Ten Years of Tunnel Blanket: The Definitive Statement on Death

What is death? We don’t know, and that terrifies us. We know that death is the end of life, but we are incapable of understanding anything beyond that. This ambiguity is a frightening prospect that has haunted mankind for as long as we’ve been able to comprehend it. Death may be a fact of life, but that knowledge doesn’t alleviate any of the dread that comes with it.

As humans, we’ve spun reams of text speculating and prophesizing about what comes after life. While some find solace in religion, others turn to art in order to process their thoughts and feelings about the afterlife. Whether it’s reckoning with their own eventual death or the death of a loved one, some artists have spent their entire lives trying to depict, understand, and grapple with the uncertainty the eventually greets us all.

Albums about death are often heavy, brutal, and filled with grief. That makes them far from a casual listen, but it has also resulted in some of the most powerful pieces of music of all time. Albums like Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me, which finds a husband bereft with grief after his wife’s passing. Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave depicts a father processing the tragic loss of his teenaged son. Japanese Breakfast’s Psychopomp sees a daughter working through the untimely death of her mother. There’s 808s & Heartbreak, Hospice, Funeral, and Springtime and Blind, just to name a few. Not to mention my personal favorite, Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell, a record I’ve already spent thousands of words meditating on. Death is one of the great human questions, so it should come as no surprise how much effort we’ve collectively expelled trying to understand it. 

These albums I just listed all tackle death from their respective artist’s genres. As a result, these records each do an excellent job of fleshing out different aspects of loss and grief in their own ways. Despite their unique stylistic leanings, one factor that ties all of these albums together is the presence of lyrics. Yes, every one of these artists, from the lo-fi grief of Mount Eerie to the fist-balling punk of Fiddlehead and the auto-tuned croons of Kanye, all work through death with the written word in one form or another. From where I sit (and despite the fact that I’m writing this currently), written language is inherently limiting when it comes to understanding something as large and cosmic as death. Death is bigger than any word, phrase, sentence, or sentiment. It just is. It’s inherently unknowable until you arrive at it yourself, and that’s what scares us. This wordless approach to understanding death is what sets This Will Destroy You’s third studio album apart from every other piece of art broaching the topic of the great beyond. 

This Will Destroy You first made a name for themselves in the mid-2000s with the release of Young Mountain and a self-titled record in 2006 and 2008, respectively. As great as these records are (I’ve written about Young Mountain as an entry point into the post-rock genre), they are, for better or worse, “textbook” instrumental rock releases. They follow the same cinematic structure laid out by fellow Texas post-rockers Explosions in the Sky with dynamic tracks that crest from subtle to sweeping in powerful ways deliberately designed to tug on your heartstrings. 

As I grew into the post-rock genre, I gradually worked my way through This Will Destroy You’s discography. While Young Mountain and This Will Destroy You offer logical extensions of the standard post-rock trappings, the group’s third album, Tunnel Blanket, threw me for a complete loop upon first listen.

Both Young Mountain and This Will Destroy You clock in at under an hour and had clearly defined song structures. The tracks begin, crescendo, and end the way that all post-rock songs do. They sounded like soundtracks to a nonexistent movie, and that’s what drew me to the genre in the first place. Tunnel Blanket, however, finds the band leaning more heavily into their ambient, drone, and shoegaze influences for a sound that the band described as “doomgaze.” This move away from traditional post-rock song structures led to a more amorphous (or, as I felt back then, boring) listen. Boy, was I wrong.

No song better exemplifies Tunnel Blanket’s shapeless approach to post-rock than its opener, “Little Smoke.” This 12-minute track begins with a pensive series of keyboard notes paired with a subtly-building swirl of distortion. These two elements plod forward, entwining with each other, then dispersing and evaporating like… well, smoke. As the keys dance, this cresting wall of white noise slowly begins to fade, eventually leading to a second of complete silence. Then, like being jolted awake by the sensation of falling, the full band thrusts into the track with a towering riff fitting of a Mogwai song. The cymbals crash, the bass rattles, and the guitar repeats the same high-frequency strum over and over again to a hypnotic effect. The riff lumbers forward with this sort of searing, distorted scream that feels simultaneously sharp with an acute pain and dulled to the point of numbness. After about six minutes, this swaying instrumental subsides and the delicate keys emerge once more, carrying the listener out of the track with a meditative and precious coda that provides a direct contrast to the brash sonic violence they just weathered. 

The following track, “Glass Realms,” opens with a fluttering wall of static that fades in and out over a backdrop of gorgeous strings. The orchestra hangs on pristine sustained notes as the static fluctuates from distracting to nonexistent. By the end of the song, the static has grown to subsume the strings, moving from one headphone to the other, jumping back and forth like a predator stalking its prey. Songs like these are what confused me upon first listen; no guitars, no drums, no bass, no nothing, just strings and a weird buzz of white noise. Hardly a post-rock song. Now, I view this song as a beautiful work of art, a meditative reflection that provides a gorgeous counterpoint to the brutality of “Little Smoke.” This song is where the record’s concept truly begins to emerge as it depicts the wholly unknowable notion of death itself, not through overt lyricism but a sense of inescapable and inevitable darkness. 

