CD Odyssey Disc 1900: The Lamp of Thoth

Sometimes to know a band, it helps to know the band they were before.

Disc 1900 is… Cauldron of Witchery

Artist: The Lamp of Thoth

Year of Release: 2007

What’s up with the Cover? A creepy, eldritch bit of stylized art of what I presume is a witch (because of the album title).

No cauldron in evidence, but the witch does look she has been doused with water.

How I Came To Know It: I am a big fan of the band Arkham Witch, and The Lamp of Thoth was the precursor to that band. Knowing this, when I saw a used copy last Saturday in my local record store I lost all composure, snatched it out of the miscellaneous “L” section, and carried it, giggling with glee, to the checkout.

How It Stacks Up: This is my only Lamp of Thoth album – and an EP at that – so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 2 stars but almost 3

How serious can you take a band where the lead singer goes by the moniker “The Overtly Melancholic Lord Strange” and the drummer is “Lady Pentagram”? As serious as you like, I say. If nothing else, Lamp of Thoth is seriously heavy, and in the world of metal that’s a good place to start.

Rounding out the trio is guitarist “Randy Reaper” (who has the least fantastical name in the band) and the amount of noise and thump these three make is impressive. Say what you will about some of the dodgy production value on this record (likely made on the cheap) but these guys manage to land some serious low-end rumble.

The musical style of the Lamp of Thoth is something of a cross between Black Sabbath and Black Flag. These guys love their old school doom metal, but they also have a frantic punk sensibility that gives things a bit of snarl and snap.

The album’s opening track, the eponymous “The Lamp of Thoth” is also the record’s best, and proof that any band starting out that works hard enough has one classic song in them. “The Lamp of Thoth” is that song for this record. This tune has it all, anthemic guitar riffs that make you feel like you’re on an epic adventure, and a deliberate Bill Ward style drum thump from Lady Pentagram that lets you know said adventure will be perilous. “The Lamp of Thoth” is a true headbanger of a tune and shows off Lord Strange’s vocals. Strange (who will go on to make many a killer Arkham Witch record) hints at his future greatness here.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot to recommend on the record beyond their brilliant opener. “Sunshine” shows the band’s fealty to Black Sabbath a bit too much, with an opening devil’s brew of three chords that is two-thirds Black Sabbath’s title track, with the other third not different enough to count as special. Later in the same song they throw in an Ozzie-like “all right now” straight outta “Sweet Leaf”. It’s clearly an homage that is born of love for the original masters of reality, but I found myself wanting more.

The other great song on the record is a cover of Cirith Ungol’s “Frost and Fire” which is anything but derivative. Twice as long and just as nasty, Lamp of Thoth’s cover is an homage to the original, reimagined like it were played on an alternate earth where gravity makes things three times heavier.

Here ends the studio experience on the record, as the final two songs are both live cuts, “Blood on Satan’s Claw” and “Into the Lair of the Gorgon”. These songs land the visceral quality of a punk show, and along with it, the requisite dodgy recording quality.

I am a bit of a production snob, and so while I can’t deny the Thothers 100% committed to their punk sensibility on these tracks, I wanted it to, you know, sound better. It’s not as annoying as someone posting whatever their raised iPhone managed to record while blocking your view (nothing is). However, it does sound a bit like it was recorded through the wall of the venue so you could avoid the cover charge.

For “Blood on Satan’s Claw” in particular, I found myself wishing I had the original studio version which was recorded for their demo record released the previous year (the hilariously named “I Love the Lamp”). Something to search the record store for in future.

Whatever else, you have to love the Lamp of Thoth’s energy. I’m thankful that later they would transform into the more fully developed Arkham Witch I’ve come to know and love, but I’m also happy to have this early effort, uneven though it is, as a keepsake of their early sound.

Best tracks: The Lamp of Thoth, Frost & Fire

The Best Albums of 2025

This is the latest I have ever shared my Top 10 albums. It took longer than I thought to sort through the options, and I’ve been working to avoid – as much as possible – later edits as I rethink my choices as I get to know these records from 2025 better (and discover new ones I missed earlier.

I found 113 albums I enjoyed enough to buy (or put on my purchase list) and I considered every one of them while making this list. 2025 was a good year for music, just like every other year. It is OK to take those old records off the shelf, but finding new ones is also worth your time.

As I’ve done previously, I’ve included a link to albums I previously reviewed that you can read more about it. I’ve also provided a youtube link to a song of note for each record in the Top 10.

