Sometimes the passage of time feels so slow and yet so fast, so infinite, so undefinable. I am perhaps feeling that more than ever now that I’m in my 40s and time seems to keep barreling forward whether I like it or not. (Truth be told, aging doesn’t really bother me, I don’t mind my salt and pepper hair or that I now get to laugh at myself while being the cranky older person who tells “when I was your age” style stories.) I’m also feeling it as a lot of landmark albums of my adolescence and young adulthood are starting to have 20th, 25th, and 30th anniversaries. I’ve spent more than half my life with some of these records; they’ve defined huge parts of my musical tastes and shaped large parts of who I am and how I see the world.
So it would happen that I’m feeling that way now as I think back to some 20 years ago, to the day I was handed a burned CD by a girl I had a brief college fling with (that of course ended badly) who said “it’s the guy from Death Cab, it sounds like Nintendo.” It was a copy of Give Up and I had no idea at the time what I was holding in my hands. Indie rockers doing side electro things doesn’t seem so unusual now, or even electronics being heavily incorporated into a main project, but back then it felt like something new and exciting, some uncharted territory we were setting off to explore.
Stereogum posted a great article last week that gives more details behind the making of the record. It talks background and gives a bit of a history of that time, recalling things I had either forgotten or never knew because I was just dipping my toes into the waters of more subtle indie as a sound (versus the concept of a release being called indie purely for being on an independent label) at the time this was released after years of coming from grunge, punk and DIY removed from the “indie as a sound” style bands. I had been exposed to a few electronic things via artists like Le Tigre (and Kathleen Hanna’s lo-fi electro solo album as Julie Ruin before that) and Atom and his Package, and I took a very early shine to the Gorillaz pretty much from day one, but other than that, I really didn’t put much stock in electronic music at all. Give Up was the first album that was less “these people from punk/rock bands are making a side thing for fun so it’s acceptable to me” or “a guilty pleasure since ‘Song 2’ is cool” and more “I really could get into electronic music.” In the years that followed I explored a lot of ambient and downtempo artists, trip-hop and other genres alongside what would become “Big Indie,” as the Stereogum article calls it, only returning to straight up punk and heavier music again around 2010.
Though most people think I’m “just a punk,” this is an important album in my musical journey and development and more than that, it had a massive cultural impact. To quote Chris Deville of Stereogum “Even those who think the album is wimpy or chintzy or radically front-loaded, you can’t deny its anthropological impact,” a statement I think is super on point.
I listened to the album on and off over the years, but I realized it had been a while since I’d listened to the whole thing front to back. With the 20th anniversary looming, I figured it was time to sit down with it once again and type up some thoughts on each track. These are random thoughts and silly anecdotes, and much like my sprawling track by track of Green Day’s 1994 landmark album Dookie, it is meant to be personal. This is not presented as fact or a monolith or “music journalist talk” or anything of the sort. Other people have written really good articles of that nature about this album and you should read those too. (I linked the recent Stereogum article, just google the rest, they are out there.) I’m not that great with that stuff anyway and love a nice bit of gonzo journalism so that’s why I write the way I do. And besides, with albums that resonate so personally and have so many memories around them, it really is the only way I know how to approach them. I have a lot of thoughts on a few of the songs, more sparse thoughts on others. I just kind of let it come to me as I was listening.
You may feel entirely differently about these songs and that’s okay! That’s the beauty of the music we love, it is so damn personal to the listener. Here’s what I think and feel about these songs, tell me what you think in the comments.
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight. Listening to this song now, I can’t help but think back to those salad days of 2003 and first hearing it. I’m thinking back fondly to it as entry way for something different, the first cracking open of a door into an entirely new world.
Such Great Heights. You all know it. I don’t have to tell you about it. It has been everywhere in the last 20 years and it is honestly just such a timeless song, embedded so deeply in our culture and consciousness that it feels like it has always just been there.
