People in music circles tend to have this very central mindset, that the discussion they take part in doesn’t really have much of an impact on the music world as a whole and especially not to the musicians it affects. But is that really true, do the musicians we deride really get damaged by the words we have for them? Well for most of us the answer is no, most big musicians are never going to see what we have to say about them, so unless you are talking about smaller or indie musicians the words you say will not reach them. But for the big publications and the tastemakers it is a very different world. The general public got a striking reminder of this with the recent Fantano and Drake controversy but this has been something that has had an impact for a while. The greatest example for me is the sad case of Travis Morrison, lead singer and band leader for 90s cult icons The Dismemberment Plan. He has penned some of the best indie rock songs in history and embodies the style of anxious emotional writing of that era of indie better than anyone. To explain my point I will be looking into 2 specific events in Travis Morrisons career. Part 1: Travistan First I need to explain the climate at the time. Pitchfork has given glowing reviews to some of the Dismemberment Plan's classic albums and after the bands breakup Morrison was working on his solo album. The buzz prior to the album was very enthusiastic with fans seeing his new material as fun and eclectic. And then the album released. The 0.0 score that Travistan received from Pitchfork has become infamous, it is possibly their most infamous 0.0 in music fan circles. But what people neglect to mention is the very real effect it has had on Morrisons Career, a quote from Travis reads “I just got the sense [Pitchfork] thought I was a rock star and they wanted to take me down a peg, but I don't think it occurred to them that the review could have a catastrophic effect... Up until the day of the review, I'd play a solo show, and people would be like, 'That's our boy, our eccentric boy.' Literally, the view changed overnight... I could tell people were trying to figure out if they were supposed to be there or not. It was pretty severe, how the mood changed. The review isn't the story. The reaction to it is. The seriousness with which everyone takes Pitchfork is kind of mind-boggling.” years of positive reviews and promotion from pitchfork had been turned on its head and weaponised into a force that immediately put a stop to the budding solo career of Travis which was just bubbling up. Part 2: Uncanny Valley The second finds us years later. Travis had stepped away from music for a while, but in 2010 Dismemberment Plan came back, to huge buzz from their fanbase who had been sitting in waiting. The crowds at these shows were loving it, there are recordings from the time which have been preserved online and you can see the audience are loving it, and they were also loving the new material they had been trialing on the road during that time. And then the album came out. Luckwarm to negative reception greeted them which immediately squashed the renewed interest in the band. Once again the album was essentially dropped from public memory and it feels that dismemberment plan almost lost the music buzz they used to have and are now surviving in small music nerd circles. And for the band themselves, there has been no news since around 2015, which is a shame. What I find especially sad about both of these albums really aren't that bad. Uncanny Valley is somewhat mediocre and Travistan is genuinely great, it has a very Self or They Might Be Giants kind of energy to it and has some really great tracks like “Change”. My thesis point for this is that a guy doesn’t deserve to have his career stripped from him because he released something somewhat mediocre. Pitchfork have seemingly realized this. The power they had in their early days to destroy reputations has been taken notice of and the publication have been significantly less extreme with their scores, after stories like Travistan I think pitchfork finally realized the effects of music reviews, maybe too late for some. I wish Travis Morrison the best, he is a fantastic songwriter and he didn’t deserve the fate he got.

A Lukewarm And Bitter Ending To A Once Unified Group Part 1: The Family Get your jokes in about this being a Kevin solo album... satisfied? Okay let's get into this properly. Weirdly badly produced at points and noxiously bitter and dislikeable. The songs themselves aren't bad but as an album it almost feels like it wants you to believe they are? The bitterness in the lyrics here stacks up in a really hard to listen to way, with every song completely soaked in toxicity. However some songs on here stand pretty strong, "Big Pussy" is a great song with an extremely energetic beat, "Good Time" has great production among others and there is a lot of experimentation on here, which I do appreciate. But at the same time there are just as many songs on here that sound unfinished and rushed, the worst offender being the very obnoxious "(Back From the) Road", but the same issues that run through that song come up often. It also doesn't help that every song is extremely brief and barely makes an impact. It's obvious Kevin really didn't want to make this and the bitter way he treats himself, his former bandmates and the group they created together makes this a difficult listen, even if it has some cool moments. Part 2: TM Very strange and not at all what I expected from the closing statement of this band. I think I mean that in a good way but it's hard to know. This whole project feels waterboarded in reverb and vocal effects, which sometimes really works, the effect they are able to make here is often compelling, but compared to the bands previous work it can sometimes feel one note. The songs on here definitely feel way more fully formed than any of the ones on The Family, but it's at the cost of being a far less interesting project as a whole, but also comes with the benefit of being way less frustrating to listen to. Some of the songs on here are excellent though, "Keep It Southern" especially, such a fun song and probably the best on either of these send off albums. While this project has far less glaring issues than The Family, it still isn't a great ending to the group, it feels often one note and as a whole just feels completely exhausted, despite the energy it's obvious these guys just want to stop. I wish all the members a bright future in music and it is sad that this lukewarm ending is the closure they get after over 6 years of music.

