RYM-Core with Geordie Greep, Magdalena Bay, Mount Eerie, Blood Incantation, and MJ Lenderman: Rapid Fire Reviews

As the year comes closer and closer to an end and the criteria for my rapid fire reviews narrows, it's always worth looking for outside the box categorization to put together some of the records I want to talk about the most. That's what we're doing here with 5 albums I didn't get the chance to review earlier this year, but ones that have landed high up on RateYourMusic's 2024 charts, and therefore have dominated quite a bit of music discourse online. Surely fans will be civil in reaction to all of my opinions on these various records, right?

The New Sound - Geordie Greep

Somehow with the release of his new solo album, Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep managed to supersede the discoursing power of his post-punk outfit's entire 5+ year run with just one record. That's because The New Sound has been a WILDY divisive record online. It's hard to knock the instrumentation and production anywhere on the record. Talented musicians weave a dizzying array of vibrant pummeling compositions across an hour of material and the sound of the record is amazing. However, Geordie Greep, the character portrayed throughout this record, can border on insufferable. His horny musings and vintage slang definitely remind me of some of the most obnoxious men I've ever met and it's sparked plenty of debate online as to whether his character was ironically brilliant or just plain aggravating. 

Lead single "Holy, Holy" had me hooked though. I love its dizzying swirl as it wanders through a story that breaks down the narrators visage of confidence and poise with vivid writing and propulsive instrumentation. Even the second single "Blues" which isn't nearly as thematically compelling still has as completely irresistible instrumental whose jittery stopping and starting reminds me of many of my favorite Black Midi classics. More favorites pop up among the deep cuts too. The grinding, gritty "Walk Up" is great even though Geordie makes sure you have to hear him say "snatch" as clearly as possible. 

That leads directly into "Through a War" which is an absolute journey of a song. It's another thematic highlight that oscillates between this uncharacteristic vulnerability and virtue and the same kind of garish posturing on display throughout much of the rest of the record. I love the push and pull of the record and the playful way the instrumental soars alongside it is excellent. I also have a soft spot for the epic 12-minute "The Magician," a track that may not need every single second of its bulky runtime but I admire the ambition a lot and it features several lyrical highlights. 

The album is never particularly reserved, but in some of its brighter moments, I start to forget why Geordie gets so much forgiveness for his content. That's the case with the subtle latin flavors of "Terra" whose eventual eruption is also pretty unsatisfying. Some of the goofy detours like the instrumental title track and "Bongo Season" are slinky and silly, perhaps pleasant while they're on but I think the record could might have done with some slimming and they'd be the first to go. 

So yes, the album is far from perfect and at several points Geordie's attitude and lyricism brings down otherwise fine songs. But the record also delivers a ton of genuinely really interesting material. Outside the bounds of Black Midi Geordie seems free to indulge deeper than ever before into some of his most insane whims, and it's fitting that the results vary a bit. But when the album hits, it hits home runs and several of the bulkiest tracks here fall in that category. So despite just how much is going on with The New Sound, it manages to leave a lasting impression that is mostly positive. 7.5/10

Imaginal Disk - Magdalena Bay

The timing on this one is an accident, believe me. As I'm writing this there are several viral tweets making the rounds online pointing out that Magdalena Bay's new album isn't nearly as progressive or interesting as the massive acclaim it's received would lead you to believe. While I think those tweets definitely lack some nuance, surprise surprise, they do feel kind of vindicating. A few years ago the pop duo's previous project was a similar critical darling and I didn't really understand it then either. Sure, their dreamy and occasionally punchy pop tunes served up catchy hooks and fun production, but it felt exactly the same way as the ways that Tennis, Cults, Purity Ring, and about 12 other bands have been doing it for years without anywhere near the same level of acclaim. 