But if you didn’t hear this song for the first time in 2003, it is hard to describe what that felt like; it really was something so far out of left field at the time, it felt like something brushing the edge of radical. What I didn’t know at the time was that it would go on to usher in a sea change in my own music tastes and flip them very much on their head. And even more than that, the overall impact it would have on popular music as a whole and that it would mark the start of relatively small, niche and regional indie rock bands evolving into “Big Indie.” I don’t think anyone realized that was what this was at the time. At all. The enduring classics never really feel that way in the moment though, like they are shifting culture, we just listen to them and something intangible takes hold. I’m a bit too young to know what hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” felt like at the end of 1991 (I was only 10 at that time and didn’t hear the song until probably sometime in 1992 or even 1993, my memory is a bit hazy) but I can imagine it was something like this. A seismic shift happening that you just knew but couldn’t quite describe.
In any case, it still sounds fresh and relevant today, like it could have been released last week; very few songs have that kind of staying power or impact (I feel similarly about “Hypnotize” by the Notorious B.I.G.). This song also has the best fadeout, and even having heard it thousands of times by now, I still hang on to every note, often leaning my head to the side in a physical gesture to try to grab every last drop of sound possible.
Sleeping In. Let me be the first to tell you that I absolutely LOVE sleeping in and am not now, nor have I ever been a morning person. This song could be my theme song with the (admittedly rather basic) lyrics, Don’t Wake Me I’m sleeping In. That is if I hadn’t had an irrational dislike of this song for a long time. I know this is stupid, oh believe me I know how stupid it is, but I took issue with this song when it first came out because in it, Ben Gibbard makes reference to Lee Harvey Oswald having killed John F. Kennedy, a common and often said thing. They even teach you that in history class (not that that is any measure of what is “accurate” or not). No biggie right?
Oh no, not to me at 22. I was obsessed with the JFK assassination for a long time and particularly so in this era. I read endlessly and watched everything I could on it and I firmly believed (as I still do now) it was the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald was exactly what he said he was, a patsy. (I am not joking when I say that I got a copy of the Warren Commission report for my 23rd birthday, not even a little bit.) I was so rigid in this belief that I was offended someone would DARE to put such a claim in a song! What the hell BG?! Wow, that was ridiculous to even type that out! But it was true at the time. Now I’m like, can I just go back in time to say to myself “Jesus Christ kid, relax, it’s just a song and the phrasing fit the rhyme scheme, there’s plenty of better things to be angry at.” Ah the follies of (a very nerdy) youth! (I was also offended when Death Cab signed to a major label after Transatlanticism, but got over that in time too. It was the tiiiimes man, what can I say?)
Oh and just to clear it up, I’m not a big conspiracy theory person at all, I never really read up much on any of the other myriad ones floating around about any number of things, the JFK one is just so enduring and it fascinated me as a kid so I read a lot about it. I haven’t read much on it in the last 15 years or so and if someone said “Oswald did it” in a song now, I’d just shrug.
Nothing Better. These lyrics…………..I thought they were a bit off then and I have to say 20 years on, I still think they’re a bit cringey. But I guess I have to ask myself, is that a fair assessment given the fact that they seem to start out as typical sad white indie boy “woe is me a girl dumped me” fare before the counter point of Jenny Lewis kicks in to set said sad white indie boy straight? That is something that was not usual in songs of this type then, before then, or even after then aka now. I think of it like this…yes the lyrics are a bit cringe but songs like this, and countless others, are more a product of their time when “I’ll make you see you were wrong” low-key misogyny like this from men was the norm; not accepting no for an answer during a breakup has spawned tens of thousands of sad songs about that fact so this is hardly out of the realm of normal.
All that being said, this is by far not the worst example I could point to of men bitching about a woman leaving them and the point and counter point narrative is certainly refreshing and even funny. The music for this one isn’t my favorite but the boopy bassline in the chorus still hits.
Recycled Air. Many a late night was spent by me (and many others I’m sure) laying in bed staring at the ceiling contemplating my young life and “what does it meeeean” with the subtle pleasant lull of this song. Ah yes, more of those follies of youth.
Clark Gable. Sorry not sorry, this one was cheesy in 2003 and it’s still cheesy now. From the lyrics to the music, and the delivery that tries way too hard, this one falls flat and is pretty much filler. But in the sage words of Primus, they can’t all be zingers.