10 The Doohickeys – All Hat, No Cattle

-          Yes, these old school throwback country songs can get a bit kitschy, but this record is fun without ever sacrificing clever. Music is supposed to be fun, right?  Here’s “This Town Sucks”

9 Nite – Cult of the Serpent Sun

-          Nite was one of my happier discoveries of 2025, with their old school metal vibe and creepy cultist vibe – these guys get better on every record. Here’s “Crow (Fear the Night)

8 CMAT – Euro-Country

-          In 2022, CMAT first landed on A Creative Maelstrom’s Top 10 list with an honourable mention, but in 2025 she takes the next step. Think Chappel Roan, with a bit more country and you’ll have an idea. Clever and vulnerable with lots to say, here’s an example with “Take a Sexy Picture of Me”

7 Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter

-          Every Tyler Childers album is different, as he routinely pushes the boundaries of the country genre. “Snipe Hunter” has a very traditional sound, with some sneaky and thoughtful songs nestled like Easter eggs amidst the plain brown packaging. Here’s Oneida

6 Panopticon – Laurentian Blue

-          Long-time Panopticon fans who have grown used to the band’s clever blending of bluegrass and black metal might feel left behind by this record, that doubles down on the bluegrass and leaves behind the double bass drumming and growling. Don’t be fooled, though, as this record has metal sensibility at its heart, and is as moody and black as anything they’ve done to date. My favourite is “An Argument With God” but I’m going to go with the also awesome (and more accessible) “Ever North” in a shameless attempt to get your attention

5 Craig Finn – Always Been

-          I’m a sucker for the hardscrabble stories that Craig Finn spins (he also made the Top 10 in 2022). This year we have a thoughtful collection of songs that once again peer deep and uncompromisingly into the human heart. Here’s The Man I’ve Always Been

4 Geese – Getting Killed

-          Along with CMAT, Geese is a band that this year will get more notice than for their previous releases. While I first encountered Geese through their 2021 album, “Projector” “Getting Killed” takes them to a whole other level. While not my usual scene, it is so innovative and amazing that it can’t be ignored Here’s Au Pays du Cocaine

3 Kora Feder – Some Kind of Truth

-          From my review: Kora Feder is a singer-songwriter with a young heart and an old soul. Listening to her records is like receiving a confessional from a close friend or curling up on the couch with a book of poetry for an afternoon of feeling the feels. Here’s the sad and thoughtful In a Young Person’s Body

2 Julien Baker and TORRES – Send a Prayer My Way

-          When I reviewed this last July I boldly claimed it would be making the Top 10, and here it is. I’ve always been a TORREs fan, and what she does in collaboration with Julien Baker is simply sublime – the whole better than the sum of the already amazing parts. Here’s Bottom of the Bottle

1 Ken Pomeroy – Cruel Joke

-          Ken Pomeroy straddles the line between folk and country, which is the perfect vehicle to deliver songs that are intensely personal, and grounded in natural space and place that puts substance and gravitas to her self-exploration. Like all great works of art, “Cruel Joke” taps into something that makes the personal into the universal. Here’s a live version of Coyote to show that all Pomeroy needs is her voice and a guitar to summon greatness

Honourable Mention – all great, but fell short because I could only pick a top 10. Here are 5 more in no particular order in the event you aren’t sated by the official winners:

• Annahstasia – Tether; Cory Hansen – I Love People; Wet Leg – moisturizer; Lommi – 667788; Master Spy – Maze Runner

And for those new to the Top Ten Experience, click on the year below to get the full from that year (I’ve proved #1 as a teaser):

Best of 2024 (#1 was Amyl and the Sniffers)

Best of 2023 (#1 was Boy Golden)

Best of 2022 (#1 was Grace Cummings)

Best of 2021 (#1 was Lucy Dacus)

Best of 2020 (#1 was Katie Pruitt)

CD Odyssey Disc 1899: Bella White

I usually get two or three playthroughs of a record before I review it, but fate conspired this week to keep this album in my car longer than usual. By the eighth or ninth consecutive listen there was no question whether I liked it or I didn’t. Verdict: I did.

Disc 1899 is… Among Other Things

Artist: Bella White

Year of Release: 2023

What’s up with the Cover? Bella has fallen backwards in her deck chair. Often falling backwards in your deck chair is a moment of hilarity for all concerned, but in this case it looks to be more of a romantic swoon.

How I Came To Know It: I read a review on Americana Highways and thought she sounded pretty good. Good enough to go find the record, in fact.

How It Stacks Up: I have both of the albums that Bella White has released so far. “Among Other Things” is the better one, so #1.

Ratings: 4 stars

I woke up today feeling my age, my back out of alignment, and cankers lining my mouth screaming in rage whenever I dared to eat or drink or speak. I admit my soul was tired too.

Fortunately, I’ve had just the right soundtrack for the moment. Bella White’s twangy folk/country mix is just the tonic for the world-weary. Not because it provides a balm, but because it reminds you that it is OK to feel the feels and encourages you to do some thinkin’ while you’re down there.

Putting on “Amongst Other Things” is a lot like stepping to a too-hot bath; at first a shock to the system, and then relaxing and meditative as you sink into it. White’s vocals are bright and penetrative and jump out at you with a burst of energy like she’s breaking the tension of silence over and over again.

Sounds painful, but it is quite the opposite. Her voice helps the stories she tells penetrate in deep, thoughtful thrusts that heal, rather than hurt. Kind of like the musical equivalent of acupuncture (I could use some of that today…).

White is also a talented guitarist, and her playing is similar to her singing, with deliberate and sometimes heavy picking in a bluegrass style that aligns well with her vocals, taking a back seat, but providing mood and structure back there.

