Too Good to Be True

 I recently discovered the band Dazy via their collaboration with Militarie Gun, one of my favourite active bands, on the song "Pressure Cooker". The tune is huge, but it has a lot more poppy bounce than your typical MG song and that intrigued me. Looked into Dazy and lo and behold, they, like Militarie Gun, have been on an extended kick of releasing short EPs for the last two years. All of them are collected, along with some new songs, on the comp MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD, which rocks. Personal favourite cut is "Crowded Mind (Lemon Lime)".

I've always been a big fan of the novel Catch-22, which I predictably checked out because of my high school obsession with the ska band of the same name. As a 32-year-old, and really as a 22-year-old, I can say that the novel is significantly better. After reading Catch-22, I read Heller's last novel Portrait of the Artist, as an Old Man. It has a godawful title and while the book isn't as bad as that might imply, it wasn't far off. That soured me, but I've had Something Happened sitting on my to-read bookshelf for ages and decided to pick it up for the trip to Ontario that I'm currently on. Since I wasn't familiar with most of Heller's other stuff, I wondered if he was a one-hit-wonder, but it doesn't seem that way. Still really funny and irreverent, but in a completely different setting than WWII.

I mentioned the trip in the last paragraph to forecast it being the topic of this paragraph. WRITING. Returning home is always weird. The trip has been the most social that I've been since the beginning of the pandemic, going to my first show, dinners at restaurants, and seeing a ballgame. The social guilt of COVID is and will continue to be there and I always have a voice in my head telling me I should just be staying inside, even though that has killed my brain over the last two years.

We've been in Montréal long enough now that it has become the new home and that coming back to Ontario doesn't carry the same degree of homey-ness that it used to. Speaking English in stores feels weird, though it took about a day to get used to it, and even more jarring is seeing people without masks. That being said, the city that I knew and that I will always deeply love is still right where I left it and I still get around intuitively because it's what I've always done. As my French friend Valentin said, "Connecting with your roots man, there is nothing like it."

The 2021 IMU Musical Revue

 I feel like the last six or seven years have been really good for punk and hardcore and when you combine that with the constant creative push forward that is always happening in rap, it's been an especially great time for music. Maybe I'm just too enthusiastic and that's boring, but damn homie you're the one here reading!

Angel Du$t - YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs

Something I found interesting this year was that both Angel Du$t and Turnstile released EPs ahead of their full-lengths and that every song on both ended up on the albums. A new style of marketing in the streaming age? A quirk of the Trapped Under Ice family tree? I think that AD's full-length ended up a lot better and is by far the best articulation of their sound. A great slow song featuring Tim Armstrong! Probably my album of the year.

Turnstile - Turnstile Love Connection

Like I said, I think the EP format worked out a lot better for Turnstile. Glow On is still a great record with cool songs, but this shorter release is more cohesive. This blew me away and maybe my expectations were too high. In any case, the feature music video for the entire EP is one of my favourite videos ever and one of the coolest things to ever come out of hardcore.

Tyler the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST

Was never much of an OFWGKTA guy, but really enjoyed Tyler's last two records and how he's developed and changed as a rapper and producer as he gets further into his career. This album is my favourite yet and probably my favourite rap album of the year. Such an amazing vibe here that feels like you're touring Europe while listening to DatPiff.

Mach-Hommy - Pray for Haiti

Griselda Records and everyone associated with them has been pretty much bulletproof for the last couple of years and I've returned to this record more than any other. It has the same chill and mumbly/extremely hard contrast that Westside Gunn and Benny the Butcher have, but this record is super focused and the world-building is great.

Militarie Gun - All Roads Lead to the Gun I

For a while this year, I thought that this release might be my favourite release, but it felt like picking an EP felt like a copout. Feels like Dinosaur Jr. and the Lemonheads filtered through extreme hardcore and it's done basically as well as it can be. Would love to see what this band could do with a full-length, but am just as happy to see them continue putting out 4-songers.

Webbed Wing - What's So Fucking Funny?

Webbed Wing's first record Bike Rides Across the Moon was intriguing sonically but definitely unfinished in a few spots. This is a fuller version of their college rock from a punk background and is one of my favourites this year. Sometimes it's just fun to rock.

Mo Troper - Dilettante

Mo Troper was one of my biggest finds this year and I gave Beloved a tonne of spins ahead of the release of Dilettante. While this isn't as focused as the former, I really like them leaning into the Guided By Voices vibe of a 28-song record where most songs are under 1:30. 

