Misguided by Voices

By Demand Music Review

Photo by Tamim Arafat on Unsplash

An open letter to the guy who asked me to review his music and say “it sucks.”

I told you I’d give you an honest review. 

I asked you simple questions like “how many musicians played on it?” and “who played on it?” and “what instruments were used?”

The answers to those questions were “You’re gonna hate it, none of the songs have bridges,”, “you’re gonna hate it, none of the songs have bridges,” and “I don’t know, like guitar and stuff.”

Really, the most intriguing thing you told me is that the songs didn’t have bridges. 

I’m no music theorist nor purist.

I’m not even a musician.

I’m a guy who carried around a microphone for a popular punk band. I hit notes occasionally the way a drunken soft tip dart player in a pub hits bullseyes. 

You asked me to say your music sucks, because that might be some sort of twisted validation.

The first track, us, sounds like Dinosaur,Jr. got in a bus accident and a concussed J.Mascis played an out of tune acoustic to pass the time while he was trapped in the wreckage. I regret to inform you that I kind of like it. It has strong elements of suck, but just doesn’t quite pull it off, drifting into waters that might actually be described as “enjoyable.”

The high pitched squeal of roa the boat might drive the average person crazy, but I’m not the average person. The song and production quality (or absolute lack of it) combine to have a vaguely Celtic vibe, and though the vocal track delves deeply into hippie campfire let’s steal their bong and get the hell out of here, it also conjures images of Phil Lynott trying subtly to come out to Barry Manilow, an undoubtedly unintended plus.

Istanbull is amazing in the respect that you named a track after a Middle Eastern city, either misspelled it or made a dumb pun, then captured a Middle Eastern riff and rhythm so literally and repetitively that Rivers Cuomo blushed into his kofta.

caso de palo at six minutes, seems to be your Sandinista moment, only five songs into your career. It’s too long by four minutes, features the breathtaking repetition we’ve come to tolerate from you, and sounds like that guy two years removed from college not knowing what he’s gonna do with that botanical ethics degree was finally going to write a song to impress his grade school art teacher he had a crush on. Bonus points if you had a crush on your grade school art teacher. 

lie to me captures the feel of the very first Butthole Surfers rehearsal so perfectly, when the other guys didn’t know they were in a band yet, but the LSD was good and two of the guys thought a Zappa tribute band might piss off their probation officer.

beautiful stunday is an outlier track in numerous ways.

First, if you ever put a picture of yourself standing in front of a beach sunset anywhere again,someone, somewhere is going to want to punch you. You’re a musician, not a South Florida travel PSA.

Second, the machine generated vocal harmony makes me believe that you could open up for The High Strung, simultaneously the best review and the worst review, respectively, that either band is going to get.

prelude,clocking in as the ninth song on the collection is the kind of David Byrnesque act of rebellion that would have been worthy of two paragraphs in Rolling Stone in 1977, but in 2023 just feels like you don’t know what the word means. However, the John Williams on lithium nature of the song itself makes the listener feel like we were there with you, watching your little sister reenact the Battle of Yavin with her Legos.

I know you wanted me to say this collection of songs sucks,and so many times you had strong elements of suck, really were sort of merging onto suck highway with your muffler dragging, but unfortunately there are some elements to like here, especially the audacity of its unpolishedness, the ability take the whiff of a song idea and make it permeate the room to the point that visible fog was created, and the eclectic stylistic nature, where you seem highly capable of sucking in different genres but just don’t quite pull it off. 3 out of 4 stars. 

https://picmusic3.bandcamp.com/