We Will Become Silhouettes. Give Up really plays out in three arcs and unfortunately falters in the middle of the album. This song is firmly in arc two (aka the “less strong” songs) and also borders right on the edge of cheesy, though doesn’t fully fall in like “Clark Gable” does; it has some redeemable moments. I have often wondered if this record would have been better as a six song EP with just the first two songs, “Recycled Air” and the last three songs, all of which have had the most impact overall for me. We’d have never known the difference if the other four weaker songs weren’t included (okay, okay, “Sleeping In” can be included as a bonus track) and probably were spared from the “limited edition vault clearing” of having them released a few years later and sold for a lot more money when it became apparent a second album was never going to happen. I guess we’ll never know.
This Place Is A Prison. I always liked the darker tone of the music on this one and the inclusion of live drums in particular which were played by Gibbard himself (he drummed on very early Death Cab releases too). I still feel this way about the social rat race. Unfortunately for 22 year old me, I can’t go back and tell her that a lot of other shit is going to get better, but this isn’t going to be one of them!
Brand New Colony. So much pining for so many girls over the years to this one, can’t even tell a lie! I’m sure Ben Gibbard knew he was inspiring lots of pining indie rock boys with this but did he think of the lesbians too?! Even if he didn’t, he gave me the best sappy goo to think about crushes endlessly to with the line I want to take you far from the cynics in this town / And kiss you on the mouth /We’ll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene /Start a brand new colony
It also sounds probably the most like Nintendo on the album so my old fling was correct in her assessment. (I never pined for her to this song for the record.)
Natural Anthem. This song closes the record and is a bit of a tough one for me, even today. The same year this was released, an old high school boyfriend, who I had remained friends with and who was supportive of me when I came out, died of an OD. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time because I never knew he had a problem, he kept that hidden from me. Then all of a sudden he was gone. I didn’t get to say goodbye; I took it very hard. (We were always friends, but in sporadic contact by then. It was the days before social media and I was a late adopter of cell phones. I didn’t find out until 10 years later that he had been to rehab more than once in an attempt to save his life and that’s probably why I didn’t hear from him.)
Then in 2004, another high school friend took his own life after dealing with similar substance problems. His wake was the eeriest experience of my life up until that point. Total silence, the grief of his family so massive and the situation so unfathomable, it was deafeningly loud, a vacuum of despair. Not long after that I was listening to this song for the first time and a profound wave of sadness hit me like a ton of bricks. (For some reason this song had not been included on the burned copy of the CD I was initially given so I didn’t hear it until I bought an official copy of the album later.)
The song has forever made me think of the boundaries between life and death, the unsettling feeling of that wake, and the guilt I felt not being able to save my ex in particular, replaying in my mind as the simulated strings and acidic synths paraded onward with the drum n bass style beat. In these sounds a picture formed in my mind, I could see my friends transcending one phase of existence for another, fading off into the ether. I mostly think of Ben Gibbard when I think of this album (I’m sure I’m hardly alone there), but it was Jimmy Tamborello who hit me the hardest of all with this one.
I don’t know what this song is even about, I’m sure it is about something specific, but I don’t even hear or process the words when Gibbard starts to sing, it is imbedded so deeply in me that this is a song about my friends dying and moving on to the next life. The long instrumental intro—that goes on for nearly four minutes—is what gets me every single time, even two decades later. I see my friends shifting from one plane to another, from life to death, forever those young guys, robbed of the middle age I’m now living—one goofy and an overly confident schemer, one reserved and taciturn—moving to enter eternity.
Quasi, the long running drums and organ power duo of Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss, have just released their first album in 10 years, the brilliantly sardonic and much needed Breaking the Balls of History. The band shares on their Bandcamp that this album might never have been, and that their 2013 album, Mole City, very well might have been their last had the harshness of life not come calling and quite literally careening into the band. First, Weiss was severely injured in a 2019 car crash. Then the following year, Covid came to (everyone’s) town and we all know what happened next. Given the gravity of everything she went through, Weiss realized “There’s no investing in the future anymore, the future is now. Do it now if you want to do it. Don’t put it off. All those things you only realize when it’s almost too late. It could be gone in a second.”
