News

Hello Fellow Sorry Staters! It’s been a week or two since I have written a blurb on what I have been listening to. Between family vacations and being sick I have not had a whole lot of listening time to check out new stuff, so I figured this week I would just chat about something familiar to me and something you may not know about.

In the early 90s I went to church. A lot of church. Every Sunday morning and Sunday night and let’s not forgot youth group on Wednesdays! Since then, I have grown out of religion as a whole. Being the natural rebellious teenager I was, I always tried to seek out something different. My other brother was playing in bands with friends in high school and he would always let me in on what he was listening to. My parents were also selective about what music we could listen to, so when I discovered Tooth and Nail records, I thought I hit a gold mine. I bought everything that label put out for years. One band stood out to me so much because they differed from bands like Mxpx and Slick Shoes that were out on the label at that time. They were called Ninety Pound Wuss.

Like a lot of the bands on Tooth and Nail at the time, they were from the Seattle area but more specifically they were from Port Angeles, Washington and formed in 1994. Their first full length was 19 tracks of pure non stop thrashy fast punk with some sprinkles of poppy riffs to round it out. Lyrically, the record was about the persecution they faced being hardcore punk in the christian music scene, which at the time I could totally relate to. They only made 3 records, all equally good, but after the first record they started leaning toward post-punk and started to sound like the Blood Brothers.

I unfortunately only saw them once when they toured in the early 2000s at the Christian club in my hometown called “His Place” (lol), and from what I remember it was just me and about 5 of my friends that they played to. I wanted to talk about them in my pick this week because their records are very expensive and very hard to find. I still have my original cassette tape and CD and recently got a call from my brothers and they found a copy of the self titled record and plan to give it to me for my birthday this weekend!

If you are curious about the world of mixing religion and punk rock, check out these bands: Officer Negative, Headnoise, Crashdog, Overcome and No Innocent Victim. Cheers! Until next week!

What’s up Sorry State readers, I hope everyone has had a nice week. Last week here in Raleigh we had two great shows: one with Meat House, Shaved Ape, and Bloodstains which was a bunch of fun, and the other show featured Ultimate Disaster and SLANT all the way from South Korea who tore the roof off the building. Always a good week when you get to go to two ragers. Anyways, it feels like forever since I’ve written anything, especially about music cause last month I was just writing about movies to celebrate Halloween. It’s only right that I come back with a banger, Rupa’s Disco Jazz, put out by the Numero Group. Daniel had mentioned this record way earlier this year and I remember checking it out when he did and thought to myself “man this is amazing!” I’m focusing on the 7” release today which features Moja Bhari Moja on the A-side and East West Shuffle on the B-side. The album was originally released in 1982 in India and features a variety of different players. There’s a quote on the back that says, “The first objective of this album was to create vibrant, new dance music with universal appeal” and I think they definitely achieved their goal. If this record starts playing and you’re not at least bopping your head along to it, you must be a real stick in the mud. I am especially a fan of the B-side; it has this bounce to the beat that’s very infectious. It’s got everything: some groove, funk, a killer bass line, and sarod and tablas! What more could you ask for? Definitely give this one a spin if you haven’t checked it out yet.

Hello and thanks for reading. At last, we have our copies of the brand-new DESTRUCT / LIFE split 12” on Desolate! Japan’s LIFE has been a band since the 90s and they have released stuff pretty consistently since. I find it super impressive that DESTRUCT did a split with them. DESTRUCT’s tracks are just getting more and more intense with each release if you ask me. While I find it impressive they have a split with LIFE, it is not shocking by any means. DESTRUCT is such a powerhouse, and has continued to turn heads for the last five years. They also seem like a super busy band, with releases following closely one after another. I just saw Noise Room shared a teaser of some new stuff that is being mastered there as well! So sick. OK, I have no time at all unfortunately, so this is it for today. Don’t sleep on this record. If you don’t like splits, wake up. Cheers and thanks to everyone for your support!

Work has really been kicking my ass lately. We’ve been short-staffed at SSR for a variety of reasons, and it feels like lately I do nothing but work work work. I keep at it every night until I’m totally exhausted, and when I finally get home, I’m so shellshocked that I just want to curl up with a book and enjoy the silence. Here are a couple I’ve been spending time with recently.