The way she arranges the two instruments together was intriguing, with her vocals having short bursts that often alternate with the guitar, making her voice feel almost a capella in places, and lending itself to very creative phrasing choices that make the songs feel conversational, and full of asides. The effect pulls you in and helps to find the soft and caring content under the sometimes sharp peal of her delivery.

The songs are full of heartache, and a restless wandering quality. Many are about transition and change whether in a shifting or broken relationship, or the broader “what next” we all feel when we’re young. White is young (she made this record when she was 23) but you don’t have to be young to get it – that restless feeling sits inside all of us, all the time. Sometimes we need to access it - not necessarily to wander, but just to remember what it feels like. It’s therapeutic.

Alternating with the folksier tunes are those that fall into line with more traditional country arrangements. Overall I like these ones slightly less, but they are critical to the record (especially if listened to multiple times in succession), offering a different aspect to White’s voice and songwriting.

The record is chock full of great stories, but my two favourites are “Marilyn” and “Rhododendron” (not to be confused with the Hurray for the Riff Raff song of the same name).

“Marilyn” is a character study of a horrible sexist POS character, seen through the titular victim of his casual and not-so-casual cruelty. This song’s walkdowns and minor notes are perfectly matched to White’s mournful warble as she reminds us that out in the world there are women like Marilyn, enduring shitheads in silence behind the closed doors we drive by every day.

The other stand-out is “Rhododendron”, which meets the other main album theme – the inner exploration of the restless soul. The opening two stanzas are sublime – I reprint them here. Note the restless uncertainty created by putting the active verb at the end of the line. Cool, and three times more impactful when delivered by White’s exceptional vocal:

“As I look out my window, all I can see
Is a bush of rhododendron flowers staring back at me
And a mama robin, she is always working
Bringing worms and bugs to feed her young
While the snakes and house cats are lurking”

“All this time I've spent inside my head
Well, I've been hurting, Is the world still turning?
For this weight I bare leaves me so damn scared
I guess we've all been hurting like a little bird I'm learning”

Ever spent an afternoon looking out at the world thinking deep thoughts and feeling the feels (you know you have). Well, this song is for you. You’re not alone – get up, stretch the stiffness out of your neck, and get back to it.

I’m off to take Bella’s advice, and I wish you a pleasant and thoughtful journey, full of cares or free of them, as the day finds you.

Best tracks: Flowers on My Bedside, Marilyn, Rhododendron, The Best of Me, Among Other Things

CD Odyssey Disc 1898: Grendel's Syster

I come refreshed from an evening of music with friends. Since I never listen to the radio, friends is one of the great ways I learn about musicians and bands I have not previously heard of. Other sources include reviews, coworkers and even random people I meet in my day-to-day life. “What kind of music do you like?” is a question I don’t need much prodding to ask.

Disc 1898 is… Katabasis into the Abaton/Abstieg in die Traumkammer

Artist: Grendel’s Syster

Year of Release: 2024

What’s up with the Cover? Cyril is a squirrel not to be messed with. Here he brandishes the femur of some creature, while sounding a barbarous yawp – presumably celebrating finding that tasty acorn in his other paw.

The rest of the animal kingdom should take note. This mighty little bastard appears to have already brained a predator, leaving the skull to bleach in the sun as a warning to others.

As for the bird, she’s having none of it and is beating a fast retreat after realizing Cyril is having one of “those” days. You know how he gets.

How I Came To Know It: As noted above, I discovered this band on Angry Metal Guy and then bought it through Bandcamp.

How It Stacks Up: This is my only album by the band, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 3 stars

This ain’t your dad or grandad’s metal music. Your great grandpa didn’t have metal music, but if he did it would probably have sounded like this. Such is the wonderful, unexpected weirdness of Grendel’s Syster.

The strangeness starts with the album title. I think of myself as having a pretty solid vocabulary, so it’s not often that an album title has not one but two words I need to look up. Turns out an abaton is a “sacred, often restricted place” and a katabasis is a “descent into the underworld – like that whole thing with Odysseus and Tiresius, for example.

If you don’t know that last reference, please look it up or maybe read some of the classics – they’re classics for a reason…

‘But what about the music?’ you ask, impatient to learn more about the record and slightly peeved with being upbraided for your reading decisions.

Grendel’s Syster is a German folk metal band, with a healthy dose of staccato almost martial melodic structures. There’s also a bit of math going on. This is metal music with a lot of right angles and sharp, precise playing.

The album consists of 16 songs, which should violate my “14 maximum” rule, except in this case it is 8 songs in English, and then the exact same 8 songs, but sung in German. More on this in a moment.

Lead singer Caro (I don’t know her last name) has that heavily enunciated style common to traditional folk music and she says every word in perfect time. It makes for a deliberate, urgent delivery. A lot of “listen to me very carefully, son” vibe in there.

This would be a better experience if things weren’t so…weird. I didn’t love the poetry here, and it felt more like a download of information – most of it bizarre and fantastical – than a poem set to a melody. I like weird topics – if I didn’t metal wouldn’t be a genre for me to begin with – but it helps when they come with a more emotive delivery that helps transport you to another time and place.

