M83 – Fantasy | Album Review

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The ‘Midnight City’ Band is, unfortunately, not a forgotten funk group from the ‘70s. This shorthand actually refers to the French electronic group M83, who formed almost 25 years ago. Their 2011 breakout album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming spawned the “indietronica” mega-smash “Midnight City,” which finds itself in playlists alongside other anthems of the same ilk. See “Walking On A Dream” by Empire Of The Sun or “Little Secrets” by Passion Pit.

M83 garnered much blogosphere praise in the years leading up to Hurry Up becoming a modest household sensation. Pitchfork awarded their coveted Best New Music distinction to their sophomore LP Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts in 2003, with a 9.2/10 rating. 2008’s Saturdays = Youth was revisited by Stereogum in its 10th anniversary year, calling it “lush, overwhelming synthpop… more complicated than the handful of new wave and dream-pop giants everyone compared it to.”

So, the band had their longtime celebrators, and by 2011 they had amassed tons of new listeners. The long-awaited Junk appeared five years later in 2016, which writer Ryan Leas calls in that same Stereogum piece “zonked-out.” Between the album cover and title, I’ll take his word for it. And aside from 2019’s DSVII – M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez’s second installment of video game-inspired ambient music – the band hasn’t released a proper album in seven years. Fantasy scratches the itch instantly.

M83 approaches the idea of “fantasy” from beautiful and strange vantage points, both in the music and the imagery. Gonzalez explained further on Twitter, “I want to keep having fantasies about worlds that I don’t know and creatures I don’t understand, and that’s the story behind this record.”  The album cover spotlights a strange alien figure and juxtaposes it with shiny neon lettering, giving an unsure first impression of exactly what type of fantasy the listener is about to be taken on. The serene introduction of “Water Deep” leading into the first single, “Ocean Niagara,” is a prog-rock adjacent couplet that suggests a more positive trajectory out of the gate. An odd choice for a first taste, as “Beyond adventure!” is the only lyric sung across its four-and-a-half minutes of steady electronic bliss. If patient fans weren’t satiated by that first track, maybe they were when M83 released the entire first “chapter” of the album, six songs altogether, to stream on February 9th.

Fantasy has quite a few moments of songs blending into each other, enhancing the seamless feeling of a fantastical trip throughout the listening experience. Tracks three and four, “Amnesia” and “Us And The Rest,” are M83 doing what they do best, an emotive mix of dream pop and dance music, making an instantly comfortable listen. “Amnesia” is sung from a fantasy skeptic’s perspective. “I believe in the darkness, it’s just a sound. I’m in love with some sadness, it’s just a sound.” Later, on “Earth To Sea,” Gonzalez takes a more Seussian lyrical approach: “Where will you go? Just say it, you can let go.”

Chapter Two opens with “Deceiver,” a groovy, sparkly disco-tinged number that sounds like it could have been a b-side to the Daft Punk & Panda Bear collab “Doin’ It Right” from Random Access Memories. While I dig this song, I believe it serves better as an ending to the first chapter as opposed to the start of a new one. Especially with Fantasy’s title track up next, serving as a statement of intent just as “Oceans Niagara” did at the start. Tracklist placement aside, this song is an absolute dancefloor smoker. “Shout it! Fantasy! Into a fantasy, into a wasteland, living in a fantasy,” Gonzalez refrains throughout. It’s an outstanding centerpiece of the album’s core themes.

“Laura” is a very pretty ballad that has one of the many mentions of traveling with another soul in this fantasy universe. “Take us on a ride, I’ll take you on a voyage through the night sky.” In the previous “Deceiver,” this character is a “distance driver;” similarly, “Amnesia” pleads to “Ride with me, slipping through my virtual magnet.” Throughout the album, Gonzalez channels classics like Elton John’s “Rocketman” or David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” through a more millennial lens. It’s lonely out in space, but he finds his companions within the great wide open. One of these companions is “Sunny Boy,” the crown jewel of the album. It’s the punchiest dance number with the strongest and most overt spatial fantasy lyrics. With an almost ABBA-like phrasing, Gonzalez swoons, “Cosmic adrenaline, she’s young and fierce. / Such a radiant queen.” Its reprise towards the album’s end is a welcome callback after the eight-minute, blissed- and blipped-out, almost-all French “Kool Nuit.”