“Communal Blood” continues this train of thought, now with the band’s full instrumentation at play once more. Again, a subtle swirl of ambient reverb drives the track forward while the band members play their instruments with the utmost subtlety. The cymbals are barely brushed, the bass is gently strummed, and all of these notes are given enough breathing room to sustain and rattle out into absolute silence before the next. This song builds to a more traditional post-rock crescendo where the reverb grows and the intensity increases. All of this gradually picks up speed until the band reaches a triumphant cadence that shakes with some sort of wondrous and almighty power.

The rest of the album follows a similar structure. “Reprise” brings back the beautiful keys courtesy of Donovan Jones. “Killed the Lord, Left for the New World” pairs carefully-wielded reverb with a driving electronic beat, wind chimes, and a drum roll while disembodied voices float through the mix uttering unintelligible half-phrases. “Osario” acts as a brief mid-album stopgap featuring a warbling electronic beat that resembles the artificial breaths of a ventilator. While the album hangs together perfectly, “Black Dunes” was the one song that stuck out to me most on my first few listens. Possessing perhaps the most ferocious and forthright melody on the entire release, “Black Dunes” begins with a remorseful instrumental that eventually erupts into a brutal and crushing wall of unfathomable depth. It’s a song you can feel the full weight of, and that’s not something you get to experience in music very often.

Post-rock has always felt “cinematic,” there’s a reason why bands like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky get tapped to score films so often. This genre captures a sort of wordless power that can soundtrack anything from a high school football game to the zombie apocalypse. The beauty is that these songs can score practically anything you want; they are objectively beautiful and musical enough that nearly anyone can enjoy them, yet they are faceless and wordless, which lends them this amorphous quality. Post-rock songs generally have a hard time carrying out a concrete “concept” or a “message” because the dynamic crescendo-based instrumental is the message. At worst, this genre can feel like powerful music just for powerful music’s sake, but the flip side is that this “blank canvas effect” means the listener can project whatever they want onto the songs, and that’s a powerfully attractive prospect. This quality is both a blessing and a curse for the post-rock genre; it makes this type of music rich and all-encompassing, yet inherently unknowable. 

You could listen to Tunnel Blanket and take it at face-value as a more subtle and ambient side of the post-rock spectrum, but I think that’s a disservice to the band’s creativity. That’s how I spent the first few years interpreting this record and why I thought it was just a more boring version of what the band had done before. What sets Tunnel Blanket apart from other albums in this genre doesn’t reveal itself until the tail end of the release… and even then, it’s only there for those who are willing to listen close enough.

Album closer “Powdered Hand” opens with a short series of piano notes and a single resonant floor tom that echoes through the listener’s body. Spaced-out hi-hat taps keep time as the keys counterbalance this heavy drumming with an air of lightness. Working together, these elements formulate a bright and sunny melody that feels like the clouds opening up after a spring rainstorm. Again, a swirl of static emerges, pushing the track forward and giving the listener something active to focus on aside from the spaced-out drums and keys. Midway through the song, this static unfurls and reveals itself to have a slowed-down human voice. 

We can only make out a few words before the voice reverts to static and the instruments re-establish their melody. After a several-minute-long interjection, the static fades, and the voice becomes clear once again. It’s a little bit jumbled and still far-off in the mix, but what we can make out is a scientist, Temple Grandin, explaining the visual phenomena of death, specifically the spirals and tunnel-shaped visions that people tend to see right before they die. It’s here that the name of the album, and its topic, fully-reveal themselves. Though wordless and abstract for a majority of its runtime, Tunnel Blanket is an album about death, specifically about the phenomena of death. 

According to an interview with Nothing But Hope and Passion, this sample is taken from a documentary called Stairway to Heaven. The band explained the inclusion of this clip in the following quote:

[Temple Grandin’s] perspective on the “afterlife” (or lack thereof) is fascinating. Tunnel Blanket was meant to be a metaphor for death or the moment right before death. Despite what you believe, that moment will be the most true, the most raw flash you will ever experience. It will always be a mystery, and as much as human beings want to distract ourselves with material bullshit, religion, etc., the outcome will always be inevitable.

I’ve never heard an album tackle the bleak darkness of death quite like Tunnel Blanket. While artists have focused on describing deaths’ effects on them, this album feels like listening to death itself. 

Tunnel Blanket is a fuzzy, grey wall that fluctuates from somber piano to larger-than-life post-rock crescendos that all mirror physical actions of the body. These tracks breathe, feel, and reverberate in the same way that we do. From the heartbeat-like percussion to the constantly swirling ambient noise, the collection of eight songs on Tunnel Blanket represent an hour-long depiction of the experience of death. 