For this reason, the record is immeasurably better in German, where I don’t have to know what Caro is going on about and can just accept that it is some kind of strange folksy tale made even more eldritch and curious because of its mystery. I think the songs are faithfully translated, though, which means if you speak German this method won’t work for you.

Rather than quote anything in either language, I give you the song title names (in English) which include “Boar’s Tusk Helmet”, “Night Owl’s Beak” and “In Praise of Mugwort”. Very specific and very much topics you are unlikely to hear discussed around the water cooler come Monday.

Grendel’s Syster is not for everyone, but I loved the novelty of this record, and while the band’s very deliberate playing style is an acquired taste, you can tell it is by design, not lack of skill. They throw in a few tasty guitar riffs along the way just to remind you they aren’t a novelty act, and like the squirrel on the cover, they are dead serious about their craft.

Best tracks: Eberzahnhelm (Boar’s Tusk Helmet), Die Burde des Schwarzkuntslers (The Plight of a Sorceror), Nachteulenschnabel (Night Owl’s Beak)

CD Odyssey Disc 1897: Jack White

Before sitting down to write this review I first restored the wiring to an unplugged speaker and then went down the hall where I exclaimed (not for the first time), “stop knocking over my Doo Wop collection!”

Having two kittens in the house is not always music friendly…

Disc 1897 is… Lazaretto

Artist: Jack White

Year of Release: 2014

What’s up with the Cover? Blind Guardian showcased Morgoth on his throne with three Silmarils and a dancing elf, (Disc 1820) and Big Daddy Kane had a plate of fruit (among other attractive features) on “Long Live the Kane” (Disc 1108).

Jack White is not to be outdone in the game of thrones, depicted here surrounded by a host of angels, going so far as to use two of them as armrests.

Jack also has the best suit of these three covers, with this resplendent sharkskin suit that falls somewhere between Kane’s minimalist toga and Sauron’s protective but uncomfortable plate mail.

How I Came To Know It: I like most of what Jack White does and was eager to buy his second solo album as soon as it came out. So I did.

How It Stacks Up: I have four Jack White albums and “Lazaretto” comes in at #3. Nothing wrong with it – just stiff competition.

Ratings: 4 stars

In 2012 Jack White did his first “solo” album, having worked at his art first through the White Stripes and then the Raconteurs. That first record – “Blunderbuss” - is a blues-rock masterpiece and was well received by the adoring public as well. I like to imagine how that commercial and artistic success gave White the artistic license to see just how far he could push his unique approach to rock and roll. The result is the brilliant and sometimes overblown “Lazaretto”.

White starts off playing it “straight” or at least as straight as his twisted genius will allow. “Three Women” is a reimagining of a blues song by Blind Willie McTell called “Three Women Blues”. You could argue he steals the idea, but that would not do justice to just how different this song is. It may be inspired by McTell but this is White’s signature “blues twisted like wrought iron” sound through and through. It is a great song, and not even one of the record’s best.

From here, White starts to take flights of fancy along many different paths. The title track follows, a tune that deploys White’s oft-used funk-crunch sound, alongside his best staccato delivery. The song is the musical equivalent of a street rat with a wad of twenties – brave and reckless and flashing green in a way that’s not entirely safe. The song is so all over the place it practically fidgets, changing speed and course two thirds of the way through before giving way to the tortured fiddle of Fats Kaplin. It’s a lot, but also just the right amount.

“Temporary Ground” follows, with a folksy number that feels like when Zeppelin takes a break, only less borrowed. Few artists can take very old musical structures and traditions and twist them into something as new and innovative as Jack White, and Lazaretto is chock full of such examples.

I also love the piano trill of “Alone in My Home”, paired with Fats Kaplin’s mandolin and the occasional drum thump, it is a syncopation-fueled dream. There is also some great loose harmony with a singer I was delighted to discover (for the first time) is none other than Lillie Mae Rische.

I ‘discovered’ Lillie Mae quite independently from this and never put two and two together, even with Jack White producing her album “Forever and then Some” (reviewed at Disc 1379). She’s great, and a welcome additional voice on the record.

For 80% of this record, White is delivering 5-star glory all over the place, and the only time things fall down, they don’t so much as fall as stagger under the weight of their own ideas. The instrumental “High Ball Stepper” is a drunken master of a song but while innovative and filled with energy, has one too many “band warming up” moments to stick the landing.

I had to dig pretty deep in the tracks to find that gripe, however, and generally the weirdness that makes it hard to love every song on this record is part of what makes it better on repeat listens.

Best tracks: Lazaretto, Temporary Ground, Alone in My Home, Entitlement, The Black Bat Licorice, I Think I Found the Culprit

CD Odyssey Disc 1896: SpiritWorld

For those waiting for my top 10 list for 2025 do not despair, for I am almost done. I delved a bit deeper this year, but hopefully this means I have less “O, and also this one!” moments this year. Not none, just less.