This all leads up to the Fantasy finale, “Dismemberment Bureau,” suggesting the fantasy we might all be living in is one of televised overload. Gonzalez repurposes the legendary Gil-Scott Heron mantra, “Do you miss the day of human revolution? What a good way to learn from the hand of a legend. An illusion on color television.” Musically, I love the synth tones being laid down and think the track’s pacing is a strong compositional wrap-up. But it’s a bit of a ham-fisted topical ending, being the only moment on the album where fantasy and reality interweave. Maybe unexpectedly facing reality was M83’s intention after an hour of electronic sonic escapism.

I love any record that takes you on an otherworldly journey that presents you with things you don’t get in typical radio or supermarket music. On the whole, Fantasy delivers that journey, with the exception of a few curious elements regarding how it’s segmented. However much of the seven-year gap M83 took to put this together, it was clearly worth the wait. Maybe fantasy, reality, and the cosmos are all one and the same. If they are, a band named after a galaxy 15 million light years away certainly has the authority to say so.

Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

Full of Hell & Primitive Man – Suffocating Hallucination | Album Review

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Closed Casket Activities

Finding comfort in expressions of grief, anger, pain, and disgust has become commonplace in the modern era. It isn’t a comfort that evokes feelings of peace, necessarily, but more so a sense of understanding and even community. The world we’ve been sentenced to inhabit has been gutted by capitalistic greed, and society is being consumed by corporate, political, and religious zealots. Bigotry and hate flow freely from the mouths of these cretins, often to roaring applause, and any sort of resistance is violently snuffed out by militarized cops who stand for property over people. It’s difficult to trust your own blood these days, let alone your neighbors or a stranger. Metal bands Primitive Man and Full of Hell capture that tension and the overwhelming dread of modern life within the pummeling walls of disquieting noise and aggression on their collaborative album Suffocating Hallucination.

It’s easy to let the noise of it all wash over you and not dig deeper. That’s a lot of what I love about it. That overwhelming wall of noise is part of the comfort. It’s all so massive. Experiencing it live, really feeling it, is like immersion therapy. But to leave it there is to miss the bleak, poetic despair of the lyrics. You won’t be able to decipher what’s being said without having the words in front of you. However, following along as the album unfolds truly enhances the experience and allows for that understanding, or commiseration, to be reached.

“Today a cherub, whose hand I held, spit in my face,” opens the record and sets the unflinching tone of what’s to come. For five tracks that span over half an hour, Primitive Man and Full of Hell conjure chaos through vocals, riffs, percussion, and noise. While this sonically feels more in line with the towering doom metal that Primitive Man are known for, Full of Hell’s contributions are undeniable on every track. This is most clear on “Bludgeon,” a 25-second grinder that acts as a perfectly placed centerpiece with the lyrics reading, “Nothing to hold on to that has not been killed from being set free.” The effort to effectively communicate such emotions often goes unremarked when discussing bands of this ilk, but I’d be remiss not to shine a spotlight. I cannot read lines like the ones above and not feel a punch to the gut that forces me to reflect. The world is a horrifying place for a lot of people right now. Someone you once knew and loved is now unrecognizable in their hate and delusions. The government is actively suppressing the existence of trans people. It’s endless. It’s suffocating.

“Undefinable suffering: punishment built for the spiritually blind. Crushing weight of nothing. Now a gift to all his children, the absence of non-existence. Worse than hell.”