How do you create a left turn in a career known for bizarre left turns? This is the question I imagine was on the minds of Tim Taylor and the rest of Brainiac following the release of their third album “Hissing Prigs In Static Couture”. Throughout their career they had created music that surprises, excites, and intrigues, so how could a band, who have made their strangeness a core part of their identity, possibly throw off their audience? Well, the answer was simple, strip back. Take away the wild drums, the freaky guitars, and tight basslines and bring it down to a core aspect of the band's appeal, Tim’s Moog synthesiser. Even if the band's sound had always been steadily approaching synths, with each album becoming more and more synth-heavy, this complete adoption of synths was blunt and immediate. The changes don’t stop here, however, as for this next release Brainiac was to do something few have attempted, a concept EP. That brings us to Electro-Shock For President, a mini album exploring law enforcement's attempts to stop a violent criminal, presented from several different perspectives. Broadly this sound works excellently, the more sparse and synthetic sound perfectly complements the story. The plot begins with the beautiful yet deeply unnerving synth soundscape of “Fresh New Eyes”, we are greeted by an unnerving yet compelling synth line running through the whole song with other sounds pulsating and screeching, synthetic drums dropping in and out, as an omniscient narrator presents us with the scene. A woman has been set up by police to catch this guy and he has taken her. We feel the anxiety and stress piling up as the sounds get more and more hectic as the man sings to himself in his car. Through the the man is presented as confident and suave to the point of fakeness as his features are described as “plastic”, giving off a synthetic and inhuman feel, complemented by the incredible vocals, which dip between inhumanly monotone and a demented wail. The song itself is an extremely effective tone setter, showing that the sounds we are going to hear are not what we were expecting from Brainiac but are a whole new level of compelling and exciting. The woman then finds herself awake in the man's living conditions, aware of the search team racing towards her location, complemented by the synth sound of a revving engine on the following, more straightforward but just as brilliant, song “Flash Ram”. This song puts us in the perspective of the man directly speaking to the victim as he taunts her for lying about how help is coming, as he is unaware that her words are in fact true. Despite his cold emotions, the hope the woman feels is personified in the instrumental where we hear real instruments complementing the synthetic soundscape, with guitars and drums coming back into the sonic palette. The man begins to panic, as he hears the police outside, he begins getting angry with the woman, he begins threatening her, he says that he will use force as he screams “Spark you out” alluding to what he may do to her. The song is able to effectively combine the claustrophobic feel of the introductory track with a more immediately infectious song structure showing the variety in effective songwriting that the band is capable of achieving. The humanity in instrumentation dips away for the synth soundscape of “Fashion 500” as the police wait anxiously for the man to reveal himself as words come over the radios of the police cars and the one sitting inside the home, shown by the sampled speech which is used to great effect on the song. He begins reflecting on his previous words “I'll solo out my innocence, and use it as my one defence, pretend it is the only thing I know, it holds me together”, as he begins to come to terms with the fact that he isn’t making it out, his former mockery of the woman turns itself harshly into his only method of freeing himself. As the coldness of the man grows with the soundscape, he hands himself over to the police. The song itself finds itself as a more tense yet loose song, as the synths effectively weave in and out of itself building tension. He sits in the back of the police car thinking to himself of what he could have done to incriminate himself on “The Turnover” as he talks back to the policemen claiming that this fate is payback for all he has done. The minimal synth sounds surrounding him like the repetitive thoughts that taunt him as he begins to realise that he probably won’t win the court case and he is