For those who could give a fig about Top Ten lists and just want to thrash around a bit to some heavy music, today is your lucky day.

Disc 1896 is… Deathwestern

Artist: SpiritWorld

Year of Release: 2022

What’s up with the Cover? Looks like a movie poster to a film I absolutely have to see.

We’ve got a sheriff who looks possessed, and what I think is a witch (or a Deadite) wielding a dagger and a snake, and that’s just the larger figures.

Dig deeper and you’ll find a First Nations warrior riding a giant wolf, a battle between a cowboy and a couple of flying fat demons, and bonfire built out of skulls and bones. Even the fucking cacti are on fire.

All of which is to say, sign me up for opening night.

How I Came To Know It: I read a review of SpiritWorld’s 2025 record, “Helldorado”on Angry Metal Guy and I was intrigued. This led me into their back catalogue and to “Deathwestern”.

How It Stacks Up: I have two SpiritWorld albums. I like them both, but “Deathwestern” comes in at #2.

Ratings: 3 stars

SpiritWorld may be unable to decide if their band name should be one or two words (seriously, what is up with the middle-of-word capital?), but they have a strong sense of the kind of music they want to make. Thrash metal tinged with Western themes and musical interludes. They call this style ‘Deathwestern’ and it is what would happen if someone admired Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” album (reviewed way back at Disc 821) but had a fever, and the only treatment for that fever was more cowboy.

On 2025’s “Helldorado” this melding of sounds meets his full achievement, and more on that when I review it. On “Deathwestern” the band seems content to feature Western themes, but the music is 90% thrash (with a side helping of Death Metal if you listen carefully). The only actual Western sounds are in the one-minute-long intro “Mojave Bloodlust” and the first 45 seconds of “The Heretic Butcher”. Otherwise, let your hair down and mosh ‘til your neck hurts.

I would have probably preferred a more balanced mixing of the styles, but what SpiritWorld lack in variety they make up for in ferocity. This record is only 35 minutes long, but it infuses those 35 minutes with relentless fury.

The effect is a record where the songs all blend into each other a bit, but you don’t mind because they’re all good. The best of the bunch is the title track, which is offered in all caps – “DEATHWESTERN”. Two other songs do the same thing - I don’t know why. Perhaps they wanted those titles shouted at you a bit louder than the others? If so, I’m not sure why those songs – which rage no harder than any of the others – were selected. Surely “Purified in Violence” and “Crucified Heathen Scum” are themes that are just as shout-worthy as “ULCER” and “1000 DEATHS”.

But I digress…

Back to the TITLE TRACK, which features the thumping power of Thomas Pridgen (formerly of the Mars Volta) on drums, and does everything all the songs do on this record, but better. Every good thrash song needs a churning guitar riff, and this song has not one but two of the best on the album (in this kind of music having two great guitar grinds that play back and forth off of one another is a common recipe for success).

TITLE TRACK also has my favourite lyrical refrain, which is as filthy and aggressive as one could imagine. It tells the tale of our narrator sets about raping and murdering folks in the non-specific locale of “everywhere I fucking ride”. Disconcerting news for homesteaders everywhere.

“ULCER” also pulls no punches, suggesting heaven is just an ulcer in the belly of the beast. Again, disconcerting. The way the music roils along in this one definitely isn’t the singing of the celestial choir, but it will get you thrashing good and hard.

In the end, “Deathwestern” breaks a lot less ground than its title purports to, but that didn’t trouble me, because that one thing they do – crunching guitar riffs, furious drums and enough angry notions to fill the Grand Canyon – they do incredibly well.

This record also lays the groundwork for the more nuanced record that follows. “Deathwestern” may not surprise you, but you will be entertained.

Best tracks: DEATHWESTERN, ULCER, The Heretic Butcher, Lujuria Satanica

CD Odyssey Disc 1895: Caroline Rose

It’s been seven and a half years since I reviewed this next artist. I haven’t been avoiding her, it’s just the result of having a large music collection and going through it in random order.

Disc 1895 is… I Will Not Be Afraid

Artist: Caroline Rose

Year of Release: 2014

What’s up with the Cover? Looks like someone’s been playing with those odd shapes in the Spirograph kit.

When I was a kid the “odd shaped” Spirograph pieces were part of the new and improved modernized Spirograph. No longer just circles, you got a football shape, a curvy triangle and an “X” as well as an “extra arm”. Yeah, Spirograph…plus!

If you know what I’m talking about you are probably of a certain age (or you clicked on that link). If you don’t know what I’m talking about you would probably prefer I talk about this record. OK, fine.

How I Came To Know It: I first heard about Caroline Rose through this record and I’ve been a fan ever since. Problem is, I don’t remember how I discovered this record. In my defence, that was twelve years – and a lot of records – in my past. I have a recollection of a stop-motion animation video for “Blood on Your Bootheels” but you think I could find it on Youtube? Reader, I could not.

A deeper Google search suggested the video was made with stop-motion Skittles so maybe it was a copyright thing. Too bad – it was a cool video…but the music’s what matters, and I’ve got that.

