I suppose everything comes full circle, one way or another.

Talkers need to be watchers.

Dirty Beaches – “untitled” (Take Away Show, Paris)

As a footnote, why does it take a personal crisis for me to blog again? I hope to do it again soon, without the impetus.

The loudest hint was “All The Best,” a brutal sledgehammer of a rocker that hits like a bucket of ice and zooms by before we’ve had a chance to catch our breath. Some terse eighth-notes from Peter Buck set up the thundering hook in this caustic kiss-off.

If you think the music is mean, listen for Michael Stipe’s goodbye note. Every lyric is a release of frustration as even some of the band’s biggest fans wrote off the group in recent years with the same tired storyline (the drummer left, they can’t “rock” anymore). Even the back-handed compliments get called out (“tell me where to place this in my Quasimodo heart” sung from a guy consistently and lazily labeled “enigmatic”), Stipe’s words reaching all the way back to R.E.M.’s fabled first performance (“I rang the church bell till my ears bled red blood cells”).

“It’s just like me to overstay my welcome,” he shouts at the climax. Lyrically, “All The Best” is a sequel to Accelerate‘s wake-up call “Living Well is the Best Revenge.” But instead of putting their crosshairs on politicians and the media distraction machine, the aim is squarely at the group’s detractors.

And there have been many, whether in 1986 when they used John Mellencamp’s producer, in 1997 when they soldiered on without drummer Bill Berry, or when the political AOR of 2004′s Around The Sun became a trendy object of ridicule.

For the ones who said Stipe went cornball, for the ones who said they couldn’t sound like a band again, and for the scornful fans of past and present, this is R.E.M.’s exit interview.

“Let’s sing and rhyme / let’s give in one more time / let’s show the kids how to do it fine.” Mission accomplished.

(See R.E.M.’s do “All The Best” in their final live performance here. You can also read my original review of Collapse Into Now here).

If you’ve been following since its creation in June 2009 – anybody, anybody? – you’ve noticed this blog has gone through some name changes. First it was Esoteria, then I thought that sounded snobby so I changed it to A Smattering of Soul, after a line in a freestyle rap verse written on a weird night in nowhere, Pennsylvania. Then I got sick of that, and changed it back to Esoteria. And now, The Occasionalist.

This one should stick. The Occasionalist is me making fun of myself for not blogging enough, when some people do it weekly or even daily. Now if there’s a drought, you’ll know why.

I’ve got a couple ideas for posts after coming back, revitalized, from a Philadelphia trip. So stay tuned kids.

Here is a recap of my cerebral state the past few weeks:

Philadelphia. The big one. Saturday 29 to Thursday 3. Friday 4 is off [woop].

Would get back on the regular workout train if I didn’t have so damn many things to do each night, so don’t ask, tough guy. And I’ll go it alone and succeed.

That new John Wesley Harding album is boss. And R.E.M. has a sad/happy goodbye song about getting lost in your dreams. We’ll miss you guys, and somehow we’ll forge ahead in a world with a few less heroes to guide us.

I love each and every person in my family, as the “holiday season” approaches. I can’t wait to see you all soon.

A breakdown of Coldplay’s discography:
Album 1 = unicorns moping in bed
Album 2 = unicorns building a stadium
Album 3 = unicorns online dating
Album 4 = unicorns painting in So. France
Album 5 = unicorns crying

that is all for now. support occupy wall street and your local protesters. read up on why they’re right (most of them anyway). be safe everybody and happy halloween.

tomorrow is dedicated to anniversaries that never happened. today is dedicated to the discussions that did.

lies,
A.B.

It’s the chill in the air, the changing of the leaves, the return to layered, dynamic fashion instead of summer’s utilitarian shorts/shirt uniform.

I’m not ready to post about the news, but when I am, it will be insightful. There are a lot of thoughts and questions regarding the split.

