Album Review: 5-Pack Volume 1 by The Four Postmen

I wasn’t planning on writing about any EPs in doing my album reviews, but I made an exception for this particular one. Firstly, The Four Postmen is a band that is pretty special to me (more on that in a moment). Secondly, it’s a really fun EP. Thirdly, it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want.

My discovery of the band is kind of a fun story. When Katie and I were living in California, she was listening to a Moxy Fruvous album while in the costume shop at school (she was getting her Masters in costume design). The shop manager said that if she liked that band, he knew a guy in a similar type of band, and not too long after that he asked us if we wanted to go to one of their shows with him. We said yes, of course, because it had been a while since we had gone to any shows. We got to the venue rather early, so we decided to walk to a local restaraunt and grab some dinner. Lo and behold, the entire band showed up at the same restaurant, and we ended up eating with them! They were all really nice and super funny guys, and it was fantastic intro to them.

We became sort-of groupies after that first show. It was hard not to. Their shows are goofy and energetic, with a lot of banter and joking around in between songs. Not to mention that most of their songs are silly or at least humorously creative. Not being able to see them anymore was one of the hardest things about leaving California (I’m not even joking about that).

The Four Postmen are pretty much straight up rock-and-roll. Their earlier albums are much more acoustic, almost early Barenaked Ladies sounding. Subsequent albums have had much more energy and traditional rock elements (i.e. electric guitar) in them. Most of their songs incorporate harmonies between the members, and it’s hard not to sing along.

5-Pack Volume 1 has (surprise) five songs, and they were all songs that we heard played at numerous shows. It begins with “The Karaoke King” (written for an independent movie of the same name) and ends with “Parachute”, the two most energetic songs on the EP. “Bed a’Nails” and “Drivin’ Me” are a little more subdued, and are similar in their sarcastic and cynical (but still fun) lyrics. “Coffee Girl” is Katie’s all-time favorite Postmen song, and it’s a ballad of a man in love with a coffee barrista, and it’s chock full of coffee puns (and inappropriateness).

The Four Postmen are a band to listen to when you’re in a good mood and feeling a little goofy. Once you learn the lyrics, it’s impossible not to join in on the singing. And after a while you really learn to appreciate the wordplay and overall writing of the songs. They are truly underrated geniuses, and I’m glad I got to see them as much as I did when I had the chance.

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Album Review: 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours by Green Day

Ah, Green Day. What musically-minded person who grew up in the 90s wouldn’t have at least a fleeting appreciation for Green Day? Green Day was one of the bands that pushed me into world of music beyond the classic rock that my parents would listen to (which I also appreciate). And while that album was actually Dookie, today we’re here to talk about 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours.

While most casual older fans of Green Day probably started with Dookie, I don’t know many who have 1,039 in their collections. I actually got my copy by trading for it with my younger brother – who had it for God knows what reason, since he was never really into music – for the Spin Doctors album Pocket Full of Kryptonite (which I had received from someone else for free). I know… trading albums? Nowadays you can just download both for free if you know where to look. I’m old, I get it.

Anyway.

1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours isn’t technically Green Day’s first album; it’s a compilation album that includes their first album (39/Smooth) and two of their EPs (Slappy and 1,000 Hours), all of which are out of print. So, really, 1,039 is just referred to as their first album for the sake of argument.

The sound of the album is much more raw than Dookie and everything beyond it. But in that rawness is an energy that started to fade a little once their albums started being produced differently. You can definitely tell they were young punks putting their hearts into their music.

That all being said, 1,039 isn’t really my favorite album of theirs. It’s a fun album, and I’ll throw it on once in a great while for nostalgic purposes, but if I want a Green Day fix I’ll typically reach for Kerplunk or Insomniac (and, yes, Dookie of course). Still, there are some gems on there. It opens with “At the Library”, a catchy teenage anthem about being infatuated with a girl from afar, which is great to listen to as an angsty teenager. And speaking of angsty songs, “Disappearing Boy” is a great one about feeling invisible, something I greatly understood in my youth. “Paper Lanterns” is definitely a musical prototype to some of their later songs on Dookie, and is yet another angsty song about a girl (seeing a pattern here?). And then there’s my personal favorite, “Only of You”, a sort of love letter to a girl. Funnily enough, I used the lyrics of this song to write an actual love letter to someone I liked in high school. It didn’t work. Still, the song is a nice one because it’s not angsty and has a nice energy to it.

I’m not entirely sure if modern Green Day fans – those who are more into American Idiot and beyond – have an appreciation for 1,039. I can’t see that many would, really, as Green Day’s sound (and image) has changed massively over the years. But I would hope there are a good number who can enjoy it for it what is is – a glimpse into the roots of a band that helped bring punk into the mainstream during the 90s.

