La Dispute - Wildlife

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to say after what period of time it's safe to call an album a "classic"; it's a very loaded word and it's tricky to separate an album that's exciting and that you're really enjoying at the time from one that will truly stand out among those more established classic albums from the past. It's particularly difficult with newer styles of music - the excitement of something new can lead to hasty decisions. I remember thinking Full Collapse and Relationship of Command were classics from the first few plays, and those are decisions I'm still 100% behind. There have been countless other albums that's I've rushed into thinking are classics that haven't aged so well.

All that said, I'm going on the record that Wildlife is a classic album and one that I'll still be enjoying in years to come. I was late to the party and only bought this three-and-a-half years ago, but in that time I've played it a lot and those feelings of excitement and enjoyment haven't faded in the slightest. The albums they released either side of it are both great albums (and in different ways), but Wildlife feels like everything fell into place perfectly and it captured everything I wanted from the band in the most incredible way.

What are those things, you ask. To be put it very concisely, it's stories told over heavy music. Each of these songs tells a story, each one deeply emotional but not in a traditional "emo" sense. There are characters you feel genuinely attached to, despite only knowing them for four or five minutes. The perspectives vary wildly, but one amazing theme is that none of them are the most obvious personas for a hardcore frontman to bring to life - struggling parents, lost youths, a church(!?). And yet each of them I feel like I know. I've watched films with less character-progression than these songs.

And the music is brilliantly heavy, even in the more reflective moments. I'm obviously going to dwell on a couple of songs in particular, so I might as well start now - the breaks in King Park and I See Everything are amongst the finest I've heard. I can't imagine the band get compared to Machine Head very often (or very happily), but those two songs are up there with the break in Davidian as some of the most perfect moments in heavy songs.

Since we're on the subject of those two songs, I might as well start gushing about side C of this album. My friend Sarah called it the "narrative side", which for an album full of stories says quite how compelling these songs are. Each side starts with a song title with a lowercase "a" - a Poem starts this side appropriately ("getting darker"), as the songs that follow are easily the darkest. King Park is a harrowing story of a gang-related shooting gone wrong told from an out-of-body experience. Whenever I've seen them live the audience has been full of people singing every word to this song, which is quite an accomplishment since it has over 750 words. I think for everyone in the crowd - certainly for me - singing every word makes that climax of "Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself" even more rewarding. I'm always out of breath, and that exhaustion makes those words even more powerful. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time just to hear that song for the first time again (partly because the first time I heard it I was re-doing the grout in the bathroom, which is a really shitty memory to attach to such a great song).

A gentle guitar gives you a moment to take in what just happened before Edward Benz, 27 Times starts and tells the story of a hardware clerk helping an elderly man who'd been attacked by his son, who suffered from schizophrenia (the layers of removal from the subjects is a interesting device in itself - I imagine people will write books about this one day). When I think of mental illnesses, I think of the characters in this song and how it affects the lives of so many people around them. It's quite fascinating. The side closes with I See Everything, which tells the story of a teacher who lost a child to cancer in the form of diary entries read out in a classroom (again with the layers of removal). The impact on the student sat in the classroom is clear as the song closes out with their amazement at the teacher's ability to keep her faith. This song always hit hard, but now as a parent I can barely sit still from the shivers it sends down my spine. The words "January 19: We buried our son today" are delivered in the most incredibly brutal way imaginable - a date hasn't had such an impact on me since that moment in The Shining when the word "Tuesday" appears on the screen with a single attack of violins as the snow and mania starts to kick in.

It's almost a relief when the needle runs-off and you get a moment to recover, although All Our Bruised Bodies... recaps the stories and hammers the point home with "Everyone in the world comes at some point to suffering", a horrifying reminder that these stories aren't far-fetched tales but things that could and do happen to anyone.

I normally write about mundanities like buying the record and how nice the colour of the vinyl is but, as with every time I get to the end of this album, I'm currently an emotional wreck and good for nothing.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, insert
Tracks: 14
Cost: £17.40 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 06/08/15
Colour: Purple
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Hermano - Only a Suggestion

The sticker on the sleeve of this albums said "eight tracks reminiscent of classic Kyuss strained through a Soundgarden at 100 miles an hour", which is a pretty good summary - John Garcia sings, so it sounds a lot like Kyuss and I think everyone can agree that is a good thing. It's definitely a bit faster than Kyuss and I guess I can see the Soundgarden reference - heavy and fast in a way that stoner-rock typically isn't, but Soundgarden often were. Either way, you put a sticker like that on a record and I'm going to buy it.

I'm not sure I knew anything about Hermano when I found this record in Generation Records in New York a decade ago. I used to work with a guy who wore a Hermano t-shirt, so I knew they were a band, and the music makes sense given what I knew about the guy. I bought a lot of records that day, and even more at my next stop in Boulder, so I had quite a stack to work through when I got home. I can't remember the first time I played this, or how long it took me to get to it in amongst all the other purchases.