How It Stacks Up: I have four of Caroline Rose’s six studio albums (I still haven’t found 2012’s “America Religious” and I haven’t gotten around to buying 2025’s “Year of the Slug”). Of the four I do have, I put “I Will Not Be Afraid” in at #2. I originally had reserved top spot for it, but looking back I think 2018’s “Loner” (reviewed at Disc 1181) is top dog.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

As an artist Caroline Rose does what she wants how she wants. This creates a lot of different albums, and some may appeal to you more than others. I expect she is fine with that. “I Will Not Be Afraid” is relatively early in her career, and that “do what I want” vibe is in full flight. It is mostly welcome, generating a lot of different styles and approaches to her music. There are occasions where it gets a bit unfocused as a result, but I don’t mind, and Rose wouldn’t care if I did.

You’ll find pop, country, rockabilly and folk elements all mixed in on “I Will Not Be Afraid”, as Rose tries on different ways to deliver her message with the thoughtful artistry of a veteran shopper in a vintage store.

The record opens with “Blood On Your Bootheels”. This was the song that introduced me to Rose, and over a decade later it holds up well. It features a heavy and infectious bass line, mixing rockabilly beat with a Vaudeville vibe and a rapid-fire spoken-word delivery. The song has a lot of social commentary, but you may miss it on the first go around. First, because Rose’s delivery is lightning-fast, and second because the song is so catchy you as just as likely to dance around with the energy of it all, rather than playing the critic. I enjoy it both ways.

She follows this up with one of the more country songs on the record, “Tightrope Walker”. Here she sings in a stye reminiscent of Lone Justice’s Maria McKee, with a bit less twang and a bit more soul. Never content with a single genre, you’ll get a circus-style organ mixed in just in case the song might get too country.

And on you’ll go in this way through this delightful record, as Rose stretches her creative wings. It sometimes feels like she has so many ideas and images to express that she’s rushing herself, but it is planned.

Sometimes the style is very evocative of something else you heard (“Red Bikini Waltz” is a straight line to sixties Dylan) but she does it with love - not theft - in mind, and besides, it isn’t like Bob isn’t the only artist to ever sing lines like “But it don’t matter none” in a folksy and wise kind of way. Also, Rose’s exploration of an image and consumer obsessed society would’ve made young Bob proud.

There are times when Rose leads me to a place I don’t love. “At Midnight” is her running her spoken word wisdom through a heavy treatment of the blues. This one didn’t land for me, as I found her singing style a poor match for the approach. I expect each listener to this record will find a song that won’t be “their thing”. This was the one for me.

There aren’t many of those moments though, and I mostly sat in awe of Rose’s ability to navigate a lot of words and never lose emotional connection to the song.

The record ends with the title track. Ironically, this is the most “straight up” country sounding tune on the record, but by this point Rose has unflinchingly established she isn’t afraid to experiment. If anything the straight up approach to this song, full twang ‘n’ jump, is more of a victory lap on a record that stretches to its full length; no regrets, no backsies.

Best tracks: Blood On Your Bootheels, Tightrope Walker, Red Bikini Waltz, Time Spent Money Grow!, I Will Not Be Afraid

CD Odyssey Disc 1894: Hole

While I admire the nineties Seattle music scene (and have plenty of music from it) I never fell as hard for it as some of my peers. That’s the only excuse – a thin one at best – on why it took me so damned long to come around to Hole’s masterpiece, “Live Through This”. Glad to be catching up now.

Disc 1893 is… Live Through This

Artist: Hole

Year of Release: 1994

What’s up with the Cover? A now iconic image capturing the intersection of savagery and beauty that is a pageant.

How I Came To Know It: This album is kind of a Big Deal, so I knew about it for years, but never thought to buy it. This was foolish.

Fortunately, I belong to a club of music enthusiasts where we share our discoveries, and last year someone brought a song off of “Live Through This”. This caused me to investigate, recognize my previous oversight, and correct it on my next visit to the local record store.

How It Stacks Up: This is my only Hole album, so it doesn’t stack up.

Ratings: 5 stars

Alternating between a sultry croon and a full-throated growls, “Live Through This” is consistent in one thing: it’s visceral rage. It’s the good kind of rage; targeted and thought-provoking. The kind that makes the listener confront society and all its ills and reconcile their place in that mess.

Grounded in the Seattle grunge sound, “Live Through This” sits at the nexus of punk and rock, with an undercurrent of pop-music hooks to help the medicine (which is often bitter) go down easier.

Like the album’s cover, this is a record about beauty with its mascara messy and running. Appearance and image – and the twisted way society can weaponize it – feature heavily throughout. On “Miss World” we see the inner turmoil and trauma of a pretty girl, and on “Asking For It” we have perhaps the greatest rebuke to that tired and petty sexual assault defence ever codified in music.

Courtney Love isn’t a multi-octave crooner, but she makes no claims to be. If anything, I think history has unfairly judged her vocals. She has a slightly-flat tone that matches well with her punk-style delivery. The slight disconnect, one half step away from pop, is a big part of what puts the sharp edges on these songs. When she’s singing quiet, she makes it sound dangerous. When she opens up into full metal growl she lifts the song up into the roiling angry storm that the lyrics call for.