Tunnel Blanket’s wordless exploration of death works to its advantage. This record delves into death and finds a home within it over the course of its hour-long runtime, which is something I’ve never heard any other “death album” do. 

Yes, death is remembering the details of a loved one, missing the space that someone held in your life, and combing through all their belongings after they’ve moved on. Those are all true experiences, and none of them are wrong or invalid. However, they are all very grounded experiences. They are “above-the-shoulders” ways to process, talk about, and relate to death. Tunnel Blanket grounds its understanding of death not in language or retelling experiences of loss and grief but in pure feeling and emotionality. It seeks to portray death in a way that no other artist has. On this album, the band is concerned equally with depicting the physiological effects of death as they are with capturing its profound vastness. 

Tunnel Blanket offers an alternative perspective on mortality; it represents the other side of our Earthly experience, the universal that we will all face at one point or another. It’s objectively heartbreaking to listen to an album like A Crow Looked at Me and hear Phil Elverum talk about receiving his dead wife’s mail, but that’s a personal experience that relies on the listener’s empathy. It’s sad no matter how you cut it, but that’s just one singular experience on the cosmic scale. Tunnel Blanket tackles death by becoming it. This record explores death from the perspective of an ambivalent absolute. It offers no answers and presents no resolution. Much like death itself, Tunnel Blanket just is. 

An Introduction To Post-Rock

Sometime in the spring of 2011, I was assigned to read The Metamorphosis for a high school lit class. I was a little bummed that I had to spend some of my spring break doing homework, but it was a class I enjoyed, so I did it anyway. That year my family spent our spring break in a little house on the Oregon coast, and it was (unexpectedly) rainy for most of the week. Given the weather, I decided what better time to sit down and read this trippy-ass short story.

I laid down on my rented bed in my room that smelled distinctly “beachy” and listened to the raindrops patter against the window as the skies turned greyer and darker. I turned on my trusty iPod and decided that now was the time to listen to that new band I heard about called “Explosions in the Sky.” I put on The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, the album with the most striking title, and cracked open my copy of the book.

For the next 40-some-odd minutes, I became so absorbed in the reading that I completely forgot about the outside world until the album came to a close. It was a meditative and (fittingly) transformative listening experience. I’d never heard anything quite like that album, and I immediately started another one of the band’s half-dozen records I had loaded onto my iPod before leaving Portland. 

Over the course of the next year, I had an absolute love affair with post-rock. A love that was kindled by one record soon grew into a new realm of sound that I relished exploring. It wasn’t like the other rock music I was used to, it completely calmed my mind and helped me focus on my work, whatever that was at the time. 

The genre single-handedly helped me get through college, soundtracking thousands of hours of reading, studying, and writing. To this day, post-rock still offers some of the most breathtaking and timeless songs in my entire music library, and I believe it’s a genre that’s worth submerging yourself in entirely. 

What follows are nine albums intended to offer a crash course of the post-rock/instrumental genre. These are personal favorites from bands that I love, all with varying degrees of significance within the actual “scene” itself, but albums that I would recommend to anyone, regardless of background or experience with this type of music. I genuinely believe that these albums serve a dual purpose as a sort of driving but distraction-free background music while also being some of the most moving and compelling pieces of art ever created. 

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Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place (2003)

Arguably one of the few unanimous post-rock records, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place would easily be on the genre’s Mount Rushmore. While Explosion In The Sky’s debut is a wonderful bit of glittering heavy-metal post-rock, I’d argue the band has improved their sound, production, and approach to music with nearly every record. Their sophomore effort is a more mellow and moody atmospheric experience (that also happens to bear one of my favorite songs of all time), but it wasn’t until The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place that the band found themselves at the forefront of the scene with a budding new audience. Thanks in large part to their contributions to the Friday Night Lights score, but also because Cold Dead Place is a tight, economic album that showcases exactly what the genre is capable of in its purest form. 

Opening with the faint siren song of a single guitar on “First Breath After a Coma,” the record eases the listener into the band’s style like a doctor birthing a baby. The group gently layers multiple shimmering guitars over a subtle heart-beat-like floor tom keeping time. They play with adding and removing elements until a steady drumroll sweeps the listener away, and just like that, we’re off. The band crests and crescendos with masterful ease throughout the record, whether it’s the pensive “Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean” or the lovestruck “Your Hand In Mine.” It may only be five tracks in total, but that doesn’t make this record any less fulfilling. I literally could not imagine a better entry point into the genre for myself or anyone else. 

Mogwai - Come On Die Young (1999)

On the polar opposite end of The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, we have Mogwai’s sophomore album Come On Die Young. These two records are not connected in any way, other than the fact that I listened to them roughly around the same time and they both felt like stark counter-points to each other. While Cold Dead Place is a light, airy, and positive album Come On Die Young is a dark, confining, and foreboding piece of music. Just look at the two covers next to each other and tell me which one you think is going to be more oppressive. While I believe that the members of Mogwai are all great people, this record is simply one of the most evil things I’ve ever heard. This is darker than black metal, more unnerving than a horror movie soundtrack, and more overwhelming than anything you’ve ever heard. 

