Style: experimental rock, noise rock, post-rock, post-punk, avant-folk (mixed vocals, spoken word)
Recommended for fans of: Sprain, Swans, A Silver Mount Zion, Slint, Maruja, Talk Talk
Country: California, United States
Release date: 1 May 2025

Stitched together out of thousands of hours of studio recordings, Talk Talk’s 1988 painstakingly crafted masterpiece, Spirit of Eden, was a landmark album for post-rock. The band sat in a blacked out room equipped with an oil projector and strobe light twelve hours a day for several months, listening to the same six tracks on repeat; session musicians would jam for hours on end only for Talk Talk to use mere seconds of the result; and the group recorded with a twenty-five person choir only to decide “nah, this ain’t it.” Spirit of Eden is a mosaic, and the tiles are treasures plundered from endless hours of tapes. That the project came together as seamlessly as it did is remarkable—one could not listen to Spirit of Eden for the first time and discern that it was sutured together note by note.

To create their debut record Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”…, Shearling—born out of the recently defunct noisy post-rock band Sprain—have similarly sewn together segments from hundreds of hours of largely improvisational recordings. The result is a single, monolithic (Motherfucker is a single sixty-two minute track) slab of noisy post-rock, avant-folk, and obnoxious British post-punk.

Motherfucker is cinematic in scope, driven by the lyrics which cover a bifurcated narrative—one side about Idaho; the other, Eden. Prosaic yet poetry, the wordsmithing is intriguing with the two stories weaving in and out of each other in a stream-of-consciousness rambling. Occasionally, the poetry touches on brilliant. Highlights include: “And the spots on our Appaloosa¹ hide / Might be mistaken for constellations at night / By obligated stars and half-imagined lines / Splattered intentionally there against the night sky” and the vulgar honesty of “I know I’m naked / Eve’s cunt obscured now / By the branch of a huckleberry bush / Adam’s cock now / So tightly sheathed by a palm frond / Before the mirror I too place a hand over / My little Appaloosa / Tucked silently away in his little stable.” The storyline reads as an allegory for queer shame from growing up in Idaho—the Appaloosa taking on an apotheosized and subverted role². The intricate symbolism is maddeningly dense, however, and some of the literary devices are implemented on the amateurish side, albeit fitting the crazed descent into madness of the storytelling.

The bard of this chaotic story, Alexander Kent, provides an impassioned vocal performance that will make or break the album for many. His first vocal entry after the first 4:00 of instrumental noodling, dissonance, and feedback is an incredibly unpleasant moan. From there, he ranges from dramatic spoken word to the rambled shouting of a madman, from operatic croons to gruff, almost-growled barks and wailing moans. His voice drips with pain—maybe some malice—from years of shame and stigma, and the screams can be cathartic (the intermittent large climaxes are the prime examples), but for an unfortunate portion of the time, Kent’s atonal shouts and vocal deliveries are grating, horrific for listening; he needs to save the aggressive shouts for the crescendos lest they ruin their gravitas… which they certainly do. The godawful singing fits the vulgarity and verisimilitude of the lyrics, but Kent should focus on a more subtle delivery when the music calls for it. 

The music on Motherfucker traverses a diverse range of influences. The record is spliced together from a mix of phone-recorded demos, jams, live recordings, and traditional studio sessions, Shearling carefully attempted to put together the recordings into a cohesive sonic epic à la Talk Talk… emphasis on attempted, though. The songwriting of Motherfucker transcends stream-of-consciousness into the nonsensical. Climaxes materialize out of nowhere; Pharoah Sanders-esque saxophone parts or home-made Gamelan bells are equally as likely to be played by Shearling; ethereal industrial styles reminiscent of Lingua Ignota make their appearances in between the abrasive noise rock; and non-Western drumming styles may transition into glitchy electronic beats. Nary a consideration is made for transitions, either. Even the final five minutes after the final epic climax—the clear high point of the album is from 38-46 minutes as the bass pulsations lead into increasingly potent doses of screaming and crushing instrumentals—feel like they have little thought put into how they fit into the flow, with flatulent, deflated horns and some final random screams closing out the track. Shearling ensure the listener never knows what’s coming next.

