8.01.2018

End of the Month Music Bitchfest - July 2018

Beck
I totally get Colors now thanks to Beck's amazing performance at MSG. CANNOT BELIEVE this was his first show there. Fuck you, music industry.* Review of the show heehre.

Nine Inch Nails
NIN streamed their last date in July and they are TIGHT. Reznor's voice sounds great and the new material, mostly all delivered in a fierce, little fist in the middle of the set, sounds fantastic. Hoping for a bit more production on their *sigh* Cold and Black and Infinite tour later this year as well as a few new tracks.
They are still.
Playing.
"The Hand That Feeds".

And, as some time has gone by, I think I am comfortable saying that Bad Witch feels needlessly padded. Specifically the slow, forty plus second fade out at the end of "Ahead of Ourselves" and the rambling feel of "I'm Not From This World". That latter track did not need to be nearly seven minutes long... These things might not have bothered me as much if Reznor hadn't have made such a fussy little stink over the whole EP vs LP thing. You had an EP, decided to add two minutes of dubious content and now you get to call it an LP, congrats. I think "Shit Mirror", "Ahead of Ourselves", "Play the Goddamned Part", and "Over and Out" are excellent, OAO a near-perfect closer, but "God Break Down the Door", while it does work a lot better in context, still feels a bit sparse, and, like I said, INFTW meanders too much. Take all three EPs together and you've got a pretty solid Nine Inch Nails album though, even if the original plan for Bad Witch  was scrapped.

They Might Be Giants
As a whole, I think I'm really digging the Escape Team tracks from DAS. They paint a pretty dark picture. Especially Flans' additions.

Also, Lincoln is being remastered and reissued on TRANSPARENT RED VINYL. I asked Flans about it and here's what he said:
The most basic difference is it is louder by about 5-6 db. (previous Rhino CD remasters were more like 4 db) The rest is more subtle. These are subjective terms but I would say it has fuller, rounder low end, and the most fundamental bass tones start at a lower frequency. The mids are very much the same, but somehow more focused. The high end on the original was uniformly a bit fierce around 5k but also “closed” since things seemed rolled off above those tones rather than continuing  up. (This is not uncommon in 80s recording–creating a phenomenon someone dubbed “brull” which is a combination of bright and dull!) The remaster subtly addresses these issues on both fronts, and while the recordings will always sound bright, the sonic glare that might feel out of control at higher volumes is smartly controlled here.
lol
"brull"

Finally, I reviewed the third album by Alessandro Cortini under his SONOIO moniker. Here.

* This could be my most general "fuck you" ever...