Album Review- Foetus- Halt

There are few artists that have had such an impact on me that I feel the need to track down every release that they have ever made. 

One of those is JG Thirlwell who has a 40 year career where he has mostly recorded under the name Foetus. Occasionally that moniker is part of an elaborate sentence that features the word- Scraping Foetus Under the Wheel, You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Interruptus, and so on. I first heard Foetus on public radio but also because of a friend who was familiar with his work. It was the 90s and all of his work - both the obscure and his more well known albums- were being re-released by Thirsty Ear. 

Though his first couple of albums are rudimentary, they are helping invent the industrial genre. In 1984 and 1985, he released Hole and Nail, two classic albums that are industrial and yet something more. I am going to skip to 1995. Foetus is working as a remixer for Nine Inch Nails and Columbia Records has decided to release his album. This is the weird days of Alt Rock where major labels signed artists that otherwise would never have been signed - Daniel Johnston, Ween, Boredoms, King Missile, Butthole Surfers, Unsane. That year’s album Gash gets mixed reviews these days but I think it’s a masterpiece. Given a big budget, Thirlwell goes from industrial to big band to Arabic melodies in a mishmash of genre stylings. The production is clean, the wordplay is clever, the music intense. These would mark the second half of his career, as would the decision to simply be called Foetus and to be credited by his birth name as opposed to the early records which were credited to monikers like Clint Ruin and Frank Want. 

Foetus had been prolific and Thirlwell remained that way by releasing other projects like Manorexia, Xordox, and Steroid Maximus, as well releasing soundtrack work under the JG Thirlwell name. Six years passed before we got Flow, which did what Gash did and possibly even better. I would sign off on it being his masterwork. Where his early work was easily categorized as manic blasts or maybe what the Damned called “mindless directionless energy”, Flow was the sound of someone in internal torment working out psychological struggles in his head. If Edward Munch’s “The Scream” had music, perhaps it would sound like this. In retrospect, 2005s Love had high expectations to live up to. But Love, a more restrained affair largely works with its ambition and quality songwork. Thirlwell had done it once again. Albums followed in 2010 and 2013 (the companion pieces Hide and Soak) and remix albums were sprinkled throughout but Foetus went mostly dormant. 

Thirlwell was busy making music that sounded like the coolest spy shows that hadn’t been made, so when shows like Archer and the Venture Bros came out, it had to be a no brainer to hire him for the soundtrack. Having made the blueprint that Nine Inch Nails and Ministry took to filling arenas, I am happy to see him get a nice big (hopefully) payday. His other projects put out fantastic work like the spacey Xordox, and he remained a big name remixer for artists like Faith No More, Current 93 and John Carpenter. But it sounded like Thirlwell was done with the Foetus world which meant one final album- the appropriately named Halt, the final of many four world titled LPs in his career, released the week of Christmas 2025. 

In many ways, Halt feels like a third part to Gash and Flow. The titles sound like a list of complaints- The World is Broken, Die Alone, Dead to Me, Scurvy. The production is clear. Thirlwell who often worked alone is joined here with some collaborators like Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Leah Asher of the Rhythm Method, and Simon Hanes of Tredici Bacci. Not surprisingly the production is crystal clear, this is a guy who’s been behind the desk for Swans, Sonic Youth and Boss Hog. The songs themselves stand out separately but I am always going to have a tough time judging this against a discography that I consider on of the greatest. I wish the songs had more variety between them. The “remote control clicker” effect of jumping genres from track to track as he did on Gash or Love probably would have made more an impact. Also, the crystal clear production somewhat feels like a blessing and a curse. I think it might have sounded better if it was a bit dirtier. But individually in five and six minute bursts of noise, I find myself finding the Thirlwell I fell in love with. 

Still, if Foetus is going to end, it likely would sound like the individual brain fighting itself in anguish which is the sound of this album and appropriately for someone with so many different projects (and differently named projects) ending in a track called “Many Versions of Me”. That my expectations are so high for an end to a career also means I am baffled that the album is only available on Bandcamp (and released in the dead zone of December and with only one video on YouTube to promote it) though maybe that just means Thirlwell wanted to share with his closest fans. As he has with most of his later work, Thirlwell plans to pair it with another forthcoming release, which means we should see at least that piece (entitled LEAK) according to the artist in 2027.

Wayne Kramer: The Hard Stuff book and a review of the final MC5 album

I read an interview with Iggy Pop awhile back where he said the best guitarists were thugs. He was talking about his Stooges, but given their history, he probably was thinking of the MC5s Wayne Kramer as well. I bought “Kick out the Jams” likely just based on its reputation without hearing it first. 

Although I never liked the MC5 as much as I did the Stooges, there was no denying its energy. There was real anger in its politics. In many ways the first step in the political side of punk. Though arguably its lineage is punk, I think most would agree that it is more accurate to call it proto heavy metal. While the New York Dolls and Ramones picked from girl groups and surf rock, the MC5 pulled from Jazz, Blues, ames Brown and Sun Ra. That said, I think it’s well deserving of its reputation and although it was seemingly downhill from there, there are a few standout songs in their discography like “Looking at You”. 

It is that reputation that made me interested in Kramer’s autobiography- 2018s The Hard Stuff. It’s not a perfect book by any means but Kramer is still a fascinating character. The more interesting parts of the book are unsurprisingly about the 5. Kramer has famously stated that the “Kick out the Jams” performance was not one of their strongest moments and the band’s live performances were even better still. As history has shown, the band was marred by self destructive behavior and record company fumbling. I find it fascinating that since the MC5 were speaking to such highly principled ideas, the fans’ expectations became unrealistic and they turned on them. It’s hard to describe Kramer’s life as anything but starts and stops. It feels like any biography of an addict. With the MC5 no longer a going concern, Kramer takes up small crimes. He famously ends up in prison in the mid 70s. After his stint there, Kramer starts a band with Johnny Thunders called Gang War, writes songs with Mick Farren, and finds some fame in playing with an early lineup of Was (Not Was). But that artistic and commercial well dries up and Kramer finds himself having to go into carpentry and woodwork to make a living. I can’t help but think of Kramer’s time in Key West where he was an anonymous member in a bar band. I was always excited that Kramer got the late life career resurrection. I always found him sort of a mismatch to Epitaph Records label that signed him (home of Bad Religion, No FX and the Offspring). 