Opening with a swirling, distorted soundscape on “Punk Rock:” the band lets a soundbite from a 1977 Iggy Pop interview provide the thesis statement for the record: “Well, I'll tell you about punk rock, "punk rock" is a word used by dilettantes and, uh, and, uh heartless manipulators about music, that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it.”

After that articulate introduction from the godfather of punk, the band pulls the rug out from under the listener with “Cody,” a precious and slow-moving love song about an ever-shifting relationship existing in an ever-shifting world. While it took me entirely too long to realize that “Cody” wasn’t named after a person, but instead an initialism of the album name, it also took me entirely too long to realize that this is the only song on the record with vocals. From there, “Helps Both Ways” utilizes a sample of John Madden commentary to navigate the murky waters of a crushingly moody riff. Meanwhile, “Kappa” and “Christmas Steps” both boast lumbering instrumentals while “Ex-Cowboy” features the more searing and rapid guitar strumming pattern dripping in reverb that the genre is most known for. Come On Die Young is far from a happy album, but it possesses an emotional catharsis the likes of which few other genres can provide. This record, combined with Cold Dead Place offer an excellent overview of the range that this genre can have with Come On Die Young existing in a more rotted and sinister end without being too offputting to newcomers.

This Will Destroy You - Young Mountain (2006)

Yet another record I’d put on the post-rock Mount Rushmore, the debut album from This Will Destroy You exists somewhere on the tonal spectrum in between Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai. Blending the cinematic builds of Explosions and the more brooding pensiveness of Mogwai, Young Mountain lies at a healthy middle ground of post-rock. 

From the first majestic keystrokes and gently-falling guitar notes of “Quiet,” you can immediately tell this record is something different. There are heart-pumping builds on “There Are Some Remedies Worse Than The Disease,” there’s world-conquering uplift on “I Believe in Your Victory,” and there’s hypnotic glitchiness on “Grandfather Clock.” While the band arguably has bigger “hits” on their self-titled record with songs like “The Mighty Rio Grande,” it’s hard to argue with the punctuality of Young Mountain. This is the debut of a band who knew exactly what they were doing and exactly the kind of art they wanted to put out into the world.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)

Quite possibly the defining work of the post-rock genre, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven contains only four tracks, each clocking in at roughly twenty minutes apiece. It’s less of an album and more of an experience that the band shepherds the listener through. These songs, or acts, are each composed of different movements, all of which are depicted in the vinyl in a timestamped illustrated diagram depicting the “intensity” of each segment. While that gatefold makes this a rewarding album to sit down with, focus on, and follow along with closely, these are ultimately just ornate layers of detail on top of an already-beautiful album.

Album opener “Storm” begins with a triumphant build of guitar, bass, and drums, eventually layering on horns, a string section, and an entire orchestra as the track gains momentum. This is not the dark and grim apocalyptic band that recorded F# A# ∞, or even Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada two years prior, this is Godspeed as a blossoming flower opening up to see the world as their stage. However, by the time the first track ends (a movement called “Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way”), it’s clear that there’s something more sinister brewing just beneath the surface. 

“Static” features ominous demonic hums that build to a cataclysmic explosion. “Sleep” is at once a dreamy, floaty, and wistful bad trip. Finally, the title track brings things home with a soaring and anthemic song that mounts into a beautiful conclusion. Quite frankly, Lift Your Skinny Fists is an album that must be experienced to be understood, there’s a reason why it’s become the defacto post-rock album for millions of fans. 

Sigur Rós - ( ) (2002)

At some point near the end of my high school experience I stumbled upon Sigur Rós, and that discovery (combined with copious amounts of metalcore) helped me realize how little lyrics really matter to me. With all of their songs being either instrumental, sung in Icelandic, or “Hopelandic” (a gibberish blend of English and Icelandic that the band invented), I didn’t understand a word these guys were saying. Don’t get me wrong; a well-written song is great, but as far as I’m concerned good lyrics are just a cherry on top, not a necessity. 

While some may sing the praises of their breakthrough Ágætis byrjun or the overwhelmingly pleasant Takk..., I believe ( ) to be their most consistent album. Comprised of 8 “untitled” songs, the record is divided into two even halves separated by 36-seconds of silence and bookended by two clicks of static. The first half of the album is more bright and optimistic, while the second half is more bleak and desolate. It’s a loose concept album in that sense, but ( ) offers a beautiful depth and breathtaking range of emotions over the course of its 76-minute running time. It bears the strange, otherworldly qualities that Sigur Rós is known for while still feeling grounded enough in reality that a newcomer can wade in comfortably.

Russian Circles - Enter (2006)

Admittedly a half-step away from post-rock and toward straight-up metal, the debut album from Russian Circles is a beautiful, heavy, and riff-oriented instrumental post-metal album. Packed with precise guitar riffs, tight drumming, and world-shattering basslines, this record truly has a little bit of everything. 

