Music Blues
Things Haven’t Gone Well
Review by Lee Newman
Their name says it all: Music Blues. Music Blues is a pervasive bad mood; a funk if you will. Music Blues sounds exactly the way the pile of soggy cigarette butts on the album cover looks. Music Blues feels like those days where everything you experience is soured by some persistent, negative feeling of indeterminate origin.
To be more literal, Music Blues’ Things Haven’t Gone Well is muddy, snails’-pace metal for your most depressive moments. The album was written by Stephen Tanner (of Harvey Milk fame) in the days after the death of a longtime friend. However, if you’re expecting DSBM woe-is-me simpering, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Things Haven’t Gone Well is instead reminiscent of a hate that has been left to fester so long that it has turned into a profound exhaustion. It is plodding and disorienting, all migraine-headache distortion. The songs don’t have transitions as much as they have sluggish upheavals. But despite the all-sadness-everything aesthetic, Music Blues does not come off as jokey. It just comes off as a big pile of raw hurt, and there is something undeniably relatable about that.
Don’t be fooled by the silly song titles here. Sure, “Great Depression” and “Failure” and “Death March” are back to back to back in a trifecta of “we get it, you’re really fucking sad!” But Music Blues is better than their naming implies. In fact, “Great Depression” is a pretty impactful slice of drone, “Failure” packs some nostalgic industrial-noise wallop, and “Death March” is a stark, vibed-out interlude, a rare restful moment on an album that heaves like a slow-motion upset stomach.
“Trying and Giving Up” shows some rare energy, introducing teeth-rattling fuzz bass that slogs along steadily under aimless, druggy guitar soloing. Every hand on every fretboard in this project sounds like it is made of lead. But ironically, for all its measured inertia, Things Haven’t Gone Well feels like a quick listen. The songs do not have distinct differences between them, but they don’t feel repetitive. This kind of music is beyond recognizable parts. It is more like an exploration of mood, and a thorough one at that. Save this one for a muggy day, or a windowless room where you can think long and hard about your neuroses. Grab it at Thrill Jockey.
http://www.thrilljockey.com/thrill/Music-Blues/Things-Havent-Gone-Well#.VAji7mRdXUY