So I came into this new record hoping that the band would win me over. That didn't exactly seem like the case based on the singles, which I did like especially "Death & Romance," I just didn't love them nearly as much as many fans seemed to. One thing I have always been in step with Mag Bay fans about is the band's storytelling, which is consistently elevated from many of their pop contemporaries and the delightfully shimmering opener "She Looked Like Me!" is a great example. That song combined with the album's first two singles makes for a pretty decent start to the record. 

Unfortunately, deep cuts here can occasionally sound fine, while also feeling like they're pulling directly from the singles. This gets started quickly on "Fear, Sex" which is a bit of a shame as there are splashes of strong instrumentation here with the stuttering drums and key arpeggios. A track like "Cry For Me" has similar issues but to an even less interesting conclusion as its entire first half feels like the life has been completely sucked out of it through and through. But as you'd expect there are also some more highlights in the mix. "Love Is Everywhere" interprets some R&B flavors and yet its pop refrains are still some of the most irresistible on the entire album. The girlish vocals and playful attitude are both perfect touches and it may be my favorite deep cut of the entire bunch. The album also ends on the delightful combination of "Angel On A Satellite" and "The Ballad Of Matt And Mica" the latter also serving as an excellent closer to the record with glistening keys and a sentimental, perhaps even meta introduction. 

So yeah, "Imaginal Disk" is a solid collection of pop tracks. A mixed bag with some great highlights and some songs that don't really do enough to differentiate themselves. For most records and most bands that's an extremely normal, level-headed, sensible analysis of a sophomore album that is in all ways an improvement over its predecessor. But I suspect it could land controversially with a duo that have somehow been anointed our heroes of forward-thinking pop music. Regardless of your take on the band coming in, I'm happy they're improving and looking forward to what they do next. 7/10

Night Palace - Mount Eerie

Though it's been a while since Mount Eerie's last true studio album in 2018, Phil Elverum has stayed busy in the meantime. Most notably he revived his Microphones project for a new album in 2020, fittingly called Microphones In 2020. And while it was a very compelling listen it also served as a kind of fan service, an experiment is storytelling and progression morphed into the shape of an album. So it was always interesting to me how Phil would sound when he eventually returned, now years removed from the tragic death that led to 2017's masterpiece A Crow Looked At Me. What he returned with is a bulky 80-minutes of material spread across 26 tracks, several of which fail to even reach the two-minute mark. Along the way he covers a variety of thematic and sonic approaches to songwriting, with mostly solid results. 

At the core of the album is the kind of noisy folk music that Phil has made for his entire career and highlights come across the board from the most reserved to the most chaotic. Opening track "Night Palace" is a great thematic launch pad for the record that works particularly well as the first Mount Eerie song in a while, feeling like it ties the album back to Elverum's past. Later on the record, we get the well-constructed "Myths Come True" whose lyrics fittingly tie Elverum's feelings back to mythological reference points. On the noisier side, we have songs like "Breathe" which features a surprisingly thick haze of static, and these distant completely blown-out drums and sour guitar chords backing Phil's gentle refrains. The resulting sound is haunting but very entrancing. The two singles I enjoyed the most "I Walk" and "I Saw Another Bird" also fall under this category, though neither are quite as abrasive they also aren't afraid to dig into gritty detail. 

The second half of the record takes a much more active political approach, calling out colonialism and the shortcomings or its perpetrators as well as the damage it causes to the environment. This is crystalized by the album's longest song, the 12-minute "Demolition." The song is largely a spoken word opus from Phil's perspective as he muses on the world around him and what ails it. Then it eventually ties it all back to the earlier themes of the record on the shorter finale "I Need New Eyes." This record is an absolute journey, though one that can occasionally struggle to justify its huge runtime. It's a whirlwind of ideas many of which are deeply interesting and made even more so in Phil Elverum's hands. Despite occasional imperfections, it's a largely strong outing and one that lives up to the expectations that come with the name Mount Eerie. 7.5/10

Absolute Elsewhere - Blood Incantation

This is another artist that I'm not out of step with the acclaim for. Their breakthrough album, 2019's Hidden History Of The Human Race is a personal favorite and I even liked their surprise follow-up ambient experiment a few years later. Now, I was quite excited to indulge with their return to the world of grand, theatrical death metal. And grand really is an understatement as this new album comes through with just two massive tracks, which are each split into 3 sections for a grand sum of 43 minutes. 