From the clockwork-like build of “Carpe” to the crushing bounding riffage on “Death Rides a Horse,” the record is a showcase for the absolute breadth of music that can be created with just three instruments. There’s the deeply-feeling “You Already Did” and “Micha,” both of which are palpable with remorse and pain, all without saying a word. While later Russian Circle albums may be tighter, darker, and more cinematic, there’s something to be said for the staggering range of both emotion and tonality on display in the 44 minutes of Enter.

Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull (2008)

Yet another half-step away from post-rock, just in the opposite direction, Earth are the all-important progenitors of drone as we know it. Characterized by spaced-out repetitive riffs that roll on like long arid stretches of desert, drone is a genre all about soundtracking a time and place that exists only in your mind. The albums work like witchcraft, slowly casting a spell on the listener’s mind until it’s transported to another world far away from this one. Through this slowly-unfolding transportive property, these bands are able to unwind gorgeous riffs that establish a sense of time and place unlike any other genre.

The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull is a mythical album. Aside from its biblical title and gorgeous leather-bound vinyl, the songs here capture Earth at the absolute peak of the band’s mid-2000’s era. Unlike their early trailblazing half-hour dissonant recordings or their more recent vocal pivot, The Bees Made Honey offers (relatively) punctual tracks that swirl and cascade around the listener with unparalleled divinity. Songs like “Miami Morning Comedown II” shimmer with opulent mid-morning light while tracks like “Hung From The Moon” feel more like a desert at twilight; blue and expansive but still hot enough for heat haze to be prevalent. The entire album is like a beautiful mirage, it almost seems too good to be true, but then you reach the end and realize you’ve made it out of the desert. 

Mogwai - Mr. Beast (2006)

Mogwai’s discography is immaculate. While Young Team introduced Mogwai to the world and Come On, Die Young has a special place in my heart (literally the first thing ever posted to this site, which I do not recommend you read) I’d argue Mr. Beast is also one of the best entry points into the band’s world. Their work ranges from spacy love songs, glistening immaculate creations, pensive piano-led remixes, and glitchy electronic diversions, but Mr. Beast is a personal favorite merely because it’s wall-to-wall riffs. While Mogwai are no strangers to The Riff (just listen to “My Father My King” or “Xmas Steps”), the band’s fifth album is arguably the most consistently heavy thing that they have ever created. 

“Auto Rock” kicks things off with a piano melody that gradually mounts along with electronic elements, pounding drums, and buzzing guitar that grows into a rhythmic tribal beat that abducts you into the world of the record. “Glasgow Mega-Snake” turns the metal side of Mogwai up to ten as multiple distorted guitars and bass coalesce into one fast-paced riff that pushes the listener forward like a violent current. Other highlights include the soft and electronic “Acid Food,” the anthemic “ Travel is Dangerous,” the riff-bearing “We’re No Here,” or the penultimate credit roll of “I Chose Horses.” 

One of the things that makes Mr. Beast a fantastic entry point to post-rock is that it’s very atypical of the genre. Lots of the songs here have vocals of some sort, and the average song length is about four minutes. It’s also an extremely-varied album with different sounds and approaches that always keeps you wondering what’s next. Truly one of the band’s many masterworks. 

Slint - Spiderland (1991)

Often cited as the record that invented the post-rock genre, Slint’s Spiderland is a masterpiece. If it wasn’t evident by the cover, this is an album that was created by a bunch of teenagers. Spiderland sold fewer than 5,000 copies, and the band broke up before the record could even be considered a cult hit… but cult status it soon achieved, eventually paving the way for the entire post-rock genre in earnest.

While not as purely instrumental as some of the other records on this list, Spiderland solidified the dark, pensive moodiness that became a standard of the genre. It crystalized the dynamic builds and ever-shifting cinematic landscapes that have become a staple of post-rock. Spiderland is flat-out one of the most influential albums in all of rock music. These guys may not be The Beatles, but in the space of 40 minutes they crafted a world so dense and lived-in that we still have groups exploring its corners nearly three decades later. 

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There you have it folks,  the single best crash course for a genre I could ever create. If you’re listening to these albums and find yourself hungry for more, I wholeheartedly recommend exploring each of these artist’s discographies because they’re all rich and rewarding in their own way. Beyond that, there are numerous other legendary post-rock bands I didn’t even get into here like Caspian, God Is An Astronaut, Mono, and more. If you’d like, all nine of the albums on this list have been placed into a playlist here for easy consumption. Thank you for reading along about this genre that has meant so much to me over the last decade. I can only hope that you’ll find as much solace and beauty in these albums as I have over the years.

September 2018: Album Review Roundup

I’mma keep it real with y’all. In the month of September I landed a new job, moved across the country, and basically started a new life. As a result, Swim Into The Sound has (expectedly) fallen by the wayside more than I’d like to admit. On top of these major life changes, the month of September was super back-loaded in terms of new releases, so it took me a bit longer than usual to listen to everything and compose my thoughts. This is all a long-winded explanation up front to excuse the fact that this post is late, but I won’t waste any more time with personal updates, let’s just get straight into the real reason why you’re here: good music.

