Albums From the Attic: Toy Matinee

If there is anything that the pop music industry can be counted on to produce with regularity, it is the unending stream of promising acts that are only ever discovered and appreciated long after their time has passed, fallen victim to a collective of reasons that must have been grouped up onto a "how to kill a great new band" bingo at the advent of the recording industry and enshrined as standard M.O. Anyone who has spent any amount of time following music, especially pop music, will have noticed how quickly the winds of fortune shift and doom a group to obscurity (XTC) or propel them to new heights (Pantera). In the case of Toy Matinee, an art rock/pop studio group led by a couple of songwriter/producer kingmakers, Kevin Gilbert and Patrick Leonard, (think Dr. Luke without the sexual assault stuff), the killing blow was dealt in a far more mundane, "death by a thousand cuts" style - crushing indifference upon release aside from some moderate radio success in LA. While Leonard would go on to a quietly successful career producing albums for Elton John, Leonard Cohen and many others, Gilbert would unfortunately pass away six years after this album's release, dissipating any hope for a follow up record.

Captained by Gilbert and Leonard and crewed by an assortment of their musician friends, Toy Matinee doesn't waste any time in tipping its hand and showing you what you're in for with "Last Plane Out", a lilting power-pop foot-tapper that gives a good reading of the group's blend of spot-on use of harmonies, meticulous studio workmanship (mostly thanks to Gilbert's unending tinkering) and a level of composition and writing that is simply a joy to experience. The record continues in such a confident, playful manner that you can't help getting carried along through highlights like "The Ballad of Jenny Ledge", "Turn It On Salvador", and the powerful closer "We Always Come Home". The mood is almost uniformly light and if there was ever an album that could be described as "joyous", it is Toy Matinee - every song bears evidence of enormous polish and it all comes off as so effortless that the band might as well be winking at you the whole way through. The production is warm and bright and the lyrics are a great mix of more out-there 60's material and straight-ahead emotional topics as the songs jump between usual pop fixations like relationships and family  as well as anti-war anthems and some unorthodox dedications: "Turn It On Salvador" was dedicated to the late Salvador Dali while "Queen of Misery" was written about Madonna, whom many members of the band worked with prior, and "Remember My Name", written in memory of Czech president Vaclav Havel. With a lean runtime just south of forty minutes, Toy Matinee is that rare album that gives much, much more than it takes and is more than worth seeking out for any fans of no-frills, high quality pop.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I recently finished re-watching the original TV version of Neon Genesis Evangelion again. It's the first time I've seen the entire series end-to-end since the 3rd Rebuild of Evangelion film, You Can (Not) Redo, was released in 2012 as I figured it would make more sense to just continue waiting for the release of the final film in the tetralogy and go back to the OG 90's television anime which I have always liked more than the new movies for a few reasons (anther topic). What surprised me as I went through it is how potent it remained as an artistic statement, even after all these years and time spent watching it (this was my third or fourth time seeing the complete series). It was burned into my brain like a sunspot in my vision and despite having more than enough exposure to both the original series and the new films to see every twist and plot beat coming a mile away, it still manages to hit like a ton of bricks and for the longest time I wasn't exactly sure why (since this show is pretty much the archetypal over-analyzed work I'll try to keep this bried). Someone linked me this video and I think the creator hit on something that explained part of Neon Genesis Evangelions appeal: its relation to other forms of media as a work of pulp fiction. This got me thinking back to this video on the role of camp in the appeal of another favorite piece of fiction of mine, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Like MGS3, NGE uses its foundation in pulp/campy genres (spy movies in the case of Metal Gear, giant mecha anime in the case of NGE) to disarm the viewer and lull them into a false sense of security with the familiar tropes of that particular genre, before sucker punching their audiences with uncharacteristically deep/intense emotional beats. Unlike Metal Gear Evangelion utilizes a lot of repetition and call-backs to previous scenes to highlight and reinforce those emotional bits, often in a darker light than previously conveyed. It's not exactly avante-garde but coupled with the noticeably repetitive score it combines to create a strange Pavlov's Dog scenario where relatively simple audio or visual cues inspire a strong emotional reaction.  It's probably pretty obvious as you're experiencing either of these works but somehow it took until just now to click for me.