done for, as he drops deeper into an already deep insanity. The building tension going through the album continues here as the lack of catharsis has the listener feeling more and more on edge, waiting for a conclusion. “For My Beloved” represents the court case, as the chaotic and noisy building sounds represent a growing and shuddering tension from all parties involved, but as the judge deals the guilty verdict, the sound immediately drives to a close. The next we hear of the man comes in “Mr. Fingers”, the cathartic explosion of a song that the album has been building towards, while also being the most representative of the band's previous sound as it dips in and out with the more synthetic sounds of this record. This is absolutely the best song on the album as well as one of my favourite songs ever, the immediately infectious chorus and chaotic music combine perfectly. The perspective of the song lyrically is first person as the man insanely rants to himself in his prison cell as he has lost all comprehension of what exactly brought him here, he doesn’t see the killing, or the kidnapping, all he sees is him complimenting a woman's looks, and assumes that this is why he was thrown in prison, and this delusion drives him to swear revenge on the woman and threatens her and all others that “If you see me out on the streets, You better get inside, get inside”. As these words slam shut for the final time the story fades, a storybook ending and success for the police, despite allowing him to kill many before and not being able to stop him until it was far too late. In the same way that the police were unable to stop him in the narrative, despite their aspirations to expand and develop this sound, Brainiac was unable to stop the tragedy that caused the immediate and sudden ending of the project. Tim Taylor's ability to form a complete narrative on 6 short and utterly fantastic songs and making use of not much more than a synthesiser shows us the once in a generation talent he was. Tim Taylor and Electro-Shock For President represent one of the core factors that makes music so exciting, they show that even if you think it is impossible to amaze, there is always a way. This is a truly remarkable EP and an incredible acheivement and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone.

Arctic Monkeys Stumble Over Themselves In A Confusing Manner I haven't checked in on the Arctic Monkeys camp for a while. Looking into the tent for the first time in a while, I see Alex Turner and company doing some kind of awkward masked ball. Now, this shouldn't be too surprising, they have worn plenty of masks before in the past. With Favourite Worst Nightmare, they wore the mask of a far more energetic band than they once were and with AM they wore the mask of a very very boring band. However, the set of masks we see being donned by them this time do not seem to fit as well, despite how expertly crafted and well produced the masks are, they are donned in an awkward manner, it's almost hard to tell if the band are wearing them in sincerity or are just wearing it as a gag and this inconsistency of tone makes the costume hard to stomach. In more direct terms, it is often difficult to tell if they truly care about this album. It is, of course, well made, the orchestration is full and lush, and the lyrics are almost nauseatingly unironic. But despite this, it never feels sincere, the instrumentals feel almost like a bitter pastiche of the aesthetics and Alex Turners' strained and honestly poor quality vocals make the whole experience feel incredibly bitter yet otherwise emotionless. Nowhere else is this clearer than in the production of the album, which, while technically sound, feels inhuman and plastic, it almost reminded me of U2's Songs of Innocence, an album that has such an overly polished production that it completely tramples the emotions of the album itself. Right at the end here I want to return to a point I previously only skimmed over. Alex Turner marks a lot of the overall issues with the album. His vocals do not sell anything, they honestly sound very low energy and strained and it feels like he is out of his depth for almost the whole duration of the album. In short, in trying to create their own polished, love letter to sounds of the past, Arctic Monkeys have seemingly crafted something that feels more like a hateful parody. It is sad, but if they continue on in this lane, I don't see them creating anything of their original quality again.

