Pat Monahan's Hairy Chest

Ignore the out-of-place sexual imagery. Or don't. This journal will contain album reviews with a focus on the lesser-known, articles about music, and possibly more.

Here's this week's album review schedule:

Wednesday: Bitter River (2007), Pygmy Lush
Thursday: Unortheta (2016), Zhrine
Friday: Life Without Sound (2017), Cloud Nothings
Saturday: Mademoiselle (2010), The Underground Youth
Sunday: Wistful (2016), Sylvaine
Monday: Urraca (2017), Sunless
Tuesday: Good Morning Spider (1998), Sparklehorse

The structure for my weekly review schedule is as follows: two lesser-knowns, one recent, two lesser-knowns, one recent, and a classic.

I'll post my review of Bitter River later tonight. Happy listening.

Frownland

Looking forward to the Zhrine review and another good source for quality metal.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

The Batlord

You do realize we're just calling you "Pat", right?

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Pat Monahan's Hairy Chest

Either "Pat" or "Chest" works.

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard

that new Cloud Nothings is a little different from their old stuff but still hella tight. interested in hearing your thoughts.

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Music Blog / RYM / Last.fm / Qwertyy's Journal of Music Reviews and Other Assorted Ramblings

Pat Monahan's Hairy Chest

(Note on ratings: I rate from one, meaning unlistenable, to seven, meaning perfect, in half-point increments.)

Bitter River (2007), Pygmy Lush

What would happen if hardcore punk, indie folk, and post-rock were united in a single, 58-minute album? With their 2007 release Bitter River, northern Virginia act Pygmy Lush lend that question a raw and atmospheric, if sometimes disappointing, answer. The album’s first track, “Nonsensical Tremor,” delivers overdriven screaming and an angular, wailed guitar hook, each within 37 seconds; following on its heels is the track “Hurt Everything,” which, with its clean, folky chords and dark, confessional lyrics, takes a tone entirely different from that established by track one.

The album is punctuated by these jarring changes in genre, in which folk songs alternate with punk songs on a practically one-for-one basis. The end result, while aptly disturbing and demented, still feels like an experiment gone awry. If Pygmy Rush had stuck to either folk or punk, or had tried to mix the two genres within songs, rather than just among them, the album could have enjoyed a much-needed cohesiveness. Unreconciled as they are in Bitter River, however, folk and punk only tear each other down.

The album has its moments, most notably with “Hurt Everything” and with its angrier, identically titled reprise. “The Boys of Swift Creek Reservoir,” another eerie song, prompted some research on my part; I’ve gathered it tells the pitch-dark tale of two thirteen-year-old boys who drowned in 2006 when their canoe capsized over Swift Creek Reservoir in Chesterfield County, Virginia. All three of the aforementioned songs draw heavily on a dark variety of folk, using wistful arrangements of clean, simple chords to produce something haunting, heartfelt, and beautiful.

The album’s longest track, a 25-minute instrumental called “September Song,” is likewise enjoyable; its ambient soundscapes manage to provide a much more fitting component to the album than do the screamed, feedback-ridden punk tracks, whose hooks feel dry and formulaic. Overall, it seems Pygmy Rush do their best work while singing softly and playing modestly. So while a whole fourth of Bitter River feels disparate, formative, and overwrought, the other three fourths are a marvel of atmosphere.

Final rating: 5/7 (Good).

Pat Monahan's Hairy Chest

(Note: in all likelihood, these reviews will become longer. This one and the one before it are both prewritten, but I'm starting the Cloud Nothings review tonight and will work on the review a good deal, probably in a more track-by-track fashion, before I release it.)

Unortheta (2016), Zhrine


Blackened death metal band Zhrine formed in Iceland in 2007, under the moniker Gone Postal. Having released several demo tapes and one full-length album, In the Depths of Despair, they changed their name, first to Shrine in 2014, then to Zhrine one year later. Their debut as Zhrine, Unortheta, arrived in 2016 to a handful of good reviews.

Here's a great one.

Unortheta opens with “Utopian Warfare,” which runs the gamut of Zhrine’s peculiar sound: slow, sparse instrumentals alternating with loud, distorted chords, violent drumming, and despairing growls. From the very start, Zhrine establish an atmosphere of gloom, desolation, and bitter cold; this atmosphere absorbs listeners and simply doesn’t let go. The next track, “Spewing Gloom,” has as fitting a name as it gets—its thick dissonance, coupled with its demented shrieking and brutally sludgy slowdown, gives the impression of pitch-black storm clouds crawling through the sky. Meanwhile, the lead guitar effects a half-graceful, half-lurching dance atop the noise.

The rest of the album is chock-full of alternated shrieks and growls, manifold breakdowns followed by explosive barrages of sound, and eerie instrumental sections, which function as perfect interludes to the deliberate chaos. Zhrine pool together the angular hooks of Gorguts, the grand chord progressions of Deafheaven, and the evolving structures of Isis to craft something so beautifully idiosyncratic it defies classification. I won’t spoil the final, title track, which is also the shortest, but I can say this: what Zhrine know how to start, they also know how to end.

Final rating: 6/7 (Excellent).

grindy

I'll call you Chesty LaRue.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Mondo Bungle

Aside from their Turboslut split, that's the only Pygmy Lush album with any loud noise punk

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