This book gives the truth that these years and the MC5/DTK (a partial MC5 reunion) were not quite the Hollywood ending that us fans hoped them to be. This book came out in 2018 and Kramer at age 70 finally seems to have found peace. He’s making jazz music and it’s having success. He has cleaned his life up and he would be taking the MC5 back on the road (as the last active member surrounded by band fans like Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Brendan Canty. He also spearheaded Jail Guitar Doors USA- an American branch of the prison social outreach started by Billy Bragg in the UK named after a Clash song that referenced Kramer in its lyrics. In the afterword, he has also adopted a son and became a father. Kramer led an interesting life and he can tell a story. Some reviewers say the book focused too much on his rehab, but it is key to his story and I didn’t find that a negative. 

 It isn’t surprising that there would be a MC5 reunion album. From 2003 on with brief hiatuses, the band was often alive in some form. From 2018 until February of 2020, as the band now celebrated their 50th anniversary, Kramer announced a world tour that was billed MC50 and was the band that was featured in Kramer’s book. Post pandemic, in 2022, Kramer was ready to bring back the MC5, hitting all the media to say We Are All the MC5. With so many members passed away including singer Rob Tyner, it’s not quite the same but you also can’t blame Kramer for keeping the band alive. His plan was a new tour and a new album. The roots of this likely came in Alice Cooper’s 2021 album Detroit Stories. That album was Cooper writing a love letter to Deroit, and in doing so reunited the classic Alice Cooper Band lineup for two of the album’s tracks. The album was produced by Bob Ezrin who had produced the classic Cooper albums. But also of interest, Kramer played on most every track and cowrote three of the album’s 12 original tracks with Cooper. 

Heavy Lifting, that anticipated MC5 release did not see release until October 2024. Sadly, the last two remaining members had passed away- Kramer passed away in February that year followed by drummer Dennis Thompson that May. I am not sure what my expectations of Heavy Lifting were. To be sure, expecting an album like Kick Out the Jams is not realistic. Kramer has put together a real lineup for the band with Arizona based singer Brad Brooks as cowriter for the material, and a band that includes Don Was, 90s guitar hero Stevie Salas, Vicki Randle of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno band and Abe Laboriel Jr who often plays drums for Paul McCartney. Not surprisingly he also find a lot of guests to cameo- Slash of Guns N Roses, Tom Morello, Vernon Reid, Tim McIlreath of Rise Against and William Duvall who is the current singer of Alice In Chains. Ezrin produces and Dennis Thompson plays on two tracks. Not surprising given the guests, I think the sound is probably closer to Hard Rock than Punk. You hear elements of grunge, Living Color and Rage Against the Machine. 

It doesn’t have a ton of personality sadly and falls a bit in my opinion. That said, it does have a certain kick and I think it’s a nice bookend piece to Kramer’s career and life. It hits the mark enough that I can’t help but wondering where it could gain an audience if it had been released in a different era. . There’s not a ton of rock records getting played these days but this certainly is in that category of recent albums by Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult that FM diehards have bought in quantity. There is a heavy blues rock sound that is definitely the 5’s trademark and the current audience of that genre would probably dig it. Stylistically, there is a certain 80s quality. Not unlike Living Colour or The Cult, it might have done well in the era of glam rock. Wanting to overthink alternate history, would this album have given Kramer a resurrection in the Lollapalooza era of the 90s. Given he was signed to Epitaph, it is doubtful that it would have been any different. But it is generally enjoyable. 

At best when it’s straightforward like the opening title track with Morello or the similar or the lead single “Boys Who Play With Matches”. Melodic track “Blind Eye” with Thompson on drums is a particular high point and I wish more songs had a little bit of pop punk sheen like it. Instead it’s probably closer to the post grunge that these days are called (not) pejoratively as Butt Rock. The album included a bonus disc of the MC50 band playing the classics. In 2025, there was an additional release attributed to the MC50 featuring a lineup with Thayill, Canty, Billy Gould of Faith No More, Marcus Durant of Zen Guerilla and Kramer. This album hits the three original classic albums and a cover of Ray Charles’s “I Believe to my Soul”- an old setlist constant that the band played. It serves as a surprisingly good introduction to the band. The band is in fine form with all of the energy one comes to associate with the MC5.

 

Album Review: The Dears- Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful!

One of my favorite albums of the still young century is 2004s No Cities Left, the breakthrough second album by Montreal band the Dears. 

The band opened for Morrissey in 2004 and comparisons with their singer Murray Lightburn has been a blessing and a curse. While it surely helped them get an audience, Lightburn comes from a jazz background (his dad was a jazz musician) and there is a more cinematic element in his music à la Leonard Cohen, Tindersticks and Pulp. While I am not sure they ever eclipsed that breakout album. the band has (in my mind) largely avoided any missteps in their prolific career. In 2020, the band released their eighth album Lover’s Rock. 

One will occasionally find an album that no one else enjoys, and for me that might be Lovers Rock. Reviews were mostly good though some like the NME blasted it. Many a reviewer was quick to point out that Lightburn and bandmate Natalia Yanchak had been married for a couple of decades by now, but it sounded like a breakup record. The band rightfully choosing to self produce had stripped their sound a bit (though not fully - for example Jake Clemons of the E Street Band is here) and it felt in many ways like a throwback to No Cities Left. I find it a late era masterpiece the likes few bands can claim.

2025s Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! surely evokes a positive feeling follow up to Lovers Rock from the album title to the life affirming song “Life is Beautiful” near the end of the album. While I prefer its predecessor, there are plenty of great moments. “Babe, We will Find A Way” is as good of a song as they have ever done. "This is How We Make Our Dream Come True" feels like a cousin to the Sparks song “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth” Tomorrow and Tomorrow is direct from Leonard Cohen’s “Memories”, with soulful uplifting singing from Lightburn. “Tears of a Nation” is a hard rocker that balances U2- style arena anthems and hard Goth guitar riffs. “Dead Contacts” is probably actually the closest the band has come to making a Morrissey sounding song in awhile. “Life is Beautiful” is almost too sunshine positive to be enjoyable but as switches to closer “Don’t Go” it feels an essential piece.

Though the band has not said it (and may not have intended it), this feels like a bookend to their last album. If Lovers Rock was the dissolution of a relationship and all the negativity that comes with it, this album is almost solely focused on the positive. The album is again bolstered by smart production, keen songwriting and a tendency towards short punchy songs. I am still shocked by the number of reviewers (not just the NME) who hated the last album. That album is without a question, one of my favorites in the last ten years. To me, this album falls short of that, but I definitely don’t feel any disappointment.