And so here we are in 2023, Weiss has healed from her injuries, the pandemic is…among us still but has abated from the worst times, and Quasi has blessed us with a new collection of songs, twelve in all, with all the hilarious social and political commentary, quirky organ, sunny pop drenched harmonies, and effortlessly awesome drum fills your heart desires thrown into the mix. There’s no doubt the pandemic influenced the making of the record, how could it not, and the band found themselves taking advantage of the situation by practicing and writing daily, almost mimicking the daily routine of being on tour. Coomes shares “When you’re younger and in a band, you make records because that’s what you do, but this time, the whole thing felt purposeful in a way that was unique to the circumstances.”
The album hits highs and lows along the way, there is a palpable feeling of anxiety in many if not most of the songs, and given all that happened in the world and to the band in the time since we last heard from them, that’s understandable. “Doomscrollers,” which was released as the second single, offers their take on the one thing everyone (justifiably) loves to hate (yet still does, myself included), doomscrolling. But is it really about the action or what we find on said scroll? Either way you slice it, the song certainly calls out our increasingly alarming inability to engage with reality—no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on—which leads to us scrolling through our days now instead. “Everybody baking bread, doomscrolling going out of their head.” The song is paired with a music video directed by B.A. Miale and features the band being driven around the various chaos of “the timeline,” (or is it “reality”) in a pickup truck (complete with “keep on truckin’” plates) by a grim reaper like character.
“Nowheresville” was the third single and exudes a cool 60s rock n roll party vibe, complete with a killer organ groove and shoop shoop vocal harmonies. But don’t let the groovy aesthetic fool you, or the bike riding Sasquatch starring in the music video make you think the song is a light hearted joke (and I do love a good Sasquatch cameo, I mean who doesn’t?!). The song doesn’t say it outright, but it’s not hard to read between the lines that it’s about the atrocious state of affairs when it comes to gun control and mass shootings in the US and how our elected “leaders” continuously throw their hands up in the air while offering “thoughts and prayers” as a means to justify the blood on their hands. “Here they come now thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers won’t get ya there but I guess they do make a pretty pair.” And thus the cryptozoology themed video does make a whole lot of sense in the full context, our hairy beast riding off to nowheresville with the empty words of politicians and their promises to do something tangible as much a myth as a real Sasquatch is.
Other highlights include the lower key “Gravity” which pulls back the curtain on the theater of the absurd that is the “post facts” era created by Trump and his fanatical followers where reality doesn’t matter so much as much as your ability to sell the lie. “You can walk on water if you so choose in your made-in-USA concrete shoes” Coomes croons, too world weary to sound exasperated about it, resigned to the fact that these are the times and the people we have to deal with now. As frustrating as that realization is, I can certainly understand it because it is exhausting and sometimes you just need to make it though the damn day. “Riots and Jokes” in particular sees Weiss in top form on the drum kit, hitting hard, powerful beats and nailing some absolutely killer fills, announcing she is not only back and better than ever, but so happy to be here; the delight is obvious and infectious: “I can hear in the music how happy I am to be there and to be playing at that level again” she shares.
Indeed, we are happy Weiss is back too, one of the best and most respected drummers of her generation, it is always an inspiring joy to hear her play. (I began playing drums not long before Weiss joined Sleater-Kinney in 1996 so I grew up, and learned to play, while listening to her.) This album comes at a unique point in history, where most days it feels like we are through the looking glass—up is down and down is up—which arguably could be said for many other eras too, it just feels even worse than ever before and like we can’t seem to ever get away (cue “Doomscrollers” again). But it also arrives just in time to say yeah we’re tired and resigned to deal with a lot of this shit, but we’re also laughing at it too because what the fuck else are you going to do? I can’t help but think of other masters of political and social sarcasm like Dead Kennedys and War On Women when I think of a band like Quasi too. Sonically all different, but connected in the unique ways they all call out and filter the bullshit that permeates human existence when you’re living anywhere outside the realm of right wing la la land.
Quasi has never failed to give me a wild ride, bumpy at times with the subjects they deal with, but worth it in the end to make sure I’m still challenging myself to do something about the ills of this world. They also provide one hell of a catchy soundtrack for the journey and Breaking the Balls of Historyis yet another awesome addition to their already strong legacy. I’m ready to keep on truckin’.
