Hater's Delight – April 2023
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April is a useless month for useless people. You’ve got Easter (I guess), taxes, and a holiday for stoners, all of which combine with some of the year’s most temperamental weather to make for an absolutely miserable stretch of 30 days. At least spring will be here soon, and we can all be unhappy in slightly warmer weather.
If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight is a monthly micro-review column brought to you by our team of Swim Into The Sound writers and a guest or two. This is a space where we can vent about the things online and in music that have gotten under our skin this past month. Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, here’s a playlist of all this month’s new releases that I enjoyed (or at least found notable) to help you keep up on everything that’s happened in April.
Without further ado, let’s get all our complaints about April out before we flip the calendars over.
BOYGENIUS
Each of these artists makes decent-to-middling pop-rock on their own time (Dacus decent, Baker between, Bridgers middling); that they must also fill my social media feed as a unit is frankly a waste of both my time as a viewer and your time as a poster. With such a massive profile (and a guaranteed sold-out arena tour arranged by their "not-so" major record label with ex-indie cred), the discourse is superfluous. "The Record" was never going to be a "flop." The stans (their parents?) will sell the vinyl out, sell the t-shirt out, sell the shows out, etc., regardless of lyrical fumbles, repetitive themes, poorly sequenced tracks, or cloyingly sweet marketing. There is no worthwhile angle regarding this fucking band. You can listen to it, but I wanna fucking talk about something else. (People who talked about it well: Miranda Reinert, as always, and SITS’ own Grace Robins-Somerville.)
SUB-HATE:
To the writer who dissed “Girls” by The Dare last month: I hope you never feel the loving touch of a woman. Song rocks – officially signed and endorsed by a lesbian.
Mikey Montoni – @dumpsterbassist
Trippin’ On The Name Of A Metal Fest
Let me preface this by saying that I love the Texas band Power Trip just like any other hesher. Riley Gale (RIP) was undeniably one of the most iconic frontmen of his era. The remaining members of Power Trip have been fairly quiet since Riley’s passing, other than the exciting new band Fugitive featuring guitarist Blake Ibanez. But the band has had quite a bit of coverage in the first weeks of April. They announced the physical release of their Live In Seattle album, to many fans’ underwhelm, and simply tweeted out “no” in response to the Power Trip festival announcement featuring AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, and Tool. Many Power Trip band diehards came to the band’s defense, but let’s take this seriously for a moment. The likely realities of the situation are: 1) the people who put this thing together have never heard of Power Trip, the band. 2) Other than being a common idiom where they got their name, “Power Trip” has been used in heavy music for decades before the band you know the most. Cleveland metal outfit Chimaira released a song called “Power Trip” in 2004, stoner rock luminaries Monster Magnet had their Powertrip album in 1998, and there was even an ‘80s band in Power Trip’s exact subgenre (“crossover,” combining elements of hardcore punk and thrash metal) called Powertrip featuring members of underground LA punk bands Angry Samoans and Würm. So, to the hardcore kids that not only wouldn’t go to the Power Trip festival anyway, but likely couldn’t afford it either, there’s nothing to trip about here.
SUB-HATE:
Hardcore bands, let’s retire the tradition of one-word band names. It was easier in the ‘80s and ‘90s when you just banked on someone else not having your name idea. Now you can very easily do a Google or Discogs search. California band Fury is the 28th known artist with that name, for fuck’s sake. Find something that stands out.
Logan Archer Mounts – @VERTICALCOFFIN
People on Music Twitter Pretending to Hate Music Twitter Discourse
Like everyone else who contributes to this column and everyone who reads it (yes, that includes you), I spend a lot of time (definitely too much time) talking about music on Twitter. There’s this pattern– especially in online forums that are simultaneously fragmented and insular –of everyone getting thrown into a tizzy over a bad-faith comment, a bad-faith reading of a good-faith comment, a divisive issue, an actually-not-that-divisive issue, a hot take, a cold take, a lukewarm take, etc; talking it to death, and then complaining about the people who are talking it to death. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve read enough insipid online music drama to turn my brain into a slushie, but don’t pretend to hate the discourse while you eat it up like the little piggy that you are. Or, in between two stupid discourse cycles, complain about how Twitter is “boring now,” barely betraying your need for more ragebait. Either admit to yourself that part of you likes getting mad online (again, why do you think this column exists?) or take a walk outside without your phone for a few minutes (ever the multitude-container, I did BOTH of these things just today and I feel FUCKING GREAT).
