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Checking in for Week 12, this is what we've been watching, listening to, and consuming!

Weekly Listens

This week was a good week for revisiting old favorites just as much as dabbling in new fare. I got my record player hooked up to my PC and have been listening to records live while gaming and on breaks on Twitch (follow me)! While this hasn't upped my listening output, per se, it has helped me recontextualize the way I listen. When I listen to albums, particularly new ones, I tend to overanalyze and get hypercritical. Bringing CDs in the car and listening while I'm streaming has forced me to let go of some of that and just absorb the feeling of the album. Not sure I like it, to be frank, and I do feel the desire to go back to some of these albums and chew on them a little more :P

Here's this week's plays:

Highlight - Passover - The Black Angels

What a treat of an album to get back into, Passover is a psychedlic alt-future war protest album that speculates on the outbreak of a second war in Vietnam (as well as making keen commentary on the series of wars we've had in real-world Iraq). The opening tracks, Young Men Dead and The First Vietnamese War set the tone with greasy distortion and jarring slapback delay on the guitars, while the bass drives forward a groove that feels like an unrelenting march (to war or to a funeral?). While the later part of the album lets up tonally, lyrically it stays sharp in its critique of the powerful using the downtrodden as their pawns.

Chances are if you consumed pop culture in the 2000s or 2010s, you had exposure to this one even if you didn't realize it. Over half the songs were licensed into a variety of properties ranging from GTA V to True Detective (seasons 1 and 2), Jack Reacher, and Spec Ops: The Line, where I first was exposed. Anti-war sentiment was on the rise and this band felt like a 70s protest group ripped out of time and put directly into modernity for creators to tap into.

While it was an iconic album in its time, it went out of print and only recently became available on vinyl again within the last couple of years. I picked this up from Groovy Records, one of my local stores, and the pressing from Light in the Attic Records is pristine. The album is as silent as they come between songs and as crisp as a muddy, low-fi, psych-cum-garage-rock spin can be.

I don't think I could ever tire of this one, an absolute Must-Buy in my opinion.

Lowlight - Mutiny After Midnight - Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds

This is a hard one to swallow for me. Sturgill is a master of craft, I don't think anyone can doubt that, and his Johnny Blue Skies persona is a fun sandbox for him to play in. And the album would have benefitted from being pure play, through and through, but it sadly suffers from such an identity crisis that I just couldn't love it as a whole as much as some of his other work. While I plan a full album review post after a few more listens which I'll save my in-depth thoughts for, I just can't bring myself to be excited about a front-to-back playthrough of this one like I was hoping I would.

Sturgill wanted to make a hedonistic disco album about pleasure, and yet a rock protest album about the state of the world, AND an introspective look at his struggles with pills, depression, and self-identity. Any one of these would have made for a great, cohesive adventure to go on, but cramming them all into a single album is incredibly jarring. It doesn't even seem to have the decency to break itself into movements of thematically clustered songs. None of the album is particularly bad (aside from Stay On That which is solely about riding Sturgill until you orgasm and uses the line "Stay on that D, baby, 'til you hit that G," no less than 20 mind-numbing times) but it leaves you feeling confused with whiplash. There are standout tracks, to be sure. Ironically the one that tickled me the most, Viridescent, hews closer to classic Sturgill than the new soundscapes he seems to be exploring as Johnny Blue Skies.

This isn't an offensively bad album by any stretch so long as you don't mind the gratuitous sex and hedonism, but it definitely hit lower for me than the pop culture and personal rings of my life would have had me expecting. An admirable experiment in physical-first media, I was more than happy to support by picking up a copy, but honestly now I would recommend seeking out someone who has ripped it and treating this one as a Stream It! first.

Weekly Watches

I've been slow on the watch train recently, chipping away at series an episode at a time and only watching one movie. We can talk about it, though! Why not?

First, I'm slowly getting caught up on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Yes, it's short. Yes I could knock it out in an afternoon. No, my brain has not been cooperating. I absolutely adore this show thus far. I'm halfway through the season and every character is memorable, important, and well cast. It doesn't feel like a typical Thrones-y bloated mess that they're trying to untangle their way out of, and I hope it stays that way. The low stakes of a hedge knight are perfect for a refreshing watch and GOD if the actors don't play their roles charmingly well, huh? I love my 11 year old coworker.

More importantly, The Thing (1982) was shadowatnoon's Movie Club pick this week. My all time favorite, it never ceases to amaze me just how well crafted this movie is. Not a single wasted beat, and the tension is thick enough to be scooped up and served to you in a petri dish full of your own potentially infected blood. Morricone's score is understated compared to his other more airy and epic works, but it fits absolutely perfectly. Of course, the practical effects set a new benchmark that most modern movies still don't hold a candle to. John Carpenter is and will always be my #1, love that guy to the moon and back. A full review is on my docket for planned content at some point, so please go watch this movie while you wait!

And now, please enjoy a few tracks that I fell in particular love with this week: (warning, they play at full volume! I am not smart enough to give you an adjustment slider yet!)