Well, I’m just about two months into this music blog. I started it to scratch the itch of all these thoughts in my head, was encouraged by my friends who wanted me to stop bugging them in group chats and just write it already, and am now driven by the emerging discipline and practice of regular writing.
Thank you for coming along for the ride. It has been an unexpected joy to get responses from so many people, both old friends and people I’ve never met before. It’s the magic of music and reminds me of the old days of pen pal writing and zine exchanges in the ‘90s DIY punk scene I grew up in.
In For Want Of… I set out to write a few different things: perfect punk albums, explore connections between jazz and punk, and share a bit of my own philosophy and personal memoir with music.
I’m now five albums in on the perfect punk series, and it feels like a good place to pause and tip my hat to five albums that I really, really wanted to include in the series, but that just don’t quite pass the test.
As I said at the start of the series, the test is simple but hard. First, it has to be an actual album. Not an EP (so many great 7”s and 10”s), and not a comp lp (sorry, Fugazi’s 13 Songs). Second, it must have no skippable track. The second threshold is pretty subjective, and I’m surprised I haven’t gotten pushback yet, but maybe that’s what this post will provoke.
There are albums I love, records I fully intended to write about in this series, that when I revisited them to prepare for this series, I had to begrudingly admit that they don’t pass. It pains me. Albums where I already envisioned the narrative arc they could offer, the musical craft they exhibit, the place they hold, but then something would get in the way. They’re all great albums. Some of them are among my favorites. But each has a track or two or three that sink it.
But…because I love them anyway, and because they’re so close, I decided to use this post to give five quick shoutouts. It also affords me the opportunity to highlight some great albums that just miss the mark, which hopefully gives some honesty about my test.
As a quick reminder, here are the five that have made it so far:
Spirit Assembly’s Welcome to Lancaster County
Sunny Day Real Estate’s LP2 / The Pink Album
Lungfish’s Rainbows From Atoms
Superchunk’s No Pocky for Kitty
Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy
And now, for five that didn’t.
Seaweed - Spanaway (1995, Hollywood Records)
This is, by far, my favorite Seaweed album, and it has some of my favorite songs ever. “Magic Mountainman” is a top-three all-time song for me. I stand by that. “Crush Us All” is right up there, too.
Those first six tracks are, simply put, banger after banger. So. Damn. Good.
Which is exactly what makes this one so hard, and exactly why it’s proof the test is real. “Assistant (To The Manager),” “Last Humans,” and “Peppy’s Bingo” tank it.
It’s such a good record, with some of my favorite songs ever. And I just can’t put it up here because of those three. That’s the test keeping me honest. But I have a feeling Seaweed may end up on the main page sooner or later anyway.
Mineral - The Power of Failing (1997, Crank!)
Mineral is canon. Heartfelt, rending vocals, music built to break you open. If you’re drawing up the emo canon, this record is on it, no argument.
In my junior year of high school, our English teacher had us bring in a song to play for the class as a way to talk about poetic devices (clutch your pearls, poets). As a 16-17-year-old, I agonized over it. I was one of just a couple of kids at my school who were into independent punk music at this point. Everyone knew that I was into music and played music, but they didn’t really understand what it was. So, to me, it felt like this was my chance at both revelation and evangelization. I finally landed on Mineral, and on their track, “If I Could,” off The Power of Failing. I had to ask my teacher to bring in a turntable because I was the only kid in the room who wasn’t handing over a CD, which felt like something in itself.
Later that year, I saw Mineral live in Philadelphia. I was so excited. Here was this band that was chef’s kiss emo. It was gonna be an experience. Instead, it was so boring. They just stood there. I remember thinking, “How do you make music this wrenching and then be this inert in a room?”
And that bleeds into the record. “Dolorosa” and “Silver” do the same thing. They drag, and they drag to the point where the emotional investment you’ve made turns on you and leaves a bad taste. This isn’t a case of keeping it simple or a droning trance. Rather than pulling you in, these two tracks just push you out.
Skip.
Team Dresch - Personal Best (1995, Chainsaw Records / Candy-Ass Records)
I loved this band. Thoughtful, funny, angry, loving sing-along lyrics. Complicated song structures that still cohere into a solid, catchy piece. Real range and diversity in the songs all across the record. It’s such an awesome record. Never mind Personal Best, this record is one of the best (ha, see what I did there?).
Plus, Team Dresch is a queer women band, which was pretty (and sadly) unprecedented at the time (one thing I’ve loved with the scene nowadays is how much more present this is!). Even though the punk scene was relatively welcoming and inclusive, it still had its guarded gates. Which bands were given the most access were still very male, still very hetero male, still very cisgendered hetero male. Team Dresch was (and is) subversive not just more generally in society but within our scene, too. The personal was very much political. And it was hard for them to get the recognition they so well-deserved. In addition to the DIY drive and culture, there is a reason this title is self-released on their own labels. At the time, within my scene, it became a marker of who was in, the ones who were family, who were allies if not queer too, by whether songs from this record showed up on their mixtapes or if they were fans.
Before I started this blog, I was sure this album would be included in my perfect punk album series. But I just can’t do it.
I was talking to a friend about this one, and before I could say which song, she already agreed and was sure it’d be “Freewheel” that undoes it. But, for me, that’s not the one. In fact, I think that song is solid within the album and is a prelude to the folk-punk wave thing that turns up in bands like Against Me! a decade and change later.
It’s “She’s Amazing.” The song drags. Same issue as with Mineral. It just sits there, and doesn’t move or pull you in.
