Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Not gonna lie, there's a special place in the bowels of my heart for a self-title last album. Fair warning though, Megadeth ended with Hidden Treasures in my brain, so I haven't heard any album since then.  Lots of things to expect. Up until rather recently, Megadeth was Dave 1 and Dave 2; drummer and lead guitarist were up for grabs from the very beginning, so that doesn't matter, the issue is what are we actually snarling about? Longtime readers will know that I don't have to believe you, I only have to believe you believe yourself, which has never not been undifficult with Dave 1. What i can't fault him for, however, is that he has always said that Megadeth is the people playing Megadeth songs at that particular moment in time. Then again, 75% of this Megadeth is totally unknown to me, so all I really have to go on is the fact that I expect it will sound like Dave Mustaine wrote it. That's why Ride The Lightening is on it, Metallica is just a fork in the trun...

I've seen a lot of people say they don't "get" the new Modest Mouse album An Eraser and a Maze, so i spent way too much money just to say there's nothing to "get." Seriously, I don't get what they're all so crazy about. You tune in for Isaac Brock's impression of Bobcat Golthwait's Sylvester the Cat impression, and you stay for the absolute insanity that ensues. I suppose it helps to know you're listening to klangfarben style noise counterpoint; music by colors, everybody playing super-catchy melodies that somehow just work together. It also helps to know you're going to get 700 songs with 3 intermissions and no clue how we got from the start to the finish.  Modest Mouse, forgive me for being contrary, is a Folk band playing Indie Rock like they only have a vague understanding of either genre, and they don't write songs for people to like, they write songs for people to hear. If you absolutely have to compare them to another b...

Yup, Even In Arcadia I gotta put up with this crap. Well, at least, that’s what I assume the title of Sleep Token’s much malaised most recent album is trying to say. Could be more like “who woulda thunk it, Even In Arcadia?!” Definitely not some kind of tied score in the Arcadian Sportsball League Championship Quarter Finals. Whatever it is, it can also be found in Arcadia, wherever the hell that is. I know exactly Vessel, Sleep, and like 4 songs about Sleep Token, so there’s not really much let down this 4th album can throw at me, other than turning out to be a crummy album that doesn’t stick to the concept or form a coherent perspective. I suspect it will, I might even enjoy it. Only one way to find out. I wonder if they know the cover looks like Foals – Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Part III? Not a deal breaker, it’s just that’s what the pink foliage/black flamingo make me think of. I can’t imagine anyone confusing Foals and Sleep Token, though; they are not similar. Oh boy, do...

Holy hell, I had no idea. I should have, but my life has never stumbled across Fudge Tunnel until this very moment. They are literally Nirvana meets Tool at a Helmet concert in a way that makes all 3 bands sound like they can only handle 33% of the responsibility. It's not that i don't know who Alex Newport is, he's half the secret sauce of Nailbomb, but music stores in Oklahoma didn't have Fudge Tunnel albums in them when I was a tweenager, and now I totally resent the universe for it. In A Word is just a collection of B-sides and live jams, but it's exquisite. Maybe it lacks something if you actually knew Fudge Tunnel existed in the early 90s, but I guess 30 years later is better than never. 3 thumbs up. I don't know who's severed thumb I pulled out of my pocket for that rating, but I doubt they'll miss it as much as my cerebral jukebox has obviously been missing Fudge Tunnel.

There comes a time in every man's life when you have to ask yourself "is Meat Puppets really that good?"  Not the band in its entirety, but their self-titled debut. Women can ask it too, but it's not compulsory. Yes. It sounds like it was written and performed by puppets made of meat. I'm coincidentally reading Jason Pargin's John Dies At The End, and this is exactly what the opening scene with the meat monster in the basement freezer sounds like in my brain. Saying they can't play their instruments is not at all true. Maybe you're not "supposed" to play them that way, but it's definitely on purpose and well rehearsed. And yet, Meat Puppets makes Butthole Surfers sound cold and calculated and constructed by committee after several rounds of test screenings. Meat Puppets sounds like everyone in the studio was too scared to politely ask them to leave. It's true, I like Meat Puppets II better, but I don't think i can argue that's...