Another aspect of Neon Genesis Evangelion that is likely memorable to many is its distinctive art direction paired with director Hideaki Anno's penchant for lingering still frames. Despite almost certainly being related to the fact that the production team was working with a rapidly dwindling budget the relatively quiet minimalism of some of these frames has always stood out to me as quite beautiful:

Note the two silhouettes at the bottom right having a conversation over this backdrop

Motion blur is frequently used along with present-day-staple cicada calls to evoke heat. Obviously looks better in motion :/

These are just a couple of shots that caught my eye in the last ten or so episodes - the show is chock full of evocative landmark shots like this. Again, not really Citizen Cane cinematography here but its all part of the vividly colored yet terribly bleak atmosphere of Evangelion. The final aspect of this show that I've always really appreciated is the sense of cumulative loss that builds throughout the series' arc that is actually reflected in the incidental background chatter. To be fair a good portion of it is total sci-fi military filler without any real impact on anything, there seems to have been a surprising amount of effort made to keep the timeline relatively constant and continuous. Battle damage on buildings/characters and environmental destruction from previous episodes is frequently mentioned or remarked on, and actually impacts how they respond to future challenges. For example, in one later episode one of the titular Evangelions (basically giant robots piloted by the main characters) loses an arm in a fight and when its forced back into battle in the next episode the forced to improvise with it because... it's still missing an arm. No bullshit timeskips to "1 week later" when everything is nice and fixed up which (for me at least) lends a sense of weight and reality to this universe. It would be interesting to know how much of this straight-line continuity was a result of conscientious work by the production staff or just a happy byproduct of the story continually evolving on an episode-by-episode basis, forcing the team to just work with whatever had been done up until that point without any funds or time for rewrites. Whatever the specific reasons, that sense of consequence contributes significantly to the shows appeal to me.

Regarding the "New Theatrical Edition" Evangelion films (currently numbering three, with the final fourth on the way): I'm withholding judgement. Up until the third one, You Can (Not) Redo I would've told you I didn't really care for them, and that still holds mostly true where the second film is concerned. The first one is fine but kind of a snooze, and I'm really not a fan of the overly-clean CG special effect-y look of them, but You Can (Not) Redo was like a blast of cool air on a sticky August night so I've got faith that Anno and his crew can pull off a compelling finale.

Mad Max - Two Long Drives

(Vague spoiler warning)

One of the moments that always struck me while moving through Mad Max was a moment towards the end of the game's storyline, after you've obtained the V8 engine that Max sought so doggedly. After a rescue attempt goes awry Chum strands Max in enemy territory and flees back to the ruins of their former hideout leaving Max without access to the car you've spent the whole game building together. Once you make it back to friendly ground you're forced to give chase and recover Chum and the car alone as Max brushes off the other character's attempts at convincing him to give up his endless struggle and reconstruct his life with them.

Up until this point, Chumbucket has been more than just a random NPC. He's the only one capable of repairing the car when it takes damage without cutting into your wallet, he acts as a lookout and gunner to help you fend off bandits and assault convoys, and he acts as a guide to the different regions of the world, pointing out areas of interest, supplies, etc. Truthfully, he's Max's only friend in this hostile environment and during the first of these "drive time" missions the only dialogue you experience is Max incensed fuming about his weakness for trusting Chumbucket. It's a welcome change of pace from the rest of the game and does a great job of reminding you of just how vulnerable Max is without Chum as the car you're forced into using for this bit has no weapons of any kind outside of Max's shotgun, it has basically no armor, and repairing it costs a significant amount of scrap (the game's currency, like bottlecaps in Fallout). At the height of your power, just after receiving a powerful V8 engine and after having significantly elevated Max and your car, referred to as the Magnum Opus, beyond the capabilities of what you started with, I think it's a great moment for it all to taken away like this.

After you find Chum, you're treated to a somewhat aggravating boss fight and a color-draining reveal: while you've been busy fighting, the main villain of this story (the warlord "Scabrous Scrotus") was acting on the info gleaned from torturing Chum about an escaped concubine named Hope and her daughter Glory, whom Max had grudgingly befriended. As you frantically race the Opus to the opposite end of the map to hopefully beat the clock and stop their impending murder, Chum is the one having the one-way conversation as he pleads for Max's forgiveness. It's a far cry from how the game started as a relatively low-stakes psedo buddy comedy about two guys building a car together in the Australian desert, and losing major characters like this in way that you have no agency to change resonated strongly with me, I think because throughout this game I was wishing that the developers had implemented some more "painful loss" mechanics into the actual gameplay, like having enemies threaten to steal your car or capture Chum for their own faction - both of which they seem to just ignore.

Obviously this is a subjective thing, but I've always been kind of struck by these two sections of this game in particular as being more memorable than the rest just because they took a chance on making the player feel bored or temporarily powerless and it's just such a refreshing change of pace.

Avenged Sevenfold - The Stage

After Vektor's Terminal Redux I thought I had had all the sci-fi metal I could take this year. Luckily Angry Metal Guy's blurbs about the surprising quality of The Stage, both from a songwriting and a production side convinced me to give it a guarded listen. The last time I heard an Avenged Sevenfold song Guitar Hero was popular and Bush was still president, so I'm not what you could call a fan of the group and was honestly more than ready to hate this record. Right out of the gates with the title track, though, I was hooked on A7X's new spacey sound and have been listening to The Stage on repeat more than I could ever have imagined.