My history with both Full of Hell and Primitive Man began in 2017 with the respective releases of their albums Trumpeting Ecstasy and Caustic. At the time, I was engrossed in the emo scene, but I’d cut my teeth on hardcore/hardcore-adjacent bands, so wading into these grindy, doomy waters wasn’t uncommon. While I was open to and familiar with plenty of music I would deem as “heavy,” I can pinpoint my first listen of Caustic as a turning point in my life. I’d never heard anything quite like it. I’d certainly never heard anything that was heavy in that way. The music was ginormous and punishing in a way I’d never experienced before. The vocals were guttural shrieks straight from hell, with the lyrics and artwork matching the barren, dilapidated ruins in which the album exists. This isn’t heavy in a fun way. This is devastation expressed through the loudest, darkest sounds imaginable. Once the door was opened, there was no closing it. I was hooked, and it didn’t take long for me to shed my skin and return to the heavy realm I grew up on, only now it was meaner, bleaker, and heavier than ever before. 

And rightfully so. Caustic, as well as Trumpeting Ecstasy, felt urgent upon their release as a spotlight was shown on the struggles of life that hundreds of thousands of people endure on a daily basis in 2016 with the election of Trump (at least in the States, specifically). Hell, in my personal life, 2016 is the kickoff year for a mountain of strife that would fall upon me and my family. I didn’t intentionally seek out meaner, bleaker, and heavier music, but when I found it, it connected like nothing else. I hadn’t cognitively processed or addressed my afflictions when I dove into modern death/grind/doom/metal, but the feelings it pulled from me were palpable, and the power was undeniable. I was converted. I had found my church.

Primitive Man and Full of Hell have both been at it for over a decade, and they’ve been prolific from the get-go. Since their albums in 2017 alone, Full of Hell has released two LPs, a collaborative album with The Body, an EP, and a split with Intensive Care. Primitive Man released an LP, two splits (one with Unearthly Trance and one with Hell), the Steel Casket demo, and the Insurmountable EP, which is longer than most albums, including Suffocating Hallucination. Through their output, they’ve consistently proven that they seek exploration and collaboration in their work. Both bands began with more of a straightforward approach and have evolved over time to the behemoths they are today by incorporating more harsh noise and experimental soundscapes. The two crossing paths for Suffocating Hallucination is a logical pairing. They’re at the height of their powers and firing on all cylinders making the album tight and ripe for repeat listens. Passages like the hypnotic ending of “Trepanation for Future Joys” and the instrumental “Dwindling Will'' showcase how well their sensibilities meld together and how they’re still able to be a looming giant without utilizing their entire arsenal.

Since finding them years back, both bands have continued to draw from the well of brutal inspiration to exhilarating results, and their first collaboration together is no different. I’m curious to see how this union rubs off of the two bands in their solo efforts moving forward. What’s evident is that connection through dissonance can yield frighteningly compelling results. There’s a lot to be found within all the noise. The anguish is communal, and coming together in shared desperation can produce captivating art if only you take the time and dig a bit deeper to understand it. 

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and is always trying his best to exist gently.

The Toms – The Toms (2023 Reissue) | Album Review

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Feel It Records

When Paul McCartney released his self-titled debut in 1970, formalizing the breakup of the biggest band in the world and foraying into solo stardom, the prevailing sentiment was one of resounding disappointment. While still reeling from John Lennon’s request to break up their songwriting partnership and leave the group, Paul had begun experimenting with home-recording equipment, eventually tracking a whole album in secret from his flat on which he played every instrument. Contemporaneous reviews were skeptical of the concept, to say the least; Melody Maker went so far as to suggest that Paul’s “debt to [Beatles’ producer] George Martin [was becoming] increasingly clear…” after hearing the record.

Not even a decade later, a devout disciple of the Fab Four named Tommy Marolda was earning a living recording artists using a similar home studio setup from his basement in suburban New Jersey. And not just friends and small fish–Richie Sambora (of Bon Jovi, with whom Marolda works to this day), members of the E Street Band, Earth Wind & Fire, and The Smithereens were all clients. In fact, it was the latter who canceled a session with Marolda at the last minute one fateful weekend in 1979, leaving him with equipment primed for use and three to four days of uninterrupted time. Marolda took an acoustic guitar and a notebook full of lyrics and ideas out to his back porch, where he began fleshing out full songs before putting them to tape, recording every instrument and singing every harmony into his trusty Tascam 16-track recorder. By the end of the weekend, he had roughly 40 songs, packaging the 12 he deemed most “commercial” into the self-titled debut of The Toms. 