This is the strange thing: this album is huge, yet I've made no effort to check out the other Hermano albums. It makes me smile so much when The Bottle gets going, Senor Moreno's Plan has such an incredible groove to it and Landetta (Motherload) has a chorus I never want to end, but Only a Suggestion sits alone in my collection as the only Hermano album I've heard, let alone bought. Now part of that is down to the fact I have never ever seen another Hermano record in real life (and I'd definitely buy any others if I found them), but the internet exists so I could find them very easily if I tried. But I haven't.

Ultimately, I guess the reason is that I have all the Kyuss albums and when I want a band who sounds a bit like Kyuss I listen to Kyuss. Sure this album is huge and makes me smile, but the Kyuss albums are even more massive and make me so fucking happy. I love John Garcia's voice - I'd go so far as to say it's one of the main reasons I love Kyuss so much - so I should feel compelled to seek out everything he's sung on, but I'm just not bored of Kyuss yet. If the day ever comes when I do get bored of Kyuss, then working through the many albums he's sung on will be the first thing I do. I'm just not sure that day will ever come.

This might not sound like a very positive review, but this really is a great album. I'm sure John Garcia hates that he can't do anything without people constantly banging on about Kyuss, but I see it as a compliment.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 8
Cost: £5.96 new
Bought: Generation records, New York
When: 11/04/08
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Ouch that's hot" Side B: "Ouch that's hot"
mp3s: None

Pale Angels - Imaginary People

I have and enjoy all three Pale Angels albums, but if you asked me to put them in the order they were released, I'd struggle; if you played me a song from any of them, I wouldn't be able to tell you which album it's from. This isn't a criticism, in fact their consistency and dedication to a grunge-level of opacity within their music is one of their charms and the reason I got into them (the story of which you can read here).

As part of my Specialist Subject Records subscription, this record arrived when it was released in April 2015. I'd only got their first album at the end of 2014, which probably doesn't help my confusion between the two - I was getting into both at a fairly similar time (I have no excuse for the third then, which came out a year-and-a-half later). It was one of the many records I would have bought anyway, had I not got the subscription.

I often write about my favourite tracks from an album, but these guys are about the whole, not the single, and I love the wall of fuzz and mostly unintelligible lyrics. There's a really heavy one on the second side that I really like (Sinking Shadows maybe, or Piss Water - it's very hard to count tracks on a clear vinyl). The doomy one at the end is great too.

When I was about 13 I borrowed a copy of Bleach from the library and recorded it onto a knackered cassette - that album has always been characterised by those first listens on a muddy-sounding cassette with no track-listing and little idea of what was going on; for me, that was always what grunge was about. As I mentioned last time, seeing Pale Angels for the first time felt like I was in a time-warp to early-90's Seattle and I loved their unashamed grunge. They probably hate being compared to Nirvana and grunge in general, but this album reminds me of my confused early attempts to listen to Bleach, and that's a good thing.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Specialist Subject Records
When: 26/03/15
Colour: Clear
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Shellac - Dude Incredible

Dude Incredible made it to number 2 in my albums of the year list in 2014 (in a very close top 5), but the truth is, I think any new Shellac album would chart pretty high - it'd have to be a very strange record to not make it into the top 10, and I just don't see them ever making such an album.

I got into Shellac in 2008 (by the way of 1000 Hurts), and had never really appreciated quite how soon that was after the release of their second-to-last album, Excellent Italian Greyhound. In 2009 I would see them for the first time at All Tomorrow's Parties (I recently commented to my brother-in-law how jealous I was that he was about to see Shellac for the first time, and that I wished I could have that fun again). Over the following years I bought all their albums and I'd see them as often as possible. I didn't think twice about booking tickets to the ATP they curated and was introduced to some incredible bands that weekend (I wonder if I'd ever have discovered and fallen in love with Dutch punks The Ex had I not seen them there). More than most musicians, I feel like I know them as people and love watching their dynamics on stage; they're a great band.

So when they announced Dude Incredible (no comma, as per the press release) I was very excited and bought a copy as soon as I could (which happened to be a few weeks after the release in All Ages, before going to a gig that is quite possibly the opposite of Shellac - Max Richter playing in the Royal Albert Hall). I was very pleased to hear Compliant, a song we'd gotten used to hearing live for a few years beforehand. Every time I hear it I picture the three of them on stage. The highlight for me has always been Riding Bikes which moves through in true unusual Shellac-style, before the climatic "I'm riding bikes!" and Todd's brilliant drum-fills. The intro before All the Surveyors always felt a bit unnecessary, but that's literally the only criticism I have with this album. The song itself is another instant classic, and probably one of their most accessible songs (it has verses and a chorus). There's a rare harmony in Gary and it's so slow it's almost doom, which is great. Only nine songs, but each one a treat.

In the years since this album, Shellac have started playing a couple of new songs fairly regularly so I'm cautiously optimistic that they won't make us wait another seven-year gap between albums. I certainly hope so, I'm looking forward to putting another Shellac album in the top half on an end-of-year list soon.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 9
Cost: £16 new
Bought: All Ages Records, London
When: 04/10/14
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Some of them are none too fit" Side B: "Some of them are spectacular"
mp3s: cd included