Producing an album sewn from several different recording methods proves difficult for Shearling, too. Unlike Spirit of Eden which feels impossible to know was blended together as it was, Motherfucker’s collage never coalesces completely. Whatever instrumental section currently backs the vocals is unduly emphasized in the mix, and the clash of dynamics and styles renders Motherfucker a disappointingly and disjointedly assembled album. Shearling achieved an opus as haywired as it is intense, yet they get lost in the sauce doing so, the songwriting too scatterbrained for its own good. 

Many post-rock albums have suffered from over-ambition in the past forty years, and Motherfucker suffers for it, too; yet, Shearling have certainly achieved something admirable here—granted, over-long, insane, and extremely challenging (and frankly painful). To improve on the deep compositional flaws, Shearling ought to look back to Spirit of Eden. Finally, that Motherfucker is part one of a massive two-part epic must be mentioned. Clearly, Shearling are overflowing with ideas—hundreds of hours of them—so I hope they manage to restrain themselves without losing the ambitious charm so central to their identity.

Recommended tracks: it’s a one track album…
You may also like: Cime, Natural Snow Buildings, Ken Mode, Sumac & Moor Mother
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

Shearling is:
Alexander Kent: Vocals, Engineering, Production, Cover Art Design, Guitar, Synthesizer, Trombone, Samples, Hammered Dulcimer, Banjo, Harmonium, Accordion, Singing Saw, Percussion, Taishogoto, Organ, Glockenspiel, Mellotron, Mandolin, Autoharp, Piano, Bells
Sylvie Simmons: Guitar, Synthesizer, Organ, Hi-C Programming, Samples
With guests:
Wes Nelson: Bass, Upright Bass
Andrew “Hayes” Chanover: Drums
Rachel Kennedy: Vocals
Mate Tulipan: Tenor Saxophone, Trombone
Ian Thompson: Alto Saxophone

1. The state horse of Idaho with a splotchy hindquarters resembling a Dalmatian. ︎
2. I mean, check out that album cover. In the context of this being a queer narrative, it is certainly striking. ︎

The post Review: Shearling – Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”… appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: post-punk, baroque pop (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Beatles, Black Midi, Keller Williams, Steve Reich, Love, The Beach Boys, The Smile
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 4 April 2025

Black Country, New Road’s last studio album Ants from Up There was something of a musical epiphany for me. After years of my music taste trending towards the obscure and impenetrable, I found myself a staunch death metal elitist. Draped in my camo cargo shorts and faded band tees, I’d turn my nose up at any album that didn’t have, by my estimation, the proper amount of blast beats, breakdowns, and harsh vocals. It didn’t matter how well composed or beautiful a piece of music was; all that mattered was whether the music fit into the increasingly narrow definition that I needed it to so as to appease my elitist nature. In all honesty, I think it was a sense of elitism that drove me to write here at The Progressive Subway in the first place, but there’s no quicker way to kill a metal elitist attitude than to expose it to truly great non-metal music. In talking to my fellow writers, I was quickly shown just how wrong I was about metal’s place on the musical throne. Slowly but surely, melody and levity crept their way back into my music taste, and it was then that I found Black Country, New Road.

I discovered Ants from Up There a few months after its release, and I was immediately enraptured by its delicacy. Isaac Wood’s vulnerable timbre, the two-pronged chamber folk/pop attack of violin and saxophone, and the post-punk laden guitar and bass riffs created a mixture entirely foreign to me, and I quaffed it down like a desert-bound traveler in an oasis. While tracks like “Concorde” and “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” merely got stuck in my head, longer cuts “Snow Globes” and “Basketball Shoes” imprinted themselves upon my musical DNA, like drops of blood in water, once released, inextricable. I was a fanatic, and like a fanatic, I researched the source of my fascination. As any BCNR fan now knows, I learned of how Isaac Wood left the band mere days before the album’s release, and thus my worshipping only grew more devout; after all, the best way to make something seem legendary is to ensure it can never be recreated.