Cracker is as good an example of a one-hit-wonder as i can think of. All anybody vaguely remembers is the lead off single from their second album. I urge you to not be some junkie cosmonaut, and check out their humble alt-country rock self-titled debut.  The world needs a new folk singer/Frank Sinatra like he needs a hole in his head. Then La Bamba, but as a sarcastic "happy birthday to me."  The concept is pretty fantastic. This is Cracker brand sardines and fried eggs, a product of the U.S.A., packed for Virgin Records America, Inc., in Beverly Hills. Yes, the Richard Branson label, but like his franchise period, not the full UMG sellout. You can compare them to Gin Blossoms because it's 1992, and this is what everybody else's answer to Geffen's Nevermind was going to be in 4 years.  Nirvana, Guns 'n Roses, Metallica were 1991, "alternative rock" was what was going to be the next big thing. Cracker was right there, but they didn’t quite connect bec...

Do you wish you could transfer to the space-time continuum where Midwest-Mathcore WAS Pop-Punk? I've got some great news, Snackd Out is a band. The bad news is that you have to spell pretzel wrong to find them, because @pretzlerecords is a new label in Champaign you can't tag with an at sign until later in your post after you follow them. Polyvinyl's address is actually a Safelight AutoGlass shop and the owner says "NOT A RECORD STORE" on the Google business page. College towns are fun (I've lived in or near 5 of 'em). https://www.facebook.com/share/1F4BuroP9L/ Juli and Doug of Snackd Out formed the label, and since I also live near Champaign because my significant other got a job at UIUC, and there's a saxophone on their 2023 album Obstacle Illusion, I totally paid for this record separate from the other 200+ dollars I spent at Record Swap yesterday. I am not at all disappointed. Hi, Pretzle Records i'm actually Bottle's Music, a transplant ba...

I legitimately forgot how good Tragic Kingdom is. I didn't forget it's awesome, I forgot how awesome. Come for the bass lines, stay for the overt feminism, be surprised by the Sitar on Hey You, and the Bluesy Circus outro to side A, The Climb. I'll allow not caring about No Doubt after this 3rd album, or Gwen Steffani's solo career, but Tragic Kingdom is a masterpiece of Ska-Punk-Blues-Funk-Disco. You know the singles, but the deep cuts are all the more fantastic for not being pop-radio friendly.  We've gotta find another way to make the world go 'round. 30 years later and that lyric rings deafening loud, doesn't it? I demand a transfer to the dimension where we followed this album instead of this one, because whether you like Gwen Steffani or not, this Tragic Kingdom we're living in right now is B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

There's a chicken Surfing in the sky, He'd like to come and meet us, But he's still a little shy... I will always eventually shamelessly plug my friend Steven Stark, and his latest melodic-electronic project is Fuchsia Chicken's debut album A Surfin' Bird. It lies somewhere on the spectrum between Yacht Rock and dentist office adjacent Vaporwave, and I couldn't be happier.  For one thing, I'd rather follow an intergalactic surfing chicken than some of the leaders we have down here on terra firma. For another, it's nice to hear something not very serious for a change. I know, I know, it's still musically serious, the chord changes and orchestration will twist your brain into a deliciously salty pretzel, and the concept reminds me of a cross between Ziggy Stardust and Bluebird from Nektar's Remember The Future, but it's easy on the central processing unit without being over the top ridiculous like The Electric Cow Goes Moooooog!  Give it a try,...