The Modern Music Star The internet age has given birth to a strange style of indie music production. Gone are the days of fruitlessly trying to sell yourself to stuffy label executives for the slim chance of being picked up and seeing your music turn into a mangled, deformed version of itself; now you can record at home, release by yourself, and promote by yourself. Now this creates a lonely world, as a hopeful musician I can relate to the worry of releasing something and it not getting the attention you had hoped it would; having to promote on discord channels and the like has the disadvantage of being ignored. It can be demoralising, seeing the music you worked for hours on getting a couple of ratings. Cowman is a musician I know little about; they were born in Taiwan, live in the UK and have a few social medias mostly geared towards promoting their music. To me, Cowman perfectly embodies the internet age of independent music; that rough-and-tumble style combined with the self-recording, use of small labels and the relentless self-promotion is a perfect microcosm of this new wave. The album itself is utterly fascinating, this punishing wall of instruments combined with almost inaudible vocals is a sound that is really interesting, it takes the aesthetics and textures of noise rock and almost squashes it into a smaller space, crushing everything into a homogenised sound, almost turning the instruments into one. Now this leads to two things. A) a sound that is unlike anything else I have heard this year, which kept me engaged through the duration of the project; and B) a lot of this sounding similar with tracks sometimes flowing into each other rather than transitioning; these factors lead to the album both sounding and being paced differently to a lot of other projects I have found this year, which makes it very interesting. Now despite this the album is flawed, it can be somewhat repetitive due to the similar sounding songs and some of the tracks can feel a bit aimless, the last track especially feels as if it continues for the sake of it rather than building to a preplanned destination, which while an interesting way to structure a song, can feel a bit tiring to listen to. But despite this I found a lot to enjoy with this album and I would recommend you hear it as I see a bright future in this artist, they have a lot of potential and have a clear grasp and knowledge of what makes music good. But what does it matter, you could create the most incredible album, but since you either self-release it or work through a small label, why bother hey? Nobody is going to hear it? Well Cowman does bother, they have worked hard on this and they aren't going to let it go to waste; they have pressed vinyl, cassettes and they have worked their hardest to get this known. I know this is a lot longer and differently structured to a lot of my reviews, but when I started listening to this album, I didn't expect to find myself so deeply inspired by the artist behind it; they have taken their position as a smaller artist and have molded it into what they want to be. I wish this artist the best in their future hopes and ambitions, they have created something special here, and despite its flaws, it deserves to be heard, and if you are reading this and are an aspiring musician, your music deserves to be heard too.

The Content Creator Trap And How To Escape It (A 12 Step Guide) There is a somewhat often discussed phenomenon that has been referred to as the "Critic Trap", where a critic falls under extreme scrutiny whenever they try to make their own art and will often fail on account of using the guise of "satire" to defend themselves from critique rather than making the art they want to. In my opinion, there is a parallel situation with comedy content creators who make parody or satirical songs, which makes it so obvious they desperately want to make serious music of their own. Matt Watson has been in this trap for a while. The youtuber and comedian has found a lot of success as a member of comedy groups like Cyndago and SuperMega, and in both groups he has created a number of comedic songs, and they are great, but the quantity at which they would be made made it pretty clear that Matt just wants to make music. After a short EP in 2020, there had been rumblings about Matt making a full album and this year we finally got it. The danger with making serious music as a youtuber is finding a comfortable balance between appealing to your old brand and fanbase and also making the album in a way that doesn't alienate people who have never listened to you. On See You There, Matt finds that balance at the cost of the music itself. While being able to have a lighthearted and also heartfelt feeling, it also falls victim to some extremely repetitive lyrics (especially in some of the choruses) as well as some obnoxiously long interludes. That doesn't mean it doesn't have good elements. Songs like "STARSTUD" and "Coral" are definitely highlights here, where Matt manages to combine the vibe with compelling songwriting and good vocal lines. The sound here is also very effective, combining very simple Bedroom Pop aesthetics with a wall of sound approach. The good elements here definitely outweigh the bad and, despite the flaws, the effective escape of the trap so many have found themselves stuck in, combined with some compelling use of atmospheric Bedroom Pop make this one of the more engaging longform musical projects by a content creator.

