Reviews by dohej

Sparse and spacious art school post-punk/post rock played slow until any residual funk in the bass is so stretched out you can’t feel it. Guitars are chimey high up the neck, played for rhythm like a maraca or a cymbal but occupying the ‘lead’ space in the mix. The drums have a robotic krautrock feel. Vocals are chants for an absurdist feel. It has a very performance art feel, like the musical equivalent of (or multimedia component of a postmodern collage sculpture - confrontational and aggressively non-commercial - music as a medium not an end, a means to disrupt a mental state, to trigger, to experiment.

Pretty talented musicians bored of playing rock music but can’t shake their Gen X alt/prog rock frat boy sensibility turn to comedy, write ironic genre pastiche, and think they’re much funnier than they are. The trap is that they’re then trapped singing dick & poo songs the rest of their lives. I had a good time at a Ween show once, but it’s novelty music and once the novelty wears off the joke is incredibly thin.

Modest Mouse takes the Pixies formula and emo it up - loud/quiet dynamics, fuzzy scuzzy guitars paired with extremely catchy melodies, high energy drum and bass parts and single-note guitar riffs. The thing they’re best at is the plaintive aching guitar leads (simple major key lines played to sound sad, with a perfect reverby breaking up tone, spacey slow atmosphere) and the tender hurt vocals on the slow songs - that build and sprawl and release. They’re hit and miss when they speed up, sometimes achieving a tight high intensity punk fervor, but other times crossing into a too dissonant noise they struggle to contain. Not even their best album, and overlong, but so many great songs, a masterpiece of 90s indie.

Indie Americana with the singer from Walkmen doing a pretty good Dylan impression over warm alt country arrangements (the organ especially gives it a great vintage The Band feel while also being the most direct sonic reference to the Walkmen). It’s shaggy and loose, lived in, earnest and personal feeling albeit pretty par for the course for folksy stomp-clap adjacent rock.

Tepid indie with a 90s alt rock sound, slow paced songs but with rapid drumming, and bloated orchestral arrangements that prevent it from ever taking off. The best parts are a bit like the loose ambience of Broken Social Scene - but there's way too much aimless strumming and repetitive monotonous padding. What actually even is ‘art rock’ ? Seems to mean overthought middle brow tedium.

Wallow core. Super slow, very deliberately put together, but also deliberately paced. There’s a mix of piano, dirty electric guitars, thumping electronica bass/drum machines, and chamber orchestration in the arrangements for a lush, deep sound and very moody ambience. The best songs have a bit more energy and verve to them, but a lot of it is so glacial it’s hard to appreciate as more than depressive background music. It’s like the prestige tv of pop - very high spec and ambitious, but it really drags on for longer than necessary and enjoys spending time in its own aesthetic world more than anything else and gets kind of boring. A couple of really patience-testing aimless tracks in the middle really drag on and on and on. I liked Lana Del Ray’s first albums a lot, but she’s had a pernicious influence - I don’t dislike any of them individually, but am getting really tired of this anaemic sleepy vibes rock that’s been coming out since the pandemic.

On the artsier side of millennial indie - heavy roles for off-kilter pianos, big warbly operatic vocals, sharp left turns in the compositions, and a vaudeville circus tent aesthetic. Despite the ironic pastiche and kitsch hyperstylized form, the vocals are intensely earnest, delivering a full throated and full bodied wrenching performance.

One all conquering single that’s a definitive piece of the pop punk/emo canon and a handful of other tracks that approximate that and a few really dire slow songs (Hear You Me is shockingly bad). Some decent hooks and ok riffs, but it’s mostly a bit of a slog.

Nice enough indie rock with some alt country twang, some power pop jangle, and some hazy psych atmosphere.

There’s an interesting story behind this guy that they made a movie about and so people confuse that with the music being good, when really it’s just fine but nothing remarkable Dylan knock-off folksy singer songwriter stuff with an guy and a guitar at the forefront fleshed out with some 60s psych guitar, latin percussion, schmaltzy strings and light rock bass. A perfectly generic blend of East Village and San Francisco scene sounds.

Ornate, orchestral, densely layered. It sometimes peters out into strings vamping and electro flickering bleeps, but the higher energy tracks where the guitars take over and lead the brass and chamber orchestra through some proper rock work really well. The vocals are wispy and hushed, modulated and buried/blended into the mix. The drums alternate between jazzy tinkling and propulsive motorik and when the gritty dirty bass drops it kicks the whole thing into gear. A bit more pop and energy, but lots of hazy shoegaze style to it.

Massive RnB pop with lots of dance tracks and hip hop production to go with a few big ballads. It's as commercial as it gets and expertly made. The rappers’ guest verses are pretty tame pro forma space fillers and some of the beats are very generic (almost covers?) for the glossy party rap era, a low ebb in hip hop. But her vocals are impressive and unrestrained but it's empty virtuosity, not my thing at all.

Post-punk revival - goth atmospheric guitars, grindy tone propulsive bass, operatic vocals. High tempo, driving, reverby. It’s a more accessible version of Siouxsie, high energy Interpol, or a slightly more pop iteration of dark wave. A touch formulaic, but good fun.

Singing that's alternatingly breathy and nasal, forceful and whiney, smokey and warm - very controlled and earnest. Piano based songs with a bit of jazzyness and and a lot of open mic singer songwriter. Best with the fuller arrangements that create a nice warm ambience ala Fiona Apple, worst when it really hinges on the vocals purely. Slow, contemplative, autumnal.

Surprisingly convincing Swedish Americana that anticipates a ton of the twangy alt-country inflection of contemporary indie. It’s ultimately still highly produced Swedish pop output though so it’s super polished genre farire that's full of hooks, close harmonies, and the uncanny feeling of really good simulacra.

Brutally heavy, technical and sharp riffs, growling screaming vocals, harmonized melodic guitar leads and shredding - it’s got it all! A bit of thrash, a bit of death metal, a touch of prog - it rips and chugs relentlessly.

Guitar rock from the transition from Britpop to indie. Best bits are garagey and energetic with a kind of whiney emo vocal but a lot of it pretty generic - it rocks and rolls in all the expected places.

As always, cool guitar solos paired with zany compositions that vary from fun to irritating, and silly juvenile lyrics delivered with a smirk.

Techno inspired swedish folk with spacey chanting, droning, Celtic sounding instruments and melodies, and heavy deep synth stuff. Cool idea,very 90s.

Pop punk songs with chaotic energy, random ska instruments, and some extremely earnest vocals that leave it all out there, making up for what he lacks in staying in tune with dangerous levels of millennial cringe.