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Noname - Room 25

Depending on who you ask, Noname may be the first poet of a new generation, or the last one we ever need. Not quite hip-hop, not quite R&B, not quite spoken word, Noname has been a tangential member of Vic Mensa’s SaveMoney collective for about as long as they’ve existed. Initially making herself known on tracks with Chance the Rapper, Mick Jenkins, and Saba, it took until 2016’s Telefone for Noname to fully-unveil herself to the world. Now returning with Room 25, she’s delivering 11 fresh tracks of explosive colors, heartfelt rhymes, and spellbinding deliveries. In one of the album’s more illuminating songs, she raps alongside Saba and Amino: “Labels got these niggas just doing it for the clout / I'm just writing my darkest secrets like wait and just hear me out” before going on to extol the virtues of vegan food. Lines like these stand in direct contrast to the wave of substance-abusing, attention-grabbing rappers we’ve seen rise to prominence as of late. Noname stands alone as a single woman with a strong voice and defined sense of self. Room 25 is just one piece of a much larger movement.

Yves Tumor - Safe in the Hands of Love

There’s a single, ill-defined line between weirdness and accessibility. Between art and commerce. Between living and dying. While most music finds itself firmly on one side of this divide or the other, a select few artists able to tread this ever-shifting boundary carefully enough without tipping too far in either direction. With Safe in the Hands of Love, Yves Tumor has proven he’s strong enough to join their ranks. Coming to us clad in green-skinned alien garb, Yves Tumor is one of many alter-egos used by Sean Lee Bowie. Embracing spacy soundscapes, intermittent guitar, and ethereal R&B-style vocals, Safe is an exploration of the inevitable apocalypse. Lead single “Noid” is a jammy bit of guitar funk, “Hope In Suffering” is a particle-shifting ambient piece, and “Licking an Orchid” is a borderline-trip-hop love song that erupts into searing distortion. Everything sounds different but adds on to the larger narrative. It’s beautiful and disgusting. Unexpected and ever-flowing. Pitch dark and blindingly bright. Safe in the Hands of Love embodies the exact sort of contradictions we’ve come to adopt in this lead-up to the end of the world.

Shortly - Richmond

I’ve been waiting a full calendar year for this EP. After witnessing the marvel that is Shortly’s live show back in November, I called her (then-untitled) upcoming album my second most anticipated release of 2018. Now that it’s here, I was able to catch Shortly live a second time (in her hometown no less), and I’m more sure than ever that she’s going to change the world. Bearing heartfelt tales of self-harm, depression, and loss, Richmond is far from a light listen, but those that go in with their eyes, ears, and minds open will emerge from the other side changed. 

Young Thug - On The Rvn

As a Young Thug superfan it’s weird to admit, but the rapper born Jeffery Lamar Williams is most effective in small doses. It’s not that his full-length projects are bad, it’s that his shorter albums always leave you wanting more. They allow him to be his most free and experimental without the requirement of forcing the songs fit into an “official” album. This short but sweet dichotomy is perfectly exemplified with On The Rvn. Whether he’s twisting a sample of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” into an intoxicating ode to drugs or getting an assist from Jaden Smith for one of the most infectious flows I’ve heard all year literally everything works when fit under the umbrella of Thugger. There’s never been a bad time to get into Young Thug, and On The Rvn offers a wonderful sample platter of his brilliant absurdity.

BROCKHAMPTON - IRIDESCENCE

After producing an entire trilogy of albums in one year, BROCKHAMPTON’s worryingly-prolific output hit a wall after sexual misconduct allegations led to a key member’s departure. Now having taken some time to recover, America’s Greatest Boy Band is back with their fourth official album, and it’s just as vibrant, wacky, aggressive, surprising, and flamboyant as you’d expect. I’ve started to realize one of the biggest appeals of BROCKHAMPTON (aside from the DIY origins) is that you never know what you’re gonna get. One song can be a straight-up gym-ready banger, and the next could be a soulful tear-shedding ballad. In fact, sometimes there’s a tearful ballad in the middle of one of those bangers. The point is, the breadth of different genres and flavors on display in any one BROCKHAMPTON release is more than enough to gorge out on, even if it can feel like the equivalent of musical whiplash at times. The fact that the same group of people can create such a wide variety of music is the real marvel, and it’s no wonder why they’ve managed to cultivate one of the most rabid and devoted fan bases on the internet. 

This Will Destroy You - New Others Part One

There is always room in my heart and schedule for well-conceived instrumental music. Often brought up alongside the genre’s greats like Explosions in The Sky and Mogwai, This Will Destroy You have cemented their place as one of the scene’s most essential acts. They made a name for themselves early on with picture perfect post-rock and awe-inspiring cinematic works. Eventually they went on to tackle the ambient darkness of death, put out one of the greatest live albums of all time, and even had an innovative electronic phase. Having just wrapped up a tenth-anniversary tour for two of their best records, the band now looks optimistically toward a distant point on the horizon with New Others Part One. From warm, airy key-laden landscapes to demonic horror, and pulsating space music, the album draws a little bit from every phase of their now-decade-long career. It’s sublime, magical, and quite possibly a new high bar for the band. 