For the first time in a few years, I’m serious about making music again. Ed McMenamin of Warped Coasters brings the woozy surf/garage-gaze, and me as singer/lyricist is ready to chime in with dusty melodic snippets and fine tuning. Very embryonic song titles include “French Casino,” “Beta Man” and “Up Against The Stars.” Choice covers yet to be determined.

If you’re in Lincoln Park this afternoon, come by and say hello. I will be dining with a friend at a spot to-be-determined.

It seems like there’s a lot to be determined. Me, I’m determined to get back on that exercise track and make a little dent before my biggest time of the year starts with a bang in Philadelphia. Time to walk it back…

This is probably the coolest musical moment of all time, made all the better in black and white with a distorted image of the always-iconic Chuck D. Creepy that I happened to be blasting Public Enemy’s Muse Sick-N-Hour Message today on the way home from Office Max.

New content coming soon…

When I saw Mike Ness perform in Chicago three years ago, he had stiff competition that night: on TV was the first episode of the new American Idol season. Of course, it’s not like most of the audience felt there was a difficult choice to make (there was beery approval when the opening band’s lead singer, a sort of real life Dewey Cox, said “those pussies in Rascal Flatts make the Monkees sound like the Rolling Stones”). Later that night, Ness burned through hits and deep cuts alike but previewed no new songs, which makes Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes that much sweeter.

For the past several years, fans have watched this American idle, taking a backing band on solo tours but never collecting Social Distortion for more than a one-off song (the greatest hits incentive “Far Behind”). Social Distortion’s last album, Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll, was released during the end of Dubya’s first term. The one before that, at the end of Clinton’s.
Whether this is a predication of a second Obama run is anyone’s guess. But unlike their sonic relative Bad Religion, who weave harmony-laden punk with political discourse, Social Distortion play the vocally-inclined auto mechanic act close to the chest like a scrawled diary (“what the hell is a blog?” they’ll ask). It may be 2010, but Ness and the boys have felt no need to change so much as their brand of shoe shine, let alone the distribution method. Forget pay-what-you want; Mike Ness will tell you what you’re paying, and you’ll cough it up. There’s no deluxe edition with a DVD and a sticker of bassist Brent Harding’s childhood pet; no cutting edge marketing plan; not a single note debuting on Facebook—just a diamond-solid collection of 11 songs rolling into stores on a physical CD in the dead of winter.

But if you took this as an indication that Ness was grizzled beyond repair and out of fucks to give, think again, compadre. Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes was worth a seven-year wait, and the songs speak loudly enough for Social Distortion’s entire discography, brave new worlds be damned. Each track sounds meticulously crafted, down to the crashing cymbals and feedback closing out first single “Machine Gun Blues”—which should have been around a decade ago to soundtrack one of those Tony Hawk video games. If you liked Social D in 1990, 1996 or 2004, it’s almost scientifically impossible to dislike Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes.

Worry not, fans of musical diversity; there’s more than leathery punk with a patent number on display here, and the influences get equal billing, from Cash to Clash. For all the permanent sneer and drive-by swagger which the band is known, Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes gets off to a rather modest start, first with opening instrumental “Road Zombie”—a hair-greased groover with snakebite blues guitar but no lyrics to drive it home—then “California (Hustle & Flow)”, which should have Bob Seger feeling like a beaming papa after Kid Rock exhumed his huffy, flour-soul style. “Road Zombie” and “California” are infused with enough melody to stun an ox, but they pale in comparison to the rest, whether in the surging hope of “Diamond in the Rough” or “Bakersfield”, which descends from “Ball & Chain” to continue a distinguished tradition of evoking empty barstools and tear-filled pint glasses (complete with an irony-free “Real Men of Genius” talking bridge).

On an album stuffed with them, Hard Times’ far and away highlight is “Far Side of Nowhere”, which stumbles out into the sun from the same bar that birthed the Nightcrawlers’ “Little Black Egg” and sugared-jangle outfits like the Shoes and the Smithereens. Underscoring the song’s uncle-friendly leanings, Ness recalls his morning routine (“I wake up, drink my coffee / put on my pants, and comb my hair”), but yearns to break free of that more intangible ball and chain by driving until both tank and wallet are dry. “We can run to the far side of nowhere / we can run ‘til the days are gone,” he courteously persuades his girl, even though he’s ready to make good on that declaration with or without company.