David Ball: An Appreciation

If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of Soft Cell. It’s a joke but the gateway to most people finding music they like is greatest hits. There were some great compilations that left lasting impacts on my generation. There of course the duality of things. 1991s Memorabilia-The Singles credited to Marc Almond and Soft Cell is at once fantastic, a primer to Almond’s best stuff and also about as good as beginning to end listen as one can experience. 

But on the other hand, you can overthink such things and this compilation is one on which it is easy to overthink These particular “greatest hits” make for a weird grab bag. The most famous songs are 1991 re-recordings of Soft Cell songs. Also, with a US track list of 13 songs (and 2 dance remixes), it is a tough job to limit that catalog to the “best of the best”. From a critic’s perspective, Marc Almond’s solo work is mostly overlooked here. There are his collaborations with Gene Pitney and Bronski Beat that both make for fine additions, but Almond had six albums of solo material by this point, and only two singles (then recently released) made the cut. Yet, such are the arguments to be made and while one can split hairs over whether the compilation was truly representative, it was still a fantastic album. At this point, I had bought it largely on the basis of “Tainted Love”- a song that made the American Top 10 in 1982 and one of those instances where it has remained one of the most played songs from year to year.

I immediately jumped into the Soft Cell and Almond discography truly and deeply. While that momentum could have died off, especially with Almond not having a ton of success in America, the 90s ended pretty strong. In 1997, Some Bizarre Records re-released the early Marc solo records. In 1999, his solo album Open All Night with special appearances by members of the Creatures and Sneaker Pimps got a lot of attention in Uncut magazine. Almond’s discography is all over the place with a variety of sounds and plenty of gems in a ton of albums of various quality, but in light of David Ball's 2025 death at age 66, I want to focus on Soft Cell now.

Buying the Memorabilia compilation led to me buying the band’s debut Non Stop Erotic Cabaret. Soft Cell’s debut is on my short list of perfect albums. It is one of those magical albums where even the cover is perfect- a Peter Ashworth photo of the duo on front in a leather jackets with Almond ostensibly carrying the album like it’s a magazine in a brown paper bag as if it was just purchased from a seedy 'adults only' shop. The band was short lived, and there’s not a better record in their discography. That, of course, is because the band was a case of “too much too soon”. While surely played up to shock, the legend was that the band’s drug dealer Cindy Ecstasy was popping up in cameos for the band’s music videos and Top of the Pop appearances. 

1983s follow up The Art of Falling Apart may not have the legacy of the debut, but it’s a pretty solid of collection of songs 1984s This Last Night in Sodom is harder to defend but it does have a couple of killer tracks like the manic “Where was Your Heart (When You Needed it Most)” and the psychotic “Meet Murder My Angel”. The decadent lifestyle was over taking the music. The song “L’Esqualita” which took place in a Puerto Rican transvestite bar in New York was about Heroin. I didn’t buy these albums until a good decade-plus after their release but the story remains the same. 

Dave Ball did his own thing and did quite well, with most of his music coming from his project The Grid, also occasionally working with Almond, doing some production work, and being a top name remixer. I may or may not have been aware of his contributions to “Psychic TV presents: Jack the Tab” when I picked up that seminal release. He can also be found on that band's well-regarded Towards Thee Infinite Beat. 

 In 2005, Soft Cell released their early recordings in the compilation The Bedsit Tapes. These early recordings had been bootlegged and it contained the four songs that made up the band's 1980 debut EP Mutant Moments, as well as other early recordings, including a cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid". The Bedsit Tapes are great, not just in a "these are good for bedroom demos" way, but it truly sounds like a good record. Much like Gary Numan/Tubeway Army's early work, it is at once primitive and futuristic at the same time. 

I am sure many  critics thought that synths were destroying music when these recordings were made, but given the constraints of the time, it shows what an amazing ear for melody that Ball had. Obviously, the band would improve on these greatly by the time Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret came along, but the elements are there on these early recordings. Soft Cell would reunite and go back in the studio to record a new record- 2002's Cruelty Without Beauty. Robert Christgau gave it a "Bomb", but most reviews were generally positive. I liked it a lot as a reunion album that did a pretty good job of a band catching some of their early magic, and I have listened to it quite a bit over the years. 

 2022's Happiness Not Included is a bit more patchy as an album, but there are some solid songs there too. "Purple Zone" is a collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys and one of my favorite songs of recent memory. I love the video where Messrs. Almond, Ball, Tennant and Lowe having written so many synth classics seem to be having the time of their life. 

Album Review- David Byrne- Who is the Sky

At some point, David Byrne and I went our separate ways. 

The Talking Heads were a major pop band when I was growing up. Specifically “Burning Down the House” was a monster hit. It went to # 9 on the US charts. While “Once in a Lifetime” became their signature song (at least for awhile, “Psycho Killer” likely has eclipsed it now), the bigger radio hit was my main impression. In 1988, they released their final album Naked. (With time, the focus has gone to the band’s early work and this album is considered a bit of a dud). I picked up Naked off the strength of the fantastic song “(Nothing But) Flowers” which featured on record (and heavily-played-on- MTV video) an assist from Johnny Marr and Kirsty MacColl. The album feels quintessentially late 80s. College Rock was on the ascent but hadn’t quite made the breakthrough that gets attributed to Grunge in the 90s. That was when U2 and REM elevated to arena level bands. It seemed everyone was just a hit single away. There were a lot of solid albums in those days as record labels gambled on the likes of Elvis Costello, the Replacements and the Violent Femmes. There were some great albums but time has not been kind to those when people reappraise them and they get compared to those artists' earlier work. Now, I’m not here to argue that Naked is a five star album but it was a statement, and the world music elements felt revolutionary at the time. 

In 1992, I would pick up Sand in the Vaseline which like any decent compilation gives you everything you need in one spot. Though there’s probably multiple correcr answers, my go to Talking Heads album for recent years has been “Talking Heads ‘77”. In 1989, Byrne released Rei Momo, his solo debut album. It got a lot of play in the Modern Rock space. Still in that period of the ambitious college rock landscape, where there finally was room for left-of-center artists like Billy Bragg and Robyn Hitchcock. It wasn’t something that caught my attention but I appreciated that Byrne was doing something that hadn’t been done quite like this- combining Modern Rock with sounds from Brazil, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. 