Microwave - keeping up 

While I normally wouldn’t write a full-on mini-review for a two-song release, Microwave’s keeping up absolutely floored me, so I now feel the need to extol its virtues. I queued this album (single?) up knowing absolutely nothing about the band, and was smitten within seconds of “Georgia On My Mind.” The soft-spoken track builds into an incendiary finish that smolders with equal amounts of passion and regret. Meanwhile, counterpart “keeping up” provides a beaten-down work-a-day perspective that writhes in an equal amount of sadness and sorrow. Keeping up is an absolutely jaw-dropping and astounding release that managed to connect with me at the exact right time.

Pinegrove - Skylight

Shelved for over one year thanks to multi-layered accusations and background drama that I don’t care to comment on, Pinegrove’s long-awaited Cardinal follow-up was surprise released at the tail end of the month. While those admittedly-negative headlines may have deterred many from listening to Skylight, the album itself is just as carefully crafted as we’ve come to expect from the group. Early-album single “Intrepid” perfectly embodies the record’s more pensive loud/quiet dynamic and careful lyricism. Similarly, “Rings” is a low-lying song that opens up into a vast expanse of amber colors and melancholy intricacies. There are also a handful of frisson-inducing bitesize tracks like “Thanksgiving” and “Amulets” that offer only brief glimpses into a world-weary yet wonderous existence. Drama and unanswerable questions aside, this album is being sold for a good cause and is undeniably still worth a listen, especially if you are a longtime fan. 

Lil Wayne - Tha Carter V

Literally half a decade in the making, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V has become the stuff of legend. Up there with Guns n Roses’ Chinese Democracy and Dr. Dre’s Detox, Wayne’s long-awaited fifth entry in The Carter Series has been promoted, delayed, and fought over more than any one person can even explain. Having recently emerged victorious from a long legal battle with perennial father figure (and more recently musical captor) Birdman, Lil Wayne is now a free agent and wasted no time in announcing the album’s release just in time for his 36th birthday celebration. Unlike most albums that spend this long in release-limbo, The Carter V lands gracefully and should satiate both long-time fans and curious newcomers. With a near-perfect mix of vivacious dance tracks, narrative epics, violent gangster rap, and revealing personal tales, Lil Wayne’s magnum opus feels like it has a little bit of everything. I never thought I’d say it, but Tha Carter V was worth the wait.

Quick Hits

• Graduating Life - Grad Life: Mom Jeans’ resident shredder Bart enjoys an affirming, cathartic, and anthemic solo outing.

• I Hate Heroes - Save Yourself: Clean and punchy metalcore that’s ready for emotional flight or fight.

• Hozier - Nina Cried Power: A four-song EP of soulful, sinister, and sexy songs from the reclusive Irish pop star.

• Joey Purp - QUARTERTHING: Wide-eyed and defiant life-tackling hip-hop songs shouted from a rooftop over Chicago-flavored jazz.

• Spiritualized - And Nothing Hurt: After a five-plus year break, the space rock-torchbearers return for an operatic, lush, and surprisingly-warm release.

• Mothers - Render Another Ugly Method: With sharply-recorded instruments, slow-moving vocals, and pensive imagery, Mothers’ sophomore album jumps out at you and demands you to sacrifice your sanity on its behalf. 

• Waxahachie - Great Thunder: Indie-flavored ever-searching acoustic- and piano-based balladry.

• Colleen Green - Casey's Tape / Harmontown Loops: A collection of early cassette-based recordings from the sunglasses-clad Colleen Green.

• Aphex Twin - Collapse EP: Inward-facing electronic music that also manages to retain a level of humanity and natural beauty. 

• Guerilla Toss - Twisted Crystal: “Music is easy” the Boston natives proclaim on their opening track, before pushing the listener down a twisted plastic slide of jagged colors and cylindrical rhythms. 

• Low - Double Negative: In what I’d call “appointment listening” Low’s newest work is a project that’s best digested in isolation, with minimal distractions, and enough time to fully-sink into it. 

• The Chills - Snowbound: Bouncy and inoffensive alternative music that slides across the stage of your mind.

• 6lack - East Atlanta Love Letter: Drowsy PBR&B.

• Bhad Bhabie - 15: Meme, rapper, and trashy guilty pleasure Danielle Bregoli dropped her first official release which is already packed with platinum singles.

• Fire Is Motion - Audiotree Live Sessions: Still without a full-length, the solo project of Adrian Amador runs through a greatest hits of his emo-tinged indie.

• Joyce Manor - Million Dollars To Kill Me: Pop-punk icons and known lovers of short songs, have returned for another bite-sized full-length of lovesick pop songs. 

