Aaron Machuca

I was introduced to this album as per my friend Ruijie's recommendation during my sophomore year in undergrad, and I haven't been the same since. I find it incredibly difficult to talk to anyone about this album because I feel anything I could possibly say would simultaneously be an over and understatement as to what the record actually is. It's never easy to discuss grief or the things that cause us to grieve, much less to be able to handle it with any semblance of tact. It's a topic well connected to the midwest emo genre, but it's usually addressed through junevile subject matters involving teenage heartbreak and other digestible forms of anguish. We are not often digging through the roots to pull on our traumas from the source, and that's exactly the premise that Christian Holden tackles within the lyricism of Home. From front to back, Home systematically confronts sensitive issues found within the silent outskirts of our minds and presents them in their emotionally raw and unadulterated form. All the meanwhile, the accompanying instrumentation takes its time to breathe, to wane in and out, and punctuate in a long-winded, bombastic break whenever the narrative sees fit. The album isn't exactly pushing the envelope as far as the post-hardcore soundscape goes, but what it does have works and to harp on that aspect is missing the point of what the record is trying to do. I don't think that's a cop-out excuse either because I'm not excusing anything, I just think the band is providing more of heartfelt experience as opposed to trying to stand equally in height to their emo predecessors. And for that reason, this album stands out in a way that has personally struck me more than anything I have ever listened to before.

5+/5

Before I delve into this album, I feel I should probably address the elephant in the room and the responses I get from folk who side-eye me for still listening to this record. I think it should be obvious that I openly condemn the actions of Alexis Marshall against Kristin Hayter in his onslaught of heinous trangressions against her on all moral fronts. My enjoyment of an album has nothing to do with being an apologist for or excusing the actions of depraved individuals. With that being said, I don't believe that Alexis Marshall represents the Daughters label or band as a whole within the span of their creative works over the past two decades. I honestly don't have the patience to tailor a discussion on the matter beyond that and we can agree to disagree otherwise.

Of all the possible ways I could've been piplined into becoming a noise rock fan, this was definitely not the most accessible choice to go with. Around the time I first gave this album a spin I think I was still bumping generic metalcore and whatever other landfill I had buried in my music library from my high school days. To say I was not well aquainted with the dissonant and lo-fi production found in similar industrial or noise music would be putting it lightly. Nevertheless, I was properly marinated to listen to the album as I had been studying for finals in the hallways of my dorm at some ungodly hour into the night when I remembered Anthony Fantano's review on the album I watched earlier that day (I was 18 leave me alone). I don't remember how or why that album came to mind when it did but I do distinctly recall the pain resonance I felt in my sleep deprived trance while listening. You have to be in a certain state of mind to willingly subject yourself to this record and you have to have a certain personality to find enjoyment in the listen. It's such an uncomfortable, abrasive experience that tests your ability to withstand a turbulent and blistering composition that has you question how a guitar can even make such harrowing sounds--like the band animated their instruments and all they're able to do is cry out cacophonous screams that are scraping against your ears. A huge aspect as to what makes this album so unnerving is the cracked mirror it holds up to the audience revealing a monstrous element innate to our psychology that we have trouble admitting to. There's a kernel of truth in the narration describing the unhinged horrors to our character that to some degree, is universal in the human condition. The production, synthesizing these staggering percussions alongside crashing guitar riffs and synths taken straight out of a horror movie, are all carried out with such masterful pacing in its delivery that it makes me reach some kind of demonic nirvana. There's nothing quite like this gothic masterpiece, that in an ironic fashion, has helped me find solace in my own personal circumstances.

5+/5

Transitioning onto a lighter note, Crumbling is another album that Ruijie recommended me and this was a special album because it opened a gateway to another world of music whose existence I was unaware of up until that point. And my god what an unfortunate precedent this album set for every other folktronica artist I listened to afterwards. Pinning down an exact explanation as to what makes this record so great feels almost as elusive as Mid-Air Thief's zero social media presence. There's something about the bubbling synthesizers scales and the spaced out mixing and the feathering guitar plucks washing together in a psychedelic haze that makes my brain melt away in a flush of euphoria. I absolutely love Summer Soul being on the backup vocals here, bringing in a lush breath to the production, like a gentle tide ebbing in and out of the sea shorelines. Then there are times when the instrumentation blends with the vocal harmonies in a magnificent crescendo that transcends what was already great music into a majesty of an album. This is one of the few accessible records in my music library I think anyone could enjoy and I would heavily recommend listening to if you haven't already.

I also recently got this one on vinyl and I don't even own a turntable B)

5/5

And we're back to the despairing music. Deafheaven's one of the few bands I came across organically from an opening performance they did for Anthrax back in 2015. I actually really enjoyed their New Bermuda album they were touring for at the time, but little did I know the band had an even more grandiose project they had whipped up two years prior, and it only took me three years to discover it. On a summer evening after my freshman year in university, I took an impromptu trip to the Albany Bulb to do some soul-searching, or maybe just get away from my life for a little while. I can't remember what compelled me to give Sunbather a whirl, I just remember being suspended in absolute awe, every, single, minute of the album. I had once described Sunbather as being "what I imagine it's like to come to terms with your own death," and honestly I still think that's an apt description. Their signature blackgaze style, fusing black metal and shoegaze characteristics, presented on this album was a wild and ambitious idea that they somehow managed to pull off with flying colors. Dense walls of noise interupted by spoken word samples and clean guitar interludes bring forth this overwhelming prescence of searing bliss. I almost always play this album in its entirety every time I want to hear it because it doesn't feel right to _not_ immerse myself in the tapestry of the tracklist, seamlessly woven together in each subsequent song. George Clarke's icy shrieks bleeds so well into the album's dreamy atmosphere that it makes me feel as though I'm flashing through a blurred slideshow of my memories, or a dream. And I wish the dream never ended.

5/5

Can someone please give God's strongest soldier a break, this poor boy has been through enough. As of the moment I write this, I'm wishing Sufjan the best and hope he recovers from his illness soon. My friend Niss was the one to suggest this album this time around, though I wasn't expecting to vicariously be thrown into a profound heartache. As the story goes, Sufjan's mother Carrie abandoned him when he was a toddler due to pervailing medical issues and passed away from stomach cancer sometime around 2012. This understandably left Sufjan in a dark period in his life where he went on to use his Carrie and Lowell project as an outlet and find closure on what was an incredibly conflicting set of circumstances. Compared to his usual songwriting style, often epic-like in the abundance of historical or mythological references, Carrie and Lowell is bare, stripped down to quiet acoustics and a soft piano. The lyrics aren't hiding behind any grandeur metaphors and Sufjan provides full transparency behind his mind's flurry throughout the grieving process. A central component as to what makes this album so heartwrenching is cosmic quality to his suffering, being so colossal that it is an experience truly unique to him as if he was Job himself cast upon God's whirlwind; in turn leaving the listener stunned in silence, unsure of how to properly respond to the ineffable nature of his questions. The ending track "Blue Bucket of Gold" itself is left on an ambiguous note as he grasps at his surroundings to reach towards his faith and his friends, pleading for someone to be there for him, to find nothing.

5/5