Julian Cope: Head On / Repossessed (2000)

Julian Cope is probably most famous as the frontman of the post-punk band the Teardrop Explodes, though I know him mostly as a music critic and historian. I’ve since gone back and checked out Kilimanjaro and enjoyed it, but what lodged Cope’s name in my memory is his pair of books—Krautrocksampler and Japrocksampler—that, respectively, offered capsule histories and buying / listening guides for the 70s German progressive music and 70s Japanese rock scenes. The music in those books totally blew my mind and I’m forever thankful to Cope for helping me to appreciate Amon Düül II’s Yeti and Speed, Glue, & Shinki’s Eve, but his writing is strong enough to keep me interested even with subjects I’m less attached to. This book collects both of Cope’s memoirs, with Head On covering his childhood, participation in the original Liverpool punk scene, and the founding and dissolution of the Teardrop Explodes, while Repossessed picks up where Head On left off, carrying you through the rest of the eighties as Cope establishes a solo music career and grows ever more interested in the antiquarianism that seems to have occupied much of his life since. (The bits about Cope finding his inner collector of vintage toys are particularly interesting.) Cope has done his share of drugs, Herculean amounts of psychedelics in particular, and you’d be silly to take his account of the events he describes in these books as the gospel truth. But his interpretation is so hilariously cracked, so hyperactively preoccupied with a search for deeper meaning, that I couldn’t put this book down.

Tony Wilson: 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You (2002)

I put this book on my reading list years ago, apparently not realizing what it was, and a few weeks ago I finally picked up a copy and read it. I’d assumed this was an autobiography by Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, but that’s not precisely what it is. The author is Tony Wilson, but it’s actually a novelization of the 24 Hour Party People movie, which was itself based on Tony’s real life and story as the founder of Factory. So it’s not Wilson telling you his story, it’s Wilson adapting and expanding on the story someone else came up with based on their interpretation of what may or may not have actually happened. How’s that for post-modern? This one took a little while to grab me. I haven’t watched the 24 Hour Party People film in years, but I remember it well enough, and the early chapters at least hew pretty close. I kept wondering to myself, “why the fuck am I reading this?,” particularly since I find Wilson’s prose often pretentious and over-wrought. But I’m glad I stuck with it, as there were some gems and some LOL moments, and it felt a little deeper than the film, which flew through the years at an insane clip. I wouldn’t go out of my way to pick this up, but if you find a cheap used copy or something it’s an enjoyable enough read.

Mickey Leigh: I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Punk Rock Family Memoir (2010)

My friend Seth has been telling me about this book for years (and it’s been on my reading list since then), but I finally dug into this memoir by Joey Ramone’s brother Mickey Leigh. I’d also read Marky Ramone’s memoir Punk Rock Blitzkrieg a few weeks ago, so I’ve been steeped in the Ramones universe and I’m struck by how different that world looks from all its various angles. Both Marky’s and Mickey’s books focus on the band’s shifting power dynamics, and while I thought Marky’s analysis of what transpired during his era of the band was sensitive and thoughtful, Mickey’s book peels back several more layers of the onion. The 80s and 90s eras of the Ramones are much better documented, but Mickey sheds a lot of light on the band’s early days. Tommy Ramone’s story had always intrigued me; I always wondered why he left the band and how he transitioned from being a Ramone into being a producer, and I learned a lot about that from this book. Leigh also charts Joey’s mental state from childhood throughout his whole life, and his perspective on Joey’s OCD and other struggles is very three-dimensional and sensitive. Mostly, though, what stands out about I Slept with Joey Ramone is how well it’s written. Particularly coming from the more mannered prose of Julian Cope and Tony Wilson, Leigh’s writing feels crystal clear and tightly focused, with enough detail to make scenes come alive without getting bogged down in purple prose. It’s just good, journalistic-type writing, and when you pair that with a story about something I’m already interested in, you have one addictive book.