The Toms was a minor masterpiece, bouncing from minor-key Beatles worship to raucous new wave and back, finding inspiration everywhere from Motown to Boston. Take the standout “You Must Have Crossed My Mind,” a harmonious marriage of blissful pop melody and universal sentiment (“Flowers need the rain / As much as I need you”) that could have topped charts in an alternate universe. Every second sounds carefully considered, the drums keeping steady time under a chiming haze of guitar. A lumbering bassline pushes the song forward (Marolda tracked bass last in these sessions, scrapping any song for which he couldn’t write a line he liked) and provides a counterweight to keep the sugary melodies from ever becoming cloying. 

Guitars on the opening track “Let’s Be Friends Again” chime like horn stabs as Marolda splits the difference between rekindling a friendship with an old flame and engaging in a sly bit of dirty-macking. Later, on “Hook,” he folds the act of songwriting in on itself, marrying a gleaming refrain to the lyrics “Repeat this hook line / over and over / til you’ve got it memorized.” And while power pop often appears regionless by nature, an amorphous genre defined by influence more than sound, The Toms feels decidedly of New Jersey–Marolda’s soul-inspired vamping at the end of “You Must Have Crossed My Mind” and “Wasn’t That Love in Your Eyes” shares more than a little bit of DNA with Springsteen.

Eventually, Marolda moved out to California looking to get The Toms signed, but labels proved wary of the whole “one-man band” thing when not helmed by a Paul McCartney or a Stevie Wonder. He found work as a songwriter in the studio system, and The Toms quietly ascended to “cult classic” status in the ensuing decades, its distinct red and white cover becoming a kind of secret handshake amongst power pop fans with the rise of Web 1.0 and forum culture. This renewed interest culminated in a slew of reissues, including this latest one by Feel It Records. 

The original 12 songs, newly remastered here by Caufield Schnug of Sweeping Promises, crackle with renewed intensity. Every component instrument is rendered crisper than before, emphasizing the astonishing feats of Marolda’s imagination and musicianship. It’s perhaps never more apparent than on “Other Boys Do,” where a resurfaced guitar lead soars above the mix in glorious fashion. The reissue also features 12 bonus tracks, including seven more songs recorded during that weekend session in 1979 which were included in prior reissues beginning as early as 1997. 

A few of these session tracks feel like standout additions: the bluesy rave “You Put Me Up to This” is propelled forward by an excellent falsetto hook, and the lightly psychedelic “If I Am Dreaming” would have slotted in perfectly on the original LP. Others feel less essential, never quite reaching the giddy thrills of The Toms or even the further-out ideas from that weekend that have since been released. Several of those ended up on 2020’s The 1979 Sessions, such as “She’s So Lovely,” which stretches a single chord into something resembling the late David Crosby’s compositions with The Byrds. Of the five other bonus tracks, the most interesting is a demo of “It’s Needless.” The blown-out snare hits on the demo are a fascinating glimpse into Marolda’s creative process, a direct contrast with the pop sheen applied to the album version. The only brand new inclusion is Peter Noone’s cover of “The Flame,” which mostly serves to emphasize just how compelling of an on-record presence Marolda is.

Ultimately it’s difficult to come away from this expanded track listing anything less than excited by the chance to celebrate an unheralded masterwork anew. Marolda made the right choice in culling the original release down to a tight 12 tracks, but what better way to put The Toms in conversation with its influences than reissues that show off what got left on the cutting room floor? The Toms, in any form, is a testament to restless creativity; one man, whirling around his basement, fueled only by boundless possibility and dedication to craft.

Jason Sloan is a writer from Brooklyn by way of Long Island. You can find him on Twitter or occasionally rambling on Substack.

