Author: Bottle

Tonight’s album is a special request from my friend Shauna Conway, and wow is it gorgeous.

Mon Rovîa (more specifically “monroviaboy”) is the artist, and his new EP Act 3: The Dying of Self is the album. Obviously we’re also going to listen to Acts 1 and 2 as well, but longtime readers will know how much I adore listening to things out of order. I’m also a big fan of explaining the artistic context up front so that we never have to play the pseudo-musicological guessing game of Artistic Intent.

Janjay Lowe was adopted by Christian missionaries during the Liberian Civil War (technically 2 by proxy civil wars stretching from 1989 to 2003), now lives in Tennessee, says his primary musical influences are Bon Iver and Vampire Weekend, and plays Ukulele. I’m already hooked.

You know Araminta Ross as Harriet Tubman, adopting her mother’s name when she married John Tubman. That’s the concept we’re delving into with Act 3: The Dying of Self, a complex, multi-layed story about love turning you into a new person. Where you are is all that’s real. Sometimes you have to press pause to fully realize you’re a new person watching that Showtime “unlikely buddy cop” drama about the corrupt 1990s Boston criminal justice system, City on a Hill.

No, that can’t be right, he’s probably referring to the 1630 John Winthrop sermon about “a society that is a model of virtue and excellence,” to quote google’s AI overlord [snap] I mean overview. Pardon my vernacular, but damn is this good, both musically and intellectually. Describing it all as Ukulele arpeggios with lush ambient orchestral accompaniment doesn’t do it any justice at all. Now we absolutely have to hear the trilogy from the top.

I’ll put links at the end, but if you want to search them out before reading my reaction, here are the EPs:

Act 1: The Wandering
Act 2: Trials
Act 3: The Dying of Self

We start with a contemplation of loneliness and a hope for escape, move through the realization that we can live another life, and ultimately see that it is not our need to be loved, but our ability to love, that defines us. Our hearts were made to cross the line. I’m on record saying Des’ree didn’t do that message justice (even though i like her very much) in her Pop Yoga style, and now i can without hesitation suggest Mon Rovîa instead.

Bon Iver meets Vampire Weekend indeed, ethereal orchestral ambience supporting an incredibly well read and well understood melange of cultural/historical metaphor. A trilogy of EPs that reward both casual listening and deep Google searching is right up every alley I love to frequent. I can’t recommend Mon Rovîa highly enough, and I probably never would have stumbled across his music on my own without Shauna’s recommendation. Where you are is all that’s real, and where I am right now is deeply immersed in audio gorgeousness.

Links:
YouTube
Act 1:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nnHBjRauxAyTRvjwtOCFzEv48s91BXQW0&si=9tYxFnuMg716hFUU

Act 2:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nqovR7mH9LZ4mn4cA3IE_5PB8IPoU2j18&si=O3hFtwuGK1KVCEvF

Act 3:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nh3Ievm_akuf_1OAoRC3JlMviO1G0E1wI&si=vB8U9LJnWh12gFdO

Act 3 on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/77hndvEyvuHleU1AXdHIVC

Do you like crusty, gargly, deathcore with random acoustic interludes that sounds like it was recorded by meth addicts in the room next door at a terrifying downtown extended stay motel? I know I do, and that’s why I’m sharing Red Horse by Early Graves with you today.

They are sadly no longer a band, calling it quits back in 2021, but that in no way means you can’t listen to them or buy my copy for the unreasonably reasonable price of 15. Buy a couple more to save on shipping while you’re at it.

Call me an elitist snob, but I don’t think extreme metal should sound good or well produced. Played really well, sure, but shimmeringly open and polished to a chrome shine? He’ll no, real metal should sound like you recorded it with an actual boom box tape recorder and a non-musical friend to cup the mic to prevent clipping. Bonus points for making me feel like i need a tetanus shot and strong antibiotics after listening to it.

As for the concept of Red Horse, I’m gonna have to go with that being the horse War rode in on for this particular apocalypse. The disambiguitive alternatives are some type of sucker fish, or an overly inquisitive (in the searching for gossip sense) native American. Totally doubt the protagonist here is a Rapid Engineering Deployable Heavy Operations Repair Squadron Engineer, but the vocals aren’t exactly crystal clear on first listen, so who knows?The acoustics and guitar solos are, though, like a chilly, haunting wind blowing across a field filled with the stench of dead bodies and gunpowder.

It’s good, is what i’m saying. It sounds exactly like what you would expect Red Horse by Early Graves to sound like, and i don’t think you can reasonably ask for more than that.

Early Graves – Red Horse LP

Black Vinyl

$15.00

Shop now

Did you know Billy Joel retired from recorded music in 2001 with an album of “classical” Piano pieces? He did, and it’s actually lovely.

