Casper Skulls released an album this month. It's called Mercy Works. I bought a copy of this album at the show at Spirit with One Hundred Year Ocean. I really liked Casper Skulls live set, but what do they sound like on the record?


Well first, let's take a look at the cover art. It's a dream-like drawing of a human and a bat, and it wraps around to the back. It's eerie, reminding me of early 3D computer games like Immercenary on 3DO. There's something incomplete, murky, and cruel about the crudeness. I can't say the same about the musick within, unfortunately.

The first track is a portal into another world titled after the album. The second track comes in somewhat jarringly, the production goes from murky strangeness to extremely clean and poppy reverb-land. "You Can Call Me Allocator" is a good song. The guitar and drums sound awesome. The vocals sound like Lee Ranaldo. "Lingua Franca" is basically a pop song. It almost sounds like Taylor Swift or something like that. It is good, and I really like the chorus. I wish it was a little less of the usual though, a little less clean. Again, I really like the guitars, especially the Neil Young meets Sonic Youth solo, and the vocals. The fourth track, "What's That Good For", really sounds like a Pavement song, vocals and all. It's decent, though it's weird that it sounds so close.  The backing vocals are okay, but it almost seems like padding to a somewhat weak chorus. The fifth track, "Primeval", reminds me again of a Lee Ranaldo-written Sonic Youth song. I'm not sure what to make of it. I like the sadness, the melancholy of defeated resignation. The lyrics sound like what's been going on in Pittsburgh and many other places. Condos will one day surround my house. The song goes on too long.

"Colour of the Outside" has a beautiful intro. It drifts in from some chilled air that isn't quite cold or unpleasant. The chorus heavily reminds me of a Sonic Youth song that I can't remember the name of. It might be "What We Know" from The Eternal. That song has a lot more drive, something that I think is really missing from this album. Also, as you can see here, a lot of these tracks overall sound like later-era Sonic Youth, especially those by Lee Ranaldo. A noise plane lands, and then a jangle pop song begins, "Chicane, OH". This one has a nice dreamy sound, Strawberry Switchblade or The Cure on Wish. I really liked this one, though I didn't expect to. It was a break from the emotional overcast of the last few tracks. This song could be shorter. "I Stared At Moses and the Burning Bush" is alright; it just kind of goes. That is until the latter half and the end, which really make this song. I think this is my favorite from this album.

I love the slide guitar on "The Science of Dichotomies", recalling The Dream Syndicate's "Too Little, Too Late". I also love the drums. This was a good song all around. "Glories" is an awesome song too. Some of it reminds me of "Gooseflesh" by Blød Maud, a Pittsburgh band that had described themselves as post-pop-punk, which makes sense for Casper Skulls as well. Anyway, all the instruments, lyrics and vocals on "Glories" are awesome, and there is a drive to this one that was missing earlier on. I also love the big noise guitar solo. "Faded Sound" ends the album with a vaguely Nocturnal Projections thing, a big epic like the beginning. I still have some of the same issues, but it works.

Mercy Works is an interesting album. I was disappointed for the first half, not that it was necessarily bad. There are too many epics. By that, I mean that too many of the first songs have such huge sweeping emotions like the cloud on the cover of Neil Young's Prairie Wind. It's too much that there isn't room to breathe. Also, early on, I hear such a strong Sonic Youth and Pavement influence, the songs sounding way too similar to those bands' songs. Finally, a lot of these earlier songs are way too poppy and melodic with super clean production that I have previously described as jarring; it is somewhat unpleasant. That said, I did enjoy most of the last half and some of the first half. I like a lot of the lyrics and the guitar solos, when they do happen. I can't say I really love this album, and it also isn't bad. If only it was more like their live sound, this but just slightly less polish. I will give Mercy Works a Neutral. Too bad, but this is a band with a lot of promise. I will await their next release.
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I went to a show at Howlers on November 14th to see a plant play musick. Oh, the synth player from Carsickness, Steve Sciulli, was accompanying the plant rock star. There were some other people playing too. One guy was even a cyborg or something.