The Long & Winding End of the Road: How KISS Spent Four Years Saying Goodbye for the Second Time

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On March 1, 2023, the hard rock institution KISS announced they would perform just 50 concerts this year before turning in their iconic stage show for good. They’re celebrating a half-century as an active group and finishing up the last leg of their ‘End Of The Road’ world tour, which began in 2019. KISS’ final live performances, closing out the ‘Countdown’ leg, will be on December 1st & 2nd at Madison Square Garden on their home turf of New York City. But KISS getting to this point has not been particularly straightforward or well-received. The band has long had their critics from all angles, whether that’s being perceived as a joke band in makeup with bad music, the embodiment of satan, or just a rock and roll cash cow. Most recently, the fact that this is their second farewell tour (and that it has taken four years to complete) has left some fans tired out. Fifty years as a band isn’t something that gets to happen to everybody, though. To understand what it means for KISS to have hit that milestone, it’s crucial that we go all the way back to the beginning. 

January 30th, 1973. A small club in Queens, New York, called Popcorn, later renamed Coventry, is about to host the very first performances of the hottest band in the world. The lineup is as follows: George Criscuola, the “Catman” behind the drums known as Peter Criss. Stanley Eisen, the flamboyant “Starchild” frontman known as Paul Stanley. Paul Frehley on lead guitar, seemingly from another dimension that gave him his name, “Spaceman” Ace Frehley. And Chaim Witz, the decades-long, fire-breathing, blood-spitting “Demon” bassist known as Gene Simmons. Costumed and made up in a way that’s only reminiscent of how we’ve seen them in their peak periods, KISS play the first live chords of their career. “Deuce,” a Simmons-penned tune, opens the first and second sets of the night. This was the first, but certainly not the last time “Deuce” would make a KISS setlist.

November 30th, 2022. The second to last show of the ‘End Of The Road’ tour’s third year. The band takes the stage at Tokyo Dome, where they’ve been performing in Japan since 1997. Simmons takes the mic for “Deuce” once again. According to the concert archival website Setlist.fm, KISS has performed the tune 1,513 times since 1973. It is their ninth most-played song, only 21 plays behind the 1983 anthem “Lick It Up” in the number eight spot. If you know one thing about KISS, you may have already guessed the number one spot goes to “Rock And Roll All Nite,” which has garnered an impressive 2,145 plays since 1975.

Stanley introduces “Deuce” to the estimated 32,000 Tokyo natives, noting this is from the very first album, 1974’s KISS. But casual fans may not know that Criss and Frehley are no longer on stage with the band, despite archival footage being shown during the performance where they’re both featured. They left the band around the same time twice over, first in the early ‘80s when KISS’ success was at its lowest and the tensions were at their highest. Then, again after the original lineup reunion tours that lasted through the beginning of the 2000s. Donning the “Catman” and “Spaceman”  makeup at the Tokyo Dome are Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer, respectively, who make up half of the longest-running lineup in the band’s history.

As early as 2002, Singer and Thayer have caused controversy among the loud and proud KISS Army by adopting their predecessors’ personas. The characters that the original band created were meant to be reflections of their personalities, not just interchangeable identities. This is why, in 1980 and 1982, new drummer Eric Carr (born Paul Charles Caravello) and guitarist Vinnie Vincent (born Vincent John Cusano) created their own – the Fox and the Ankh Warrior – until the entire band left the makeup behind for 12 years in 1983. For me personally, I take no umbrage to Singer and Thayer in makeup for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they are essentially just doing a job. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both incredible players and do justice to the KISS brand; their interpretations of the “100,000 Years” and “Cold Gin” drum and guitar solos from 1975’s landmark Alive! album are played exceptionally to this day. To me it’s like James Bond or Doctor Who, albeit more of a long-form tenure that can evolve as necessary. But this leaves the conversation open for what happens after KISS ceases to exist as a touring unit.