Now, if your aesthetics run something along the lines of “Pop Stars are terrible composers no matter how lovely their pieces are,” then you obviously won’t like it. From a different perspective, if your litmus test is slipping in one of these pieces into your local NPR classical playlist to see if anyone suspects it was written by Billy Joel, then you also won’t care very much because no, nothing about this is Piano Man or any form of Rock & Roll to anyone. If, however, you don’t keep the gate padlocked and think “interesting, let’s check out Billy Joel’s classical Piano album,” then i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it isn’t even remotely terrible. Not surprising really, Billy Joel does have some passing familiarity with how Pianos work, and that’s really all anyone needs to get started.

Now let’s be Bottle honest here, this is actually Hyung-Ki (Richard) Joo’s album, so whether or not you’re predisposed toward or against Billy Joel writing music, Joo certainly doesn’t present them as anything less than a completely normal assortment of mid-Romantic chamber music pieces that happen to be written by Billy Joel. That’s the source of intellectual friction, assuming you feel it. If you approach this as a Billy Joel album it will make absolutely no sense. If however you consider the possibility that these aren’t the only 12 serious piano pieces Billy Joel ever wrote, instead merely the ones Joo wanted to record on HIS album, then there’s really no excuse for not loving it. He does them all the musical justice you could hope for. Other piano players wanted him to write more serious pieces for them, but Billy Joel consistently declined.

No, he’s no Chopin or Liszt, but good gravy he shouldn’t be. He should just be himself: observent, witty, ready to throw away pretense and say what he really means, musically speaking. Nothing crazy going on here, the Waltzes are waltzes, the Star Crossed Suite is nice, the Invention is not technically an actual invention, but that’s a super nit-picky criticism on my part. It’s all totally listenable, and i just so happen to have a copy on CD for sale if you’re interested.

How’s this for coincidence? After a terrible week at work, things breaking around the house, finding my few remaining chickens had been murdered by probably another raccoon, and a complete waste of a Saturday morning taking Ethan’s car to a mechanic to schedule taking his car to a mechanic next Wednesday, Green Day has a new album called Saviors. Imma be real not happy if it’s terrible. But first i need to replace the whole house water filter…

… well shit, the old one was 3/4 but the new one uses 1 inch fittings. Guess i’ll eat lunch then go back to town…

… we’ll just skip over all of the interveningly insane aggravation that plagued this particular process (there was plenty) and move on to the part of this cursed day that is Green.

What in the world do we want from a Green Day album in 2024? For starters, i want the single quotes around the title to be sarcastically cautionary: ‘Saviors.’ Actual Punk sensibilities would certainly be welcome, but the last couple albums were not up my alley and i have absolutely no idea what to think now that Billie Joe ditched the Emo makeup and went blonde moptop. Not gonna lie, i preferred them back in the day with colorful hair as, to quote myself, “irascible little snot-rags,” but they’re in their early 50s now…

The cover is pretty inspiring, though. A pre-teen kid doing the “What, me Worry” shrug with a rock in his hand in front of the neighborhood garbage fire in the middle of the street does nothing if not suggest this album will in some way rock, and the completely obnoxious wall poster/lyric mural is, well, completely obnoxious. So far so good so far as i’m concerned.

Holy hell this is fantastic. No, really, like it has absolutely everything. Philosophically, the album explicitly demarcates the era with the death of Bowie, and i think we all can recognize 2016 as a serious turning point toward whatever direction we’re reluctantly facing. Sociopolitically speaking, welcome to the ’20s, please enjoy all the hot garbage as the billionaires bankrupt the US so they can blast off into space and leave us to our miserably lonely existence on this dying planet. Make no mistake, “wanna be my boy/girlfriend?” is a bit of a ridiculously sarcastic sentiment in such a context. No wonder it makes no real difference if you drop me off at Urgent Care or the record store (i’ll obviously take the latter), we’re all going to end up in the insane asylum with robots handing us our daily medication regardless. And yes, in spite of the sincerity with which we beg to be saved, there are no “saviors” to call upon, except of course in the now truly and arcanely old-fashioned sense of aimlessly wandering the outside world and attempting to talk to strangers. 

Musically it has everything all smashed together as well. It’s profoundly Green Day in all their manifestations, but there’s also decidedly Dropkick Murphys style pub anthems, Weezer-esque nerd monologues, a desperate longing to be woken up after September ends, and ultimately an equally desperate plea for all the dicks who so love to play victim to just. shut. up. already.

Again, i don’t know what to make of the new visual image, image is not my thing, and one could feel a bit of over production makes the whole thing feel a little more overweight and sluggish than desirable, but again i remind you we’re all middle-aged burnouts in a garbage world we don’t like, watching our kids have a war with their grandparents, so in a very specific way it’s completely apropos. 

I’m more than satisfied, i’ll put ‘Saviors’ on par with Hackney Diamonds as a shockingly great album from one of the last few great mainstream Rock bands left standing atop the pile of rubble.