Rudimentary Peni: Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric 12” (Sealed Records) Sealed Records’ Rudimentary Peni reissue campaign arrives at Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric, the band’s third album from 1995, regarded by many as the strangest and most difficult record in the band’s catalog. Never having been able to locate a vinyl copy of Pope Adrian in my twenty-five years of Rudimentary Peni fandom, it’s the Rudi P record I’ve spent the least time with, and consequently I was looking forward to this opportunity to appreciate the full artwork and packaging alongside a deeper dive into its music. The lore is that Pope Adrian was conceived during one of Nick Blinko’s most severe bouts of delusion, when he believed he literally was the pontiff from the album’s title. While Blinko’s mental state clearly colors his music and artwork throughout his career, there’s something unique about the way Pope Adrian engages with the landscape Rudimentary Peni’s music inhabits. Repetition is one of the key themes on the album, and the way Pope Adrian leans on repetitive motifs makes it a unique entry in the band’s canon. There’s a looped chant of “Popus Adrianus” that runs through their entire album, not only between the songs but right through the mix, and while you can occasionally tune it out and focus on something else, it’s always there and impossible to ignore for more than a few seconds at a time. The songs themselves are also extremely repetitive, totally hostile to the musical development or resolution upon which all pop music (punk included) is based. Most songs are just one or two parts repeated over and over, with perhaps some slight improvisation on the theme, but never in any sort of clear direction. While the droning repetition might be difficult for some hardcore punk fans to acclimate to, Pope Adrian’s music is some of Rudimentary Peni’s most straightforward and catchiest. The lack of blistering tempos (the exception being “Vatican’t City Hearse,” which might actually make you think you’re listening to Death Church for a second) means the memorable riffs and melodies that made Rudimentary Peni’s early music so seminal shine even brighter here, with tracks like “Pogo Pope” and “Regicide Chaz III” being downright hum-able. But to appreciate those moments, you have to accept Rudimentary Peni’s embrace of repetition, letting go of the desire for the cathartic middle eight or breakdown that gives a song its sense of shape. In contrast, Pope Adrian is like a Dali landscape, stretching out to infinity, built on its own inscrutable logic. But despite all this talk about how strange the music is, I never find Pope Adrian difficult to listen to. It’s not like Nick Blinko is abstruse… he’s not attempting to hide what he’s saying or make it difficult for you; it’s just really fucking weird. That’s part of what you come to Rudimentary Peni for, and Pope Adrian delivers in spades. And even if the music is too out there for you to jam on the regular, the packaging on Sealed’s reissue is phenomenal, with a full-size booklet packed with large, beautifully reproduced images of some of Blinko’s most captivating illustrations.

Hello and thanks for reading. I have not been home very much since the last newsletter, which also means I have not been playing many records at all. I do listen to music at work a lot, but it’s usually digital. I can’t even tell you what I was jamming this last week though. My brain is feeling pretty foggy. I unexpectedly woke up today feeling like shit, so I did not come into work. I was going to bail on the newsletter, but on second thought I decided to write about one of the records that was featured in this week’s Hardcore Knockouts. It’s kind of funny to me how bad DESTRUCKTIONS beat VARAUS. I think that DESTRUCKTIONS are really good, but I think that VARAUS’s songs are more memorable to me. Maybe DESTRUCKTIONS is more popular because they were active after the 80s? They’ve also had more reissues. There’s no particular reason why I paired them together for the match, except that I recently got the VARAUS record and was looking for another Finnish 12” to put them against. I’ve had the DESTRUCKTIONS LP for a long time and it really was not that hard to find when compared to other Finnish records. VARAUS seems to be extremely rare. I’ve only ever seen one in person, and that was literally in Finland when we went on tour earlier this year. It’s ironic this record is so rare because I too commonly hear the story of someone finding their copy for something like $15 or even $2, but of course this is a very long time ago, before the internet started dictated the going rate for records. Regardless, it’s crazy to think about something so rare going for so cheap.

I should’ve taken the time to do some proper nerding before writing, but I didn’t plan for this staff pick. I think the first pressing of the 12” had 200 copies and the repress in this poster sleeve had 150. I’m really not sure, but Finnish punk/hardcore bands often pressed stuff in small quantities back in the 80s. I think their 7” had 300 copies pressed. Anyway, I think I’m just explaining how rare it is in my head, since it was the most expensive record I have ever bought! Haha. TAMPERE SS would probably be around the same I paid on this one, but that was a not-so-straightforward deal with cash and trade. If I can remember right, Anarkist Attack was the most expensive record I ever bought for a really long time. I remember when the most I’d spend on a record was $50. That amount went up to around $100 fairly quickly, and I feel like it hovered there for years. It’s hard to remember, but I think the SVART FRAMTID or maybe BANNLYST 7” was the first record I ever spent more than $100 on. After that, it was all downhill. Or uphill? Haha.