You couldn’t have a discussion today of most influential bands of all time without mentioning the Talking Heads but there were some down times. In 1996, there was a reunion without Byrne called The Heads with the aptly titled accompanying record No Talking, Just Heads. It was a dud even though looking back now the talent assembled seems worthwhile. I remember listening to some songs and walking away with barely an impression.

Byrne’s output in the 1990s isn’t particularly impressive either. There were some singles that got some traction and some attention but nothing that gets much mention these days. In fact, it really was his 2012 collaboration with St Vincent-the Love This Giant album and follow up world tour that really brought Byrne back to the spotlight in a major way. Byrne followed that up with American Utopia-an album then Broadway Show and then a Movie. It was a culmination of a new generation that celebrated Byrne- sometimes in an imitative fashion- Vampire Weekend, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Franz Ferdinand and many others. Oh and there was those guys who named themselves after the sixth track on the Talking Heads seventh album - a song called “Radio Head”. 

Byrne was never completely off my radar, of course, even as I wasn’t checking in heavily. He appeared on 2009s Spirit of Apollo, an album by the collective NASA. He collaborated with Chuck D and Seu Jorge on that album which elsewhere paired indie rockers (Karen O, MIA, Santigold, Tom Waits) with innovative rappers (Kanye West, Kool Keith, KRS-1, and members of the Wu Tang Clan). I also read and loved two books he wrote -2009s Bicycle Diaries and 2012s How Music Works. 

The local public radio station played the heck out of 2025s Who Is the Sky? It makes sense of course- it’s the perfect album for that- equally ambitious and radio friendly. That will likely be the deciding factor if you like it. I fell in love with the record but it’s an upbeat, at times silly album. Some might find it cloying. The album is technically a collaboration between Byrne and Ghost Train Orchestra, the New York City based Avant Garde jazz collective. Hayley Williams and Annie Clark of St Vincent show up for vocals on a song each. Grammy winner Kid Harpoon (Harry Styles, Shawn Mendes, Miley Cyrus) produces, giving it pop star polish. 

As I look over reviews, it seems that this was generally loved though reviewers almost universally felt it fell short of being a truly great record. Pitchfork was the rare reviewer who gave it a negative review though it’s interesting that they picked up on something that I thought right away. There is definitely a Jonathan Richman vibe on some songs. Take “She Explains Things to Me” which is the sort of “older couple in love” songs that might fall on the wrong side for some listeners. “Moisturizing Thing” falls in similar cringe territory though I find charm in it. Or “My Apartment is my Friend”, a paean to… well, what it says in the title. Maybe this is why Pitchfork gave us the lowest score I have seen in months. Similarly you might not take to the songs that find Byrne in a sea of hipsters. 

There’s “The Avant Garde”, which is fantastic and argues just because it’s avant garde, doesn’t mean it’s good. Then, "I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party" which has the trademark Byrne wit. I really love this album which is chock full of poppy sounding songs which remind you why you love Byrne in the first place, and that he is indeed the same as he ever...no I can't say that. Having reminded myself of the great Modern Rock boom of the late 80s and early 90s, this album feels like that- a true album and not a collection of songs, and that there is plenty of life left in David Byrne

Brian Wilson- An Appreciation

I probably should say something about the passing of Brian Wilson. It’s been a few years since I last wrote about him. When I was a teenager, the conventional wisdom was that Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was the greatest album ever. It’s understandable that it earned that honor -it was a defining album in music. Over time, opinions change. For one, the Beatles had a lot of great music- and you could make arguments that Revolver or Abbey Road were better albums than Pepper. But more than anything, public opinion went to the album that inspired it and an album that aspired to it (Pet Sounds and Exile on Main Street) Starting with a love of Baroque pop taking over 90s indie rock, Pet Sounds has had a steady ascent and has found new fans via the online crowd. 

Now The Beach Boys were always in the discussion of greatest American bands, but it’s only recently that albums like 20/20, Surf’s Up and Holland get discussed in “Greatest albums ever” now discussion too. Wilson (as famous as he was) kind of feels like a cult figure like Alex Chilton or Syd Barrett. The fact he was suffering mentally and physically plays into certain “suffering for art” cliches, and his solo career is quite patchy. His 1988 debut solo album was critically loved but didn’t get the kind of mainstream inroads that similar records of the day by, fo example Roger McGuinn or Robbie Robertson did. Largely, his solo career didn’t get the attention you might expect from someone with his profile. 

 Personally, I love the early Beach Boy singles. Like the Beatles, there is a reason that critics focus on the albums that came later. I get it, but there is definitely a link from those early songs to the punk sound of the Ramones. Lest us not forget the other branches of psychedelia to bands like XTC and the power pop of the Raspberries and Cheap Trick. But the story of The Beach Boys is overshadowed by the myth which is the SMiLE album. I am not sure there’s a more famous “withdrawn” album (with Prince’s Black Album and Neil Young’s “Homegrown” and a few others in that conversation) SMiLE would not be released as planned in the Sixties. Instead we got a scaled down version in 1967s Smiley Smile. SMiLE was probably not going to bring the world jetpacks and flying cars. We know that with ambitious albums like Chinese Democracy and Their Satanic Majesty’s Request- the expectations usually overweigh anything the artist could possibly produce. But in 2004, Wilson was able to present (indeed it’s called Brian Wilson Presents) SMiLE. By that time the myth was strong and the story had established real Heroes (Brian) and Villains (Mike Love). You can’t probably have gotten a better reception for an album that people had already mostly heard the material. For me personally, it was my soundtrack for 2004. 

It’s not an album that I revisit often but I can’t separate the music from the timeframe and so it will always be meaningful to me.

Robert Wilson (The Black Rider) - An Appreciation

When I first heard of Robert Wilson in the 90s, my first thought was that it must be a pretty talented name (there’s also Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Charles Wilson for example). The highlight of Wilson’s 55+ year career is the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach which had music composed by Philip Glass. It is considered a classic with the related 1979 album scoring 5/5 on Allmusic and 10/10 from Pitchfork. It is easy enough to say the album is a blind spot for me, but avant garde theater doesn’t quite get a bunch of air time. 

Wilson’s later career did bleed into rock music a bit. In 1990, Tom Waits wrote the music for Wilson’s play The Black Rider- based on a German fairy tale and a book by William S Burroughs. Three years later, it became Waits’s then-new album. It’s hard to call Waits accessible in the first place but the Black Rider is surely an averse non commercial move following the critically acclaimed Rain Dogs and Grammy Winning Bone Machine. If Waits was making any inroads with a popular audience, The Black Rider took the weirdness to 11. Contemporary reviews maul it. Allmusic damns it to two stars and very rare is the decent review like the 4/5 from Rolling Stone. 