Having never toured in support of their newest album, BCNR announced that they would not be looking for a new vocalist, and that vocal duties would instead be split amongst the band’s six other members. I was skeptical of this approach—after all, Isaac Wood, at least in my estimation, was the beating and bleeding heart that made Ants from Up There so visceral. But I’ll be the first to admit that BCNR truly surprised me with 2023’s Live at Bush Hall. Despite coming across more like a playlist than a cohesive album, with each track’s vocals being taken by a different member of the band, Live at Bush Hall showed that Black Country, New Road could in fact exist, at least in some form, without Isaac as frontman. Since then, two years have passed, and BCNR has been hard at work. This time a bona fide studio album was the result; its name is Forever Howlong.

Vocal and songwriting duties have been split between the band’s three female members Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw, and immediately Forever Howlong distinguishes itself from its forerunners. Where Ants from Up There featured a distinctly masculine perspective, not just in the sense of Isaac’s vocals but in his choice of lyrical content, and where Live at Bush Hall seemed to thrive on the juxtaposition between the masculine and feminine perspectives, Forever Howlong narrows in on the feminine. In tracks like “Mary” and “Nancy Tries to Take the Night,” we see our heroines struggle against the trappings of domesticity and rebel when the opportunities arise. But in tracks like “Two Horses” and “For the Cold Country,” we see our same¹ heroines, struggling to get by on their own. This fuzziness of conviction can be found everywhere on the album, from the lyrics and instrumentals to the album’s overall flow.

Instrumentally, Forever Howlong continues to chart the depths of post-punky baroque pop that BCNR has plumbed across its discography. However, Forever Howlong differs from its predecessors primarily in its lack of set piece instrumental sections. The closest we ever get to such a moment is the drone work on “For the Cold Country” and the ostinato work on “Nancy Tries to Take the Night,” but even those moments feel as though they are in service to the vocals. In fact, Forever Howlong is more vocally driven than any other BCNR release. Tracks like “Socks” rely exclusively on vocals as propellant and slide dangerously close to stagnant as the vocals slip tastefully in and out of tune, while other cuts like the title track follow the vocals more literally with bits of diegetic silence. 

Such a strong focus on driving vocals can only succeed when the production is top-notch, and Forever Howlong has that department more than covered. BCNR has never had any production issues, but this new album blows their previous output out of the water. Layers come and go like tissue paper and gossamer, yet in conjunction they become full and succulent. Even as the vocals come in at barely a whisper, there can be heard tinkling piano, noodling sax, and tasteful tom fills, each adding their own frisson-inducing texture. Like any great art pop, this is an album best enjoyed with your fullest attention as each note rings out crystal clear.

The only hangup I have with Forever Howlong is its flow. Each track leading up to the double whammy of “For the Cold Country” and “Nancy Tries to Take the Night” feels like a piece in a carefully constructed staircase of intensity that ultimately climaxes in glorious splendor, and then there’s two tracks that come after. On their own, the title track and “Goodbye (Don’t Tell Me)” are perfectly fine, both continuing the trend of tasteful and delicate art pop that defined the album’s front half, but when viewing them as part of Forever Howlong I can’t help but see them as outliers of an otherwise well defined rising trendline. The real issue here is that I don’t think a simple rearrangement of tracks would have fixed this; had the final two tracks instead been somewhere in the album’s front half, I’d probably instead be complaining that the album was a bit samey with the only major impacts occurring in its final few tracks, and simply removing tracks never feels like a satisfying solution in an already lean album. I understand that not all albums need to climax on their final track, but it is far and away my preference when it comes to album flow. At the end of the day though, this is a minor gripe, and maybe I’ll come to enjoy the two closing tracks with time.

The more I sit and listen to Forever Howlong, and the more I try to compare it to Ants from Up There, the more I realize what a fruitless endeavor that is. Where Live from Bush Hall seemed to be defined by the absence of Isaac Wood, Forever Howlong is its own invention, and in its delicate nooks and crannies, it forges a new identity for Black Country, New Road. As someone who once shut out entire genres in favor of brutality and extremity, it’s albums like these that make me glad I’ve changed my ways. While Forever Howlong may not reach the same mythical heights as Ants from Up There, it carves a new space entirely—one softer, stranger, and equally beautiful.