Avail - Over the James (1998, Lookout! Records)
Avail is a legend, at least in our Delmarva nook.
I first heard them early in middle school. My friend John, who played in that first band with me, handed me a cassette of Satiate (their first album, released in 1992) on a class trip to Colonial Williamsburg. I kinda remember he said he got it from a skater friend. I think I had just turned 13, and this was one of the first punk records I ever listened to. I remember I was listening to “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix when he handed it to me. And I just played it over and over again.
Avail runs deep in that Delaware crew and beyond. Richmond wasn’t too far away to drive to, and Avail would play our area a lot. And this album is just so good.
I remember one night on one of Boy Sets Fire’s European tours, listening to Over the James, all of us in a drunken delight, singing along and throwing our bodies over the seats. “Stagediving” inside the bus. I remember my brother Matt being in such a great mood, really happy, and just singing along to every word. That was a great night.
I remember another tour, this time in a van with Dear Tonight, and our drummer, Dan, singing along to “Fifth Wheel” at the top of his lungs like he was trying to expel them out of his mouth or pop a blood vessel trying.
I can’t believe a band can write so many anthemic songs, but that’s just simply the Avail formula.
When they played a reunion in Brooklyn in 2019, our Delaware-in-Brooklyn crew turned out and had a blast. Everyone at that show did. I lost myself in the joy of it. I hadn’t gone to a punk show in years, and it just brought me back to what I loved, the pure collective catharsis you can experience dancing in the pit, no distractions, everyone present together.
That one was nostalgia. In my post last week about Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, I wrote about how that reunion show, for me at least, wasn’t about nostalgia, and I meant it. But sometimes these reunion shows are. And you know, what? So what. Sometimes it’s great to just be a kid again for a night.
This album is so good. Fourteen tracks, but sadly, “Vine” and “Ask” make it fail the test. If only they made it a 12-song record, it’d be sitting in the main series instead of the honorable mentions.
Neurosis - Times of Grace (1999, Relapse Records)
Oh my goodness, this album. There’s so much here. This is one of the first experiences I had experiencing the cathartic, near-ecstatic thing a heavy ass record like this can do, and this is one of the best to do it. The first four songs kick off and simply take you over. It’s a heavy trance.
I got to see them live at Tramps (RIP) in New York City on this tour. It was my second year in New York City, and my life there still felt fresh and like a discovery. I’d spend parts of my late mornings and afternoons in class and then my nights skateboarding the empty streets of Manhattan, cutting across Times Square, Chelsea, the Village, at 1:00 a.m. with my roommate, Danny. Somehow, we’d often end up with a 40 and falafel from Mamoun’s. This was still Giuliani’s New York. There was a sense of freedom and danger in Manhattan at that time. I don’t think it was just because I was 18 and 19, but I think it’s what it actually was, and it’s something that NYC has long lost. Though I know everyone says that about the old days.
Tramps is gone too, another venue lost to the tides of New York real estate. The Neurosis show was in the venue’s final year.
The show was unlike anything I’d experienced. Bodies moving as one, a constant wave rolling back and forth across the room. The music full, almost to the point where it wasn’t invisible sound but some tangible force that surrounded us and moved us back and forth in time. It was this album they played live.
And if this album on its own wasn’t enough, then there’s Times of Grace coupled with Tribes of Neurot’s Grace. Tribes of Neurot was Neurosis’s “dark ambient” side project, and this release was a companion record to Times of Grace, with the two meant to be played over one another. Try lining those two up exactly, though! Not sure if I ever succeeded.
So, I was so ready to write about this record. All the feeling. All the cathartic and ecstatic power of music. My early days in New York City. I was even prepared to defend “Belief” and “Exist,” the moodier, slower, more atmospheric pieces, because I think they actually work within the album’s narrative. Then there’s “End of the Harvest,” one of my favorite songs ever written. I’ve always wanted to write a song as heavy and as compelling as that, and I’ve always failed.
But “Descent” kills it and makes it fail the test. Sorry. That bagpipe drone is too much. Make it stop. Please! There were plenty of other drones they could have reached for, a shruti box, a tanpura, a synth. Any of them would have worked. Just not that damn bagpipe.
So, these are five honorable mentions. Exclusions that hopefully prove the rule. And, affording me some wiggle room to give a quick nod in their direction. I know one could just say, “Forget about the rule. Change it! Rules are made to be broken! This is punk rock!” But the discipline of holding this test drives the focus. A test that never excludes anything valuable isn’t a test. The fact that it costs me records I love, hopefully, is evidence that it means something.
Stay tuned for future posts! I have more perfect punk albums to write about, more connections between jazz and punk to explore, and hopefully some interviews to share as well!
And please let me know what you think, and feel free to share. Thanks!
RE: Mineral
I had a similar thing in a High School English class -- but they had us separate into groups and each group picked a song and dissected it's meaning. Everybody in my group knew there was no way in hell I wasn't going to pick the song since I had already made music my whole ass personality. So I picked SDRE 'Shadows'. Cue my (then) need to be the most pretentious kid in the room.
At CMJ in 96 Mineral gave my friend a CD copy of 'the power of failing' simply because he looked like he would be into it (IE: buddy holly glasses, morrisey hair, and a thirift store thisrt). But I saw Mineral only once in their original run -- on that last tour they did (97?) at a fest in Cincinnati and I had never seen a band that looked like they didn't want to be there more. Meanwhile a girl wearing a backpack cried and the power blew out twice. Actually I think I bought my copy of the BSF/Jazz Mans Needle split at that fest.