I loved it though. The first thing anyone seems to mention is Burroughs who takes “vocals” for a song and admonishes “t’aint no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones”. It’s not my favorite part of the album but I do enjoy it and it certainly adds to the weirdness. Some of my favorite moments are the inclusion of the musical saw on “November” and “Flash Pan Hunter”. I love “I’ll Shoot the Moon”, a late night drunken lament that would fit on Frank’s Wild Years. “Russian Dance” is well… just that. The music is strange and alluring, but so are the lyrics. Waits is jarring at times “Go away you rainsnout/go away, blow your brains out”. Lucky Day may even the most Waitsian words ever “And when you get blue and lost all your dreams/ there’s nothin’ like a campfire and a can of beans” 

Like Franks Wild Years, you might not get the story without the liner notes but it’s a great folk tale. Our hero hunter makes a Faustian bargain and gets a collection of magic bullets that always hit but the last one is cursed and will hit the target of his love. I love the Waits album. It’s one of my all time favorites and probably ranks as one of my most listened to albums as well. Waits and Wilson would do two more collaborations - in 1992 and 2000- and Waits would again turn these into albums. He would release these on the same date in 2002 - Alice and Blood Money. You can probably guess but I love these albums too which amp up the aspects of folklore and instrumental oddity. I can’t completely remember but I must have bought them close together if not at the same time. They are pretty tied together in my mind. They take me back to 2002 and 2003 in one of those ways memories tie the music to the year because it’s become so big of a part of your life. I think I prefer Blood Money over Alice but both are quite good and filled with memorable songs. 

Looking back it was such a treasure trove of Waits sandwiched by 1999s Mule Variations and 2004s Real Gone - classic albums in their own right; followed by a three disc set of “lost songs” in 2006. Then somehow we haven’t got a new Waits album in 14+ years Looking at Wilson’s work- I would probably enjoy it quite a bit- the names he worked with are too notch- Anna Calvi, Arvo Part, CocoRosie, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars and so on. 

The last Wilson collaboration that made significant shockwaves in the alt rock category is Lou Reed’s 2003 album The Raven. I love Reed but it is interesting that his work post 9/11 is as unpredictable as Reed could be- The Raven was his last solo rock album, followed only in the Discography by live discs, the Metallica collaboration Lulu and the Hudson River Wind Meditations album. An all star cast collected for a concept album around Edgar Allen Poe’s poems and stories, I want to like The Raven but I find it generally unlistenable. Even with the talent assembled- Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Steve Buscemi, ANHONI, Ornette Coleman, Kate & Anna McGarigle, Willem Defoe, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, among others including Reed’s longtime sidemen Mike Rathke and Fernando Saunders. I did find performance pieces of The Black Rider and it’s hard to say which is weirder or more accessible- with Waits singing or with it part of musical theater.

Either way, it scratches an itch of mine which I don’t expect anyone to necessarily understand- a bit of the Kurt Weill/Beroldt Brecht cabaret and dark carnival elements - mixed of course with more modern sounds of pop, rock and blues with lines of comedy and existential horror woven through out, but also beauty. Wilson died in July of 2025 at age 83. 

This is one of a series of posts this week I wrote about artists we lost in 2025. 

Jock MacDonald: An Appreciation

 Jock McDonald passed away in July of 2025. He was the frontman and brain behind English joke punk band The Bollock Brothers.

The Bollock Brothers were largely a nonentity in the US, but had a string of records in the 1980s that made headlines in Europe. Someone surely would have made the joke inherent in “Never Mind the Bollocks”

Related stunts including a disco version of the Sex Pistols “Never Mind the Bollocks…” album in 1983, and I have heard it’s not bad. For a short time, they hired Jimmy Lydon (Johnny Rotten’s brother) as vocalist. On record, they gave the mic to Michael Fagan who famously broke into the Queen’s bedroom in Buckingham Palace. (Martin “Youth” Glover even played bass for them around the time he briefly left Killing Joke in 1982.)

Song ideas include writing a sequel to the Velvet Underground’s “The Gift” and covering Serge Gainsbourg’s “Harley David (Son of Bitch)” (which became a bit of a cult hit)

I doubt I would have encountered them if a friend didn’t lend me his copies of The Last Supper (1983) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1985). He had served in the military and heard the band in Germany.

The truth is the band did have some tunes and sometimes comedy punk if done well can be as good as the serious stuff. Besides, where is the line between this and “serious” bands like the Damned and the Stranglers, and does it really matter.

As much as I love “Horror Movies”, the band sticks out in my mind for the timeframe I encountered them. In the 1980s and 1990s, trading cassettes and making “mixtapes” was a major component in discovering music. The music industry hated it, though as usual, short sighted by greed, the practice probably helped their pocketbooks as much as hurt them.

In more recent years, there may be a rare case of a friend “burning” a CD or outright occurrence of giving of music. But we don’t really put as much significance on that. If you want to let someone know about a particular piece of music, you can post a video or the actual song; or not even necessarily do that as the person can do such things for themselves. In fact, they may prefer to do for themselves.

But cassette swapping was where I heard a lot of bands for the first time, and the Bollock Brothers in the middle of the 1990s may have been the end of that era for me.

This is one of the 2025 tributes I wrote that I plan on sharing this week.

Ozzy Osbourne: An Appreciation

When Ozzy Osbourne passed away in 2025, he was one of the most loved musicians on the planet. It’s funny because growing up in his classic years, he was the epitome of heavy metal and shock rock. His music was the stuff of cult legend and Hard Rock radio. Things change over time, of course. At its release “Crazy Train” would fall short as a Top 100 single. No surprise there, of course, but over time it would become a guitar rock classic and that momentum would continue, until at some point, it became a song that everyone knows. 

Early 80s Ozzie was the PMRC nightmare. Prior to Metallica, Slayer, thrash metal and death metal, it’s hard to think of anything that evoked the shock of Metal in those days. When the mention of Ozzy didn’t evoke blasphemous cover art, songs with titles like “Suicide Solution” or that famous bat incident, it was the out of control rocker that appears in Penelope Spheeris’s glam metal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2 in a mix of mental fog and physically shaking unable to pour a glass of orange juice, instead spilling it all over the counter Another defining moment was a 1982 Des Moines concert in which Ozzy bit the head off of a bat. While Ozzy clearly expected it to be a rubber bat, it only turned the story in one of the all time great rock legends. In each decade, there have been trends in rock that defined the genre- classic rock then glam rock then grunge and alt rock then nu metal and emo; and no matter your tastes, if is hard to avoid what’s popular when you are in those defining ages. 