Breaking the Balls of History is out now via SubPop. The upcoming tour in support of the record hits NYC at TV Eye on 3/16.
Math metal greats, Botch (which features members who went on to be in Russian Circles, Minus the Bear, These Arms Are Snakes and others), have just announced a full reunion tour set for this fall. It will follow a trio of shows later this month in Seattle and Tacoma which are their first proper shows in over 20 years.
The band also played a surprise re-union show back in October and has been busy with re-issuing their classic albums, first 1999’s We Are The Romans which came with their first new song in over 20 years, “One Twenty Two,” and recently announcing a 25th anniversary edition of 1998’s American Nervoso. Both albums were reissued via Sargent House.
See below for all dates. Tickets go on sale Friday 2/17 at 10am local time for each city.
Botch 2023 Tour Dates
2/17- Tacoma, WA @
2/24- Seattle, WA @ Showbox
2/25- Seattle, WA @ Showbox
10/5- Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
10/6- Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
10/7- Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
10/13- Chicago, IL @ Metro
10/14- Chicago, IL @ Metro
10/19- Austin, TX @ Emo’s
10/21- Denver, CO @ Summit
11/11- New York, NY @ Webster Hall
11/14- Baltimore, MD @ Soundstage
11/15- Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
11/17- Boston, MA @ Roadrunner
12/8- Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
12/9- Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory
12/12- San Francisco, CA @ The Regency
El Ten Eleven, the long running instrumental post rock duo, are true masters of their craft, having consistently released strong and musically rich albums for going on twenty years now. And they only seem to get more prolific with time—in the last three years alone they have released a triple album,Tautology (2020) and its follow up, New Year’s Eve, which came out last year. Now they have started off 2023 with the release another album, Valley of Fire, an album that has very distinct themes tying it together, which their label, Joyful Noise, describes as “merging personal anedcotes with the larger ecosystem of the sound.” Bassist/composer Kristian Dunn further explains that the album was inspired by “visiting Valley Of Fire State Park in Nevada,” “Overwhelmed by the beauty and surreal nature of the place, I found myself in the rare state of actually living in the moment and feeling awash in true tranquility. There was a sense of not getting close to something transcendent but actually experiencing it, thus the title. It wasn’t almost transcendent, it WAS.”
The thing I have always loved about instrumental music is that, in the hands of the right artist, it can say so much without ever uttering a word. Vast feelings and emotions, thoughts and ideas, incredible highs and dark lows can wash over you with a power that even the best lyricists can’t seem to match and say things that words can be hard pressed to convey—this is something El Ten Eleven has always excelled at. The band echoed this sentiment, sharing on Instagram about the album: “It hopefully says everything I can’t quite articulate about the feeling of experiencing something bigger than yourself. It’s like having someone describe the Grand Canyon to you—you don’t really understand until you’re standing at the very edge. We hope you listen and love it.”
Regardless of the creators intention, the other gift of instrumental music is that you get to decide and apply it to your own experiences in a way that is much less restrictive than if there are the stricter boundaries of lyrics. I have been a fan of El Ten Eleven for a very long time now, what I have always found and loved in their music is the undercurrent of hope and a sense of calm that always seems to find me in the moments I need it most. Through thick and thin, through terrible loss and incredible triumph, I’ve always found comfort in putting on one of their albums to feel grounded.
And so Valley of Fire finds me and offers me a feeling of being grounded yet again, at the start of a new year and a new phase of myself. Now no longer the quirky twenty something that first discovered this band and fell in love with some of their bouncier older tracks like “Hot Cakes” or “Jumping Frenchmen of Maine,” the firmly middle aged me is here at the dawn of a new era of my life, exploring what that means, and the more somber and contemplative offerings on this latest record hit me in a much needed place.
Opening with the subdued and hopeful, “New Year’s Day,” we enter into the world of the Valley of Fire, full of introspection and reflection, a place to quietly contemplate and explore the meaning of things bigger than ourselves. This song is followed by the album’s lead single “Not Even Almost,” continuing in the vein of hope and hitting many of the sweeping signature aspects of Kristian Dunn’s impressive pedalboard wizardry. About the song he shares “If you listen closely, you’ll notice the melody repeating but the bass parts changing underneath. It’s a very Bach-inspired idea, but fits the metaphor perfectly (the anchor of your identity shifting under a truly moving circumstance).”