Bottom Line: Don’t go to the circus for news and get mad when you hear it from clowns. You love this shit.
Grace Robins-Somerville – @grace_roso
The Big Re-Do
If you were to ask me what my favorite Drive-By Truckers song is, I’m sure I’d have different answers depending on my mood or the season, but usually, I say “Puttin’ People on The Moon” from their opus, The Dirty South. Hood’s raspy voice and strong storytelling portray a character driven to crime by a hostile political hellscape. The song felt powerful in 2004 but feels even more necessary 20 years later. Now, Drive-By Truckers are reissuing a “director’s cut” of The Dirty South, with additional songs left off the record and some new recordings. This brings me to my issue—they have re-recorded the vocals of “Puttin’ People on The Moon,” and they’ve made it worse.
Don’t get me wrong, every artist has the right to do whatever they want with their work, but DBT are calling this version of “Puttin’ People on The Moon” definitive? Hood’s vocal take 20 years ago is nasally and raspy, yet full of desperation, anger, and anxiety. He is fully embodying the character he is portraying. Though Hood’s voice is still strong two decades later, there is no improvement found on this reworked version. If anything, the confident and cleaner vocal take (still raspy, less nasally) softens the blow of the song’s message. All this is to say I don’t think I can justify the $46 for the director’s cut of one of my favorite albums. I’m reminded of the 1990s George Lucas Star Wars edits or Donnie Darkos’ director’s cut. You’ve maybe added some deleted scenes, but you’ve touched up the practical effects with CGI, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Russ Finn – @RussFinn
Closing songs as singles
You want to know what I do whenever I start a new book? First, I find a nice, quiet place where I can read undisturbed. Then I sit down, crack the book open, and read the very last chapter. Just kidding, I don’t do that because I’m not a fucking psychopath. Why, then, are some bands so insistent on releasing the final song from their album as a single? It happened a few times this month, including one of my all-time favorite bands (who will remain unnamed), and the song wasn’t even that good! I mean, theoretically, shouldn’t the last song be a sort of big, anthemic closer that sends off the whole release? A summation of every track that came before it? Your big final number? Why would you want to drop that song weeks before people can hear it as intended? Obviously, not every album is a sequential story that you can “spoil” the same way you would with a book, but I don’t understand the logic of releasing a song like that by itself. The artist likely spent months creating, recording, and sequencing these songs, so why give away your final curtain call before people have even had a chance to enjoy the whole thing? This is really only a problem for dorks like me who keep up with singles as bands release them, but even for a casual fan, there’s gotta be some sense of letdown if you get to the end of your favorite artist’s new album and your first reaction is “I’ve already heard this one.” Let’s plan out our singles a little better, people.
Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG
Expecting Anything Of A Band
Frank Ocean – Have you heard of this guy? He had a whole ice rink, and some other stuff happened during his performance at some festival in Indio, CA, a few weeks back. A lot of people got very upset that Frank Ocean’s whole Coachella performance was slapdash and “not what [they] paid for.” Bro, you paid for a weekend of debauchery under the guise of attending a music festival! Did you think everything was going to go exactly to plan? What happens when something else in your life goes a little haywire? Do you check the receipt and ask to speak to the manager? Even worse than that, I saw complaints that Frank didn’t play specific songs! *whiny suburban music nerd voice* “Oh man, can you believe he didn’t play (deep unreleased cut from the Nostalgia Ultra era that I found on Tumblr in 2012)??” YES. YES, I CAN. He probably doesn’t remember the lyrics to a song that he threw aside 11 years ago. This isn’t your show, and you are NOT the main character for every event you pay money to see! Every time you pay for a ticket to a show, you are rolling the dice that something could go poorly. The smoke alarm could get set off by a fog machine, your favorite artist could get food poisoning, you could get an imposter instead of MF DOOM. All of these things are possible, and you hope they don’t happen, but sometimes it does not meet your expectations. Doesn’t that make the story a little more fun to you? It is more interesting to say, “I was at the Snowing reunion show where John Galm got pissed and spiked his bass into the ground,” than, “Oh yeah, I saw Snowing one time. Pretty good band!” Buy the ticket, enjoy the ride.
Jay Papandreas – @listenupnerds