Recommended tracks: Two Horses, For the Cold Country, Nancy Tries to Take the Night
You may also like: Eunuchs, The Orchestra (For Now), Maruja
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Ninja Tune – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Black Country, New Road is:
– Tyler Hyde (bass, lead vocals)
– Lewis Evans (saxophone, flute, backing vocals)
– Georgia Ellery (violin, mandolin, guitars, backing and lead vocals)
– May Kershaw (keyboards, piano, accordion, backing and lead vocals)
– Charlie Wayne (drums, percussion, banjo, backing vocals)
– Luke Mark (guitars, backing vocals)

1. It’s unclear whether this album is conceptual. BCNR has always toed that line. ︎

The post Review: Black Country, New Road – Forever Howlong appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive rock, art punk, avant-garde rock, post-punk (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Black Midi; Black Country, New Road; Sprain; Black Flag; The Mars Volta; King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Country: United States-CA
Release date: 2 August 2024

Like it or not, progressive rock has drastically changed. Yes, yes, I’m sad that the heydays of Yes, Rush, and Gentle Giant are gone, too, replaced by a truckload of insipid neo-prog. But on a real note, it’s the post-punks who are keeping the genre alive in spirit the previous half-dozen years or so. Influenced by the freaky prog of acts like The Mars Volta, it’s been impossible not to see praise for the new generation—the likes of Black Midi, Black Country, New Road, and Eunuchs—across the internet. The old prog-heads may not always get it, but with new and exciting projects like those aforementioned and now Cime, the creative boundary of rock is still shining brightly. 

From Orange County, Cime have a lot to say on their sophomore album: both in the pointed political lyrics and in the dense musical arrangements. The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble was written in episodes of restless creativity: Monty Cime lived in her friend and collaborator Sean Hoss’s place where she wrote in the closet for sleepless days on end with nothing but a guitar and a “cheap plastic keyboard.” I do not know how one could produce such an ambitious album with this sort of massive instrumentation like that. Like Eunuchs earlier this year, The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble is a post-punk/prog rock album with a menagerie of additional instruments, including a particularly varied and vibrant percussion ensemble. Monty Cime’s feverish inspiration—with I’m sure some sleep-induced side effects—led to the creation of an unusually diverse album with a strong focus on her identity: a Latin swing, noise, punk, and prog along with some jamming improvisations all contribute to an intensely emotional and personal album.

The balance of intricate arrangement and jam-band sensibilities define Cime’s sound, and the latter element of the writing creates a sense of unbridled energy, particularly in climaxes where the classic shouting vocals of post-punk take on their most aggressive mode. Across the album there are dozens of highs due to the loose songwriting—the extended sax solo from around 4:00 and the rippling synthesizers in “A Tranny’s Appeal to Heaven,” the free jazz-informed background to the driving bass riff of “DIYUSA,” and the insane Latin brass sections of halfway through “The North” among them. Essentially all the styles and tracks work in harmony with few exceptions. Brief closer “Goodnight from La Ceiba” is weak after the twenty-five minute epic “The North,” and occasionally the amelodic punk vocals and/or spoken word detract from the more subtle musical moments which don’t demand as much intensity. 

Lyrically, Cime is ardent and charged, delivering solid political commentary with some killer lines. For instance, “Lempira (Or, the Lencan Crusade)” (so titled after Lempira, a Lencan (indigenous group from modern Honduras) ruler who fought against the Spanish) features the uproarious line “The smell of war makes me fucking horny.” On “DIYUSA,” there’s a lyrical switch to Spanish as a reflection of Cime’s roots, and the seamless shift to delivering these lines—including some code-switching at the end of the second stanza—makes it a vocal highlight of the album, especially with their more aggressive harsh quality. Cime writes about her experiences as a trans woman, her nomadic life, being homeless; the album has a gravity that even the more humorous lines like in the ironic nature of “The Ballad of Tim Ballard” come across as all the more sinister. Cime reminds me a lot of Ashenspire in the straight-to-the-point attack on the establishment and the lack of sugarcoating heavy topics, her lyrics passionate and hard-hitting.