Steve and the plant played first. The plant made many different types of sounds: echoing Electroplankton hollow bells, Ocarina of Time well whispers, sweeping synths of sonic air, and strange rumbles from space. Steve brought these sounds out from the innards of his photosynthetic pal with different methods: fire, water, touch, sound, and light. He even accompanied it on some kind of woodwind instrument. As the set was going on, I figured the whole thing must have been some kind of put on, but Steve confirmed that it was not. It was one of the coolest sets I've ever seen.


Immediately after "Robert Plant", as the flora was called, finished, Ephen Ager started their set. I was a little put off by the sudden shift; Steve and "Robert" hadn't even got off the stage yet. I wasn't sure that anything was really starting until it had been going for a while without stopping. Anyway, Ephen's set was pretty good. They played a lot of different stuff, ranging from fast techno beats to slower psychedelic tunes and harder jungle rumbles. A lot of it reminded me of the video game Wipeout.  I enjoyed the musick, but, as with most electronic artists, I wish there had been more of a visual component to it. I like seeing people play instruments, seeing how the musick is created. Obviously you can't do that with a laptop, but there are other solutions. It would have been cool if everybody danced, but nobody did (that includes me too).


The final performer for the night was Benni, a New Orleans-based musician on Goner Records that I had never heard of before. Before he played, he set up a video of dogs that projected onto the stage. I think it was an old PSA or instructional video. Benni's musick was awesome! It was cheesy, but that was all incorporated into the retro sci-fi aesthetic. He had a metallic cape on and used a vocoder for everything. He combined elements of Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, and John Carpenter to great effect. I loved the song about being more than a man with awesome musical hook and lyrics. "My power knows no bounds!" "I am supreme machine!" So cool!

After Benni's set, I bought a record and talked with him for a bit, talked to Steve, and then walked home. I haven't listened to the Benni record yet, but I will review it once I get the time to visit the "Moons of Almuric". Most importantly, I hope to see more plants making musick in the future.

I was recently sent an album for review, Sonic Sea by Anjroy. I didn't know what to make of it. Anjroy is a pop/rock/electronica band from here in Pittsburgh. The singer, Jocelyn Rent, was in the band Omega Love, a band that a guitar teacher I had, Luke Williams was in. That band had a similar sound to Anjroy. Neither of those bands are my type of musick, but I did finally listen to Sonic Sea.


The album cover for Sonic Sea is not good. Okay, we have a blue-tinged coffee cup full of the titular water floating in a pink void. The title is in a sans-serif font, hugging the edge too closely on the bottom right, hurting the already hurting composition. There's not much to draw the viewer in. It's a strange cover for sure, but what should I take from this? Coffee is the lifeblood of middle-class mucisk? It's true; ads seem to back that up. This cover art looks too phony, too much of a computer manipulated veil over nothing. That isn't far off from the rest of the album. The tools are there but the vision isn't.


 Sonic Sea starts with "The Movement". I liked this track at first, but it didn't hold up for me throughout the song. I really like the keyboards, like Casiopea or some old-school anime musick. I don't like the drums; they seem too perfect, somewhat robotic. The second track, "Juice", is pretty good, coming straight in to fill the void. It has some nice energy to it and sounds more natural. Again, I really like the jazz-fusion keyboard parts. "Motion" also comes right in, keeping the album moving forward. "Motion" is a little more laid-back. I like the drums and the keyboard solo towards the end. "Marion" comes next. I don't like that all these tracks have somewhat vague and terse names, but this one is referenced in the song at least. "Marion" gets really high energy at the end with rising instrumental blares. Before that, I felt like it was kinda so-so. "High Dive", the fifth track, is the single. I really like the sort of breakdown in the middle, but the rest of the song is just alright. The singer has some impressive vocals on "High Dive", though for sure.