The rest of the players are equally exceptional, with their skillful playing providing the platform from which Love can explore the space in the song without anything ever going off the rails- or going off the rails just enough.

Guitarist (and principle co-writer) Erik Erlandson is particularly notable, delivering rock grooves and metal crunch with equal skill. His guitar has a foreboding tone that matches the themes of the record well. On “Credit in the Straight World” there is even a hint of Buddy Holly lurking in there, under all that reverb.

On a tragic note, this record was the last for bassist Kristen Pfaff who would die of a heroin overdose shortly after recording at the young age of – you guess it – 27. Damn you once again, heroin. Damn you.

An unexpected discovery for me is “Jennifer’s Body” a song that is simultaneously about the attack on a woman’s body, and also her own inner disconnect from it. Is it a song of murder and mayhem, or just crippling self-doubt? Yes. It fits well with the 2009 movie of the same name. Not the same plot, but clearly with themes that (I think) are partially inspired by the song 15 years earlier.

There aren’t many records that can be this angry but still retain focus, but this record accomplishes it. It is a record that, like its title, isn’t just for listening, it’s for living through. You’ll be confronted with the inner demons of its creators but reflected back through the harsh lens of society that is one of the reasons they were possessed by those demons in the first place.

This is a winner of a record that took a while to find a home in my collection but will be getting a lot of playing time in the years to come.

Best tracks: all tracks

CD Odyssey Disc 1893: Okkervil River

With this review, it’ll be three 4-star albums in a row, opening me up to calls of “going soft”. I would remind you that I don’t review random albums, I review albums I’ve decided to buy. This tends to favourably skew the data.

Disc 1892 is… The Stage Names

Artist: Okkervil River

Year of Release: 2007

What’s up with the Cover? A stylized hand emerges from a lake or pond in front of a stylized sunset (sunrise?). Up close, this cover looks like it is coloured thread stitched artfully together to create a picture, which is pretty cool.

Not as cool as some random giant hand reaching out of a magic pond, though.

How I Came To Know It: I had literally forgotten and had to go back to my first Okkervil River review twelve years ago at Disc 575 for a refresher. Turns out, this band was featured in a folk magazine advert. I recall now it was for “I Am Very Far” (released in 2011) and which – strangely – I have still not reviewed.

Random is as random does, friend.

How It Stacks Up: Well, this is a fine pickle. I figured this one would land #2 or #3, but looking back I see I’ve left a place for it at #1. I gave #2 to “The Stand Ins” back at that Disc 575 review. I admit, it was close between them.

I am correcting that now, putting “Stand Ins” at #1, and “Stage Names” at #2. Damn it, maybe I have gone soft…

Ratings: 4 Stars

As you might expect from a record I saved the #1 spot for, “The Stage Names” is a great Okkervil record, and the fact that it had one or two merely “okay” songs than I remembered does not diminish that. Sure it’s #2, but it is a burnished, filigree collection of silver, ornate and complex in its beauty.

If you’re just coming to Okkervil River, they are an indie rock band that features unlikely but seductive melodies that tend to take one or two more turns than you expect but always leave you in the right place.

This musical approach is highly compatible with the lead singer/songwriter Wil Sheff’s and phrasing. Sheff can take freeform poetry and twist it into lyrics that pirouette their way through the song. It feels a bit breathless at times, and is akin to taking one or two in-time dance steps after the music ends. A little awkward, but fully commit to it and…its art.

“The Stage Names” has some of the Sheff’s finest songwriting, starting with the awkwardly titled “Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe”. The imagery in “Our Life…” matches Sheff’s vocal delivery, slightly manic, and jumping from image to another. Best stanza:

“Where the lock that you locked in the suite
Says there's no prying
When the breath that you breathed in the street
Screams there's no science
When you look how you looked then to me
Then I cease lying and fall into silence”

Like most Okkervil River songs, these seemingly disparate images are stitched together like the cover art into something grander, in this case various allusions to film making and how they are like the editing process in a movie. A lot of scenes along the way that we later infuse meaning and purpose into.

When the band is hitting, they are chock-full of these “a-ha” moments that make you feel clever, as though you came up with it. They always walk that line of “too clever by half” but on this record they are on the right side of it a good majority of the time.

My other favourite is “A Girl In Port” a stripped-down tune that is a blend of urban-Gothic and seafaring imagery fused together into a romance that will melt you into a puddle of yearning. Most romances are about a single girl, but this one features many, each filling and emptying our restless narrator’s soul on his travels. There is no ill-will here, and as the chorus makes clear between each encounter:

“Let fall your soft and swaying skirt
Let fall your shoes, let fall your shirt
I'm not the lady-killing sort
Enough to hurt a girl in port”

Where there are some lapses are in the musical experimentation. The music is built to be frantic and aggressive, and it works, but when they descend into sound effects, it could pull me out of the moment right when I was getting acclimated to the spin of it all.

