Cool Records From November 2024.
The Cure — Songs of a Lost World
I thought I was done thinking about The Cure in different ways. I’d seen them live. I’d gotten into them through multiple greatest hits records and subsequently dug deeper into their catalog, finding new favorites in their deep cuts and an all-time favorite album (Disintegration) to boot. I had zero expectations for a new song dropping, let alone a whole new full length record. This record exists in the way that only Cure songs do, like dusting off an ancient language, an ancient instrument. The synthesizers are somehow primitive, the pacing is blissfully ignorant to the modern ADD stride. Each song takes its time in exposition, in set up. Where so much of the music that this band has influenced reminds me of strobe lights and crushed chrome, this record bleeds a slow steady stream of fog and smoke, casting a washed out spotlight on a modest stage. Robert Smith sounds just as forlorn, just as melancholy as ever. At 65, his songs still reach into the bleak internal beyond, longing for something more, something pure. He still sounds as [melo]dramatic as he always has as well, which is such an incredible feat, both for what he’s able to perform now and also in the way that he was able to create a distinct persona for himself back when the band began making songs in the late 70s. The biggest drawback of this record is that a lot of it starts to sound like one big tapestry instead of the 8 different tracks it’s made up of, but this is one that I believe fans should be very pleased with and one which I think cements the band’s legacy as one of the greatest to ever do it.
Check Out: Drone:Nodrone
Leaving Time — Angel In the Sand
Another phenomenal droney shoegaze release this year, Leaving Time came with some phenomenal recommendations from friends and this record definitely did not disappoint. The spiraling and spacey leads kept my head spinning while the grunge-influenced chord kept a steady rhythm from beginning to end. The production on this record goes out of its way to make the listening experience feel like there’s a lot of breathing room and open space to explore and observe. It’s within the enormity of this band’s heft that you can begin to dig deeper into the effects and blemishes and forced repulsive sounds that the band throws onto their sounds. This is a massive headspace that Leaving Time has created, one that sounds best when you can tunnel in your attention on the shapes and hallucinations that the shadows can cast on the walls of the cave in your mind. I think this is an incredible grunge album that borders on stoner rock in some of the most subtle ways. Having recently revisited a bunch of my old records, this one somehow feels akin to one of my old favorites (at least in tone) to Sponge’s Rotting Piñata.
Check Out: Burn
Counterparts — Heaven Let Them Die
This one was a surprise drop for me, one that I found out about as I was about 5 minutes away from my house when a friend texted me about it. I put it on as I was entering my neighborhood and was so mad that I didn’t have it to listen to three or four times during my 45 minute commute home. This is more of what I’ve come to love from Counterparts, a menacing and uncompromising shred through songs that leave no quarter. This is metalcore at its most pure. Fast verses, a heavy chorus and a breakdown in varied measure. Throw in a punishing bridge somewhere in there to ensure that there are no prisoners. I feel like one of this band’s major strengths has always been squeezing every last drop out of each riff idea, making sure that every song hits as heavily as it possibly can, pushing the production and sound design to its absolute limit. Within the first two songs, it becomes blindingly apparent that these guys have come to destroy. Counterparts have always felt, to me, like the band that Misery Signals passed the torch to, one where they had complete command over their instrumental mastery but utilized their skills with control and composure to construct a war machine, displaying the more technical and complex elements of their music sparingly. I think this EP doesn’t feel like the band’s most creative and ‘exciting’ work, but they deliver their brand of panacea with exquisite proficiency.
Check Out: With Loving Arms Disfigured
