” (which also clocks in at around fifteen minutes), with aggressive extended chords roiling while high-pitched electronic vibrations swirl above. At times, one can hear voices within the storm. It’s hard to tell what is the moon here and what is the sun, but if celestial bodies began to howl and bend and melt around each other, I’m pretty sure this is what it would sound like.
“Michikusa” (which in Japanese means to dawdle or waste time) is a shorter track, the softest on the album, with floating synth and electronic sounds that again create the sensation of voices or even whale songs, but it cuts off abruptly because “nanji, sashidasareta te wo tsukamu bekarazu” is coming. (Translation: “when you should not grab the outstretched hand.”) Fade’s fourth song (but third chapter) unleashes the uncontrollable beast that is Wata’s brutal guitar sound again here, like an unrelenting monster that is stomping its giant feet, causing mammoth earthquakes and breaking the world apart. If this thing offers its hand to you, well yeah, I’d advise against taking it.
The aftermath of the monster is “Marine Snow,” a wall of fuzzy guitar noise much like the blizzard suggested by this fourth chapter’s title. Like witnessing a frozen tornado above the ocean, you can hear the wind and waves in this track, the power of the sky meeting the power of the sea. But once again, after one final crash, the song ends abruptly, and it’s time for the epilogue.
Boris signed tour Polaroid
“A Bao A Qu–Infinite Corridor” begins with the slow twinkling notes of an old music box that seems to summon all of the rotating cosmos as big thick guitar chords erupt again, pulsing through static, like the beacons of light shooting out from a space-age city in Fade’s cover art. In the middle of the song we hear a fluttering of cymbals, and again, distant indecipherable voices calling out to the night. “A Bao A Qu” references a mythical creature from literature that originally appeared in Arabian Nights, and again in Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, and Boris has recorded three earlier versions of the song—on 2004’s The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked, 2005’s Mabata No Ura (a soundtrack from an imaginary film), and 2014’s The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked Extra. This newest iteration of the song is the longest of the four recorded, offering a triumphant cacophony for fourteen and a half minutes, until the thunderous layers of sound suddenly burn out. But Boris’ beautiful noise continues to smolder in your mind, like being buried in marine snow (the afterword).
Fade has served as my introduction to the intricate, diverse, and stunningly impressive body of work that Boris has shared with the world over the past thirty years, and I’m definitely now a fan. I missed their live show at Webster Hall back in September (but our EIC was there, see below for her pics from the show), but I’m hoping they will return to New York soon. In the meantime, I will go explore their mammoth discography and continue to get joyously lost in Fade.
The Swedish alternative rock band Omni of Halos released their self-titled debut LP on November 18th on Lövely Records with heavy swirling soundscapes whipped up by four guitars (one of them, unexpectedly, pedal steel), bass, moog, and relentless drums. The impact of their sound often brings the sensation of being caught in the eye of the storm, or tossed about in a maelstrom of guitar noise magic. The songs are moodily reflecting on the pain of human relationships or the shit state of the world, but within this spinning, glimmering wall of sound there is solid strength. Omni of Halos bring vulnerability and warrior ways all at once. And through all the ups and downs, they weave their own unique brand of rock—dense, complex, and fierce.
The opening track, “You Suck,” was one of my favorites. Immediately driving and urgent, the layers of guitars pulse with energy, as the pedal steel slinks around the edges, with Markuu Mulari exploding on the drums with some mind-blowing fills. “Yeah, you want to control me / Good luck with that / It’s gonna end bad,” Henrik Hjelt Röstberg sings, and indeed, with power like this coming at you, why would anyone try to control Omni of Halos? You can see the band working their magic (with so many amps) in the video for “You Suck”
Other standout tracks for me included “Care Free,” with its grungy grooves, masterfully driven by Kyle Pitcher on bass. “What made you think / That you could run away / From all that shit you created / And never looking back / Keep on running free / Care free from this world we’re living in.” As the lyrics reflect, there is no being care free in this messed up world anymore (if there ever was). The tension and disappointment build to a frenzy from the guitars, with the pedal steel from Daniel Levin cutting beautifully through the chaos. “Care Free” also has an exciting video that collages together footage of the band live, recording, and some very cool animation by Bianka Berggren.
“Crumbling to Pieces,” the first single from the album, takes the disillusionment with our post-modern mess to a fever pitch, featuring strong vocal harmonies from Röstberg and Gabriel Unsgaard as the band roils and rumbles underneath. “This world crumblinginto pieces / in front of our eyes / this place gonna burn.” The sonic frenzy escalates until you can almost feel the earth shaking under your feet, guitars so heavy the streets are beginning to crack open. Having additional guitars and moog energy from Johan Winther just makes the sound all the bigger, and this song truly becomes the apocalyptic earthquake it should be.
The final track, “Out of Control,” closes out this intense album perfectly with a message of the persistent need to keep moving, keep hustling, keep working, keep making, in an extremely broken world that will never allow you to stop. “Don’t stop this motion, keep it moving,” Röstberg sings. “You can’t stop now, make sure to let go. Out of control, out of control.” The unhinged and potentially dangerous energy of humanity on the edge comes through beautifully in this last track from Omni of Halos, and throughout the album.
Omni of Halos (photo by David Hultesjö)
Featuring the four tracks from the band’s Care Free EP (released earlier this year) and six brand-new songs, Omni of Halos offers dramatic rock music at its best. “We just wanted to play massive indie rock with no limitations or influences,” says Röthberg, and that is what they’ve achieved. With production from Per Stålberg (of Division of Laura Lee and Pablo Matisse) and mixing from John Agnello (who previously collaborated with Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Kurt Vile), Omni of Halos is “beauty and darkness combined,” providing “shelter to the misunderstood.” One big old laser storm of loud goodness from Gothenberg, Sweden!
Omni of Halos is out now via Lövely Records and available on Bandcamp and all major streamers.