I am no longer in denial of being a collector, but I like to think that I’m not as pretentious or snobby as many of those I encounter on the internet. I always pick up a good reissue, mail order from labels I wanna support, and of course I buy records from bands at gigs. The one thing about an 80s pressing of a record, though, is that like nine times out of ten it is gonna sound so damn good. I know this isn’t always the case, especially when the recording wasn’t the greatest. The interesting thing about tons of Finnish hardcore records is that they were recorded with professional engineers. If you didn’t know, tons of bands would be working with engineers who hated them and who obviously hated their music. Typically, bands could afford just enough time to record one take of each song. Regardless of the conflicts these bands would encounter during record sessions, the results were phenomenal. I remember reading about the original VARAUS 12” online, and how bad the sound was. Not that the band was recorded poorly necessarily, but that tape they used was shit or something. In the Svart reissue of the 000 7”, they explained a similar situation they had when they recorded. The engineer didn’t give a shit about them and recorded them on a heavily used tape. The volume is kinda all over the place, and even falls out at times on the original pressing of that record.

The VARAUS 12” material was reissued on a discography CD in the 90s and later on LP in the 2000s. I’m pretty sure the vinyl version was just made from the CD master, since it’s the same track list. The unfortunate thing about the reissues is that they are missing three songs from the original 12”. I had read that when they were mastering the audio for the reissue, they decided these tracks were no longer usable. Obviously, it couldn’t be that bad since the reissue sounds really good and I have heard the rip on YouTube, but I was really curious what to expect when it came to the real deal. It felt pretty crazy to open up the parcel. I actually felt pretty crazy for days after, knowing this record was now tucked away in my shelves. I don’t think that feeling has disappeared either, really. It was packed like mad, which I really appreciated of course. The dude said it was NM, and NM it was indeed. I laid the needle down and the speakers were overwhelmed with that fuzzy VARAUS guitar tone.

When it came to the sound stuff I read about, it was apparent once I was able to play the original. The recording is good, and the pressing sounds nice. It’s not like the 000 7”. It’s not apparent immediately, but on a few songs you can actually hear another band in the background! I think I heard harmonica? Not really sure, but there’s something going on there, haha. I can hear some Finnish folk-type singing here and there too. This stuff doesn’t just happen between songs, but even between some quiet parts. I’m probably making it sound a lot worse than it really is, cos the record does sound really good and you gotta be paying attention to catch this stuff, but it is certainly there. It’s silly to think about some Finnish folk stuff being recorded on this tape before some raw hardcore shit like VARAUS. It also makes me wonder what the sound source for the reissue was, cos maybe they didn’t even have the original tape anymore? I’m gunna have to get back on that one. Alright that’s it for the week. Thanks for reading. And thanks A TON to all of those who bought records off me last month so I could pay off this sucker!!

Hi there Sorry Staters. Here we are with a newsletter coming out on the eve of the US election. Is this the eve of destruction or the beginning of a new era of hope and positivity? I’m feeling election anxiety and fear for the future. As a legal resident but non-citizen (yet) of the United States, I unfortunately do not have the right to vote, although I get to pay taxes. Let’s hope that enough of the people that can vote do and the world can finally be rid of the orange scum that has been poisoning our lives for the last ten years or so.

I missed the deadline for the Halloween week newsletter last time out, but am writing this on Halloween day here at the store, where Jeff has a custom themed video playlist set up with a TV screen on the counter so customers can shop and watch and listen to cool horror videos. Nice. For the record, my favorite horror character is Dracula. I like the Hammer House Of Horror films best, but also love horror comedies like Shaun Of The Dead and Young Frankenstein.

For my pick this week I’d like to recommend The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy: Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury album released in 1992. I’ve been listening to it recently, inspired by the current political and social landscape and because we recently had a used copy come through the store. What a great mix of hip-hop and rock this record is. Perhaps you’ll remember the MTV “hit” Television, The Drug Of The Nation, which continued from where Gil Scott-Heron left off with his The Revolution Will Not Be Televised from two decades previously. Both songs were ahead of their time and stand up equally today as they did when first recorded.

Heroes consisted of Michael Franti and Rono Tse, who formed after the end of their previous group the Beatnigs, which were an experimental industrial group who also fused rock with hip-hop. Michael Franti, of course, became more widely known with his next band, Spearhead.