"Cast Me Away" starts what would probably be the next side if this wasn't a CD. It's a more atmospheric song, and I like this one. It fades right into the seventh track, "Cloud Crusher". I like the synths at the start, the subtle background echoes, and the horns. I don't like the drums and the overall production. This sounds like a Björk track. It is her birthday today, so maybe this was all fate. "Cloud Crusher" has some interesting parts where the vocals are isolated and sound like they are coming through a radio, which adds drama and sounds neat. Now the next track, "As I Trace" doesn't really stand out for me that much. It pushes forward with some cool synths, however, I don't like the vocals. I should say that overall I dislike vocals like on this album. This track also seemed especially turned towards mids and highs. The bass was weird.

"Fabrications" comes in with a new sound. It's more like "Cast Me Away", atmospheric and slower, without the dance drums. "Between Our Thoughts And Isolated Islands" goes back to the jazz fusion sound. I liked this one. This sound works best for these vocals. The production was less piercing too. Some UFOs land in the latter half of the song. I hope the band was okay. "Chasing Waves" is the last track, post-alien abduction. This one isn't anything special. It's fine. It's much more subdued than the rest of the album; sometimes it's best to not have all the bombast. "There's a moment in the emptiness".

Sonic Sea was really a pain for me to listen to the first time. I initially felt much more negative about it, but I gave a few of the tracks another listen. Some of these are really good. Clearly, the musicians put a lot of work into this album. There are still problems, the work put into it being the main one: everything seems too clean and too bright, musically. The vocals and drums are the biggest culprits. The drums seem too perfect and mixed too high. The rest of the instruments are fairly mid-ranged to high as well, so the whole thing ends up kind of tinny. The vocals are too grandiose all the time and sound so separated from the rest of the musick. In general terms, I want to hear the room, not the band, if that makes sense. If you focus too much on the band, it strains my ears; everything just exists in a vacuum. It's not grounded; it just is. It seems to lack a meaning, floating in a plastic coating through a whole in space that isn't space but just a single color like the pink of the cover here, a true Sonic Sea that someone is lost in. If the album had more life to it, less polished production to the point where that polish pierces my eardrums a bit, along with more variation in song structure and vocal performance, it would be a Good album. As it stands, Sonic Sea gets a Neutral.
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The other day, a friend of mine made a post about going to a show at Spirit. The date was November 12th, 2017. The show looked pretty cool, so I decided to go. I had not seen any of the bands before.


I missed the first band, the Early Thirties. The touring band, Casper Skulls, was starting as I came in. This was the band I had come to see. They have a poppy post-punk sound. It reminds me of the Birthday Party. The bass was super solid, and the drums were snappy. The guitars had a cold thin sound like my own and could really go off into realms of electrical chaos. Some of the vocals sounded like Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth, and those songs sounded like his songs from Washing Machine. I really liked this band a lot, and I bought a CD that I will review.



After Casper Skulls, I took a quick trip home and came back just in time to see Tremoravia, the next band. Tremoravia, musically, is a garage/grunge/90s indie rock (think Pavement) kind of band. I remember the vocals having that pop-punk/emo sound that I despise, but I don't hear that on my recordings from the show; they sound more like Kurt Cobain or Steve Albini. The guitar sound was okay. I wasn't fond of the bro-y banter between the songs, though there was also a self-deprecating tone to some of those things that made me more worried. The end of Tremoravia's set was cool, with the bassist and guitarist on the floor screaming.


The final band was One Hundred Year Ocean. This band was the most emo/pop-punk, but the musick had a lot of variation and cool stuff happening; at times, you could say it was more post-rock, though the instruments did not include the more unconventional strings you find there. I really loved the atmospheric, instrumental breaks; they had an epic and emotional quality to them. Some of those guitar lines were so cool with Hawkwind-esque space rock sounds. The vocals resembled some of the pop-punk standard stuff, but they could be cold and deathly at times. I liked the variations from fast and furious to sludgey heaviness in one song. I didn't expect to like One Hundred Year Ocean, so much. I'm glad I gave them a chance.

