Thou – Magus
I hope everyone who reads this blog likes Thou, because over the course of the next year or two there are going to be a lot of Thou posts. Some of them a little later in the sequence because I decided, “Sure, I need all their studio albums AND their rarities compilation” (the one that’s on vinyl–they have several that are Bandcamp only, in addition to the many splits, 7-inches, collabs and so on. I have a lot of Thou in my collection, and it’s still not close to complete. (But at this point trying to fill in the gaps proves both difficult and probably not entirely necessary.)
Rhea Sylvia, the last Thou record I documented, is their most accessible by some measure (the Alice in Chains influence will do that!) but Magus, their first released through Sacred Bones, is, arguably, their best. Or at least their most consistently strong–other albums feature my favorite individual songs, but as I type this, it grows harder and harder to make a statement so definitive. But I still feel pretty confident about this–Magus is a phenomenal record, a pretty epic document of everything that Thou does best: grungy chug, transcendent doom metal journeys, big riffs, gothic mystique, plus some of their best melodies. “The Changeling Prince” actually has a video! (See below: And check out the cameo from The Body.) And the closer “Supremacy,” come to think of it, is definitely a top five Thou song, a kind of goth-psychedelia swirl in their massive doom sound that shows the kind of versatility they’d milk to a greater degree on their Emma Ruth Rundle collab, May Our Chambers Be Full.
I interviewed Bryan Funck, their vocalist, around the time this was released and he contended that Thou was more of a sad band than an angry band, which tracks—their songs move slowly and are burdened by the weight of the world. The presence of songs like “Smoke Pigs” in their catalog might suggest otherwise, but Magus is different, an album more concerned with how things seem to be perpetually stacked against us, but we soldier on. (There’s actually some truly hopeful moments, as well, though those aren’t the majority, necessarily.)
I also caught the band live twice within a year of this album’s release–once about nine months before it came out and another one about two months later. The first time I only caught the second half of their set, which included a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Into the Void” and closed with “Into the Marshlands” from Heathen. The second time they also played “Into the Marshlands” (it’s their “Rock and Roll All Nite,” for lack of a better crowd-pleasing comparison), “Smoke Pigs,” Alice In Chains’ “Brother” and half of the Inconsolable EP. Neither show contained any songs from Magus! That’s on one hand a little frustrating since I love the album and would love to hear them play those songs. On the other hand, I can’t help but respect a band that just plays whatever the hell they want and doesn’t have a setlist mapped out for the entirety of a tour. Just one more reason why Thou keeps me on this wild ride.
Rating: 9.3
Sound Quality: Great
Mitski – Be the Cowboy
From time to time I’ll see a sentiment from someone on social media about how the industry doesn’t actually know what’s going to be successful, they just roll the dice and throw money at stuff. In a way, it seems like it doesn’t matter whether they know or not, because throwing money at it is what makes it successful, but I can’t say that for sure. (The fact that all radio stations in the country play the exact same music tells me that payola probably isn’t dead, not exactly, anyway.) But in the case of artists like Mitski, it comes across as even more out of leftfield. A lot of bands will build up an audience over quite a few albums and eventually reach the point of being a solid career band, and Mitski more or less did the same on a smaller scale, but then she just got massively huge. Her entire tour in 2022 is sold out, and it sold out fast. Some of that is due to ticketbots snatching up a lot of the tickets and reselling them for obscene amounts. But that wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t real demand for them, and what’s particularly odd about it is that it happened nearly two years into a pandemic and three years after her last album and about two years after she disappeared on social media. It’s almost as if nobody expected her to return and just freaked the geek out when she did.
But she makes incredible pop music, so that goes a long way to explaining how she became an indie hitmaker. “Nobody” is as great a pop song as I’ve heard in the past decade, an infectiously melodic disco song about being lonely. A lot of Mitski songs are about being lonely, really, but she packages them in such bright and hook-filled songs that leave their impact in about two minutes, sometimes less. Sometimes they have big horn sections (“Why Didn’t You Stop Me?”), sometimes a brief shock of noise (“Geyser”) and sometimes a warm glow of synthesizer (“Washing Machine Heart”). It’s like a mixtape where the theme is catchy songs with big feelings. Only it’s a short mixtape–the whole thing fits on about ⅔ of one side of an XLII90.
A year later or so, Mitski became part of this odd discourse about indie artists whose parents have specious careers, in this case her father was in the state department. This led to some fairly bizarre critiques considering Mitski herself didn’t unseat foreign leaders or anything. I don’t know the full details, really, but you can’t choose your parents. I mean, if her dad did something that sucks, then have at it, though I’ll say that I don’t imagine that helped her succeed musically; when artists have high-profile executives as parents, that strikes me as a more damning statement about the industry. This is just, well, America I guess?
All of which is to say none of this really strikes me as material. The album is a half-hour masterpiece. That’s the important thing.
Rating: 9.4
Sound Quality: Great
Idles – Joy As An Act of Resistance
While we’re on the subject of controversial bands: Idles. The group tapped into a certain kind of craving for high-energy punk and post-hardcore that specifically spoke to the frustrations that are making the world increasingly more unlivable right now, without letting go of hope. The primary complaint about their music is not that they address topical concerns, but rather how they address them—generally shouting slogans in their audience’s faces. Which, I suppose, means they do so with a lack of nuance. But, like, that’s just punk rock? The Clash, Gang of Four, Fugazi, they all more or less did what Idles are doing now, in their own unique way. (And they all did it better than the Pistols, don’t @ me.)
I don’t fault anyone for deciding that’s not their thing, or even determining that it doesn’t always work as well as intended; I, for instance, wasn’t crazy about 2020’s Ultra Mono. (Though the new one is very cool.) But a recent Pitchfork review summarized them as being not bad but unnecessary, and that’s sort of where I started to get a little irritated with the backlash—most of the best art in the world is “unnecessary” if you really want to pull at that thread. Once we start to untangle ideas of the role of art and whether everything meets that decidedly narrow definition, don’t be surprised when your faves end up in the bin as well.
But whether or not I think Idles is essential listening (and I’d say this and their previous album, Brutalism, most certainly are), the fact of the matter is it resonates with a lot of people who really needed music that provided motivational fuel during some really fraught fucking times. And all the soft-focus easy-listening indie in the world can’t provide anything that comes close. These songs just kick ass, basically. And they’re insanely fun. “Colossus” is a slow burner of an opener that explodes in its climactic coda. “Never Fight a Man With a Perm” is both hilarious and heavy as fuck, and “Rottweiler” is just manic, seething energy. A messy scrum of a closer, the kind of thing that’s made for live performances—and they’re a hell of a band to see live.
Like I said, not enjoying Idles’ music is fine, but the backlash, as much as there was (briefly) one, seemed overblown, an extension of the Sleaford Mods dudes complaining about the group’s lack of working class bonafides and the grumbles of a few critics whose writing I respect but whose taste I don’t necessarily share. That’s totally fine. But when a band gets this popular, the kid gloves tend to come off. All I can say is Idles made me feel something that most other music didn’t when the world felt like it started to close in, and that has value beyond scene cliques.
(Also, you might notice all three records today are colored vinyl—not that important but kind of neat to look at.)
Rating: 9.1
Sound Quality: Great
1000 Times Jeff 
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