Arts & Culture

ALUR | Exercise, HGTV and Emo Melodies

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Let me preface this piece by saying that my recent columns have been very politically driven, and I’m ready for a break. Every news story I read makes me cringe, so today I’m going to attempt to deliver some lighter writing. Here’s to hoping I succeed. I’ve been going to the gym more often lately. It’s a nice break from my academic life and it gives me something to do in those awkward hours in the middle of the day.

Arts & Culture

TEST SPIN: Jimmy Eat World — Integrity Blues

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Jimmy Eat World’s newest release, Integrity Blues, weaves its way through nearly every subgenre of alternative in 11 songs. It’s got a little bit of progressive rock, a chunk of emo, a healthy dose of pop and a block of dark electronic. It’s diverse, well rounded and flows pretty well. It’s not completely cohesive, but moves through its different phases as gracefully as possible. The first phase is poppy and catchy.

Arts & Culture

TEST SPIN: Taking Back Sunday — Tidal Wave

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There are select phrases that evoke a warm, fuzzy feeling inside of me. Among them are “Warped Tour” and “Hot Topic.” And I still wholeheartedly believe that it’s perfectly okay to long for Warped Tour and Hot Topic even in 2016. You see, there’s something about teenage angst that epitomizes nostalgia. Something comforting, even. But this same nostalgia reminds us that the heyday of pop-punk has long since passed.

Arts & Culture

Spinning Singles: Joyce Manor, “Last You Heard Of Me”

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Nine days remain until Joyce Manor release their fourth LP, Cody. In the six years since their 2010 Split with Summer Vacation, the pop-punk/emo quartet has matured in a familiar trajectory. The group toned down the blunt twenty-something angst of their 2011 self-titled debut, added in power-pop motifs and continued putting out unpretentious vignettes through 2012’s Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired and 2014’s Never Hungover Again. “Fake I.D.,” the first single off of Cody (slated for an October 7 release), resembled the Brit pop-inspired “Heated Swimming Pool” far more than any of the group’s latchkey SoCal musings. I freaked a little when I first heard it, to be honest.

Arts & Culture

Joyce Manor — “Fake I.D.”

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Before getting to “Fake I.D.,” let’s lay down some background on Joyce Manor. The California four-piece works in a grey area between emo and punk. Their lyrics skew far more often towards crypticness than the melodrama in their emo and pop-punk contemporaries’ work. Their songs are complicated, throbbing with raw energy and short: their four LPs all clock in at fewer than 20 minutes. The band’s 2011 self-titled debut posed a commitment to bile and pettiness that continued throughout their later releases.

Arts & Culture

TEST SPIN: Teen Suicide — It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, Let’s Stir the Honeypot

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Is Teen Suicide’s It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, Let’s Stir the Honeypot a long album? Its 26 tracks boost it to a nearly half-hour longer duration than that of the Maryland band’s 2012 i will be my own hell because there is a devil inside my body. And even though many clock in at two minutes or shorter, the pure number of songs on the release can seem intimidating. Or, if you switch your mindset, welcoming. It’s the Big Joyous Celebration does not pack neatly into a succinct metaphor.

Arts & Culture

TEST SPIN: Wet — Don’t You

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Sometimes the sad love songs you listen to are not about the type of love you think they are. Sometimes they aren’t even romantic, though they may be rather striking. Kelly Zutrau, Joe Valle and Marty Sulkow — the trio who make up Wet — seem to be early-rising experts at crafting songs that ooze distilled electronic sounds and R&B patterns, gliding along Zutrau’s whimsical voice singing highly realistic and exhausted lyrics to create an enrapturing soundscape. The band’s debut album, Don’t You, is the band’s first release since their 2013 self-titled EP. I started listening to the new album for background music and soon found myself unable to focus on what I was doing because I was so wrapped up in what I was hearing.

Arts & Culture

TEST SPIN: Foxing — Dealer

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By MAX VAN ZILE

Foxing’s Dealer is a thoroughly toothless record, a set of non-obtrusive songs that resists close attention. Since it aims for  —  and mostly hits  —  a tone of subdued prettiness, the record is never unpleasant to listen to, but it fails to engage the listener. Moreover, both the sensitive, self-consciously emotional lyrics and the vocal performance by lead singer Conor Murphy are vaguely irritating. This is an uninspired listen, but it does have its moments of melody: Dealer, therefore, is a record ideally suited as background music, a record that suffers with increased scrutiny. The band themselves are a five-piece from St.