Astute readers among us will notice Cool Stuff is up a few days late this week. I was ready to put the finishing touches on this article when four tornadoes touched down in Northeast Ohio, knocking out power for over 300,000 of us, including me. It was as if Jesus didn’t want me to say the next thing I’m about to say. But as always, fuck that guy.
This is my last article for Bearded Gentlemen Music.
If you’re a fan of my music recommendations, you’re probably wondering what that means for us. Don’t worry. I got you.
I’m going to take some time to plan, but Cool Stuff will continue as Poison-Free Pizza Party, a music recommendation newsletter and Instagram account. The newsletter will be a lot like this column but with some tweaks and bonus items. The IG account will have updates about music recs as well as weird music videos from my band of the same name. It’s all going to be the kind of fun strangeness you’d expect from a poison-free pizza party, thus the name.
Before I move off this, I want to thank Jon Robertson, who owns BGM and is a dear friend of mine. If you take a peep through my author archives, you’ll find a lot of bonkers shit in there. Jon has let me do whatever I’ve felt like, and he even gave me the go-ahead to share links to my newsletter and IG. He’s also a really talented bassist, and his old band I.A.T.’s last album is a post-metal classic, so check that out:
As for this week, you can already see that Personal Trainer got Coolest of The Week with Still Willing. I have a lot to say about what that album meant to me this past week or so. I never meant it to be so, but this last edition has been an especially personal one, so I suppose it’s only fitting that the band that calls themselves Personal Trainer is coming out on top.
The runner up this week is the absolutely sinister and face melting Ils with To End Is To Begin. I’ve already gone long, so I’ll just say you can find the other finalists by their asterisks, but they’re killer.
For the last time ever, come join me for…
The Coolest Stuff of The Week | August 7th
Blood – Loving You Backwards *
Genres: Alternative, post-punk, punk
Guidon Bear – Internal Systems
Genres: Alternative, indie rock, experimental pop
henderson century – lonestar freedom
Genres: Rock, experimental
Snowbeasts – Devour *
Genres: Alternative, post-punk, electronic
Jacob Wick Ensemble – Something in Your Eyes
Genres: Experimental, jazz, experimental pop
J.R.C.G. – Grim Iconic...(Sadistic Mantra) *
Genres: Alternative, Latin rock, noise rock
Hubbub – abb abb abb
Genres: Electro-acoustic, experimental, ambient
COWBOY BOY – Lipstick On A Pig
Genres: Alternative, power pop, pop-punk
Ils – To End Is To Begin *
Genres: Noise rock, punk, hardcore punk
Fred Cracklin // i.o & Colin Fisher – Fred Cracklin // i.o & Colin Fisher split
Genres: Experimental rock, math rock, experimental
G.O.O.N. – God’s Only Option Now
Genres: Punk, hardcore punk, alternative
BECKTON ALPS2 – Winter Guitars
Genres: Electronic, dark ambient, cool guitar
Personal Trainer – Still Willing
Genres: Indie rock, indie pop, alternative
I usually don’t get too personal about myself in these things. As personal as music is, these recommendations should be about the amazing artists and not an aging dad with impeccable taste, but something broke loose this week. An acquaintance, who had been a near-daily fixture in my life for close to fifteen years, died on Thursday. A few months before that, she got sick with I still don’t know what, fading from my life, and then she was gone. I didn’t expect that second part.
For the sake of her privacy and my own, I won’t get further into the details than that. However, I came out of this unable to just feel sad. For one, I felt guilty that I had been leaving a Facebook friend invite from her hanging since before she got sick, the reason being, I pretty much don’t use Facebook except to message with literally two people. And I wondered if she died with the general vibe that I didn’t like her, not that those thoughts would be anywhere near her mind in her final moments.
I also felt used up and angry, the news of her death coming to me with the detached air of Adrian Wojnarowski reporting an end of bench NBA player getting waived, the hint of something sad in the news if you’re human enough to instill empathy into emotionless words, but otherwise shared with me, cold and devoid of any caring. And the implication of which meant that I didn’t matter either. And I have to say, that really fucked me up. It fucked me that she wasn’t given more love and respect in the announcement, and it fucked me up as I came to realize how I am viewed by the people I spend the most time with. Which is to say, she was viewed as nothing and I am viewed as nothing. We are human cattle and that is it.
With what had broken inside of me, I needed something both equal and different. I needed the pop-rock I found in Personal Trainer.
When the choice between finalists is close, sometimes what swings it is just however the fuck I’m feeling in the moment. Well, this particular week, the searching, almost pleading quality of Personal Trainer’s lyrics resonated in a way that the bleakness of Ils’ brutalism did not.
You’d almost think it would be the opposite, but shit, I was looking for something, anything to carry me through this week. The many voices on this album (and for what’s billed as the project of Willem Smit, there are a lot of them) all seem to be looking for something as well. But when multiple singers are trading off singing about or harmonizing on some existentialism, it’s hard to feel quite as alone in the world.
Juxtaposed against the hookiest tunes you may ever hear, this is the kind of music that can both match a bitter mood and keep a person going at the same time.
That kind of thing doesn’t really work in this genre if the songwriting, execution and production aren’t all up to par. Pretty obviously because I picked the damn record as the best record of the entire week, all three exceed being up to par. Still Willing is brilliant in all facets, especially its production.
Every single detail here feels poured over to the point where it feels like it occurred spontaneously, naturally; divinely. The difference between this and over-produced bullshit is Personal Trainer seems to have an innate genius for what feels right. Yes, the details do feel micromanaged, but like I already said, they also feel natural. Yes, everything feels fucking perfect, but the compositions feel lively and bursting with spontaneity. This balance in pop genres is so hard to maintain — between perfection and heart, perfection and joy; perfection and surprise. Yet here we are.
And for as much as I talk about the pop sensibilities on Still Willing, blasts of dissonance burst threw nearly every track without ever feeling out of place.
But that’s just Personal Trainer being Personal Trainer. They exist within their juxtapositions. Sadness living beside joy. Noise living beside pop. They claim to be mainly a project of Smit, yet they feel more like a group project than almost any other album that I’ve loved this year. All of these things can be and are true all at once. They contain multitudes.
For me, on this weird week of mine, this is what made the most sense. This is what felt right. This pushed me forward through some hard days. Still Willing was there for me with its multitudes and juxtapositions and weirdness. And if you’re going through some weird times, I think they might be there for you, too.