Audio Antihero, Reissues & The Passing of Time

'There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time', the title of the short-but-brilliant album that The Superman Revenge Squad Band gave the world back in 2013, may well be the truest ten words ever to grace my iTunes library. There really isn't anything more frightening than the passing of time - it happens so damn quickly (I can't believe, for example, that it's been almost two years since I reviewed There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time), and once it's happened, there's no way to make it un-happen.

The music industry, mind you, LOVES the passing of time. It gives them an excuse to recycle their old stock, to make more money on the same old product by adding nothing more than a smattering of crap bonus tracks (boo, hiss!) and telling everyone to re-buy something they already own simply because it's a particular number of years old now.

Even Audio Antihero, the self-professed "specialists in commercial suicide" who released There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time back in 2013, have decided to get in on the reissue game; to be fair to 'em, though, they're playing it a lot cooler than most.

Today, Audio Antihero are reissuing Frog, a lo-fi, seven-track mini-album from the New York band of the same name. You remember Kind of Blah, Frog's full-length debut, released earlier this year? Well, that album went down so well that Audio Antihero decided to dig up the set of recordings that preceded it and rehash it on their own label so as to ride the Frog wave that little bit further.

Review: Kind of Blah by Frog

Here are some lyrical excerpts from the songs that make up Frog's Kind of Blah:

"Bar moans with calzones and verses from the Rolling Stones" - Wish Upon a Bar

"All dogs go to Heaven, all songs end in quiet refrains, smart moms buy generic, say it tastes the same" - All Dogs Go to Heaven

"Judy Garland hit the bathroom floor of her cold apartment 'bove a Chelsea store and all the drag queens and all the whores couldn't get poor Judy back up off of her laurels" - Judy Garland

Fuckin' poetry, no? If I had written those lines, I would want to make damn sure that everybody could hear them, that my genius was plain to all who listened.

Five Years of Audio Antihero

An antihero is, put simply, someone who does heroic things but doesn't behave in a heroic way. Wolverine is a common example; he fights on the side of good, but he's a drinker, a smoker, and a bit of an all-round curmudgeon, none of which are normally considered to be heroic qualities.

Let's apply this trope to the music industry. A traditional 'hero' would be the label who put out catchy, accessible music that everybody instantly loves. Audio Antihero, on the other hand, have a slightly different approach:

"We know, we know. You THINK you want a squeaky-clean pop song, but deep down, that's not really what you're looking for. Here's the music that you really NEED: some wonky punk stuff, a folk song that sounds like it was recorded in the bowels of a ship, and a nine-minute droney thing."

I only came across Audio Antihero last year. The first AA release I listened to was There is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passing of Time by The Superman Revenge Squad Band, and while that one grabbed me more or less immediately, it was followed by left-turn after left-turn after left-turn.

Top 10 Albums of 2013

Right, I've done the best songs of 2013 - now it's time for the albums. These are my ten favourite albums of the last 12 months, and each one is an outstanding testament to the album as a format. Some scale the highest of high concepts with subtlety and aplomb, while others simply succeed by filling a CD with corkers from one rim to the other.

One side note before we get started: The Crimea's Square Moon is noticeably absent from this list, but not because it's not good enough for the top ten. The band's double-length swansong was officially released this summer, but since I got a pre-order version way back in autumn 2011 (ner ner na-ner ner), I don't really count it as an album of 2013. If you like, you can read my tribute to Square Moon - and The Crimea generally - by clicking here.

Right, now that that's out of the way, let's crack on with that all-important list...

#10 - Reflektor by Arcade Fire
There are plenty of reasons to dislike it (not least its inescapable promotional campaign, which certainly ruffled the feathers of one Trent Reznor), but it's hard to deny that Reflektor is one of the best albums of 2013. It's easily been among the most talked-about, and that kind of hype will often lead to disappointment when things actually get released, but fortunately, the music on those two discs more than justified it. It was a more daring, more ambitious, and altogether more exciting album than The Suburbs, with songs like Afterlife and Here Comes the Night Time making up for the slight lack of truly brilliant tunes on the band's previous release. Oh, and even if it could quite easily have fit on one CD,  the second one makes it feel a lot bigger, and a lot more important.

5 New Albums I Now Own

Back at the '-er' end of October, I posted a blog called 5 New Albums I Want Right Now. It was pretty much exactly what the title promised: a quintet of newish releases that I simply couldn't wait to get my grubby little mitts on.

I now own all five of those albums, so today I'm going to sit down and see whether or not my excitement was valid. After all, a new album isn't necessarily a good album...

Reflektor by Arcade Fire
I've already mentioned that I prefer this album to its predecessor, but just because it stomps on The Suburbs doesn't mean I'm going to hand it an 'Album of the Year' trophy as a reward. My opinion of Reflektor shifts every time I listen to it; at first, I thought disc one was genius and disc two was boring, but after another play, I decided that they were both completely brilliant. Then I started to like disc two more, because the songs on disc one had started to lose their novelty (the Jonathan Ross cameo on You Already Know will never not be jarring).

There Is Nothing More Frightening...

So this album by The Superman Revenge Squad Band was one of the five that I mentioned in my greedyguts wishlist blog a couple of weeks ago, and I'm pleased to announce that - mildly disturbing artwork aside - it's really rather good. In fact, it's probably my favourite out of those five (although I haven't picked up my Okkervil River CD from Spillers yet so I'd better reserve that judgement for now).

