Reviews

Born Yesterday

Landowner Consultant LP

People, I am here to tell you how much LANDOWNER absolutely fucking rules. They play tightly-coiled rock music that is in constant motion while appearing to remain perfectly still. It’s a neat trick, this hummingbird punk trip, but these guys got songs too—LANDOWNER nags you with their flitting, arid smart aleck takes. Imagine NOMEANSNO stripped of their exaggerated bluster (to be sure, a large part of that unit’s charm) or the MINUTEMEN time-warped into the 21st century. “Victim Of Redlining” corkscrews into your head with a relentless bass riff, a D. Boon guitar lick, and lyrics spat out like the speaker has been sitting stewing in anticipation of five minutes of facetime. “Swiss Pavilion” dissects city planning with wit and brevity, addressing public spaces, parking concerns and the narrator’s desire to achieve urban nirvana. In the context of punk, LANDOWNER’s music is understated yet contains an undeniable ferocity. Despite its lack of a “sick riff,” “Being Told You’re Wrong” is closer in spirit to MINOR THREAT than a thousand generic straightedge bands. LANDOWNER utilizes clean tones, repetition, and interlocking guitar/bass lines to build spaces that are there to serve a purpose, more tool than structure. On album highlight “This Could Mean Something,” singer/mastermind Dan Shaw is “Talking to the wall / ’Til it starts talking back” as the band veers into US MAPLE territory. “Confrontation” adds synth and shares sympathies with PATOIS COUNSELORS, while “Mystery Solved” sketches an existential story of an IT worker over seven tense minutes. But don’t get it twisted—Consultant is occupied with churning, propulsive music. Hardcore is inverted. Pointillist-brutalism is engaged. Patterns are melodies and whispers are screams. This album leaves invisible bruises like pillowcases filled with bars of soap. A bright spot during these last dark months, no doubt.

Landowner Impressive Almanac LP

One of my faves from last year, LANDOWNER’s Consultant was a true masterclass in smart-aleck punk as performed by young men who had ingested entirely too much coffee. For this re-release, Born Yesterday takes LANDOWNER’s debut cassette and commits it to the permanent record. If you dig LANDOWNER’s other two albums, you will be in familiar territory. Here, LANDOWNER is represented by principal architect Dan Shaw. He not only writes all the songs; on Impressive Almanac, he’s playing everything, including programming the drum machine. Shaw mines MINUTEMEN precision and RUDIMENTARY PENI mania to craft expert punk nervosa. Maybe it’s that drum machine that enables this initial batch of Shaw’s songs to seem even more frantic, sometimes coming off like the FEELIES trying out distortion-free powerviolence. It’s always been a bold move in the punk world to forgo the fuzz, but with LANDOWNER it pays off in dividends. This is head music for speed thinkers. The songs are always tense and driving, but the focus shifts to the greater whole, even as it’s constructed with tiny moments of meticulous concentration. Shaw often sounds like he is urgently whispering to you, and it makes you conscious of how much time you spend getting yelled at by singers (and teachers and bosses and cops). But it’s not all swift kicks and snarky lyrics, as there’s plenty of forceful yet twinkling tracks like “Shimmering Neck” and “Ancestral Home.” “Places to Put Cars” positions itself as the first in several key LANDOWNER songs about parking. Straight up—Shaw is currently one of the best songwriters in punk and this welcome reissue reveals that that has been the case for a while now. 

Landowner Escape the Compound LP

LANDOWNER puts emphasis on the limitations that they place on the creative process of the band, which in turn are clean, distortion-free guitar and bass tones, minimal drumming, and  almost spoken-word vocals. The results are intriguing, albeit somewhat repetitive and dinky.  There are moments to be had, with the diamond in the rough being when the band creates some melodies behind their usual tin march in the song “Thousands of Years in Fast Forward.” Beyond that, I feel that I am listening to early MEAT PUPPETS in 8-bit on a repetitive loop.

Mesh Mesh cassette

Everything about this cassette is absolutely spot-on! A wonderful-sounding, self-recorded five-song tape from Philadelphia, PA. Super catchy, memorable, driving post-punk with just enough artiness peppered in to allow the band the ability to make the tape and sleeve look super cool. If I’m not mistaken, this seems to be a band born out of the smoldering ashes of underrated Philly powerhouse MINT, of whom I was an unbelievably big fan. Gotta have more! These five songs will only hold me over for so long!

Stuck Change is Bad LP

STUCK is a Chicago four-piece that produces an angular brand of post-punk in the vein of bands like ARAB ON RADAR or URANIUM CLUB. As a debut record, this LP is sure to make quite the impression on the DIY circuit. It’s ferocious in sound and unrelenting throughout. Despite the record’s often pummeling riffs, there is still an overarching melancholy that is present on every track. Similar to bands like OMNI and PREOCCUPATIONS, frenetic off-kilter grooves are a constant motif for the band. This is a damn fine experiment in post-punk and noise rock. Not one to miss!

Stuck Freak Frequency LP

I imagine a lot of folks will like this record. The second LP from this Chicago act is eleven tracks of intricate (almost proggy) polyrhythmic post-punk that acts like URANIUM CLUB or VINTAGE CROP have made popular over the past few years. The music is smart, polished, catchy at times, tastefully noisy at others, with lyrics that take aim at contemporary ills while avoiding being too abstract or preachy. There isn’t much here that will rub you the wrong way. But it’s this lack of friction that I have a problem with. To me, this record sounds immaculate to the point of being antiseptic, impressively engineered but soulless. It’s pretty much the same complaint that I’ve lodged against another beloved contemporary art-punk act that I have to imagine is serving as a bit of inspiration here: PARQUET COURTS. Just imagine that band trading their affinity for dance punk and slacker rock for a love of TALKING HEADS and more overt DEVO worship. Again, it’s hard to point to any one thing and go, “That! That’s the thing that’s bad.” It’s more…well, I’ll just say this—every time I try to visualize what a fan of this music looks like, the image that keeps popping in my head is MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in casual wear. Does that make sense? Probably not.