The twenty-five minute epic “The North” is the musical and lyrical climax of The Cime Interdisciplinary Ensemble although it’s far from a perfect track. Starting with a full nine minutes of noodling atmospheres and flutes, it only breaks out of that stretch to go into a lackadaisical spoken word storytelling segment; however, once Cime breaks from the extended intro, things get intense. There’s shouting about dead bodies on the Rio Grande while migrating northwards, critiques on the economic system, and Latin percussion with grandiose brass parts underpinning the story. But the emotional climax is a paragraph long rant full of vitriol towards herself, her family, her situation, and race relations. Along with the section’s cacophonous music and energetic screaming, “The North” is a song as intense and emotionally charged as you’ll hear all year. 

Apart from ten minutes of pacing issues in the ginormous centerpiece and a few vocal choices I dislike across the album, Cime have utilized the weightiness and anarchism of punk to write an emotionally charged progressive music experience. The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble sounds huge and professional, a feat in and of itself considering probable budget constraints, the whole ensemble’s worth of instruments gelling together, clear even through the most chaotic moments of jamming. Funneling the frustration of a lifetime of difficult circumstances into this project, Monty Cime is a prog composer and performer like few others, and her brain will surely produce a wealth of passionate music for a long time.

Recommended tracks: A Tranny’s Appeal to Heaven, DIYUSA, The North (second half)
You may also like: Eunuchs, Maruja, Streetlight Manifesto, Ashenspire, Half Empty Glasshouse
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Instagram

Label: Syzygy Records – Bandcamp

Cime is:
Monty Cime – vocals, bass guitar, triangle, ocean drum
Rowan Collins – electric guitar, bass guitar, synthesizer, vocals
Sean Hoss – keyboard, upright piano, soprano sax, tenor sax, bass clarinet, vocals
riley. – flute, bass flute, alto sax, tenor sax
Austin Jenkins – electric guitar, drum kit
Jonas Phipps – bass guitar, vocals
Brian Watson – trumpet
Elijah Parra – trombone
Lautaro Akira Martinez-Satoh – classical guitar, bass guitar, quena, quenacho, conga, bongos, garifuna drums, djembe, maracas, shaker, guiro, wooden frog, claves, cowbell, egg shaker, mridangam, mason jar, french press, vocals
Kaydi Sweet – vocals

The post Review: Cime – The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: obnoxious British post-punk, prog rock (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Black Country, New Road; Black Midi; HMLTD; The Mars Volta; The Dear Hunter; Thank You Scientist
Country: Australia
Release date: 5 April 2024

I’ve never used a meme as an intro before, but this is perfect: if you recognize more than two of these album covers, you’re too far gone. Taking the internet and your local third stream coffee shop by storm, the post-punk/prog rock/art pop hybrid scene that has blossomed in the 2020s is currently the most progressive form of rock but also, frankly, rather obnoxious with its shouty vocals and ever-changing instrumentation. Of course, obnoxious doesn’t mean bad, and instrumentally this scene contains some of the most talented and diverse musicians the prog and punk worlds have ever seen. Moreover, while they’re not British, Australia was famously a British penal colony; essentially, this counts toward the meme. And I think Eunuchs will be the next to blow up and gain widespread hipster acclaim. 

At the core of Harbour Century are seventeen different instrumentalists—most credited with multiple instruments on the album—ranging from a full quartet of saxophones to a harp to more exotic sound-sources like hydrophone recorders, bass trombone, tenor recorder, and lap steel. Eunuchs have gathered a veritable orchestra, and the diverse range of sounds from which they call upon are entertaining and rich, often used to jarring effect but clearly placed with anal deliberation. Private Detective Nick Hatzakos the First—oh you bet your ass these guys are a quirky bunch—handles engineering (along with electric bass and nylon string guitar, naturally), and the instrumentation sounds sublime, expansive and engrained naturally within their rockier context. For such a small band at the time of release, Eunuchs have a truly gifted producer.