This was a fun show. I went just sort of looking for something to do, and it was a good choice to make. I found some new bands that I will watch for in the future, and I also heard about another band called Fruit & Flowers, a Brooklyn band whose members were at this show to see their friends Casper Skulls. Since I was going to Brooklyn soon, for other reasons, I planned to see if that band might be playing when I was there. We'll see if I made it at a later date.
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If you remember, I won a few tapes from White Reeves Productions at the show with Bill Nace and Twig Harper. One of these albums was Pay The Rent's Soft On Glass. Pay The Rent features members of Pittsburgh's Slices doing something totally different than hardcore. Soft On Glass came out back in May, but this is my first time hearing it. The soft sounds left me feeling somewhat damp, a mild ennui of slight, vague despair.


The album cover follows the White Reeves Productions design template with a rectangle border around an image surrounded by, usually, a solid color. This one is particularly simple, but it is a good design and an eerie one at that. The lizard that adorns the tape really creeps me out, in a subtle way, with its double-tail, headless form.



Soft On Glass starts out with the ambient "Knaut". It's like a small choir of mermaids singing underwater. The next track, "Lower Down", starts droning, turning into a John Carpenter-esque synthscape before moving back into New Age territory. "Two Days In" is a somewhat bleak, sad track, meditative. And the first side ends with the swinging "Calf", which reminds me of a bleak highway, shot in black and white, somewhere out in the high desert.

Side two comes in with another more Carpenter-esque track, "Diana". Waves repeat as something builds in the background. Many echoing voices form this space travelogue. "Corridor" has more watery sounds; I imagine walking through an aquarium with huge windows to peer into jet jellyfish. "Knaut (reprise)" sounds more like the sky, a musick box that you might open to reveal clouds and winged humanoids and other things. The sky would be a pinkish orange in color, not blue. This one also reminds me a bit of some of David Bowie's stuff from the Labyrinth soundtrack. "Knaut (reprise)" really is beautiful and might be my favorite track on the album. Soft On Glass closes with "Soft Silhouette", a scarier track like Coney Island at night, some of the abandoned dark rides beckoning from the gloom. There's the sound of the ocean, a pulse, and various creaks and bells and things. And then that's it.

Soft On Glass is a really interesting album. I'm not sure if I have ever heard something that made me feel quite this way. It's gloomy and brooding but not to any sort of extreme. The title fits the musick extremely well. I enjoyed the small slices of synthscapes that would normally be longer, grander epics. Despite the unsettling feeling, this was a breath of fresh air to what could have been a much more typical electronic album. Soft On Glass gets a Good.

Upon my return from NYC, I was pretty tired, but I went to a show not long after on October 30th. I almost didn't go. I wanted to see my friend Anna Azzizy though; she had a new performance that she had done on her tour this fall. I didn't know the other bands on the bill.

I wore a costume to the show, a priest of "He Who Dwells in the Space Between the Stars". Such an outfit, at least as seen on this plane, consists of a big hat, scarves, and a big red coat. I had meant to bring some gory body parts enclosed in envelopes with me to hand out to members of the audience on behalf of My Lord. This didn't work out so well, the night being cloudy, creating a distance between myself and that cosmic being of the outer void. I just had some slime instead. "Is this edible?" everyone asked. It wasn't. The slime was the liquefied remains of some nobody. I wouldn't eat it.


The first performer I saw was Soft Bodies. They were already playing when I came in. Without any cosmic guidance, I had trouble finding the venue, which was located in a deep, dark wood, a place of true mystery. Soft Bodies made some magical and upbeat trance stuff, a good choice for a house of illusions. The vocals were like Siouxsie Sioux. The many colored lights made the performance fun to see, a rainbow from a prism of dusk.

