on second thought, i am cutting that off; i can't really approach the thing objectively now that i know that it's religiously focused, and i don't expect to actually like any of it, anyways. it's pretty clear that they got pretty boring pretty early in their career and never really reversed it. i'm not going to find that lost record like i did with cursive.

as mentioned repeatedly, my sole interest in the band was it's influence on other things i like, and i think that ran it's course after the first few records, if not strictly the first one.

apologies if anybody really wanted me to go through with this, but it's just not the kind of music i listen to, and i wouldn't have even walked down this path at all if they weren't touring with cursive, and i hadn't done the survey on cursive.

or, to put it another way, the survey has come to a clear conclusion that i'm not into it and am not going to waste my time on it.

you can trace the jangle chords back to the byrds, but the syncopation the guitarist from mewithoutyou is using is all over early u2 records and generally attributed to the edge.

so, i'm not shitposting. it's obvious.

now, somebody is going to accuse u2 of stealing their tonality from the middle east [u2 were also clearly a massive influence on early our lady peace].

you probably just haven't hear u2 from the period i'm referencing.

this was the early 80s, and is widely seen as their best record. if you beef the guitars up a little bit, you get something similar to mewithoutyou.

as mentioned, i've done this before, so i was expecting them to exit my sphere of interest in the opposite direction almost immediately, delving directly into a kind of poppy indie rock that almost sounds like an edgy u2. i think the last time i did this was around 2012 or so, so it's just the last few records i haven't heard. i know they mellow out and further commercialize for a few records.

you can't unhear the comparison in vocal styles here to the singer for la dispute, even if any musical overlap instantly evaporates with this record; la dispute haven't done anything remotely like this, musically, and probably never will. and, i'm not denying an influence, either - i mean, i'm sure he's acknowledged it. i just want to temper the issue of the originality of the vocals here. this guy clearly listened to a lot of lee ranaldo, who himself listened to a lot of lou reed. i'll drop the point, now.

for what this is, it isn't awful. it's just not really in my sphere of interest.

C.

https://mewithoutyou.bandcamp.com/album/catch-for-us-the-foxes

i'm going to point something else out, though: i did not know until right this minute that mewithoutyou were signed to tooth & nail, or that they are arguably a "christian rock" band. that's another good reason why i hadn't run into them - and another good reason why i wouldn't have spent the time looking into it.

i'm going to carry through with this and have an open mind about it. i don't actually care if an artist is religious or not, but i'm not likely to respond well to open evangelism. i'll let them speak for themselves, and react to their work as it comes up.

but, i'll plead ignorance - i did not know that.

time has taken the edge off of it, but something you'll notice about a lot of the rock bands that were labelled "punk" or "hardcore" at the time is that they actually based most of their respective sounds around boneheaded sabbath and motorhead riffs, via whatever intermediary, rather than fast, aggressive chord work. you might think this is trivial or not even notice it as a defining difference, but it gives this record more of a testosterone feel and less of an adrenaline feel, which is how i've tried to explain my interests in punk in the past: i like high energy adrenaline-fueled punk, but have little interest in the kind of dumb brutality that punk produces when you let the testosterone take over.

and, i'm sure a lot of the people that liked this at the time will talk about how awesome the riffs are, too, whether that's really true or not. i can get into riff-based rock music if you tone it done a little, but what these guys are doing is the exact opposite - they're tweaking what is essentially cock rock into something that is even more pelvic-focused. if you're going to get into this, you're going to feel it in your groin, not in your brain.

the drum machine interludes are unusual, but they're just gimmicky and pointless, overall.

it's not the worst record of this type that i've heard, but i'd actually classify this as some kind of crossover metalcore. i don't want to say it's too hardcore, and it's not bad enough to call it brocore, but it's certainly very much a cock rock record and consequently not something i'd want to listen to.

is this where la dispute got their sound? well, you can hear an influence, but if this were la dispute then it would be a half-assed demo. they've never released anything quite like this. and, i don't hear anything particularly original on this recording, either.

D-.

https://mewithoutyou.bandcamp.com/album/a-b-life

so, what am i expecting out of a survey of mewithoutyou?

i again had absolutely no interest in this when it was coming out around the early 00s. i mean, i had some vague understanding of what was then contemporary hardcore, but i just wasn't into it and couldn't have had much of a conversation around it besides articulating a broad, general dislike of the form. i remember asking around for punk that was specifically political in nature and getting blank stares like i was missing the plot. i mean, that was partly why i liked post-rock a bit better - i could actually relate to the subject matter. these emo kids were speaking greek; i didn't understand their perspectives very well. the people i was around were more into nu metal and glam rock, as well, so the exposure i had through them was on the other side of the genre.

i don't expect that i would have liked them much at the time if i knew they were there, but i may have had a better opinion of them than the stuff i was exposed to. as it is, though, i wasn't around the kind of people that were into this...and wasn't into it myself, either.

so, despite being alive and of age at the time, my understanding of mewithoutyou is mostly through a back rec via bands like la dispute, which i've been able to connect with more readily.

that said, i don't actually expect these records to sound like la dispute, or for me to connect with them on the same level; i've surveyed this before, and not come to that conclusion. rather, i expect to find them mildly interesting, but ultimately be turned away by the same things that turned me away from most hardcore of the period. it's probably going to be a string of Cs, and maybe a few weak Bs.

i don't know if i'm going to like them more or less as they mature. we'll find out.

so, where does that leave the new cursive record, really?

it actually leaves it near the top of the pile.