Many people have speculated there will be a “KISS 2.0” in the future, with younger musicians wearing the makeup and keeping the music alive in venues across the world. This would be different from the millions of Beatles or Guns N’ Roses tribute acts in every town, as the original band members would still be involved. The rumor has been that KISS will audition and hire hopefuls themselves, putting the official stamp of approval on whoever is out on that stage. In the same way that new casts come and go in Broadway musicals, KISS might be the first rock group to achieve that feat – touring classic rock lineups with zero original members notwithstanding. So while it may be the ‘End Of The Road’ for KISS themselves this year, it may be the start of a new road for some up-and-coming rockstars.

Secondly, if these guys didn’t come in to back up Simmons and Stanley, I might not have seen the six KISS concerts I’ve been lucky enough to attend. If all the personnel lore erupted after 2002, and that was truly KISS’ final farewell, there would be no opportunities for me to experience “the Hottest show on Earth” in my formative years. Thankfully, I’ve had six of them up to this point, five of them on the ‘End Of The Road’ tour, and potentially two more in the ‘Countdown’ leg.

September 19th, 2018. After performing on America’s Got Talent, KISS officially announced the tour would begin in February of the following year (they circled back to a big-broadcast breaking news stunt with Howard Stern to promote this final 2023 leg). They promised to “play every city they’ve ever played one more time,” and “once we hit yours, that’s it.” Most rock fans and critics alike know how these promises go. Despite the tour’s length, KISS did pull off not repeating any specific venues, except for a few locations where they held two-night residencies. But by the time the ‘Countdown’ leg is over this year, there will have been some crossover as they’ve already played MSG in New York and Centre Bell in Montreal, among others.

During a performance at their yearly KISS Kruise in November 2019, they announced the final show would take place on July 17, 2021. So you factor in an entire planet’s worth of cities to attend, with some breaks in between, a little over two years sounds like a respectable timeline for a farewell tour. On March 10th, 2020, KISS performed their last concert before the lockdown in Lubbock, Texas.

KISS spent the height of the pandemic like any reasonable and responsible group of industry professionals: live-streaming their ‘End Of The Road’ stage show from Dubai. Somewhat cleverly titled “KISS 2020 Goodbye,” the concert featured a documentary about the band traveling to the United Arab Emirates during the pandemic and what it meant for them to be performing the concert. It was a decent performance that provided some respite from the outside world at that time. However, at the time of this publication, fans have still not received their merchandise packages from the concert. The band resumed touring in Mansfield, Massachusetts, on August 18th, 2021.

A sentiment amongst the KISS Army throughout all of this has been, “how can we miss you if you never go away?” Granted, the COVID-19 pandemic doubling the tour’s timeline was unexpected, but it also seemed there were way more shows on the books post-vaccine than pre-vaccine. These feelings may have affected the band’s cancellation of a Las Vegas residency in early 2022. The truth of the matter is, no matter how many times I see the same tour with the same songs with the same solos, I will miss KISS when they stop playing big shows. I won’t pretend that, even after the sometimes frustrating ‘Road’ we’ve been driving down, I didn’t get a little emotional once the ‘Countdown’ leg was revealed and set in stone. Even in repetition, it’s unlike any rock concert I’ve ever seen. The music is genuinely powerful, the guys are having a good time playing, and the crowd continues to lick it up after all these years. An important asterisk here lies the careful words of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, though: that KISS is ending as a touring unit. So the opportunities for one-offs are still on the table, theoretically. From an optics standpoint, I think it would be incredibly unfair to pull something like that.

And let’s not stray away from the fact that these two guys are now officially over 70 years old. As good shape as they’re in, they won’t be able to do this forever. In 2021, Paul Stanley’s longtime guitar tech Francis Stueber passed away during the tour from a COVID exposure. In an already brutal 2023, we’ve lost the likes of Jeff Beck, David Crosby, and Ozzy Osborne finally announced his potential retirement due to health concerns. KISS has no reason to push themselves. Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead played his last show 17 days before he died. It is possible if he had taken a stage sabbatical earlier, there could have been another album or even a chance to announce a final tour. 