“The Stage Names” is a record that can be beloved by young romantics and English Lit graduates alike (did I just repeat myself?). It also works for pretty much anyone who enjoys a little of the old yearn n’ pine, delivered poetically with a slightly tortured lilt.

Best tracks: Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe, Savannah Smiles, Plus Ones, Girl In Port

CD Odyssey Disc 1892: Katie Gavin

This week my college football team, the University of Miami (aka “The U”) secured their spot in the National Championship game. The ‘Canes haven’t been in the big game since 2003 and haven’t won since 2001, so it is kind of a big deal.

But not for most people reading this, who came here for music not football. Apologies for this indulgence, Gentle Reader. We now return you to regularly scheduled programming.

Disc 1892 is… What a Relief

Artist: Katie Gavin

Year of Release: 2024

What’s up with the Cover? Katie in her bedroom. It is either laundry day or it should be, as the basket’s full, the bed littered with clothes, Katie is clearly out of clean pants at this point, and there’s a bra on the birdcage. That last item is not code or metaphor. There’s literally a bra on the birdcage.

Also…kitty! This cat is doing what every cat traditionally does on laundry day – sitting on the comforter so it is hard to get the sheets in the wash. Good job, kitty!

Less good is Katie’s decision to put the cat’s food dish right beside the aforementioned bird cage. In the NFL this would almost certainly be flagged for taunting. Then again, maybe by doing this Katie is letting the cat know, “hey, no need for budgi-cide, there’s a food source readily available right here that you don’t have to chase first.” Based on my extensive experience with cats, I do not believe this is a winning strategy.

How I Came To Know It: I am a fan of the band MUNA, where Gavin is the lead singer so when I heard she’d put out a solo record I decided to give it a shot.

How It Stacks Up: This is Katie Gavin’s only solo album, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 4 Stars

Welcome to another episode of Thoughtful Indie Pop on the CD Odyssey, as we unveil yet another example of an artist you likely won’t hear on the radio despite penning both pretty melodies and engaging and thought-provoking lyrics. Pop radio, you are stupid.

“What a Relief” sees a confident Katie Gavin emerge from her role in MUNA to show that she can go it alone and make music that is just as compelling, catchy and clever as her work in her band. The songs focus heavily on relationships, finding romance and in the daily routines of coupledom. Gavin blurs the line between sexy and domestic in a way you don’t often see (most songs veer one way or another).

“I Want it All” and “Aftertaste” lead off the record walking this line, the former a moody submerged piece, and the latter an upbeat and bouncy pop ditty. Both have lyrical depth, exploring complex emotions, and heaps of relationship history in equal measure. These songs get better with multiple listens, which is always the sign off a good song, and an essential element to pop music in particular.

While fundamentally pop in its structure, the album has a folk/country flavour in many places, often helped along by the addition of Sarah Watkins (Watkins Family) guesting in on fiddle.

A fine example of this - and one of the record’s standouts – is “The Baton”. This song is about mothers and daughters and while the theme is old and well established (the ‘handing of the baton’ through generations) this song does an exceptional job of it. Buoyed by tight harmonies and Watkins’ fiddle (hint: she is very good at the fiddle) this song will give you a tapestry of emotion, rolled together into something celebratory and uplifting.

Gavin’s influences are wide, and in addition to demonstrating strong literacy in country and folk movements, I heard a strong echo of Sarah McLachlan, particularly on moody love pieces like “As Good As It Gets”. I also heard a little Taylor Swift in the phrasing and structure of “Inconsolable”.

“Inconsolable” is one of the record’s best both musically and lyrically. Gavin’s vocals aren’t as rich as Swift’s but she has a breathy charm and a sneaky power similar to Samia (another artist you should be looking up, if you’ve read this far). The song is about two people learning to be vulnerable despite not being taught these skills growing up. The extended chorus says it all:

“We're from a long line of people we'd describe as inconsolable
We don't know how to be helped
Yeah, we're from a whole huddle of households
Full of beds where nobody cuddled
We don't know how to be held
But I've seen baby lizards running in the river when they open their eyes
Even though no one taught them how or why
So maybe when you kiss me, I can let you see me cry
And if we keep going by the feeling, we can get by”

Hey – if lizards can do it surely we can, right?

The record is not perfect. The jazzy elements on “Sanitized Girl” pulled me out of the moment just to be clever, which is a pop no-no. It’s a minor quibble though and is more about my personal biases than anything fundamentally wrong with the song.

Note that while I said this is Gavin’s solo effort (and it is) fellow MUNA member Josette Maskin appears on over half the songs, playing guitar, bouzouki and something called a ‘tamburica’ which the internet tells me is a form of lute originating in the Balkans. She does not play these at the same time, of course. That would be very hard.

When I started listening to this record, I had it pegged early for a 3-star review, but through the course of the week it just got better and better, as I took in the layers of what Gavin accomplishes here, and liked it more and more. This one’s a winner.

Best tracks: Aftertaste, The Baton, Casual Drug Use, Sketches, Inconsolable, Sparrow