Just Friends - JFC Crew Vol. I &II

Nothing but Love was in constant rotation during 2020 and even though I'm sure Just Friends' mix of pop-punk/funk/pop/rap is not for everyone, I find it super refreshing to see a band be so focused on not sounding like anyone else in punk. Seeing them also try new stuff here, doing remixes of songs, singles that sound like nothing else they've done, and a SONG FEATURING LIL B, was even better.

Anna Fox Rochinski - Cherry

I don't remember how I found this record, as I had no frame of reference for AFR or her old band Quilt, but this was one of the more original-sounding things I heard this year. A little shoegazey, but never slow, poppy, but off-kilter, firmly post-punk but definitely dancy. "Party Lines" and "Epilogue/Overture" are two of the best songs of the year.

ALLBLACK - TY4FWM

I had high hopes for this one after NO SHAME 3 and even if it didn't live up to that, this was still a tight full-length that has everything that makes ALLBLACK one of the best rappers alive. It makes me want to yell "Thank you for fucking with me!" all the time.

2nd Grade - Wish You Were Here Tour Revisited

2nd Grade has dominated my listening over the last two or so years and though I'm jonesing for a new full-length, this re-release of their first record, with new full-band versions of 7 of the songs from the original is a great replacement. "Favourite Song" has, predictably, been my favourite song of the last few years, so hearing a new cut of that was particularly great. The band is so jubilant that you can't help but love it.

Absolutely Clear, but Don't You Worry

 I wish I could see the dates that I edited this post, but if I had to guess, it has to have been like two weeks ago that I started. The opening paragraph is pretty funny in hindsight, considering it took me so long to finish a nothing post that was even started before the last one. Anyways, it was already most written, so I can't just lean on the backspace now, can I?

I can feel the void inside getting a little bit bigger lately, but it's hard to pinpoint why. Caving under the pressure of thesis work? Dread about not making as much out of my summer as I could? COVID? Missing friends? I feel fairly certain that it is absolutely not from having neglected personal writing, though I have thought a couple of times about how it's funny that I'm just not driven to do that lately. Unfortunately, writing out dumb stream of consciousness blogs is one of the only coping strategies I have for dealing with stress anxiety, so here we go.

Another problem: I have no idea what to write about. Ideas have come and gone quickly lately, so what you'll get here is ideas jotted down as they come to me over multiple days.

Anna Fox Rochinski recently put out an album on Don Giovani Records called Cherry. It's sort of dreampop, sort of shoegaze, in the early 90s Cocteau Twins sense, but still dancey. I've never heard of this artist before and I like her a lot so far.

I just returned to this point for the first time in like three days and instead decided to make this only about music I'm into at the moment. Look at this transparency about the blog! Crazy! So interesting for the fans! Or just lazy!

Angel Du$t

I never really got into Trapped Under Ice during their first run as a band, though I really enjoyed seeing them the few times that I did. I think even the most hardcore of TUI fans wouldn't have predicted the prosperous family tree that resulted from the band though. Initially I was very much Team Turnstile and didn't really get into Angel Du$t that much, but they somehow went in even weirder and more interesting directions musically than their brother band. Really cool EP.

New You

It's simple power pop played by a punk guy that focuses on crunchy guitar leads. That's exactly what I like! It kind of reminds me of TRÜ, another new band I really like. 

Militarie Gun

I think that Regional Justice Center is extremely cool, but power violence is also something with a bit of a ceiling with me. And I also like to watch it live much more than I like to listen to it on record. Fortunately Regional Justice Center also turned into a band that is both hardcore and indie/college rock. I like this EP each time I re-visit it and I think it will probably end up being one of my favourite things this year.

Just Friends

Just Friends were a pandemic find for me and are great as a serotonin boost as the pandemic wears on you. Just always intravenous fun vibes. In lieu of releasing a follow-up album to Nothing But Love, they've focused on putting out short EPs that feature new singles, new versions and remixes of old songs, and, in general, a lot of playing with their sound. Honestly, if they just did this for the rest of their existence as a band, I'd by psyched.

Postscript:

I think I might be starting an Eddy Grant binge? I had always meant to dig more into his music and was inspired to today. I have this dumb vivid memory I tie to him (from well before "Electric Avenue" became a bit of a meme from Pineapple Express*), where he was being discussed on a VH1 "Remember the 80s" thing being aired on muchmoremusic and most people were teasing how retro the video sounded and looked. In the middle there was a cut to Adam Levine from Maroon 5 saying very seriously and earnestly "It's a great fucking song." That made Eddy Grant seem cool? It's great stuff.

*For the record both "Electric Avenue" and Pineapple Express are good, it was just annoying that everyone knew it as the Pineapple Express song and associated with stoners for like 5 years.