 For me, I loved punk and new wave, but glam metal ruled my school in those years. For me, it was no surprise that the best at it in the 90s were the guys who innovated the genre at its beginning- Alice Cooper and Ozzy. Osbourne’s 1991 album No More Tears was a commercial success. I spent plenty of time with it and although it’s an outlier to my usual listening, it’s quite an enjoyable record, but more about that later. While most of Ozzy’s best loved songs had been recorded by 1986, he had his biggest hit with Lita Ford in 1988. In a genre known for its power ballads, the pairing was perfect to push the song all the way to # 8 on the pop charts. In 1991, he made a cameo for Cooper with the anti-drug song “Hey Stoopid”, another rock radio hit. This set up the stage for his bid for mainstream success - 1991s “ No More Tears”. Mama I’m Coming Home” was the kind of on-the-nose ballad that would earn him a larger audience. Ozzy would find himself on the Top 30 again. 

I thought the title track was a killer mix of metal and goth, miles better than a lot of 90s records. I wasn’t apt to stick around but the next album gave us the “Perry Mason” single- a song much better than its name. As Ozzy became a rock elder, he switched to the mode of a Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, his collaborations were a who’s who of the “hit band” of the day. Take a look at his singles on Wikipedia and you will see him paired with as varied artists as Type O Negative, Fear Factory, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Lemmy. He’d have a late era run at the chart again in 2020 with a collaboration with Post Malone which brought two generations together- “Take What You Want” would go to # 8 and seemed to go viral on social media. 

 But the biggest change may have came in 2002. The preceding years gave us Ozzfest which was for metal what Lollapalooza, Lilith Fair, and the Warped Tour had been for their genres- a generation defining event. You can’t deny Ozzfest but it was also Autumn 2002 that gave us the MTV television show “The Osbournes”. I don’t know if it was the first reality show or not, but in retrospect, it is the first one that comes immediately to mind. We sit 20+ years later with shows like Vanderpump Rules, Real Housewives and Project Runway and dozens that you probably are thinking of, have come and gone to this day, and are still a big bulk of tv programming. I think The Osbournes tv show is a large part of how Ozzy became a household name. We all knew each member of the Osbourne family and we sympathized with the dad trying hard in Ozzy. No longer the scary prince of darkness, but someone your mom had heard of. Such is life. 

As Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson aged from rebels to crowd favorites, so did Ozzy and Snoop Dog. Rock (the genre) became more extreme but some of the color went out of it. It’s that atmosphere where songs like “Crazy Train” and “Bark at the Moon” became part of the Great American Songbook. Ozzy even went to the charts with his daughter Kelly for a cover of the classic Sabs ballad “Changes” in 2003 amidst a run at the charts by her. A year later in 2004, Trick Daddy sampled “Crazy Train” for his song “Let’s Go”. Genres blurred. Rap rock was mainstream and Ozzy was cool regardless of where you came from. The song went all the way to # 7 on the charts. Lastly, I want to mention Black Sabbath. They are one of the coolest bands of the day now, but that is a recent event. It doesn’t help, that the Sabbath of my youth didn’t have Ozzy, and it didn’t have Dio either. Instead, Tony Martin lead them to diminishing sales. 

It wasn’t his fault. But a band born in the 1970s with its sound and look stuck there, especially when compared to bands like Metallica and Skid Row, not to mention bands that were popping up like Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie and Godflesh Yes, while Martin’s Sabs found some cult success in 1989s Headless Cross, the roots of a Sabbath revival were growing in an unexpected place, but we will get there later. In the early 90s, despite my contrary experience in high school, alt rock was well loved by the critics but metal was considered “not serious”. 

It’s unlikely I would have become a Sabbath fan if a friend of mine wasn’t a huge fan. It was enough to convince me to buy the “We Sold Our Soul for Rock N Roll”, the 1976 compilation that picks the best of the Sabbath albums to that point, drawing largely from the first four records. It’s an ‘All Killer, No Filler’ collection that became a mainstay for my CD player that summer. But it wasn’t going to just be me that was converting, but everyone started to love the Sabs in the US. To bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Sabbath was a defining part of their sound. P

laces like Spin magazine were calling Grunge music- the trending music of the day as “Black Flag meets Black Sabbath”. Punk was important to the sound but so was classic 70s metal. In 1994, many of the bands defining the new sound of hard rock came together for NIB- a tribute album. Megadeth, Sepultura, Faith No More, Biohazard and others made Sabbath cool again. The tributes to Ozzy transcend generations and genres. Even when I was young, he had become a metal legend, but I doubt anyone could have imagined that he would become this rock icon that so many would revere. 

Album Review- Castlebeat- Revival

Recently a friend was talking about bingeing television shows. You have probably had that conversation. There’s no commonality as there was 40 years ago with Network TV or even 25 years ago with Cable. Everyone uses different steaming services and our experiences are not as shared. It’s even more so with music. There’s so many ways people experience music than there used to be. I will hear someone reference a band I never heard of, and I will look and they have a million monthly listeners. Of course, there’s no secret society of music that is keeping me out of the loop. 

Things have just changed slightly. For example, I don’t recognize a lot of top rock bands, but I also don’t listen to rock radio. Despite technological changes, I don’t think you can discount the influence. When I talk to people about where they discover their new favorite artists, I still hear people saying that they get them from Spotify and Apple’s features like new music playlists. But I also hear a lot of people saying their biggest influence is word of mouth from friends. Also, I often hear a lot of people’s new favorite bands start as opening acts for existing favorite bands.  

In fact, I am surprised things are as homogeneous as they still are. As an indie rock fan, you would think tastemakers like Pitchfork, The Needle Drop, RateYourMusic and their respective fanbase almost exclusively landed on Geese’s “Getting Killed” as the best album of 2025. Pull down a list from any of those sites and their Best of 2025 lists look like near carbon copies. But even if the world of music hasn’t busted wide open, there are still an incredible wealth of music out there out to be discovered. Having said that, there are a lot of places to discover music, and if we are being honest I am not sure quite where I first heard Castlebeat (usually stylized as CASTLEBEAT) but it was probably via Streaming. It was at the time of their debut album 2016s self titled Castlebeat. 