Bs: decent records: {vitriola, happy hollow}
Cs: unrealized potential: {domestica, ugly organ, i am gemini}
Fs, Ds: boring emo: {1,2,6}

it's going to warm up this weekend. finally...

this is at least on the right side of the partition of their discography (it's not boring, mopey emo), but it kind of careens between being overly cheesy and being borderline psychotic. they just can't seem to win, eh?

i'd like this to be better than it is. really. but it isn't.

C+.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-gemini

this is a return to the boring emo sound that defined their earliest records. and, he's trying to sing again, too. yuck.

if they had done this while attempting to retain some of the more adventurous tendencies of the then most recent discs, i could maybe give them a bit of slack. but, they aren't even really doing that, it's just straight regression.

so, this gets an F for turtling or ostriching or however you want to say it.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/mama-im-swollen

well, ok. i'm listening to this a bit more, and religion and music is...

i was raised as an atheist, but i went to a catholic school, and i know people that struggled with faith, and either eventually discarded it or fell back into it. i never had such a struggle; i was a self-identifying, conscious atheist by the time i turned 10, and i've never had any serious doubts about it.

there was certainly a time when i was a kid where i identified with specifically anti-religious music, but it was on an anti-authoritarian basis and not a question of struggling with a faith that i've never had. i can still enjoy a good fuck you to religion; i'm not any less anti-authoritarian, and not any less interested in poking fingers in the eyes of religious types. i still enjoy watching them squirm. but, nowadays, i'd rather listen to something like bad religion than something like nine inch nails; i'm more into the elevation of reason than the denigration of faith, even if i think there's a place in my playlist for both.

i've been through this with other records as well. i just don't have all of this catholic guilt and repression. but, like i say, i get it, abstractly. so, i'll just say that it would follow that some of the tracks on here are more interesting to me than others.

that last cursive record reminds me a little of this old cop shoot cop record.

this is a much more dynamic, playful sound but it's still just barely interesting. in some sense, they've just replaced the cello with the horns, kind of confirming that it was a gimmick to begin with. but, the shift from the cello to the horns comes with a shift in tonality and song structure from dourness and sterility towards a more fun, almost ragtime kind of sound. it suits them better, but they're still hemmed in by a disinterest or inability in taking it to the next level of abstraction and intensity.

again: i'm not going to spend any time deconstructing the lyrics because it's not musically dynamic enough to pull me in. it's getting closer to being able to do it, though.

B.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/happy-hollow

so, there's the cello - and this is supposed to be the high point.

what was i listening to in mid-2003? mostly constellation records stuff, and a bunch of dying rock bands from the 80s and 90s. i'd pretty much had it with rock music at the time. i would have been open to a good punk or grunge band if i stumbled upon it, but the minimal exposure i had to the term 'emo' did not generate much interest in me. i thought it was trash, as a form. you would have been more likely to find me at a jazz festival than an emo concert. if anybody mentioned cursive to me at the time, i don't remember it. i didn't go back and try to sort through this stuff for the first time until stuff like la dispute and defeater started coming out, which piqued my interest in the form for the first time since junior high school, which was roughly fifteen years earlier.

so, my memory of this record is precisely zero: i don't remember it at all. i wasn't remotely into this kind of music, at the time...

i'm going to give it a careful listen, but my first impression is that it sounds like larks' tongue in aspic watered down for the masses in the sense that it's opaque and sort of ugly, but not in a complicated or abstract enough way to be interesting. it's like weezer doing crimson covers, which is not a very exciting prospect.

i'll give it at least two listens, though. promise.

.....and.....

no. it's a boring C. at best.

they have enough instruments on stage at this point to be doing something more interesting than this, but they just aren't doing it. the cellist is just hanging out, really. it's better in the parts where it's referencing the cure, but this term i previously used - pedestrian - remains the best description of it.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/the-ugly-organ-2

maybe he started screaming because he came to terms with the fact that he can't sing worth fucking shit. or, maybe it was catalyzed by the replacement of the guitarist. i dunno.

it's another baby step overall in terms of being interesting, but it still broadly sucks. it might have been better if pared down to an ep....

that said, i'm not going to deconstruct the lyrics. i don't have the time; it's not interesting enough to hook me.

but, if the first record was an F and the second was a D-, they at least eek out a weak C- for the first time, here.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/domestica

the vocals on this one are worse than the vocals on the last one, but the song structures are a little more interesting. it would probably be better as an instrumental recording.

i'm not going to make it very far if these vocals don't ease up. it just really sounds like autism; and, i don't mean that as an insult or in a derogatory way, it's just a literal description - the slur on the totally tone-deaf vocals is what an autistic person sounds like. the thing is that i don't thing the guy is actually autistic.

i don't know the ultimate origin of the style, but it was widely copied in this period, and in fact still is. maybe the initial progenitor actually was autistic. i don't know. i know this vocal style needs to die...

yeah. no. i'm at track 5 again and i think i'm done. it's a baby step in terms of composition, even if the vocals are worse; even as an instrumental, this would be pretty weak.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/the-storms-of-early-summer-semantics-of-song-remastered