It’s certainly a big responsibility being the face of Social Distortion. The changing lineups and fixed songwriting duties have Ness carrying the weight of Social D the way Jeff Lynne did with ELO, responsible for creating a specific sound no matter who’s in the room. There’s only one new member since Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll, but it won’t show, as all members play their part like well-taught theater kids in a Stephen Sondheim musical. Ness strains to hit some of the album’s higher notes, but nails every one. As with those notes, he’s made it to the top, snagging the dream job of a thousand YouTube crooners as the idol we know we too can be.

“What’s life without a little pain?” he asks, having been able to enjoy the former by making money off the latter. Is there anything more inherently “pop music” than that?

6/10

Back home, there’s a friend of the family whose response to someone’s good fortune is a resigned “must be nice.” The woman – let’s call her Debbie – means well like most old friends, though we still joke about her defeatist tendencies. Admittedly, as John Lennon put it in “A Hard Day’s Night”, some people have it dead easy.

If you or someone you know exhibits these tendencies, take this writer’s advice to avoid I Was A King, a band that makes harnessing the gift of songwriting look so enviously simple you may just lock your guitar away in storage with your SACD player. Third album Old Friends follows IWAK’s criminally overlooked self-titled album, which sported hazy garage pop ready to soundtrack a sunny July hangover. The rest of the indie world may have headed to the beach that summer for weeeed and bedroom-bred nostalgia-tripping, but IWAK found more comfort inside with a dusty record collection. Comfort is a key word: the music on Old Friends is so gooey and enveloping that it may take a few tracks to notice the actual lyrics accompanying the fuzz. IWAK may have wanted it that way, as words are tricky to make out here, disregarding token quiet moments like “Snow Song”. The Norwegian outfit might have free-jazz drummer Kevin Shea on the skins, but things don’t get too zonky (it’s only with the baroque noise-rock excursion “Unreal” that the album falters abruptly). Flow is the name of the game, and the piecemeal recording process – laying down vocals, rhythm section and piano in separate rooms – does nothing to disrupt the cohesion. Songs segue effortlessly in and out like relatives at an open house.

The previous album’s Siamese Dream-on-mescaline pace continues here – if you’re looking for hyperactivity to jumpstart your New Year, look elsewhere. IWAK remain modest, but where the previous album buried its best song, “Norman Bleik”, in the back with the crushed beer cans, they don’t make the same mistake here. Kicking off with the honeyed jangle of “The Wylde Boys” and downshifting with a four-chord British Invasion-via-Robert Pollard mantra on “Echoes”, Old Friends gets down to business immediately.

While the sequencing comes off as ambitious, Old Friends generally has an unfettered breeziness about it, like most albums recorded at a fast pace (the material was tracked in less than a week). It’s less direct an album than its predecessor, and the surprises are fewer. Still, the band’s arsenal is more than the reliable guns of guitar and drums – bumpkin banjo pickin’ on “Learning to Fly” sets up the minute-plus intro, with frontman Frode Stromstad in no rush to drizzle his androgynous syrup on the microphone. Stromstad’s feminine pipes often recall Girlysound-era Liz Phair, which make the druggy atmosphere even more of a pleasure.

But Old Friends’ greatest strength – being no-sweat good at what it does – is also its greatest weakness. Taking 18 months between albums of dreamy pop (not dreampop) doesn’t imply a lack of ambition, but there also won’t be a designated place for I Was A King in your “feelgood indie rock” playlist, especially when this album magnifies the sleepy, repetitive qualities of the band’s last effort. Old Friends gets a bit hazy by “Nightwalking,” and that’s only the fourth song. It’s a perfectly timed release, its ethos reflecting the hibernating instincts this season brings out in people. On “Snow Song”, Stromstad gets snug to make a mental to-do list. “I warm my hands by the fireplace / and plan another card that won’t be written” he sings. Like that letter never sent, and appropriate for a winter where comfort can overpower productivity, these songs have a spark but never fully catch fire.

