Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

K, so i'm trying to get a handle on this multiple pages thing. There's me doing album reviews on this page, and then there's me trying to sell you records on the Bottle's Music page, but also me attempting to confine my ranting about dumb crap on the Bottle the Curmudgeon page, not to mention the Bottle's Album Club page that i still don't know what to do with, but today was hell and i realized that what i haven't done is specifically NOT tell you a story. So yeah, i'm not going to tell you the story of why i needed to replace the slipmat on my turntable before tonight's record, except to say that that's exactly why we're cracking open my procured on clearance copy of Underoath's Voyeurist tonight, it has an unsullied slip mat inside. Not a Game of Thrones reference, unsullied is the appropriately unfortunate word choice.  I have a fair few Target clearance albums i was considering offering up for sale over the weekend, and i still might,...

I am what you might call a gigantic fan of King Buffalo. For its 10th anniversary they officially published their 3-song demo (literally the first 3 songs they wrote together), and my copy arrived today. The special deluxe pressings sold out like immediately, but there's probably still a few of the 1,800 standard pressings if you want to snag one. I shall now disappear until it has fully absorbed into my blood stream via my ear sockets and possibly begins to ooze out of my pores in an unsightly manner. Stay thirsty, my friends. Cap'n Bottle out.

Eddie Vedder Earthling, a dad rock masterpiece, or a masturbatory solo album just because you can afford to hire Stevie Wonder and Elton John then name check them in your song about a piano being a married woman who lets all the men fondle her in the basement while Ringo watches, i mean bangs on the drums?  Spoiler alert, it's both those things at the same time. Not gonna lie, it feels a whole lot like that David Duchovney choose your own adventure album, Hell or Highwater. The songs are completely hit or airball, he doesn't actually mispronounce any words outside the ocassionally hilarious wrong vowel sound (dark sounds a lot like dork), and i don't think any of it actually deserved the postludic recall of random lyrics that weren't particularly inspired the first go round.  Pretty confusing when i say it's actually a pretty good album, huh? Don't get me wrong, 3.5/13 is 73% suck as far as the songs are concerned, but a fantastic album consisting if 100% terrib...

Is The Record by Boygenius satire? Yes, deliciously and nutritiously so. It's also a gorgeous Indie Alt-tronic Mope-Folk album in its own right, but the meta-sarcastic concept is pure delight in a way that even an ironically obsequious album like Badflower's This Is How The World Ends can't capture. It's like if the lyric "hey there Delilah" were a real person you absolutely didn't want to hang out with.  "Women in Rock" is not a genre no matter how often you try to mansplain it that way, women making Rock that mocks the cultural grooming of the (invariably male) tortured artist as oracle is absolutely delightful.  On one hand we have a supergroup of Indie Rock icons eschewing the inherently imaginary competitiveness so often forced upon them by simply not have any adult men involved in the process, on the other hand we have them faithfully embracing the ridiculousness of believing that expression itself is inherently meaningful. The upstreched h...

Just finished listening to one of the most gorgeous albums i've ever heard. It's called The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, by Austin Post-Rock band Explosions In The Sky.  I've officially reviewed well over a thousand albums, but other than No Sleep's Every Drop Counts compilation, i don't this i've ever reviewed a real Post-Rock album. The story is that way back in 2002, Explosions In The Sky needed a break from Austin, so they rented rehearsal space out in Midland and eventually this album coalesced from several months of late night rehearsals. I've been there, saying there's not much to do is a crowning achievement in the understatement department, and i can attest that you haven't seen stars like the desert has stars. Now, if you've ever wandered into the barren wasteland of my deep cuts, you'll know i have a tremendous fondness for tremolos of various velocity, and The Earth Is Not A Cold Dark Place is exceptionally delectable in that r...

Hilarious story. At check out the nice lady struck up a conversation about the records i was buying, and asked who this was. I said Wu Tang Clan. She said never heard of them. Now, when i tell you it took every fiber of my being to not deadpan reply "they ain't nothin' to fuck with," i mean i found new fibers i wasn't even aware were contained in the tapestry of me to strain in the process. Which reminds me, i sadly did not acquire Carole King's Tapestry or Queen Latifah's first album, and i deeply regret not being made of money. As it is, i managed to get out of there having only explained that they were a rap group.  Sufferin' smorgasbord, Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers) is a fantastic Golden Age of Hip Hop album. It has everything, king fu movie samples, radio promos, dick jokes, spelling Method Man's name, ODB being ODB.  The mystery of chessboxing is of course why anyone would willingly get punched in the face while trying to play chess, but i...