After Soft Bodies was done, I found out that I had missed Anna's performance. Again, I cursed the dreary cloud cover of the celestial sphere. This grey canopy had brought many despairs to me on this night. I whispered a malediction to the clouds and the rain, a meaningless act as these beings rule this place called Pittsburgh.


The next band was Chiffon. They were really cool. Despite doing more electronic dance musick, the duo was very dancey themselves. I often find electronic performances somewhat dull; I don't like to see people standing still or moving in a sort of bro-y, cool guy way. Chiffon, on the other hand, seemed to really have fun with their performance. I felt good watching them and hearing the upbeat tracks. There were jazzy piano bits, harsh machine sounds, and a deep bassline accompanied with R&B vocals. Again, the lights really made it fun to watch.


The final act was slowdanger. I had heard of them before but never seen them. I did lIke the one single I had heard weeks before the show. slowdanger is a more cerebral act, emphasizing dance in a fine art way. It was cool actually. I really liked the costumes, and the songs were good. The cold sounds were met with vocals like from a dream, airy or octaved down. It was like the sound of water underneath a glacier, the cold depths of the North Sea. Their themes seemed to revolve around sex and gender norms and breaking those norms, but the vocals were more a part of the song if that makes sense. I liked it.

The show was over early, and I went home after some talking. It was a good time despite missing some stuff. One day the Herald of "He Who Dwells in the Space Between the Stars" will return and bestow the gifts of his master to all. Until then, carry on.

If you've been reading Skull Valley for a bit, you will remember that the Climax Landers/Sweet Baby Jesus show at Roboto really made me want to start writing again. I reviewed the Climax Landers tape back in July, but I somehow forgot about this one, Lyres of Ur by Sweet Baby Jesus. I think I left it in my bag or something, but here it is after it was brought to the light.

Lyres of Ur starts off super strong with the Cheap Trick in the weirdo zone of "Dark Horse". Bright guitars and soulful rock vox make this a great track! "Soul Can" is next. It's another rocker and reminds me of the Rolling Stones, especially the vocals. I like the different sections of musick, especially the waterfall chorus solos and other little speed bumps between the out and out rock 'n' roll drive. "Amaryllis" is a short song with a dark tone. I liked this one a lot. It seems like a sad song using star-shaped flowers for a metaphor. "Wild Wind" is more country than the ones that came before, again in a Rolling Stones way. I really love the slide guitar on this one, and there are some amazing guitar solos that ricochet off the peak of the Sun. "Oh pretty baby, you're the wild wind". That's beautiful. "Center of Seasons" closes side one mournfully. It's not all total livewire energy as before, as we "take a train out to the ocean". There really are beautiful lyrics on this album, especially within the spaces between the notes on here.

Side two opens with the wailing "Rock & Roll Queen", backing vocals and chugging hard guitar. This is a tale of heartbreak, and it makes me sad, as I've been there before too. Next is "Birds of Paradise", a wild country rocker with more backing vocals. It's not as basic as it sounds, sounding off with elastic chords and a voice like Bowie out of Pin Ups. There's more melancholy and melodrama on "Easy Rider". The song is really down and out, all the space of the lonely spaces of the far west, places that I have never been. At least it's like that before the guitar bursts into the scene in full gear once more. All the guitars on this album are amazing! "Sunlight has a toxic hue" in "Nasty Ones". This one is so full of great lines. Some of it reminds me of Badfinger or Big Star but way weirder. "River of Fire" is the end of the line here, and it's a good end, a solid end. It ends, and that's it. I was so enraptured with this song after the whole album, and then it was over.


After listening to Lyres of Ur, I really do want more. Sweet Baby Jesus have constructed one of the best albums I've heard from this year. Seriously. Really. I mean that. The musick takes twists and turns while staying true to soulful, old-school rock 'n' roll roots. I felt sad, uplifted, angry, and in love. This is a magickal album. I didn't know how much I needed this until I heard it. Lyres of Ur gets a Good, and I can't wait to hear the next release from Sweet Baby Jesus.
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