Other highlights for me are the short hit of “Volsens,” the darkly funky third track and the quietly majestic “Days of Our Lives” with laid back percussion from Dunn’s stalwart longtime musical companion, drummer Tim Fogarty, who plays perfectly subdued beats alongside the low-key guitar and bass loops. The title track closes the album, with a slow and cinematic build towards a triumphant conclusion, relying again on sparse percussion alongside gentler, circumspect loops to tell its tale.
Valley of Fire is a stirring addition to this duo’s already impressive body of work. It showcases everything that makes them such unique songwriters, and enforces why they are so beloved by the devoted fans who have followed their career for many years. They hit NYC twice in 2022, once for their own headline show and again opening for Peter Hook and the Light (both phenomenal shows for the record), so here’s hoping 2023 sees them grace the Big Apple once more.
“It’s been a bit of a weird week, anyone else having a weird week?” asked Angela Phillips, lead singer/bassist of A Deer A Horse (and also owner of the coolest bass in New York City). And you know what? Yeah, it was a bit of a weird week for me too. But as I always like to say, there is nothing a nice dose of rock n roll can’t solve, and boy was I in for a much needed head clearing at this show.
The show was kicked off by Shiverboard, who prior to this night I had never heard nor heard of before. But immediately upon walking into the venue (unfortunately when their set was already in progress), I found myself enthralled with them, turning to the members of Venus Twins between songs and asking “who are these guys?! They’re fucking sick!” All at once they are noise punk, grunge, metal, grind and hardcore, and they seriously knocked my socks off with their stage presence and catchy as hell tunes. Onstage they mentioned they have new album coming soon and after the show I went to the merch table and said “tell me more!” They said that while yes, it is coming, they have not yet recorded it though will be in the process of that soon. While I anxiously await that, I’ll be digging into their previous releases, which includes some recent live recordings on Bandcamp, and keeping an eye out for upcoming shows. (They will be playing 2/16 at Our Wicked Lady.)
Shiverboard at TV Eye
Next up was Trace Amount, a one man harsh industrial noise project who put on a feverish and spell binding set, playing many of the songs from the 2022 album, Anti Body Language.
The penultimate set of the night was played by the ever incredible Venus Twins, the killer experimental noise punk bass/drums duo of Jake and Matt Derting. I’ve seen them many times now and never once have they delivered anything less than 200% at a show. This was another one for the books, with all the potent noise and pummeling intensity I’ve come to expect from this band. Matt also traded his axe for a sax during a brief interlude, handing the bass to an audience member while it continued to feed back, the sax swirling over top as Jake wailed on the drum kit with wild speed and acumen, all of it converging into a beautiful cacophony radiating out from the stage. If you haven’t heard their most recent album, Raxis (which was one of our favorites of 2022), I suggest you get on that, post fuckin haste.
Heavy noise rockers, A Deer A Horse, closed out the night and incredibly, despite having followed them on social media for several years and loving their 2022 album, Grind (read our review), this was my first time actually making it out to a show. (Working nights is great and has always been my jam, but can also be a bitch sometimes when it means you can’t get to all the shows you want to because you’re busy working other shows!) Their set ripped and it raged and was everything I had been waiting for. I especially loved getting to hear the album opener, “Bitter,” which is a favorite of mine. They will soon embark on a European tour before heading back and playing dates in the US leading up to their appearance at Caterwaul Fest in May. I’m certainly going to make sure I don’t wait so long to see them again, my work schedule be damned! (I’m also contemplating a trip out to Caterwaul, my bank account be damned!)
A noise rock head clearing is exactly what the doctor ordered because, while feeling a bit weird and in the doldrums before the show, I was refreshed as ever and dipped back into the cold night air with a decidedly jaunty pep in my step. Proving definitively that sometimes, noise is all you need.
Scroll down for pics of the show (photos by Kate Hoos)