How come Everclear's 6th album, Slow Motion Daydream, gets no love? As far as my ears can tell it's only because it was released in 2003, and we just assumed Art swam out past the breakers and watched the world die already. I mean, sure, you can hear some of the songs as cringe, and not everybody likes strings and accordions in their Alternative Rock like I do, but it's unmistakably Everclear, and not every song is supposed to be on the radio.  The album is a daydream, I thought that was pretty obvious, but people have this bizarre habit of forgetting how irony and sarcasm worked back then. You aren't required to agree with every thought presented to you, or even every thought your own brain invents, but you are required to make some reasonable attempt to understand it. The two songs in question here are Volvo Driving Soccer Mom and New York Times. Everything else, whether it suits your taste or not, is just a passing scene in the meandering daydream. Those two songs, h...

 "Rudimentary mathcore from the state ranked 49th in education." Don't let the self deprecating humor fool you, OKC's Thross will absolutely turn your brains to scrambled eggs, and direct you to the National Domestic Abuse Hotline in the process. I can't do Gross Human Index, their 4-track debut EP, justice with my sloppy copy writing, you'll just have to go get screamed at for yourself over at https://thross.bandcamp.com/album/gross-human-index-ep I've got two copies here at the shop ( https://bottlesmusic.com/shop/records/metal/thross-gross-human-index-ep-cassette/ ), but do us all a favor and buy the other 98 copies of this limited run cassette straight from the band first.

Bottle's Music will get a much needed infusion of new stuff later this week, so I thought I'd take a moment to tell you about the biz. Firstly, I'm just a guy who loves listening to records. I love all sorts of music, but I prefer albums. Real albums, collections of songs or pieces that add up to a unique and coherent experience; Album as Art. So, I started a record store and named it after a fictional character called Bottle the Curmudgeon. There's a whole big back story, but that's not important right now.  Lots of things I don't like about the music industry, but as a human what I really don't like is going to a crummy marketplace and sifting through thousands of drop-shipper listings. I'd much rather walk into a real record store and sift through the bins to find something intriguing. I want to buy records from a real person, not some random giant corporate vampire. There's a place and a purpose for huge corporations, but demanding i buy a franch...

Crowbar's 3rd album, Time Heals Nothing, doesn't get nearly the love it deserves. First of all, The Only Factor doesn't sound like the start of a new album, it sounds like you've just listened to the first two albums and Kirk merely changed the subject. Second, it sounds like you're listening to it through cheese cloth, or with a blanket over your head; production wise it sounds like acid washed jeans, and that's a tough sell if you don't already adore Crowbar and/or have the ability to physically recalibrate your ears to enjoy the synesthesic sound of TV static. The good news is that it is unmistakably Crowbar under all that asbestos blanketed high end, but that kind of makes it even more obvious you're hearing it through a dirty window instead of punching a boody fist through that window to let the audio sludge ooze out into the alley. The engineering/production sucks, is the bush I'm beating around.  I was so surprised I had to throw on their self...

I mean, really, it's the only appropriate soundtrack for a second Trump presidency... ... if you didn't know, the concept is specifically "what would an album made by fascist clowns sound like?"

Merry Christmas, everybody. A lot of things happening behind the scenes around here, so I've been quite quiet in the album review department. Well, guess who showed up. No, not the Guess Who, just The Who, and their 5th album, Who's Next.  The title, of course, is a double entendre. On one hand, it's just a regular old single-disc studio album. On the other hand, the cover art implies they all just took a piss on that 2001 inspired monolith in the middle of a slag field.  After Tommy, Townsend was working on another massive multimedia distopian rock opera called Lifehouse, but they eventually dropped it and let Glyn Johns pick whatever songs and arrange it how he liked. The end result is widely considered The Who's best album, and one of the best in general. No argue from me, it's a Random Crap album about living life. All the songs are great, i'm sure you've already heard most of them a thousand times, but they sound completely coherent from start to finish...