KISS has nothing to prove now that they’ve crossed the 50-year mark, which some fans speculate is the only reason the tour has gone on this long. They’ve made their place in rock and roll history, and it’s been well-deserved and diligently worked for over their five decades. The old adage “Stop while you’re ahead” could have applied to KISS in 1977, 1997, or even in 2009. I think we should treasure the last 50 years and be thankful it’s ending at an amicable conclusion, not a forced halt. You can rock and roll all night and party every day, but after five decades, it’s going to take a toll on you somehow. So to my favorite hard rock band on the planet, thanks for all that you’ve provided. But please, after December, stop while you’re ahead.

Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

Nagasaki Swim – Everything Grows | Album Review

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Excelsior Recordings

Is there a way to observe the passage of time that isn’t inherently sad? Nagasaki Swim, the Rotterdam-based project of songwriter Jasper Boogaard, sits with this question on their sophomore album Everything Grows. Guided by Boogaard’s ambitious yet steady hand, the new album leads Nagasaki Swim to powerful new heights, cementing their reputation as one of indie rock’s most promising new bands on either side of the Atlantic.

Everything Grows follows Nagasaki Swim’s dreamy 2021 release The Mirror, a record loaded with jams, showing a young band bursting with promise and energy. The band’s latest album features an all-star roster of collaborators; Molly Germer, who has worked with (and dated!) Alex G plays violin. Songs: Ohia veteran Mike Brenner, who has lent his talents to over 100 recordings in the music industry, also makes an appearance.

Nagasaki Swim’s sophomore record is a compact yet potent meditation on time and life transitions, and each song unpacks these themes in new ways. On the folky, country-inflected “American Dipper,” Boogaard sings “everyone wants the quickest way to love.” It is a beautiful and ludicrously infectious song. “Eternal,” the lead single from the album, is dreamy yet dynamic, a song that you reach for on a long drive, a song that makes you want to light out to the provinces.

These songs were followed by the more contemplative and downtempo “Window,” and the delicate interlude “Wait,” which is one of the most interesting pieces of music I have heard on an indie album in several years. It sounds like someone playing piano alone in a field, infused with nostalgia but gently resisting melancholy. Many of the tracks on this record are constructed to be steady and unwavering, providing a feeling of solidity against the album’s themes of uncertainty and transition. In “Wait,” the piano melody is allowed to stand on its own, unmoored from other instruments but not an isolated sonic texture. Despite the apparent loneliness, I take this piece of music more as a refuge of solitude and pleasant memories, an interesting departure from sad yearning typical of other music made about isolation.

The title song off Everything Grows immediately makes its case as one of indie rock’s great songs, balancing both depression and affirmation: “there is a fire in everyone,” Boogaard sings, before saying “leaving the old ways… doesn’t get easy.” With a comment on transience befitting Sufjan Stevens, the refrain becomes “everything goes, everything goes.” Much like “Wait,” the song closes the album with piano and birdsong, placing the listener out in the bewildering wild world.

This album got better and better the more I listened to it, and never lost its poignancy. As Townes Van Zandt said, time is a fast old train, she’s here and she’s gone and she won’t come again. To be human, perhaps, is to be troubled by time’s passage, to fret our hour upon the stage. How should we spend the brief moments we have on Earth? How to ensure that we waste the least amount of time? Should we quit our jobs, leave cities in droves, form anarchist communes in the Montana wilds? Everything Grows doesn’t answer this, exactly, but it suggests that time spent contemplating isn’t wasted.

When Everything Grows touches on melancholy, it refuses to be maudlin, gazing evenly at the great sadnesses and unknowns of being human. The album consistently explores these themes with sincerity and humility, it is tenderly melancholic and bittersweet: cough syrup encased in a hard sweet shell. We are left with the impression that perhaps the best way to watch time go is by fostering growth, moment by moment.

Elizabeth is a neuroscience researcher in Chicago. She writes about many things—art, the internet, apocalyptic thought, genetically modified mice—and makes electronic music in her spare time. She is from Northern Nevada. Find her on Twitter at @OneFeIISwoop.