Short Attention Span Record Reviews, Sep 23

ZACH BRYAN – Zach Bryan
It’s like this guy was designed in a lab to cater specifically to my tastes – country music that sounds more like heartland rock, not light years away from what Jason Isbell has been doing for the past decade or what Ryan Adams was doing in the early 00’s. Great tunes, strong lyrics. (9)

EMPIRE STATE BASTARD – Rivers Of Heresy
Biffy Clyro guys recruit Dave Lombardo and make some noise that’s probably more fun for the players than for the listeners, somewhere between Napalm Death and Fantomas. (7)

KVELERTAK – Endling
Started out 15 years ago as Immortal meets Hellacopters, now they’re like Mastodon meets Turbonegro, never losing their kickassness along the way. (8)

JEFF ROSENSTOCK – Hellmode
DYI punk rocker enters a proper studio and ends up sounding more “Dookie” than “Repeater”. (8)

ALLISON RUSSELL – The Returner
We got to know Russell as a member of Our Native Daughters who almost made the top of The List in 2019, and on her second album she goes way beyond folk/Americana reaching as far as soul and disco to address some very serious stuff that’s on her mind. (8)

SLOWDIVE – Everything Is Alive
Beautiful shoegaze that’s less noisy than My Bloody Valentine and less classic rock than Ride, actually much closer to dream pop. Bring on the reverb! (8)

SOEN – Memorial
Moving further away from Opeth/Tool time signatures and progmetal pyrotechnics towards a more “mainstream”, 4/4 template. (7)

MORGAN WADE – Psychopath
Rooted in country but pop-rock smart and glossy, Wade’s new album is a Venn Diagram where Miranda Lambert, Stevie Nicks, and Alanis Morrisette meet. Excellently produced by Sadler Vaden (from Jason Isbell’s band). (8)

TOM WAITS – Swordfishtrombones / Rain Dogs / Frank’s Wild Years / Bone Machine / The Black Rider (2023 Remasters)
One of the wildest left turns in modern music was the one Waits took in the early 80’s when Island Records took him in, moving away from his well-established beatnik/boho persona and coming up with 1983’s “Swordfishtrombones” (10) – giving up the beloved “jazz trio with strings added on the tearjerkers” shtick for a cacophonous yet addictive blend of demented Beefheart blues, Kurt Weill cabaret and Harry Partch microtonality. He perfected that formula on 1985’s “Rain Dogs” (10), his finest album and quite possibly anybody’s finest album, ever, a perfect Ten record if there ever was one. 1987’s “Frank’s Wild Years” (9) revisits the template successfully, completing an unsurpassable trilogy.
1992’s “Bone Machine” (8) is a different kind of animal, lyrically much darker and disturbing and sonically placing a greater emphasis on percussion, his voice achieving the unimaginable and becoming even gruffier in the five years that passed. 1993’s “The Black Rider” (8) is a collection of songs Waits wrote for a theatrical play and they sound like it.
All of Waits’ Island Records catalog is now re-released, and even though these remasters don’t make the records sound significantly different than before, I envy the younger generation that will now discover Waits for the first time through them.

WARREN ZEVON – Excitable Boy (Remastered)
A masterpiece of 70’s American rock, now’s the time to discover it if you never got into Zevon before. Big fans like Billy Joel and Jackson Browne can’t be wrong. (10)