Yippee! My copy of Nobody Loves You More, the new Kim Deal album, finally arrived. It took quite a journey from New York to Des Moines, then headed the wrong way over to Davenport, then back through Des Moines, and finally to me. It's fine, actually, i didn't have the new OS up and running properly until yesterday anyway. I somehow piped everything the wrong way and the volume control kept creating new audio sockets every time I raised or lowered it, eventually crashing everything. All fixed now, so bring on the quirky songs about loving me, or loving myself, or whoever it turns out loves whomever in a comparatively measurable way. Kim Deal is of course famous as the bassist of Pixies and frontwoman of her own band The Breeders, but this is a solo album with 19 other random and not so random people. I kid, of course, but part of my brain wants a "solo album" to be literally solo. I know, I know, it's her first time, i should be gentle (please note that joke is nei...

Oooh, brand new Linkin Park and Marilyn Manson albums. Legit head-to-head cage matches are so rare these days, what's the pre-fight stat sheet give us? Both bands i stopped caring about as 1999 wound to a grinding halt (you know with all the computers about to think it was 1900), so that's no help. I'm sure they're both canceled or whatever, so we're even. Kinda surprised Linkin Park has the grosser album cover (not remotely unreminiscent of Metallica's Load/Reload). Manson just has a painting of what most people look like without properly organized health care. What I've heard of Emily-fronted LP has been quite lovely, what I've heard of MM over the last 20-something years is an equally lovely nothing, so yeah we're just wading into the terrifying tunnel of hyperbolic sadness. Hope there's not a trolly problem waiting for us at the end, but [hold on, let me mix these metaphors real quick...ok] we'll cross that bridge when we're tied to i...

Maybe you forgot, but Spirit is my personal favorite Psych Rock band (if we don't include Iron Butterfly). What's their first "reunion" album like? Oh no, critics favorably compare it to Clear. That's the absolute worst of their original 4 albums. On the plus side, it's the least influenced by Randy Hawaii-fornia, so maybe it's actually better than the 2 stars Allmusic gives it. I definitely can't fault the concept, they had a great run with some terrible jet lag 3/4 of the way through, and after a ridiculously messy breakup they are by definition "Farther Along."  No, wait, this actually sounds good. Granted, good in the context of 1976, but Spirit never understood the concept of genre to begin with; they played all of them whenever convenient. I do have one criticism, some of the songs and instrumentals have an "unfinished" vibe, rather than what I'm sure was the intended "... and so forth..." fade out. Regardless, t...

Speaking of New Wave, I just listened to the penultimate J. Geils Band album, Feeze Frame, and it is awesome. You know the title track and Centerfold, but i highly doubt you know the album closer, Piss On The Wall.  It's not even really reviewable, to be honest, it's Freeze Frame, couple songs, Centerfold, couple more songs, and Piss On The Wall. I guess i could rehash what Post-Punk/New Wave New Wave was all about (actual dance club Rock & Roll with quirkily expensive synth leads), but you know The Cars and The Motels and Talking Heads. Believe it or not, the Ramones were considered New Wave rather than Punk in the beginning. Now we'd call them Pop Punk, but the point is that Rock in the late 70s existed on a spectrum from Corporate Cock to Nerdly Neurotic Pocket Protector, and in 1980/81 J. Geils Band said hold my beer, I gotta take a leak, how's this for "radio-friendly, twitchy nerd Rock with huge sing-along choruses?" Freakin' awesome, dude, freak...

I'm told Secret Treaties by Blue Öyster Cult is one of the best proto-metal albums of all time, but my ears are like "whaaaa?" Agree or not, this is Punk. Original, old-school, impossible to differentiate from New Wave, undeniably evolved from Psych/Garage Rock Punk, with a splash of Glam. This has way more in common with The Tube's or Boomtown Rats or New York Dolls or the Stooges than Uriah Heep or Black Sabbath or Deep Purple. If you wanted to call Steppenwolf or Iron Butterfly Proto Heavy Metal i wouldn't bat an eyelash, but not this. I'm batting all of them with my "do critics even listen to albums before deciding what to write about them" face. I will give you the fact that it's a stellar album that delves into the darker side of human mundanity, but not really in a metal way. For starters, it's too intentionally weird. Less horror and evil, more really bad acid trip. No monsters or psychopaths or demons, just standard people suck stuff...