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Album Review: +- by Mew

My review for this album might be a little lacking, because I’ve not had the album for very long, and it’s a band I’ve only known for a short time. I first learned about Mew about a year ago when someone in a forum directed me to their album Frengers. I fell in love with that album, but didn’t seek out any of their other works until +- was released.

Mew is a Danish band whose sound is pop-influenced indie rock. While +- shares many similarities in sound to Frengers, it has a little more of a pop feel to it than the indie sound that dominates Frengers. However, where I would normally find this as a minus (see what I did there?), I actually think it works for Mew.

From the spacey sounding intro and twinkling guitars of the opening song (and album single) “Satellites”, I knew it would be a good listen. “Satellites” is probably my favorite song on the album, and it will get stuck in your head for days. The tone of the album mellows out a bit with the next few songs, sliding into the pop-heavy “Making Friends”. Again, not being a fan of pop in general, it took me a few tries to get into the song, but it’s pretty well-composed, and I’ve come around to it. The pace of the album starts picking up again with the next song, “Clinging to a Bad Dream”, and then we fall into the hands of the catchy “My Complications”. After that we’re treated to another poppy tune, which also happens to be the second single off the album, “Water Slides”. The last three songs bring the mood back down to mellow, which probably the most disappointing thing for me, because I would have loved at least one more rock-inspired song before the album ends. As it stands, after “Water Slides”, I tend to tune the album out. They aren’t bad songs, I just think there could have been a little more energy before the end.

While I would highly recommend Frengers over +-, the latter is still a very well-done album with fantastically composed songs and haunting vocals. Give it a try if you’re looking for something different.

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An Intro to Something New…

In my pontificating upon what to do in cases of lack of writing blog material (as was the case with this week), I came up with an idea that I’m very excited about. I can’t guarantee that you will be, but for me it’ll be a good exercise and something that I will enjoy. I will be reviewing a good portion of my music collection.

As I pointed out in a fairly recent post, music has been extremely important to me, not just in terms of something to inspire or motivate me while writing, but it weaves through my life. Many songs and albums are attached to important memories, good and bad. And music and writing are not so far apart in similarities; both require masterful crafting to produce something beautiful from many individual parts.

So, these reviews will provide me fodder to write about, it will give me a chance to talk about albums that are important to me (and even the ones that aren’t), and it will challenge me to get through nearly 500 albums (and that’s just the current number).  This is not to say that I will no longer be talking about writing.  This is just for the times when I struggle to think of something else to write about, or if I just really want to talk about an album.  The best case scenario will be that you’ll get at least two blog posts in a week – one about music and one about writing.

My initial plan was to compile all of my albums and review them alphabetically by album title. However, I want to kick this thing off by reviewing an important album to me because the band is celebrating its 30th anniversary at this time, and I thought that would be a good way to start. So, album #1 is…

Images and Words by Dream Theater

By the end of my junior year in high school, in the ancient days of 1998, I was mostly still a metal head when it came to music. I listened to a lot of alternative stuff, but it was mostly the harder bands.  I was big on Metallica, Megadeth, Black Sabbath, Marilyn Manson, and Korn. And then, one day towards the end of the school year, we were cleaning out our lockers when a classmate with whom I wasn’t friends turned to me and handed me a cassette tape, asking if I wanted it. It was commercial cassette tape that had been taped and recorded over (the older folks will know what I’m talking about), and a piece of white masking tape had been used as a label with a handwritten “Dream Theater: Images and Words”. I took it, because why not?

When I finally got around to listening to it, the first song, “Pull Me Under”, completely blew me away. It was metal, but it wasn’t. It was heavy, but at the same time it was complex. What was going on? Then the second song, a softer one, introduced saxophone fills! Granted, they were synthesizer created, but still – saxophone in metal? The entire album was an eye opener to me, pushing me into a realm of music that I didn’t know even existed and gave me an admiration for technical prowess over catchy riffs.

Backing up a bit, I suppose I should explain a little bit about the band. Dream Theater is progressive metal band that formed in the eighties, and while Images and Words (1992) wasn’t their first album, it’s their breakout album with what would be their main lineup. Progressive metal, in a nutshell, is a style of metal that relies on technical playing and complex song structures. A typical Dream Theater song can be about eight minutes (although they range from about three minutes to over twenty minutes).

In any case, after a short while I ditched the cassette tape and got my hands on a CD copy of Images and Words. To this day, out of their extensive discography, it remains my favorite and has my favorite song, “Metropolis, Pt 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper” (with “Pull Me Under” being a very, very close second). Dream Theater, and Images and Words specifically, took a run-of-the-mill metal head and showed him that music can be hard-edged and beautiful at the same time. And for that, I will always be greatful.

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