Don’t mistake the relaxed vibe for hesitation: these kings are ready to rule. When they get around to concocting some more focused melodies, they’ll have it made, and we’ll feel like simpletons saying “boy, it must be nice.”

On Tyvek’s Nothing Fits, nearly everything fits.

The photograph marking the Detroit outfit’s sophomore album – a girl, masked and nearly naked, staring at dog figurine – should come off more disarming than it does. Instead, it falls in lock step with the closet box photography gracing the covers of this year’s Vampire Weekend and Dum Dum Girls albums. There’s also a very late-2000s anti-production attitude, appropriate for a gang from the Motor City playing head-rattling garage punk with empty pockets and snarl to spare.

L.A.-based outpost In The Red might be the best-named record label for Tyvek, as the group pushes the levels to the harsh extremes of no-fi loyalists Times New Viking and Eat Skull. Pushed front and center, the guitars sound as if they’ve been spit on and fed through a wood chipper, the mutilated remains shaken around in a rusty trash can. If you stick around, they’ll layer a trebly guitar line on the chunky riffs, as in “Underwater To”, the more accessible second part of two songs that form the warm little core of his album, sharing a title but not much else.

Few tricks subvert the Black Flag-influenced minimalism, but when they do, it’s a chilling delight. Three minutes in, “Outer Limits” takes a serious wrong turn off the road from Damaged territory, and ends up all the better for it, as distant sirens, lost whistles, and a dripping faucet ooze paranoia at every corner. Most people don’t come to a punk record looking for sonic risks; they’re here for the sonic reducers, songs taking rock back to its basic elements. Tyvek give us more of the latter on Nothing Fits (fittingly, the once-quintet has since stripped its sound to three members for maximum rawness), but while it might be good for moshing, it’s not altogether memorable outside of tempo. You could slap your knee at 120 BPM, nah-nah a couple alternating notes and unintelligibly garble wails about your current problems, and a stranger could get the gist of it.

If Nothing Fits isn’t generous with the melodic end, the lyrics are still more sparse. Tyvek don’t take themselves too seriously, refreshing in an era where even the rambling punks carry pretense. It’s hard to tell what singer Kevin Boyer is on about, but unlike his sweaty, shirtless forefathers, it’s not the point here. Songwriting is clearly not the group’s strength, but there’s a certain workingman’s frustration that fuels its potential, with a road raging Boyer lashing out at people in the passing lane (“Just pricks in a car / Fuck off!”), fed up with money ruling his life (wanting “to move forward in time / Into the future / Fuck the cash part”). He knows how to make light of the mundane, too: “I think I’m Jesus / just got up from a nap / what’s so funny? / I look just like him” are the kinds of absurdist interjections that made torch-bearers of ’60s anti-pop like the Monks so damn enjoyable.

Rarely do punk numbers fail when they include some kind of countdown, and opening raver “4, 3, 1, 2″ doesn’t miss, even laying on some oh-ohhh backing vocals for fans who like to sing at shows. Mostly though, Boyer’s vocals don’t stray far from a manic howl spiked with high wails for the words he wants to emphasize. The band might share a name with an insulation company, but your comfort isn’t their concern – the music is as brittle as it gets. Bare bones is the way of the walk, and that’s great, but few of the songs on Nothing Fits approach the jet-fueled power punk of “4, 3, 1, 2″ or the mindfuck wilderness in the coda of “Outer Limits”.

If checker-pattern shoes, split singles or zines have any significance to you, it’s worth cranking twice. For those with an indie record collection longer than any Christmas list, it will fit right in. It would just be nice if Tyvek would stand out instead of quietly doing its job like insulation.

soon to be published on PopMatters.com