Undoubtedly, the brilliant Television track stands out as a highlight of the album, a song they brought with them from The Beatnigs, but they cover other social and political issues across the other cuts on the record. Racial identity and sexual identity are subjects tackled and done well. Many people have written that they were inspired and changed after hearing these songs. I’ve read that college professors would quote lyrics from the album to demonstrate a point that they were trying to get across to their students. Certainly, one could still learn a lot from playing this album. Music, be it hip-hop or punk or whatever else, can be like a newspaper or a textbook teaching us and informing us. As a dumb white kid coming up during this era, I can certainly vouch for the educational benefit of listening to records like this.

There is also a cover on the album. A nice working of Dead Kennedys’ California Über Alles updated to reference the then Governor of California Pete Wilson. Added to some copies of the album was an additional one sided 12” with the track Rock The Vote (Exercise Your Rights), which was to encourage voter turnout in the 1992 elections. It’s a bangin’ cut and hopefully influenced some would-be voters. I’m not sure whether the track targeted the US elections or worldwide, but the 12” and vinyl editions of the album only appeared in the UK and Europe. As far as I can tell, there is no US vinyl pressing. Although I remember buying the album on CD when it came out, I can’t recall hearing the Rock The Vote track until I found a vinyl copy years later.

The group, although being critically well received, didn’t break through to big commercial heights, although as mentioned before, the track Television was a minor hit. During this period, they toured with a lot of big groups and opened for U2 on their Zoo TV tour and featured prominently. They also opened for Nirvana and Rage Against The Machine.

Fans of guitarist Charlie Hunter might know that he got his professional start with the group. He’s featured on the album and played for a while in their touring band before moving on to his own projects.

If you dig sample based hip-hop from the golden age with a production value like the Bomb Squad or Public Enemy mixed with Alternative Tentacles vibes, then this album will be right up your street. If you aren’t already familiar, of course. Even if you are familiar, now is a good time to pull this one off the shelf and give it a spin or to dial it up on your preferred streaming platform. I’ve added a couple of YouTube links there for you to check out and will leave you with a great clip taken from the Save Our Cities Rally in Washington, D.C. back in 1992, which has the group play Rock The Vote, California Uber Alles and Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury, another key cut from the album. Click here to watch that.

Alright, that’s all from me. The rest of the world, please pray for us all over here in America that our national nightmare ends this Tuesday. Probably going to be a shit show, but wish us luck anyway.

Cheers - Dom

What’s up Sorry Staters?

As I’m writing this, my bubbling anxiety is taking a physical toll as I prepare to go out of town. But it’s the good kind of anxiousness. This happens to me every time I get ready to go on tour. Meat House is getting amped up to hit the road with Bloodstains from California. Shaved Ape, which is really just one pissed off primate backed up by us Meaty boys, will also be in tow. Just 5 gigs, but I’m sure they’ll be killer. I’m sure many of you have already scooped a copy of Bloodstains’ debut LP. They’re fucking great, and I’m stoked for them to rock the East Coast. First show of tour kicks off in NYC on November 6th! Hope to see you fuckers there.

I’ll keep what’s going on with me on the personal front brief, but I did wanna mention how much fun the Halloween cover show was here in Raleigh a few nights ago. Scarecrow all dressing up and overcompensating with our over-extended devil locks, attempting our best jab at classic-era Misfits, and having a bunch of friends up front shouting along to the songs made it a night to remember. I think we raised a good chunk of money to donate toward disaster relief in Western North Carolina, so big kudos to Usman for handling all that.

I wanted to talk this week about the debut LP from Raleigh’s own DE()T. Yep, that’s the word “debt” with the “b” missing, to be clear. DE()T has been playing gigs in the area for quite a few years now. The band contains a bunch of familiar faces who have played in many other bands in Raleigh and elsewhere. The band’s synth player, Matt, now lives in Richmond but is still constantly traveling back and forth to the keep the dedicated “De()t-Heads” happy. Their demo tape came out pre-pandemic, and now in 2024, they finally have a proper release on vinyl! Their LP is entitled Think Of Your Future, released on local label Simp Records. I gotta say, I’ve seen this band live countless times, but dropping the needle on this LP for the first time I was super impressed at how the record sounded sonically and how impressively air-tight the performances are. Stoked that my dawgs threw the fuck down.