Beyond just sounding crisp and luxurious, Eunuchs are full of energy as good punk needs to be as well as intricate composers befitting of the prog aspect of their sound. “Bird Angel Dynasty,” for instance, starts with an amazing verse replete with a trumpet matching the main melody before switching into a certified-bop of a dance beat, and of course it ends with a hybrid spoken-word singing section in an Aussie man’s accent—it is in the school of Black Country, New Road after all. Other tracks have mind-blowing main riffs (see the harp and woodwind lead of “Pat a Dragon” or “Gnome and Direction” with its homage to Thick as a Brick turned post-punk), insane buildups culminating in blast beats and screaming (“Magic Death Sea Nemesis” and “Siren”), and every one of the tracks has several highlights involving at least one of the assorted THIRTY PLUS instruments. 

I’m not usually a lyrics person myself, but these guys seem to strike the balance between self-aware pretentious garbage and decent poetry better than your average band in this scene, and while some songs feature singing that makes me roll my eyes with a bit of cringe like “Gnome and Fortune,” I usually am much more content to read along with the absurdist poetry than critique it. Without a doubt, Real Sea Police Officer’s lead singing makes the lyricism work with his wide-ranging vocals—from angered shouts à la Ashenspire to the saccharine theatricism of “Estuary of Dreams” to the aforementioned stereotypical spoken word rambling essential to obnoxious British post-punk. However, while the menagerie of instruments are produced wonderfully, Real Sea Police Officer’s vocals are almost unilaterally too quiet—a difficult balance to be sure since I certainly wouldn’t want to lose out on instrumental detail, but the vocals often get woefully lost. At the end of “Siren” where all hell breaks loose into shouted intelligibility, the insanity of the vocals loses its impact because they’re repressed by the instruments.

The biggest mar on Harbour Century’s gleaming package is the epic closer “Heroin King.” I love a bona fide prog epic more than anybody, but “Heroin King” is a slow burner and feels discontinuous from the energy and flow of the rest of the album. The long piano intro and the harp and all the other eccentricities certainly contain layers of detail in the first half of the piece to unravel and appreciate, but so does what comes before, and it does so without the somber pacing; the album is practically begging to end given most of this slowdown occurs north of the forty minute mark. Thankfully, the back half of the track picks up with stunning orchestration and several balls-to-the-wall freakouts in the closing minutes, but it’s too little, too late for a song which does not justify its bloat; the buildup is good composing, but it doesn’t reach the heights of even their shorter tracks—“Magic Death Sea Nemesis” demonstrates what I mean with its perfect pacing. 

Even if obnoxious British post-punk isn’t your thing, this might sway you; if it is, you’ll be in love. Eunuchs bring out all the tricks of their vast imaginations, and like it or not, this is the current trajectory of progressive rock. These guys deserve the imminent blow up of popularity.

Recommended tracks: Magic Death Sea Nemesis, Bird Angel Dynasty, Hierophant
You may also like: Half Empty Glasshouse, Ashenspire, Adjy, All Traps on Earth
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

Eunuchs is:
– Captain Enzo Legge: Electric Guitar, Electric Bass, Nylon String Guitar, Enzomophone, Harmonium, Piano, Banjo, Singing, Accordion, Bass Synth
– Master Mariner Kristo Langkjær: Drum Kit, Vibraphone, Glockenspiel, Electric Guitar, Electric Bass, Auxiliary Percussion, Hydrophone Recording, Harmonium, Singing
– Finn Fowke of Finn’s famous laundromat: Flute, Bass Recorder, Tenor Recorder, Electric Bass
– Private Detective Nick Hatzakos the first: Engineering, Production, Electric Bass, Nylon String Guitar

The post Review: Eunuchs – Harbour Century appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: post punk, Modernism (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Arnold Schoenberg; Black Midi; Black Country, New Road; HMLTD; Oingo Boingo
Review by: Andy
Country: New Zealand
Release date: 27 October 2023

Restricted Repetitive Behavior: An Experiment in Application of Classical 12-Tone Technique to Contemporary Post-Punk Composition. What the HECK is that. Listen, I like Modernism a bit more than the next guy and have a very high tolerance for Postmodernism, but how can a band earnestly release an album with that title? Quite effectively if you’re Half Empty Glasshouse. I exercise my rights to bring you all progressive but not prog music, frequently fighting with my boss and peers here about what prog is spiritually: I won the battle with Schoenbergian post punk. 