The first of these songs is "The Stargate," whose 8-minute first section bounces between pummeling death metal and soaring triumphant guitar lines that feel as big as space itself. It ends with a pummeling finale of blast beats and grueling vocals, only for part two to recruit Tangerine Dream of all bands for a vibrant array of alien-sounding synths and vocal samples that sound like old TV dramas. That momentary exhale eventually gives way to the anxiety-inducing siren-like walls of torches guitars and the head-banging riffs that begin the song's final section. This piece also bounces between the dizzying fast gritty death metal sounds and some more reserved, darker tones with more conventionally sung vocals. All-in-all it's a wild and rambunctious first half fo the album but one whose nuances clicked with me more and more each time I heard it. 

The second half of the record is called "The Message" and it's introduction is even more unhinged with frenetic cascading guitar lines and a sort of fake transitional lull that gets interrupted just for even more throttling metal stylings to return. It's another moment on the album that isn't afraid to use more intimate vocal stylings occasionally though it also cuts itself off to return to dizzying guitar work, blast beats, and brooding screams. This is probably the best point to note the drumming on the record which oscillates between this impossibly technical precision in the fieriest moments to a more informal style that I find intoxicating at others. While it sounds good when functional, it sounds GREAT when stretched to its artistic potential. 

The second section of "The Message" features another surprise with a Pink Floyd-inspired psych-rock passage. Distant reverbed vocals call out like they're asking "Is there anybody in there?"and these sauntering guitar tones echo out into space it's all a very fascinating and unexpected change of pace. The song's third part is the bulkiest on the album stretching 11 minutes. It's pretty sonically familiar at this point on the record but it does feature some standout moments like the false fade out and re-eruption around the midpoint and the triumphant key change 8 minutes deep. The bulk of this song and the record as a whole makes for a strong and triumphant return from Blood Incantation. The band clearly knew the expectations being placed on them by fans and in delivering and epic and otherworldly piece of progressive black metal, they met those expectations. 5 years later the band reminds us why they're one of the interesting outfits in contemporary metal all over again. 8/10

Manning Fireworks - MJ Lenderman

Moreso than any other artist here, MJ Lenderman is one whose acclaim I've never quite understood. I thought that might finally be due to change on this album for two reasons. The first is that he's a member of Asheville indie band Wednesday who broke through last year in a major way with their great record Rat Saw God. The second is that the lead single from this album "She's Leaving You" is easily the best song MJ has ever released and it never left my rotation once I first heard it. I even kind of liked the next single "Joker Lips" even though it's languid poise reminded me of the same reason I haven't enjoyed so many other MJ Lenderman songs in the past. 

Of the 5 records in this Rapid Fire Review, Manning Fireworks is the only one I struggle to even think of much to write about. Part of that is because it doesn't really feel like much of an advancement for MJ, short of maybe the full 10 minutes of its wandering closer "Bark At The Moon" feeling like a novel way to end the record off. For the most part, it's just a series of familiar indie folkisms, cut with the occasionally distorted guitar riff, which to be fair makes for some of the better deep cuts like "Rudolph" and "On My Knees."

But ultimately I'm just surprised how little interest the album evokes. Even its solid deep cuts really just feel like they're invoking the great lead single a bit too much and the rest of the Neil Young worshipping folk cuts don't really have the songwriting or performance to carry themselves save for a clever or funny lyric every now and again. After the lead single I was pretty convinced that I would finally really like an MJ Lenderman album, and while this may be a better effort than what he's delivered in the past, I'm still not crazy about it. 5/10