How do I describe DE()T? The lazy description would be like “synth/garage/punk”, but I think to just say DE()T sounds like The Spits would be selling the band short. It’s freakier than that. It’s more intense than that. It’s much more interesting than that. The band walks a thin line between incredibly hooky and catchy—even danceable—songwriting, but mixed with a super chaotic, abrasive, and dark atmosphere lurking beneath the surface. The singer/guitarist Colin’s vocal style weaves between a demented, somewhat bored, aloof groan, but then all the sudden he unleashes a totally gnarly throat-scraping snarl. The opening track on the record, “Lambs To The Slaughter,” starts with this cold, low and creepy synth riff. When the track kicks in, the guitar strikes this counterbalance with these sharp, jagged, dissonant stabs that are rhythmically syncopated against the synth part. This sort of dark, pulsating rhythmic feel reminds me of the darker side of post-punk, not unlike Killing Joke. But then, a track like “Why Should It Be Absurd?” amps up the tempo and gets more toward hardcore territory. I guess I might throw out the Screamers as another influence, but DE()T to me is so guitar forward that it’s difficult for me to directly associate them with bands that have a synth as a dominant instrument. The synth just adds another layer to the sonic palette of the band’s sound. Sonically, this record just sounds super crisp, expertly captured by local engineer Missy Thangs, along with Colin from the band mixing, having an extensive recording pedigree himself. Jonah Falco’s job on the mastering also doesn’t hurt.

And I gotta say, as much as I love the catchy synth melodies and the bright guitar work that goes totally off the rails, the rhythm section just kills it on this record. The drumming is so damn tight and in-the-pocket, with slick, heavy-handed, murderously fast snare rolls. Nothing soft or feathery about the drumming at all, totally slammin’, driving with razor sharp rhythmic intensity. And the way the bass pulses on the intro to a song like “Stayin’ In” just sounds so heavy, laying a foundation for the menacing groove while the guitar scratches these dead notes. Seriously, what gets me about DE()T and the way the band constructs their songs more than anything is how they so cleverly arrange each instrument’s role in the band. The method with which each player takes up space in the mix is so expertly thought out. It feels like the band has a seasoned maturity in the way they play off of one another. This record is a unique of blending of interesting, wonky and powerful elements of several corners of the punk genre and is chock full of great songwriting by these dudes.

DE()T also has a follow up 7” EP that I’m pretty sure Sorry State is going to be putting out at some point? That’s all on the horizon. I will take this opportunity to let you know that DE()T is going on tour later this month in mid-November—a run of mostly southern cities, I’m pretty sure. Make sure you catch them if the band is coming to your city!

That’s all I’ve got this week. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week (or probably not since I’ll be on tour),

-Jeff

Last week we were in the lead-up to Halloween, and now that’s behind us. I think both the 45 Grave and Misfits cover sets went pretty well. So many people came up to me and said, “you know, I’d never heard of 45 Grave before, but I checked them out and they’re really good!” Since not as many people knew them, the crowd reaction was a little more muted for that set, but I think the band totally nailed all the tricky bits I was worried about. And then after Black Flag (who were pretty good!) came the Misfits set, and people lost their shit. It was so much fun. I don’t think I’d been to a house show in Raleigh in several years, and even though the crowd at this one was totally different from the last one I went to (whenever that was), it still felt like Raleigh… no cool guys, just a bunch of freaks out to have some fun. I hope we can do it again soon.

I had a lot of stress and anxiety leading up to Halloween. Not that I was nervous it wouldn’t go well, but just because I had so much on my plate that I felt really overwhelmed. There was about half a day on Friday when I felt myself decompress when I realized the gig was behind me, but I’ve been pretty much right back into overwhelmed mode with all the stuff going on at Sorry State. I’ll be sticking close to home for the near future, but much of the rest of the staff has time off planned in the coming weeks, so I’ll have a lot of work to cover their duties while they’re gone, and there never seems to be enough time to get my work done in the first place. That’s life, I guess.