I'm not familiar with Avenged's catalog outside of their big hits ("Bat Country", "Almost Easy"), but I can't imagine the compositions on this album are anything worse than the best they've ever written. The opening salvo of "The Stage", "Paradigm", and "Sunny Disposition" alone is one of the most enjoyable three song runs I've experienced in some time and offer an excellent serving of high-quality melodic... prog-thrash-metalcore? Whatever genre this technically falls under, the playing is tight as a vacuum seal and groovy to a fault with guitarists Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance (I did not make those up) locking in with new blood drummer Brooks Wackerman perfectly. Besides the freshly progressive numbers on display there is a good deal of variety scattered throughout The Stage that keeps things from bogging down too hard: "Sunny Disposition"'s jeering brass horns, "Paradigm"'s high-speed blastbeat chorus, and my personal favorite "Creating God"'s Layne Staley-esque vocal melodies and grungy beat all contribute a piece of the puzzle alongside a couple of slower tracks: "Roman Sky" is reminiscent of King's X's "Pleiades" in subject matter and slower tempo while "Angels" is pretty full-on power ballad. Despite the technicality and lofty subject matter (AI, Simulation Theory, space exploration, post-humanism) song lengths are wonderfully succinct and largely in the five-six minute range and the lyrics are actually pretty damn interesting.

While The Stage isn't necessarily breaking any new ground in the progressive metal arena the high level of musicianship coupled with the band's known skill at crafting hugely catchy, accessible metal mesh excellently here on this album. It's not quite flawless and it does drag a bit towards the end (and M. Shadow's vocals are the definition of love-it-or-hate), but not many metal bands can convince Neil Degrasse Tyson to write and perform a unique piece of prose on their album - and if he thought it was worth doing, I think we all can agree that The Stage is worth a listen.

C+ 

Dream the Electric Sleep - Beneath the Dark Wide Sky

I remember how I first came into contact with Dream the Electric Sleep's music in the summer of 2014 on the pages of some random blog tucked away in a far corner of the music web. They had released a new album earlier that year called Heretics and the eye-catching cover artwork combined with their sound being described as "Pink Floyd meets shoegaze" led me to give the recommended track, "Elizabeth", a song that immediately hooked me as did the rest of that fantastic Heretics record. While the Pink Floyd comparison turned out to be not super dialed in, Heretics blended an indie-style production and sound with shoegaze atmospherics and unabashed prog ambition as the record is a concept album about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the rest of the Suffragette movement - not exactly your usual topic for this type of music. Now that I've finally given follow up CD Beneath the Dark Wide Sky some spins I'm happy to say that this Kentucky-based trio has delivered the goods here.

Working with noted producer Nick Raskulinecz, Beneath the Dark Wide Sky exchanges some of the group's progressive inclinations for a cleaner, more refined sound across the board. The songs here are all noticeably shorter with only two tracks moving past the six minute mark, while the album as a whole runs a quarter of an hour less than its predecessor did as the band has done a great job of distilling their sound down to its core elements, trimming the fat without stripping out any of the meat. This new approach is felt from the first note as opener "Drift" accomplishes in five minutes what took them over eight on Heretics' initial piece, before pivoting into the very Foo Fighters-esque rocker "Let the Light Flood In", again swapping out long-winded atmospherics for straight ahead hooks and a huge chorus. The rest of the material on Beneath the Dark Wide Sky follows the direction of these first two songs, trading big on guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Matt Page's better-than-ever vocals and an entire disc of spectacular drumming from Joey Waters, particularly on album highlights "Flight" and "Headlights". If you're worried that Dream the Electric Sleep have gone full-on pop then you'll be comforted by the presence of the dark and excellent instrumental "We Who Blackout the Sun" as well as the longest and most overtly progressive track on offer here, "Culling the Herd". Just like with Heretics the band has managed to write and pace Beneath the Dark Wide Sky so that not only does it not lose any steam after the halfway point, some of the best songs on the record are tucked back there: the chunky anthem "Hanging by Time" (Matt Page does an excellent Dave Grohl impression on this song), the grunge-laced "Black Wind", and the other ballad-type song on the album, the wonderfully Southern-flavored "The Good Night Sky", as the boys seal things up with the dreamy closer "All Good Things".

Just like King's did with Dogman with the help of producer Brendan O'Brien, Dream the Electric Sleep was able to achieve a similar reevaluation and reinterpretation of their sound with Nick Raskulinecz's help and have successfully retained the songwriting abilities and ear for genre-blending that helped make Heretics such a great album for Beneath the Dark Wide Sky. Catchy as hell, surprisingly heavy at times and without a second wasted, this album is hopefully the one that helps Dream the Electric Sleep break out of their niche and into the mainstream spotlight.

