Well, crap. We almost had an extra cool week, but instead, the opposite. Y’all know what I’m talking.
Thankfully, we have very cool music to lift us out of the disappointment of everything. Big ask for these bands, but that’s why music exists. If they didn’t want us to use them to get over our trauma, they shouldn’t have recorded dope music.
Kosmetika’s Luxury won Coolest Album of The Week, but what about the other finalists?
You know, the albums marked with an asterisk next to their title. What’s the deal with those? Well, Mast Year’s highly aggressive but also kinda beautiful post-metal is fantastic on Point of View. Head Wound City is an aptly titled band that I wish were more aptly titled, but their album A New Wave of Violence absolutely rips. Blod and Shadow Pattern dropped a strange, atmospheric album that’s still strangely catchy at times with Midnite Blues (not a blues album). Fashion Tips’ I Wish You Every Success is some pure fun noise rock. Salétile is some trippy rock, and their album Saturno 3 – Atmósfera 0 has to be experienced to be truly understood.
If you have a lesser known band or label you think fits my taste, email me at pizzafriendsrc at gmail.com and I’ll check it out (but due to the volume of emails, I probably won’t respond even if I liked your band — nothing personal!).
And hey, if you do that, you might just see your band in a future edition of…
The Coolest Stuff of The Week | July 17th
Mast Year – Point of View *
Genres: Post-metal, noise rock, post-rock
toe – NOW I SEE THE LIGHT
Genres: Post-rock, math rock, experimental
Julia Reidy – All Is Ablaze
Genres: Experimental, avant garde
Mould – S/T
Genres: Punk, post-hardcore, hardcore punk
Undercover Martians – I Don’t Want To Mention It
Genres: Punk, indie rock, new wave
Erhard Hirt, Richard Scott, Klaus Kürvers & Willi Kellers – Trails
Genres: Experimental, Electronic, avant garde
Ismatic Guru – IV
Genres: Punk, post-punk, egg punk
Spyros Polychronopoulos and Jannis Anastasakis – Nyfida
Genres: Sound art, electronic, electro-acoustic
Psychic Weight – Show Me Where You Find Your Strength and I Will Tell You Why You Are Powerless
Genres: Punk, hardcore punk
Blod & Shadow Pattern – Midnite Blues *
Genres: Alternative, experimental, indie experimental
IRKED – EP
Genres: Punk, hardcore punk, noise rock
Fir Cone Children – Jig Of Glee
Genres: Indie rock, shoegaze, garage rock
Fashion Tips – I Wish You Every Success *
Genres: Noise rock, rock, punk
Patrick Higgins – Versus
Genres: Electronic, ambient, drone
Salétile – Saturno 3 – Atmósfera 0 *
Genres: Post-rock, experimental, psychedelic
nd dentico – Morrow’s Invasion
Genres: Experimental, sound art, field recordings
Head Wound City – A New Wave of Violence *
Genres: Post-hardcore, post-rock, noise rock
KOSMETIKA – Luxury
Genres: Post-punk, new wave, krautrock
Right up front, I’ll admit I am not the biggest fan of new wave. This makes Kosmetika’s Luxury a strange pick for Coolest Album of The Week because the new wave influence is all over this thing, either overtly or subtextually. It is inescapable, yet it’s also not the point. A single genre does not define this album or it wouldn’t have been my pick this week.
Instead, Luxury subverts expectations every step of the way to create an album that’s an incredibly polished eclectic mess.
The root of this subversion is Kosmetika’s willingness to marry incredibly catchy hooks with experimental moments in nearly every song. Whether it’s undermining the pop sensibilities of an otherwise borderline-twee song with an absolutely disgusting (in a great way) discordant guitar riff, augmenting an experimental detour with bursts of hooky goodness or washing otherwise accessible songs in layers of feedback and noise, this band never settles for one state of being even with a single song.
Take, for instance, the one-two punch of “Fish” and “Halp”. The first song starts off listing facts about fish in a very Stephen Malkmus-y stream of conscious sing-speak tone (except the lyrics are too factual and precise to actual be stream of conscious, which makes this section all the more impressive) before exploding into a catchy chorus also about fish. It’s one of the more overtly experimental moments on the album, given the spoken word segment and strange structure and jolts of abrasive instrumentation. It’s also one of the most fun moments on Luxury, thanks to the pure joy in vocalist (and bassist/guitarist) Michael Ellis’ voice, the absurdity of the lyrics and cries of “whoo!”, shouted like a kid going down an especially rad waterslide.
Immediately after this song, “Halp”, goes into a bittersweet new wave send up that rips apart halfway through. Here, vocalist (and snyth player) Veeka Nazarova pleads for help on one of the album’s bounciest tracks. Weird sounds constantly buzz around in the background, and the track sputters and turns abstract between lines as the band builds toward that mid-track climax, and then the track comes back together again as if nothing weird ever happened in the first place.
Kosmetika has built Luxury out of these off-kilter juxtapositions.
The most experimental track is also its silliest (and most educational!). Maybe its catchiest track is also its darkest. Hell, the opening track (“Kosmetika Strikes Back”) even sets the tone by starting with lush “bah-bah-bah” group vocals and the alternating between sweet vocal hooks and psychedelic freak outs. Straight from the start, we think we might be getting one thing, but it’s immediately clear we’re getting something stranger and far more interesting.
All of these in-track juxtapositions, genre-mashups and change ups help unify an album that could be scattershot in less capable hands. The genre-hopping never leads Kosmetika to lose their sense of self even as they go from new wave to post-punk to shoegaze to psych and back again just because they blend these genres so seamlessly throughout Luxury. It’s not like this song is the shoegaze song and that song is the post-punk song and that song is the twee-pop song.
The mix-and-match genres style they imposed on this album means that each song takes a little bit from a few genres at a time, and it all sort of just sounds like the work of one complete band (because it is!).
This is pretty similar to another Coolest of the Week winner, Grocer, and in more ways than one. Like that previous winner, the genre hopping helps blend alllllllll the different vocalists on this album. Grocer has three vocalists to blend. Kosmetika has five. That makes them two better than Grocer (much love, Grocer is one of my favorite bands right now). They each bring their own personality to their songs without taking away from the overall personality of the band as a whole, and when two or more of the vocalists combine, it’s pure magic.
When it came time to pick the top album for this week, I wanted to pick one of the heavier bands because those were the comfortable choices. Those were my easy, on brand choices. This album was a finalist, but I almost didn’t consider it because I had these other, rip-your-face off albums I also loved sitting right there for me to grab.
Yet, this was the album I kept coming back to over and over again this last week. Luxury was the album I couldn’t get out of my head. It was the one I couldn’t forget. The one I was drawn to. It’s an album so good, I couldn’t help but pick it over what would be the more obvious choices for me.
But that’s the thing. Music doesn’t live on paper. Music is alive. And of the albums I listened to this last week, Luxury was undoubtedly my favorite — even if it shouldn’t have been on paper. Because Kosmetika is a band that easily defies any and all genre labels and expectations.
