Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

I failed to actually finish writing like 9 album reviews this past week, but i stumbled upon Turnstile's NPR Tiny Desk (Home) set, and i love Blackout, so let's just press ahead. I'm sure i'll get back to Giant Stride and the Voodoo Violin Concerto and some others at some point, but the comment "this sounds and feels like drinking an energy drink in a library" is too funny to pass up. Punk Rock in inappropriate places, here we go.  Blackout is the only song i know, so let's check out their 2021 LP Glow On. They seem to release more EPs than full lengths, and that's pretty great, but Glow On is what i chose.  I take it back, i guess i have heard Mystery. I've listened to the whole thing now, and i am perplexed. I know without a doubt i have never listened to this album, but don't tell my overwhelming sense of deja vu that, because it feels like i have. It could just be the ultra-identifiable vocals making every song sound immediately identifiabl

We got a taste of Winter here in Iowaland last week, and this might be the final pleasant weekend before it takes up long-term residence. So, let's listen to something delightfully pleasant. Steven Stark mentioned a Gentle Giant song on his tiktok, so let's listen to Octopus, widely regarded as one of their best.  Gentle Giant had an active career from 1970 to 1980, but couldn't quite gain mainstream popularity. It's mostly because they write incredibly complex and lushly experimental compositions, merging Medieval/Renaissance vocal counterpoint with soaring Rock melodies, Avant Jazz, and Modern orchestral expressionism. The jukebox with this in it is not surprisingly devoid of dimes. Shame, these guys are fantastic.  The album, in spite of concept albums being immediately panned as pretentious garbage at the time, was written from the concept of having a song about each band member. The end result is 8 musical compositions drawing heavily from literature and philosophy

Your Old Pal Mason (my favorite local radio personality) says Ozzy's latest album, Patient Number 9, is worth a listen or two, and your old pal Bottle will mainline anything through my ear holes, so why not? I don't wanna get all morbid and gloomy and stuff (because Ozzy Osbourne is nothing if not a ray of sunshine beaming down upon a field of frolicking kittens), but he will eventually die, and this could be his last album. Don't blame me, he's the one who brought it up, not wanting to die an ordinary man and all.  Patient Number 9 is of course the sequel to the sequel of Patient Number 7, episode 5 of season 6 of Highlander: The Series, where Duncan MacLeod tells Kyra (who has amnesia) that they were warrior lovers 300 years ago. Or maybe it's a reference to Patient Seven, the 2016 movie about a psychiatrist who suspects all his patients' horror stories are connected to said 7. I like that, we'll go with it.  I gotta be honest, i don't like the effects

It feels like an eternity since i last reviewed an album. I guess technically it has only been 10 days, so merely a minor eternity, what's Target's collection of bespoke despair and misery have for us? It really is a terrible selection of garbage, by the way. I naively thought the retail record rennaissance might bring us something good, but nope, we jumped straight back to Now That's What I Call 5 songs everyone sort of remembers from 30 years ago and could make their own crappy mix tape straight from youtube of. Makes me want to puke. Now, there is stuff that i would more than happily review if i were getting paid. I'd intently listen to Lizzo or The Weeknd or Olivia Rodriguez or even Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga being confused as to how they ended up in the same room together. I'm not gonna lie and say Chris Stapleton isn't amazing at what he does, because he is, but i'm also not exactly gonna listen to it out of the kindness of my own wallet. I prefer Rock

C: Bottle, did you do a thing? B: Yes, Compy, i did a thing. I of course went cheap and unexpedited, but Novemner could be an interesting month. See for yourself. View Our 3D Artwork | Disc Makers

Chapter 1 Skip squelched down the hallway toward the bunker. This fishing trip had been productive. Not in terms of catching fish, because he didn't catch any (and he'd probably happily admit his ineptitude for angling if asked acutely), but in terms of not being there for a while. So, happily squelching along, empty bucket in one hand, fishing pole in the other, he found himself humming the Mission Accomplishable theme song. Through no fault of his own it morphed into the Batman theme, and that's when he knew he had returned to the nest (a robin joke? That was the perfect place for a Refreshments-style lures and bobbers joke. What the hell is wrong with me? ). Skip stopped and sloshed back and forth like a lazy tide, took one last deep breath of the lightly lemon-scented vacuum of the Infinitely Recursive Hallway of Doom, and patiently waited for the door to corporealize. For the sake of honesty, several more breaths ensued because my sci-fi magic door repair account is em

She's got Bette Davis's eyes in a jar of formaldehyde and she brings them out for parties. Real conversation starter. And that was just the warm up, ready for the main course? Trust you'll cringe. Look, if we're objectifying eyes here, then i'm gonna have to point out that all things considered, Bette Davis's eyes are not in fact much observably different from Peter Lorre's eyes. Go ahead, you know you totally want to google photos of both of them to compare.  But that's not why we're here, we're here to hear the Kim Carnes follow up album, because i have a real fascination with the things musicians did right after they earned the ability to do whatever they actually felt like doing. Post Gadda Iron Butterfly, Freedom Suite Rascals, Genuine Imitation 4 Seasons, every Hanson album after we all fully processed the reality of Taylor as a boy, that kind of stuff.  Hold up, hold up, i know i just made all that up as context, but there's something