Another modern (if not really that modern) aspect of the band is that it is largely the one man project of Josh Hwang, and he rarely performs live and releases his (and others') music through his own label- Spirit Goth records. I left 2016 listening to the band with the expectation of any artist that there may be more or there may be less. The band has risen in popularity, that is for sure. I inevitably was going to keep my eye on them but they fell a bit off my radar. What I didn’t expect was that their fourth album- 2025s Revival would be such a realized album. Revival is an appropriate name for a band that is so in debt to the 1980 and early 90s- Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order/Joy Division, Bowie. Even the song tracks and cover seems to reference a vibe with an end of 1990. While 2024s Stereo felt like sort of generic indie pop, I love that this album has a certain feel. I love Castlebeat’s Lo fi approach to synth pop but there’s no denying the catchy pop hooks. I am definitely looking forward to more from Castlebeat and rank this as one of the great 2025 "under the radar" albums.

Album Review- Mekons- Horror

The Mekons may be more a phenomenon than a band. Their 1978 debut single “Never Been in a Riot” is one of the finest punk (and perhaps with Television Personalities’ “Part Time Punks” one of the finest anti-punk) songs ever. 

Trying to keep it as brief as possible, the band had three of the most well regarded albums of the 1980s- 1985s Fear and Whiskey, 1987s Honky Tonkin and 1989s Rock and Roll. Wikipedia lists tons of plaudits contemporary and retroactively- (Best of the Year, Best of the Decade and so on) for these albums from a number of critics and websites like Pitchfork, Robert Christgau, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Allmusic, Village View, Blender and the New York Times. It was part of that late 80s zeitgeist that the Mekons seemed to be the Rock Music critics’ favorite band. Hard to peg down, if anyone they resembled the Pogues as they merged folk, punk, rock and blues. It was “alt country” before that term existed. 

But that momentum didn’t really carry into the 90s. Perhaps, there was really never a chance that they could turn into REM or U2 stadium fillers. The Mekons continued to make music that critics loved, but 91s Curse of the Mekons wasn’t even released in the US and they soon were dumped by their label, A&M Records. I was in college when “I (Heart) Mekons” came out in 1993. With a focus on love songs in a way only the Mekons could do love songs- I loved the record and it generally still shows up near the top of fans’ ranking of Mekons records. 

For whatever reason, I have followed the Mekons pretty closely over the decades. They’re not quite like other bands but they are fascinating. They have yet to have the same effect that they had on me as they had in 93, though critics still seem to love them (though part of that is that it’s quite hard to keep track of them. 2020s Exquisite was only self released as a digital Bandcamp release at first). So listening to 2025s Horror was at once a surprise and not a surprise. In this case, Horror seems to be the real world and the politics in it. Not a surprise for the Mekons. “The Western Design” is a history of imperialism in pop song form. Titles like “War Economy” and “Private Defense Contractor” are clues that this isn’t normal pop song fare. 

I believe there are six vocalists that take lead that are spread throughout, which is fitting in with the Mekons style. It also gives it a real concept album feel as a gorgeous melody like “A Horse Has Escaped” will follow a rocker like “Nightcrawlers”. In many ways, it’s a sound that’s identifiable as that critically acclaimed 80s band- jumping from sound to sound on each song throwing in elements and instruments like rock, reggae, violin, folk, dub, angular pop, waltz, accordion, and even whistling where it is appropriate. Not that far underneath is that late 70s punk band- the one that pops up from time to time, like it did in 2004 when the band re-recorded their early tunes for the album titled “Punk Rock”. You can find 16th Century British Politics and the Irish Famine and modern climate change. In other words, things you can only find in this combination on a Mekons record.

I spent a lot of time with this album and in a pop world where surprisingly there doesn’t seem to be that much politically themed music these days. I am happy to see the Mekons deliver an album this powerful. The early reviews I saw were average or below, but I tend to think that is partially due to the fact that the Mekons are one of those artists that will have a Rohrsach Test effect on its listeners. What you get depends on what you are looking for from the band. (To be fair, a wave of more positive reviews have since rolled in) I find this album particularly accessible and with a political punk edge that speaks to me more than a lot of their recent work.

Album Review- Hayes Carll- We're Only Human

Hayes Carll is on the list of one of my favorite new artists of the (not so) new Century. It was 2016s Joe Henry produced Lovers and Leavers album that I first noticed him. On his early albums, he cowrote songs with Jim Lauderdale, Ray Whylie Hubbard and Guy Clark. Carll has established himself in that lineage. Carll reminds me of a couple of musicians. One is one of my favorites- Steve Earle. Both are cut out of the Townes Van Zandt/Guy Clark cloth. Long time Duke (Earle’s backing band) Bucky Baxter, guitarist Kenny Vaughn who played with Earle on”Some Dreams” (as well as spending time as main guitarist with sometime Earle collaborator Lucinda Williams) and Alison Moorer (who often toured and recorded with Earle for many years as well as being an established artist in her own right, and was married to Earle) make up part of the band on Carll’s 2005 album Little Rock. 

The character in the title track of Carll’s title track of his fourth album KMAG YO-YO is a military serviceman not unlike the kind Earle has sang about, and “Stomp and Holler” from the same kind of ramble and rollick Earle does so effortlessly. Of course, when I first listened to Carll and imagined him as the next great Earle style songwriter, I didn’t know their history was going to intertwine. Earle’s seventh marriage was to Moorer (2005-2015). Carll married Moorer in 2019 and they are still married to this day. In a much publicized interview after the divorce, Earle said that his wife left him for a “younger, skinner less talented songwriter”. 

Carll is a perceptive writer but has a sense of humor too. One of his most famous songs is “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” (not the Tom Waits song. Though he does cover “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”). You don’t have to look too hard in his catalog to find songs like “She Left Me for Jesus” and “Jesus and Elvis”, or “Another Like You” a song about a Democrat and a Republican falling in alcohol-induced romance. He reminds me a lot of the recently passed Todd Snider, who also has made a career of switching back and forth from serious country folk to humorous songs. Carll would cover Snider (“Beer Run” “Play A Train Song”) and Snider would cover Carll (“Stomp and Holler”). The two were close friends with Snider acting as a mentor to Carll. Critics say 2025s “We’re Only Human” is a different Carll album than previously. I don’t know that it is drastically different if you really want to compare. It is certainly a bit more mature for sure (and that may be why I connect it to more than any of his previous work) but it’s still him. 

