Author: Matthew Barlow

Paul McCartney Egypt Station Capitol Here is something I never thought I would say: I really like Paul McCartney’s new album.  I grew up on the Beatles, my mom, my dad, and my stepfather were all fans, but of different eras.  My dad was a fan of the Rubber Soul era, my stepfather of The White Album era, and my mother preferred the poppy early Beatles.  Not surprisingly, Paul was her favourite.  John was about the only thing my dad and stepdad would’ve ever agreed on (they only met once, thank God).  So the Beatles are so deeply burrowed into me, I think they’re in my DNA.  I am also a John guy.  But Paul also wrote some of the sillier songs I loved so much as a kid and still do today (‘Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da,’ for example).  But John never had a great solo album.  Paul did, with Linda McCartney, with RAM from 1971.  But George had the best solo album, All Things Must Pass, also from 1971. Anyway.  Since then, McCartney has fallen into the rabbit hole of cheese and schmaltz, I would argue.  And then, suddenly, Egypt Station.  He’s focused and determined here, his familiar voice like an old friend.  He even busts out the old leather lungs of the 1960s a few times.  I’m amazed he can still do it.  But it’s his song-writing that stands out here.  The entire...

Mudhoney Digital Garbage SubPop Earlier this year, Mudhoney celebrated their 30th anniversary, commemorated with the live album, LIE (Live in Europe).  It’s kind of mind-boggling to think they’ve been doing this that long.  And even more impressive is that even now, 30 years on, as the band members are pushing 60, they sound as essential, and pissed off, as they ever have.  There was a long wait between their 2008 album, The Lucky Ones, and their 2013 comeback, Vanishing Point.  Something interesting happened in that break.  They re-discovered their snarl.  But 2008, I found Mudhoney to be getting tired, frontman Mark Arm even sounded bored at times.  But no more. Arm is a fascinating frontman, of the Iggy Pop school of frontmen (minus the self-harm and utter looniness of Sir Iggy), but oozing charisma and self-loathing, able to spin on a snear on stage, and a pretty vicious rhythm guitarist (Steve Turner plays most of the leads).  And on Digital Garbage, he sounds pissed off and vicious.  His target is the white supremacist, Christian right (or what some call the alt.right), and the idiocy of our lives filtered through social media.  The first track, ‘Nerve Attack,’ openly mocks white supremacists, survivalists, and gun nuts.  ‘Kill Yourself Live’ talks about the pressures and stupidity of social media.  And, ‘Hey, Neanderfuck,’ well, I suppose you can figure out what’s going on there. And then there’s the...

Idles Joy As An Act of Resistance Partisan For my money, the best band in the world right now is Idles.  A collection of working-class louts from Bristol in the UK, they make essential, vicious post-punk noise.  Their 2017 début, the appropriately named Brutalism, was a kick in the head.  Over 13 vicious tracks, frontman Joe Talbot deconstructed classism, nationalism, wilful ignorance and toxic masculinity.  Talbot’s co-opting of Margaret Atwood in the midst of the track ‘Mother’ was both surprising and welcome: Sexual violence doesn’t start and end with rape It starts in our books and behind our school gates Men are scared women will laugh in their face Whereas women are scared it’s their lives men will take. Live, they are devastating: Joy picks up where Brutalism left off.  It’s not quite as heavy and vicious as its predecessor, but it is equally essential listening. Tablot remains fixated on what ails the world, including xenophobia and nationalism, racism, and, as ever, toxic masculinity.  One thing I appreciate about Idles is that they speak to violent masculinity in our culture through a particularly vicious art form, and yet, they are not the violent ones.  And despite the heavy lyrical content, Idles are not preachy.  Part of this is due to the music.  The duelling guitars of Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan provide the brutalism of the music, over the bouncing bass and drums of...

Dilly Dally Heaven Partisan My generation is always dissing on the Millennials for this, that, and the other thing.  They eat too many avocados.  They think they’re the first generation to get screwed. And so on.  But one wonderful thing that the kids have done is give us a 90s alternative rock revival. Big, loud guitars. But they’ve taken Gen X one step better, it tends to be women behind these guitars.  Think Courtney Barnett.  Or Camp Cope.  Or Jenn Cloher (to be fair, she’s one of us, she’s my age).  And so on.  So that brings us to the Toronto outfit, Dilly Dally.  Along with having a great name, Dilly Dally bring the noise. Their first album, Sore, came out in 2015, and was long-listed for the Polaris Prize.  And they toured the hell out of the album and nearly imploded.  So it took awhile for the band to recover and regroup.  And then, of course, the global clusterfuck of 2016-17.  And so, frontwoman Katie Monks had to dig deep for the songs on their stellar new album, Heaven. Heaven hits hard.  Very hard, and lead guitarist Liz Ball hits like a tonne of Billy Corgan filtered through the past three decades.  Monks and Ball are like Corgan and James Iha Redux.  But I feel this does them a disservice, they’re not the Smashing Pumpkins II.  They’re better than that.  They’re...