Along with the stress of the Halloween show, I was in some negative headspace earlier in October because I read a Henry Rollins book. I heard him on a bunch of podcasts talking about his new book Stay Fanatic Vol 3, and since it sounded like something I’d find interesting, I started reading the first volume in the series. And while there was a lot of information in there I found interesting, I think it pulled me a little too effectively into Hank’s world, which seems very lonely. While I share his passion for punk’s history, the way he approaches it—at least how it comes across in Stay Fanatic—is so solipsistic that it makes me question my own love for music and why I’m so devoted to it. There are so many things that seem interesting about his life, particularly all the traveling he does and all the money he gets to spend on punk records and memorabilia, but reading about it through the texture of his day-to-day experience left me feeling really down. I’m struggling to articulate why it made me feel bad, but it definitely did.

I suppose Rollins’ book popped into my mind because of what I chose as my staff pick this week: the Fall’s very first album, Live at the Witch Trials. Of course, Rollins is a big fan of the Fall. Also, Rollins constantly revisits his favorite records, which is something I don’t do nearly often enough. The Fall are my favorite band, but it had been months since I listened to them. Another thing that made me think of the Rollins book is that he often notes October is his favorite month, and he particularly likes to revisit his favorite records every October. It was actually November 2 when I spun Live at the Witch Trials, but I get the point. While we’ve had a very warm week here in Raleigh, it still feels like fall with the leaves changing and falling and the days getting noticeably shorter (particularly after the time change this weekend). During a colder spell a couple of weeks ago I had to get the fireplace going in my living room, and I felt the pull of winter cosiness. It’ll be here before I know it, and I’ll be sitting there wishing it was over.

Anyway, it’s nice to listen to one of your favorite records during a transitional time like this. While the world is changing around you, your favorite records remind you of who you are. I kind of forgot—or at least lost touch with—how much I love the Fall until I blasted the record. But when I listen to the brilliant closing passage of “Frightened,” the sinister bass line of “Rebellious Jukebox,” the relentless clatter of “No Xmas for John Quays,” and the ethereal poetry of “Live at the Witch Trials,” it hits me somewhere deep. This is what I love. This is who I am.

Naked Roommate: Pass the Loofah 12” (Trouble in Mind Records) Pass the Loofah is the second proper album from this Bay Area group. Naked Roommate originally spun off from a band called the World, whose 2019 record Reddish remains one of my most-played records of the 2010s. While the World was an earthy, organic-sounding group with deep sonic roots in the early Rough Trade Records discography, Naked Roommate’s sound leans into early 80s electronic beats and synthesizer pulses, albeit still laced with the irreverent lyricism, forward-thinking artistry, and comfy DIY aesthetic the World leaned on. But what strikes me most about Pass the Loofah isn’t the aesthetic, but the craftsmanship and artistry I hear on the album. So much music today is made for short attention spans and instant disposal, focusing too much on surface-level aesthetics rather than crafting songs with strong bones. Pass the Loofah bucks this trend with a substantial 41-minute runtime that takes the listener through a range of unique landscapes, an epic journey rather than a toe dipped into a diluted, lukewarm bath. For me, one of Naked Roommate’s strengths is that they never decide whether they’re a dance band, a pop group, or an art project. Tracks like “No Kicker” and “Bus” have tough, danceable rhythms from the 99 Records / ESG school, but while the beats take center stage, the songs are stacked with memorable hooks, like the chorus refrain of “we take the bus” or “Reasons Why,” where the chorus of “that’s whyyyyyyyyy… I looooooove you” cleverly subverts the unromantic mundanity in the verse imagery. And these pop moments go down all the more smoothly because they’re cut with so much art school roughage. A standout in this vein is “Successful Friend,” a funky, Talking Heads-esque track with great lyrics, my favorite being “among your many successes (…) is having your designs printed on pajamas across the world!,” a line that’s bound to bring a smile to the face of any Uranium Club or Cool Greenhouse fan. Even further out are the album’s three instrumental tracks—including the Neu!-ish “Ducky & Viv” and the electric-era Miles Davis-channeling “G-Y pt. 2”—which are among my favorite on the album. There’s so much variety on Pass the Loofah, and not only does nothing feel redundant, but as you’re listening the record seems to spiral ever-upward, each song reaching new heights. The experience culminates with “I Can’t Be Found,” a soft landing that reminds me of the way Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets closes with its title track. Typically, a good record is one I want to play again as soon as it’s over, but Pass the Loofah’s wider scope and ambition leave me wanting to sit in silence and process what I’ve heard, a sign that I’ve consumed a substantial piece of art rather than just a bunch of instantly gratifying empty musical calories.