There is definitely a pervasive feeling of 2025 on this album. It is an album for a world where people just don’t get along anymore. There was always a sense of John Prine in his work, but that really feels like the vibe here. Very few songwriters can make sense of it all like the guy who wrote “Sam Stone” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore”, but Carll accomplished that here. While it’s not a theme album. There’s enough songs here to bring that topic up. Songs like “Making Amends” and the title track are pretty self explanatory. The best songs are the live-and-let-love “Good People (Thank Me)” and “The Progress of Man” where “we all make big money on Bitcoin and cattle”. There’s a bit of variety in sounds and topics with “High” being a mellow waltz that Snider would have approved of. 

Songs like “One Day” and “Stay Here Awhile” sound like they could be off one of Earle’s late 90s records. Throughout the record, a variety of guests from Americana to pop country offered their assistance in cowriting or instrumentation- Shovels and Rope, Brothers Osbourne, Jared Reynolds (Ben Folds), MC Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger) Noah Jeffries (Jason Boland and the Stragglers), Gordy Quist (Band of Heathens), Brian Wright, Aaron Raitiere (Lady Gaga, Miranda Lambert) and Ray Wylie Hubbard. I had my eyes on Carll for a long time. There’s a bit of parallel to Lydia Loveless who came out around the same time and has shifted from the bluntness of youth to really developing into an astute storyteller. I would attribute the comparison that both these artists scratch my particular itch (I haven’t seen any other reviewer make this connection and I doubt any will, though of interest, both Loveless and Carll show up to provide guest vocal spots on the Supersuckers’ 2016 album Holdin the Bag). 

“We’re Only Human” is one of the great Americana albums of 2025 and a testament that Carl has delivered on his potential promise all those years ago.

Album Review- Mark Mallman- Magic Time

Mark Mallman is a Minneapolis legend. I don’t know that I would have ran into his music if it had not been for a Minnesotan who told me to see him when he came to town. I saw him in 2006 which doesn’t seem that long ago. Mallman has been described as “Elton John meets Darby Crash” which feels quite accurate. His reputation as a piano player with punk attitude made wanting to see him in concert a “no brainer”. 

I find it hard to explain Mallman’s music as he is one of those musical chameleons but definitely the biggest influence is 1970s glam. There’s a lot of Bolan, Elton and Mott in his style. There’s plenty of 70s American rock too- a bit of Aerosmith, a bit of Springsteen, and yeah even maybe a bit of John Cale confrontational craziness. 

He has recorded ten solo albums starting in 1998 and on those albums- a whole list of Midwest and Minnesota rock royalty have guested-Kat Bjelland (Babes in Toyland) Davey Von Bohlen and Dan Didier (The Promise Ring)Slim Dunlap (The Replacements) Ed Akerson (Polara) Erik Applewhite (Tapes and Tapes) Jeremy Ylvislaker (Andrew Bird) Craig Finn (The Hold Steady) and Shannon Frid (Cloud Cult). Mallman is a Minneapolis legend with a star on the outside of the legendary First Avenue. It was a Minnesotan (a different one this time) that reminded me of Mallman. You see besides making solo records, he has written books, curated playlists, made music for TV and Movies, and maybe now in 2025, his highest profile gig- Musical historian on TikTok and Instagram. 

It prompted me to look to see what he had been up to, and sure enough, he had released an album a few months ago called Magic Time. He’s always been on small labels and the only time the Press really seemed to cover him was those magical “indie rock” years of the late aughts before Pitchfork and their ilk moved from Fleet Foxes, Panda Bear and Bon Iver to more pop fare like Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar and Lana Del Rey. 

 In many ways. 2002s Red Ballroom was his high watermark produced by Paul Q Kolderie (Uncle Tupelo, Radiohead, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Hole, Morphine). It was around this time, he was making a name for himself with his marathon performances in Minnesota. In 2004, he performed a song over two consecutive days only breaking for the bathroom. In 2010, he performed for 78 hours straight. He would outdo that in 2012 with “Marathon 4” a continuous 180 hour moving performance, broadcast on his webpage- starting in New York going to Los Angeles with Mallman wired up in such a way his biorhythms continued the music while he was sleeping. I have to admit that the last time I took notice of Mallman’s 2016 The End is Not the End which was probably his most explicit Bowie homage- following his mother’s death, he drew heavily from Bowie’s Scary Monsters. When it came to 2020, Mallman like a lot of artists used his Covid-era time to record the memorable single “Quarantined”.

I totally missed his last album 2021s Happiness, an album that was an extension of his 2019 autobiography- “The Happiness Playlist” Checking out Mallman’s short music history videos as suggested by my Minnesotan friend, I immediately thought I would check for recent albums and sure enough, there was Magic Time- released in June of 2025, how fortuitous to find it in time to mix it into my October listening. As someone who had enjoyed Mallman’s music but never drawn to a particular album, I was shocked how much Magic Time sucked me in. I would imagine most would be put off by the cheesy horror movie cover and song titles full of cryptids, vampires and ghosts. That surely isn’t the sales pitch for a lot of indie rockers, but it somehow is the perfect fit for Mallman. 

His piano driven style is still hard to pin down, though there’s definitely an emphasis on 70s glam. Like the things that go bump in the night, it’s hard to take the proceedings too seriously. Yet, the way Mallman weaves seemingly autobiographical facts makes it a compelling listen. There’s a bit of Ben Folds. There’s Bolan of course. Yet I also hear some Warren Zevon who fittingly wrote his most famous song about a monster. The best song on the album is “I Know the Mothman” in which the most memorable character may be that of Mallman himself-a long time, high mileage musician. Songs like “Clowns” and “Christopher Lee” come close to that high watermark. For seemingly silly subjects, there’s a large amount of pathos. 

While certain songs are better than others, there’s generally no bad songs here “Screaming in My Dreams” opens with a cinematic flourish fills with biographical details. Is the real horror the Music Industry? The theme makes the album fun and smaller gems like “Seen My Own Ghost” give real depth with new wave keyboards and storytelling lyrics, while “Poison Flower” slows things to an Alice Cooper worthy glam horror ballad, and “The Cancer” is a string laden Beatlesque number with accompanying flute. If you don’t like Mallman’s voice, it’s likely that this won’t win you over. That said, I was impressed with how Mallman was able to put together a signature album this far into his career. I rate it highly and find it one of the most compelling albums of recent years.