For those of you who aren’t well-versed in 20th century classical music, twelve tone serialism is a way of composition where you cycle through the twelve chromatic notes without emphasizing one to create a distinct atonality—or as I prefer to call it: a pantonality—since there is no tonal center. The band explains their explicit methods more on their Bandcamp, but for the layman it’s enough to know that it’s conceptually difficult to compose and that it’s even more challenging to write engrossing music. Half Empty Glasshouse stick to their schtick admirably, the guitars almost uniformly staying within these “tone row” restrictions while the vocals and bass have a bit more melodic freedom to create a listenable final product. Using these serial techniques of composition, the band actually writes some remarkable music. For instance, “Confidential Neuropsychological Evaluation” balances wild atonal guitar parts with wavery 80s goth vocals to forge a distinctly absurd scene replete with an ironic nihilism from the lyrics such as on the first track: “This diagnosis has been a long time coming / Walk out of the clinic like a jackpot lottery winner / Just needed a little confirmation of what I’ve known deep down all along / From someone with a PhD.”

Speaking of, the lyrics grab me much more than they would on a usual album since they’re the only aspect of Restricted Repetitive Behavior to grab onto completely. Particularly with the relaxed but zany energy of post-punk vocal performance, the lyrics are often hilarious and thought provoking: “I’m a foreigner in my home country / I’m an alien in the wrong galaxy / I’m a land animal and I’m lost at sea / I’m an android in a tribe of chimpanzees.” They’re a perfect blend of absurdism and post-punk deranged nihilism. Perhaps my favorite lyrics are on the insanely titled “Bill Buckner Syndrome & Maladaptive Obsession with Statistics,” which philosophically rambles through one of baseball’s most infamous occurrences for eight minutes. The peculiarity of topic and verbiage throughout complement the wackiness of the twelve-tone technique, tying the whole album together. 

Just as I feared when I saw the album title, though, at times Half Empty Glasshouse go a bit too far over the line between Modernism and Postmodernism, perhaps inappropriately abusing this tonal system without the prerequisite experience to pull off. First, nearly every track ends with a twelve-tone piano solo, and that disappoints me honestly—I’d like to hear the band either use that texture in their post punk or not include it, but I feel it breaks the immersion of their experiment. Notably, I also think that the post punk lacks a bit of the manic energy the genre necessitates, and the serialism sounds a tad lethargic for genre standards. Most importantly, though, I think that to truly pull off Modernism requires a great deal of relevant historical and cultural context, and as the band is anonymous, I can only guess from listening this is more of a textbook experimentation rather than an appropriately ready one. I never want to gatekeep experimentation, but I think more practice at the style is necessary before Half Empty Glasshouse can release a masterpiece. Hence, I consider this Postmodern more than Modern; the band skipped right through the garde rather than going through it.

All told, Restricted Repetitive Behaviors is extremely promising. Schoenbergian post-punk is absolutely possible—the proof of concept is here—and only a couple things need to be tweaked. Half Empty Glasshouse were right on the money noticing that the absurdity and experimentation inherent in the recent wave of progressive post punk would blend well with the tone row, and I applaud their efforts.

Recommended tracks: Confidential Neuropsychological Evaluation, The Sociolinguistics of Group Identification, Bill Buckner Syndrome & Maladaptive Obsession with Statistics
You may also like: Blotted Science, Ron Jarzombek
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp

Label: independent

Half Empty Glasshouse is:
– Anonymous

The post Review: Half Empty Glasshouse – Restricted Repetitive Behavior: An Experiment in Application of Classical 12-Tone Technique to Contemporary Post-Punk Composition appeared first on The Progressive Subway.