Perhaps my favourite thing about There Is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passing Of Time is its talent for taking a seemingly arbitrary pop-culture reference and spinning it into gold. Paulie in Rocky Three - yes, that's the name of the song - starts with a description of this one scene in Rocky III where somebody smashes up a pinball machine (disclaimer: I have never seen any of the Rocky films), but as it transpires, the whole point of that song is that he can remember random bits of films and TV shows better than he can remember important events from his own life.

And then you have a track called Flavor Flav, which is a particularly inventive break-up song:

"If you leave me, I'll be left like Public Enemy without Flavor Flav. It would be functional, and the records would still sell (after all, Chuck D is the main man). We'd get through this somehow, but I don't think I'd want to fight the power without you."

Ben Parker - yes, like Spider Man's uncle, I believe that's this guy's name - then goes on to compare himself post-relationship to R.E.M. post-1993, acknowledging that bigger things await (like headlining Glastonbury) but suspecting that the best work is in the past and that all of those festival-goers will only want to hear the songs from Automatic for the People.

This album speaks to me on an almost embarrassingly intimate level, and I'm pretty sure it's because everything is framed in terms of albums and films and TV shows and magazines. When he sings about acting like his 13-year-old self in Lately I've Found Myself Regressing, 'regression' means reading and listening to all your old favourites, not necessarily behaving like a younger person.

And while it's true that lyrics are more interesting when they refer to albums you love and TV shows you've grown up with, I think there's a little more to this album's appeal than just 'oh awesome he's talking about R.E.M.'. This bit from We're Here for the Duration sums it up pretty well:

"I'm quoting from telly 'cause it makes much more sense, people understand stuff that comes from Joey from Friends more than they ever know."

Basically, feelings like nostalgia and discontent and wanting things to change are best expressed in cultural references because it's a language we all speak. Parker rounds off that song by quoting verbatim the chorus from Iron Maiden's Can I Play With Madness, as if to illustrate his point.

It's been a long time since I was so interested in an album's lyrical content - I've really only scratched the surface of how scarily accurate these songs are to my life - but I should mention that the music itself is pretty good too. Special mention for closing track The Angriest Dog in the World, which reveals that The Superman Revenge Squad Band have really mastered the art of the slow build:

The album can be download from the SRSB bandcamp page. Go buy it, bros and girlbros.

5 New Albums I Want Right Now

Dunking my head in the waters of the Welsh Music Prize for a month or two was a fun exercise, don't get me wrong, but buying up all of those albums did cause me to miss a few interesting new releases that weren't born on Welsh soil. Here are five new-ish albums that will be going straight in my shopping basket come payday:

Reflektor by Arcade Fire
I wasn't a big fan of The Suburbs (as this blog post made pretty clear), but I get the impression that Reflektor is a pretty big departure from its predecessor. Equally interesting is the lack of critical consensus I've seen; NME hailed it as their best work yet, while Uncut portrayed it as grand but flawed and Drowned in Sound didn't seem very convinced at all. I'm keen to hear who was right.

The track that has me excited: Reflektor itself. It's big, it's new, it's cuh-ray-zay!

*

Hesitation Marks by Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails still occupy the 'Best Live Band I've Ever Seen' throne in my brain palace (they completely upstaged the new Smashing Pumpkins at Reading 2007), and while there are still plenty of old NIN albums I don't yet own, this new'un was sufficiently unexpected to leapfrog to the top of my wishlist. I thought Trent Reznor was done with NIN, so the announcement a few months back came as a pleasant surprise.

The track that has me excited: The rather awesome Came Back Haunted.

*

The Silver Gymnasium by Okkervil River
I love The Stage Names, and I quite like I Am Very Far, so when I stumbled upon the news that Okkervil River had a new album out I was pretty made up. I know absolutely nothing about The Silver Gymnasium, but I daresay that these guys know what they're doing.

The track that has me excited: I haven't heard anything off this album yet, but if any of the songs are half as good as Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe, I'll be happy.

*

Arrows by Polly Scattergood
As I hinted in an image caption on Friday, this one is quite high on my buy list. I discovered Polly Scattergood through a Mute label sampler (free with another purchase from the ever-excellent Spillers Records); the song was Disco Damaged Kid, and when I discovered that its parent album hadn't yet been released, I made a mental note to check it out when it eventually did see the light of day. Arrows is that album, and I intend to purchase it forthwith.

The track that has me excited: Disco Damaged Kid, the climatic teenage defiance-storm that stood out on that Mute sampler.

*

There is Nothing More Frightening Than the Passing of Time by The Superman Revenge Squad Band
I'd never heard of TSRSB until a couple of days ago. I posted a tweet asking people what new releases I ought to check out, and @DannyinBelfast insisted that I add There is Nothing More Frightening... to my list. I listened to the first track on bandcamp, and promptly stopped listening after that so as not to spoil the album for myself.

The track that has me excited: Lately I've Found Myself Regressing, which sounds like Ed Stockham with a full band behind him.

Come back on Friday, when I'll be listing some slightly less new albums that I've got my eye on.

Click on this link to find out what I thought of these five albums when I did eventually buy them, or click here for the 'slightly less new' albums mentioned above.