B

Mad Max: Photo Road

Some choice screenshots from my time with Mad Max, one of the most gorgeous games to release this generation. Enjoy.

Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct

Of all the things that happened in 2016, Metallica releasing a new album after almost a decade was not something that was particularly high on my musical radar. Metallica at this point is more of an American institution or cultural touchstone like McDonald's or Reaganomics than 4 dudes that make music. Their popularity and legacy have all been written and talked about to death and you would hard-pressed to find someone out their who hasn't already made up their mind about liking them or not. Regardless of your (or my) particular opinion on their material, this past year was full of enough strange/horrible/depressing shit to make some good old fashioned Metallica seem like just the comfort blanket we needed.

The band makes their presence felt right out of the gates with opener "Hardwired", which burns through its 3 minute runtime without a second wasted before moving into the first disc proper. The quality of the riffs here are way higher than they have any right be from a thrash group who have been going for 35 years, and Disc 1 of Hardwired... bangs past with only one major pothole in the drawn out closer, "Halo On Fire". The songs all run past the 5 minute mark (and frequently cross to 7) but the sheer quality of Hetfield's riffs (ahem) manage to keep the foundations from sinking into the quicksand of 10 minute instrumentals or power ballads. "Atlas, Rise!" and "Moth Into Flame" are, simply put, some of the best songs this band has ever written and the beefier production from Greg Fidelman really bring Hetfield and Ulrich into the spotlight, and depending on who you are that may or may not be a good thing. Ulrich's playing is fairly rote throughout Hardwired... unfortunately, and he tends to repeat his fills a lot which is probably news to no one. He isn't Pete Webber or even Jerry Gaskill but the compositions here mostly give him enough space to not drag the foundations down too much. Trujillo's bass is too quiet as usual but it's the absence of Kirk Hammett that really sets this record apart from the rest of their discography, as his solos are few and far between (almost.. tastefully spaced out?!) and I have to admit I lost track of him a couple times and wondered where he wandered off too as James and Lars chugged on without him.

And then we get to Disc 2 and the whole frame starts to warp and sag. Outside of the phenomenal "Confusion", "Here Comes Revenge", and "Spit Out the Bone" we have 3 6-minute chug-fests that just don't hit the same marks as the rest of the material. "ManUNkind" is probably the strongest of the bunch but major points deducted for that pun. "Murder One" is an ok tribute to Lemmy but its weirdly inoffensive and tame, whereas "Am I Savage" just doesn't fit the rest of the songs here and sounds like it was ripped from their Load/Reload era. In the end its more good than bad, but it is interesting that they considered the material here to be worth including in the end despite the higher costs passed on to both them and the consumer as shaving just one of these songs would've given them plenty of room for a single disc release. The whole thing ends as suddenly as it begins without a moment of hesitation and the overall impression I get after popping the disc back in its sleeve is of a band doing what they genuinely love to do. No, they aren't pushing any boundaries. Yes, the songs are probably too long across the board. Yes, Lars' drum sound and style is just as restrained and thin-sounding as ever. Ultimately though, Hardwired... to Self-Destruct rises above its brickwalled dynamic range and scattergun stylistic focus to deliver some truly excellent material that I think will be remembered for a long time as some of Metallica's best pieces of music. And amid all the death and suffering and flat out weirdness of 2016, it is cathartic to be able to enjoy a big, dumb, overlong album from one of music's remaining legends. Let's enjoy them while they're still around, huh?

C+

Bonus:
The artwork and packaging design of Hardwired...to Self-Destruct deserves special mention, I think. After seeing it for the first time you probably either reflexively laughed or sighed in disappointment, as I did. After looking at it more and more, though, it's started growing on me and now I believe it's one of the more interesting pieces of album design work that I've come across recently as it balances this stark black and white negative space with this bizarre, aggressive photoshop mishmash. Your eyes can't help but be drawn in to it and its almost hypnotic, like an optical illusion - you keep thinking you're missing something hidden in there but nope, thats really all it is. Obviously its not any kind of virtuoso display in a traditional sense, but it does a good job of catching your eye and fitting the tone of the album.

The packaging of the CD sleeve and booklet are very similar in tone, but just as "your mileage may very" in terms of effectiveness. Some of the image design work is actually pretty cool looking, but to me about 40% misses the mark and coupled with the very minimalist black-font-on-white-background motif, it doesn't leave much to grab onto if you didn't like the main design dominating each page. Definitely subjective, but whether you like it or not I think the artwork accomplishes at least some of its goals by making it stick in your mind.