When things get plain, mangle them and make them your own. These past few years we really saw a revival in Post-Punk. Bands such as Black Country, New Road, Squid and more all emerged onto the scene and saw great success in the sounds and aesthetics they helped popularise together. Well, this year felt like the death of that revival, with the bands who popularised it turning to different sonic palettes and new bands receiving far less fanfare. Now where does that put Courting, a band who only really burst onto the scene proper with their frankly great Grand National EP last year, an EP that, while great, did mostly stick to the sonic conventions of Post-Punk. Courting decided to take a different approach to their escape from their sound than the others. Instead of abandoning the sound, they decided to mangle it in their own image and mold it into a frankenstein mess of what it used to be, and with Guitar Music they put that beast on full display. The band place the head of their monster on the song "Cosplay / Twin Cities", a song unlike anything the band have previously released, this is a truly monsterous and hulking song bordering on the sonic pallettes of Power Noise and Deconstructed Club; it succeeds in introducing the album by showing us that this is not the courting we knew before this album. But the old courting has been taken as part of this new monster. We see that part on the stomach and left leg of the beast, the left leg being in the single "Tennis" and the stomach in the rerecording of their previous song "Crass". "Tennis" as it is would seemingly be a normal single for Courting, with some huge exceptions, the additions of massive amounts of noise and a doubling of the drums giving the song a jarring and almost inhuman effect. The song is brilliant and has one of the best choruses of the whole year, it is a brilliantly tightly written song which immediately impacts and then rings in your head for weeks following. The left leg of the monster "Crass (Redux)" is somewhat similar to "Tennis" in that it shows us familiar signs of the Courting we knew from the EP, being that the song originally comes from said EP. But it isn't how we once saw it; it's been maimed, giving the song an even more captivating and jarring feel than it already did. The right leg "Loaded" doesn't look too dissimilar from the left on first glance, but it is immediately clear that it is coming from a different source. The heavily processed vocals combined with the hypnotic and winding guitar line causes the song to give off this truly uncomfortable but still immensely catchy feel. The arms of the creature come in "Famous" and "Jumper", two songs that on the surface feel conventional but have this deeply synthetic yet sincere atmosphere that causes the songs to not quite sit right in a fantastic way. It lets each word weigh on the listener as more and more piles on. The Chest and heart of the beast come in the one two punch of "Uncanny Valley" and "PDA", two of the most sincere and heartfelt songs on the album, yet also the most alien to us, on "PDA" this is shown most clearly as we this outlandish soundscape held to normality by Seans vocals and some pounding drums; we see the last breath of the old Courting in the brief guitar solo, like a singing bird being enveloped by a cloud of smoke and the next time we hear the guitars they have been assimilated into the soundscape as the new and the old Courting become one, leaving both the past and the present in order to march onto a much different future. I know I got very cryptic in this review, so I want to make it clear I adore this album. It has its flaws of course, "Jumper" does feel like a very abrupt shift, and while I still like it, it does feel like a weird pacing change. But these flaws really do not detract from the fact that this is a truly inventive and utterly new album. The old Courting is dead, as is the new Courting, long live Guitar Music.

The Free Artist In music circles we seem to be obsessed with the concept of "the free artist" able to create without any concern for record sales yet able to captivate listeners. With that obsession comes the adjacent discussion regarding the impossibility of it. An artist cannot possibly gain love and attention while simultaneously going in direct contrast to the music industry that would give it that love and attention. Well by 1970 Tim Buckley was that elusive "free artist" and his 1970 project Starsailor is a testament to that fact. We are taunted by that fact from the start by just looking at the album cover, seemingly friendly but with a certain smugness to it, almost as if Buckley is looking directly at the listener and saying "You are in for a ride, buckle in" while laughing to himself. The listener is then greeted with the ride, as it gives no breathing room and immediately enthrals you into this hypnotic and angular world. Instruments pulse and wail, almost as if completely improvised, while Buckley's commanding voice holds every piece together with a unifying power. Every song sounds like a sprawling piece of orchestration that has been suffocated and trapped into a smaller container, and screeches and moans like a wild beast wanting to be freed, but yet Buckley continues to attempt to tame the beast. Until the title track where the command breaks and he lets out a demented series of wails and moans on top of an unsettling backdrop as the overlapping vocals crash into each other. The crypticism of the lyrics combined with the off-kilter instrumentation creates a maze like effect for the listener, both enthralling and entrapping them into one of the most compelling and fascinating albums of the 70s. However it isn't without flaw, sometimes its looseness can lead to it feeling as if it is going nowhere and there are sometimes obnoxious vocal passages such as the longer wails on "Monterey" which end up being more unpleasant than they are compelling. But these downsides are really more of a testament to how truly free this album is, on this album Tim Buckley is saying "I do not care if you do not like this, because I like it and I know many others will too" and as a whole I am in agreement because this truly is one of the most interesting albums I have ever come across.