U2 – Days of Ash: Most of the protest songs I’ve heard have been about a distant past and often a distant land. Whether it was Fela or The Clash or Woody Guthrie, I was separated by years if not oceans. Even my first experiences with U2 were songs that brought distant conflicts and historic people to a fiery life. I’m disappointed that Days of Ash does not bring fire to the events that are happening right now in my own backyard. Sonically, these songs suffer from the same missteps that have plagued the band for 30 years, and lyrically, vital messages get lost in clunky execution. U2 sparked fire by trusting the audience to understand the meanings of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Pride (in the Name of Love)” without ever mentioning the Troubles or Martin Luther King Jr. I wish they trusted us the same way today.
Cardinals – Masquerade | Dogpark – Corporate Pudding: Masquerade starts strong, dips in the middle, then recovers for the last three tracks. It all started to sound the same by the end of my first pass, but each song began to take on its own personality during my second listen. I ended the album by thinking, “If I ever come back to this for a third listen, it just might claw its way into my heart.” I then put on Dogpark, which sounded so corporate in comparison that I feel confident Masquerade will get that third play.
Dijon – Baby: This is not at all what I was expecting. It reminds me of Sign O’ the Times, not in a derivative way but as if it’s filtered through a millennial who listened to Prince’s masterpiece so many times that it’s in his bones.
Jeff Buckley – Live at Sin-é: We used to frequent Sin-é, our winter jackets piled high amidst the pints of Guinness as the tiny room fell into a hush. On crowded nights, there were no good seats but certainly no bad ones either. I don’t think I ever saw Buckley at Sin-é but thankfully these recordings captured the magic of his early shows and helped the world to hear it.
Joyce Manor – I Used to Go to this Bar | Angel Du$t – Cold 2 the Touch: Neither of these is my thing. It’s kinda neat that Joyce Manor wears their love for The Smiths on their sleeve, but that’s not enough to make me listen again. As for Angel Du$t, I wanted to like them since they’re local to Baltimore and peripheral to Turnstile, but if anything, Cold 2 the Touch reminds me what an anomaly Turnstile is.
Old friends who made it into rotation this week: HAAi: Humanise and Baby, We’re Ascending