• Story So Far - Proper Dose: A half-hour expedition of shimmering pop-punk that’s trying its damnedest to hold onto the last remaining moments of summer.

• Metric - Art of Doubt: Well-polished alternative music that manages to thrive in the seemingly-contradictory position between accessible modernity and throwback-grunge.

• Mutual Benefit - Thunder Follows The Light: Hopeful, dreamy, ornamental folk music that satiates the ear and soothes the soul.

• Mudhoney - Digital Garbage: One of the few remaining bastions of the grunge movement continue down their acid-washed, jean-ripped path of muscular distorted rock

• Ratboys - GL (8-Bit Version): A charming 8-bit rework of GL from earlier this year featuring four songs that sounds like they’ve been taken straight from a long-forgotten NES game.

• French Montana - No Stylist: A three-pack of excitable trappy bangers from everyone’s favorite Moroccan rapper. 

• Advance Base - Animal Companionship: Folksy indie tunes with a minimalistic electronic tinge and a delivery that borders on Bill Callahan at times. 

• Lupe Fiasco - DROGAS WAVE: A feature-length album worth of hyper-lyrical bars spit over brightly-colored beats. 

• The Devil Wears Prada - Audiotree Live Sessions: Five live songs of emotional and physical restlessness.

• SOB X RBE - GANGIN II: The last hurrah of the bay area hypebeasts and hyper-lyrical paramedics.

• Logic - YSIV: While most of Young Sinatra IV is exactly what we’ve come to expect from Logic (for better or worse) a full-on Wu-Tang cut and unexpectedly-lively jazz track elevate the tape into the upper-echelon of the rapper’s discography.  

• Tilian - The Skeptic: Even though it can feel like boneless Dance Gavin Dance at times, Tilian’s voice is so strong that it doesn’t even matter.

• Beartooth - Disease: Having started music at the age of 14, we’ve now watched Caleb Shomo develop musically for nearly half of his life. Disease is another hardcore, yet melodic development in his aggressive Beartooth project. 

• Well Wisher - This Is Fine: Personal statements, fears, and concerns recorded directly to shreddy fuzzed-out pop-punk.

• Marissa Nadler - For My Crimes: Dark and haunted sparsely-instrumental gothic folk Americana.

• Tim Hecker - Konoyo: Death-ridden soundscapes and long-stretching instrumentals that reflect a trip to Japan, a personal loss, and a meditation on normalcy. 

• The Living End - Wunderbar: Dressed in leather jackets and accompanying bedhead, the punkabilly standby gives the world 11 hard-charging and anthemic rock tracks.

• Polyvinyl - Polyvinyl 4-Track Singles Series, Vol. 3: Featuring the likes of Owen, Japanese Breakfast, and Modern Baseball, Polyvinyl’s communal cassette project is now available on all streaming platforms for the entire world to enjoy. 

• Pixies - Live from the Fallout Shelter: Just one piece of the Surfer Rosa 30th anniversary celebration, Live from the Fallout Shelter features a 40-minute performance of the band in their hungriest form right before fame and success would strike like lightning. 

• Justus Proffit & Jay Som - Nothing's Changed: A laid-back 11-minute collaboration between indie up-and-comers Justus Proffit and Jay Som. The sound of a crisp fall morning spent mostly in a hammock.

• Silverstein - The Afterglow / Aquamarine: In a showcase of musical dexterity, Silverstein offers up two renditions of two singles done in both acoustic and electric styles.

• Hippo Campus - Bambi: Diverse and dancy indie tunes with wonderfully-absurdist electronic elements.

• Roosevelt - Young Romance: Pivoting from DJ-centered electronica, Marius Lauber contributes more vocals for an album that ands up sounding like a long-lost 80’s classic.

• Colin Stetson - The First Original Soundtrack Vol. 1: After disturbing me with the soundtrack to Hereditary earlier this year, Colin Stetson has returned for another deeply-reverberating soundtrack for a new Hulu Original about the first group of humans to visit Mars.

• All Them Witches - ATW: Heavy riffs, bluesy guitar, and confident delivery. Sometimes that’s all you need, and All Them Witches has ‘em in spades on ATW.

• Doe - Grow Into It:  Cheery and magnetic indie rock that demands to be shouted from rooftops in between PBRs.

In the month of September we also heard brand new singles from Kanye West, Death Cab For Cutie, Clairo, Petal, Indigo De Souza, Ty Segall, Lana Del Rey, Lana Del Rey, Lil Uzi Vert, Cloud Nothings, Action Bronson, Minus The Bear, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, St. Vincent, Broken Social Scene, Lil Baby, Saves The Day, Half Waif, Fleet Foxes, Jaden Smith, Thom Yorke, Kero Kero Bonito, Juicy J, Kurt Vile, Yaeji, Weezer, Open Mike Eagle, The 1975, BADBADNOTGOOD, Cloud Nothings, and Vulfpeck.