Deftones' 'Around the Fur' and the new new normal

No. 1250: Deftones - Around the Fur

It feels somewhat refreshing to begin this second iteration of Autobiographical Order with a new venue, 10 years after it began. Though not necessarily under the circumstances that transpired since I published the last post on the previous blog. The U.S. just had a presidential election that went, well, not how I hoped it would, and I’m still a little astonished that this is apparently what 74 million people want. But it ties in, however circuitously, to this chapter of AO. 

At the time of purchasing Deftones’ sophomore album Around the Fur on vinyl—24 years after buying it on CD from a Wherehouse at UTC in La Jolla—the world was just starting to thaw from nearly two years of pandemic lockdown. Just months earlier I’d seen my first live show in 18 months, and at the end of the year I had my 40th birthday back in San Diego after moving to Richmond. It felt good to see friends I hadn’t for over a year, and to kind of have everything feel like it was normal again. But a few years down the line, I can’t help but feel like Covid fundamentally broke us as a society. Not just because of the economic disruption and the disease itself, but it made us more antisocial as a matter of survival and I don’t think we’ve fully recovered from that. And the royal We won’t recover until we embrace community again on a larger scale. That doesn’t entirely account for 2016 part two, but it doesn’t help. There’s a recurring refrain in certain indie circles: “I don’t know how to explain that you should care about other people.” But it’s hard to have empathy for anyone's lived experience when you never see or interact with them, you know?

But see, here’s the thing: Being in this paranoid, insular bubble for two years made me (and probably lots of people like me) reaching back for sources of comfort, and in a lot of cases that meant old music I loved. Deftones is perhaps not the first thing that’d come to mind as a comfort record, but I damn near wore this one out back in high school and while I was in a hardcore band at the time, we all had different ideas of what good music was; our drummer was more into Victory Records stuff and our bass player loved Dream Theater. I always wanted to sound more like Deftones. Seeing them again in 2019 at The Cure’s Pasadena Daydream festival kind of rekindled my affection for the band’s music and I bought a copy of White Pony in 2020 (still their best album), and this one a little over a year later.

I don’t object to Deftones’ first two records being called nu-metal, because they more or less are, Adrenaline in particular, but I can’t abide by the nu-metal revivalism that’s been happening over the past god knows how many years. I understand people’s arguments for why it doesn’t suck, I just, uh, don’t agree with them. But Deftones were always my exception to that rule, in large part because they didn’t behave much like a nu-metal band. (One notable exception here being Max Cavalera’s guest spot on “MX” where he just shouts “Soulllllflyyyyyy,” which is hilarious and corny as hell). 

Obviously the two big singles, “My Own Summer” and "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)”—the latter as close to an argument for Deftones as a shoegaze band as you’re gonna get, perhaps, or at least post-Smashing Pumpkins alt-rock—are monsters. The chorus to “Lhabia” is catchy as hell, and same for the title track, despite having more of a nu-metal bark about it. And the heavy bass groove of “Dai the Flu” is one of the greatest moments in the band’s catalog, if you ask me. But one of the greatest factors that ultimately separated Deftones from nu-metal is Chino Moreno’s vocals. He screams when he needs to, sure, but his melodic, whispery style is unusually sensual for heavy music. And nu-metal isn’t sexy; it’s a lot of things, but it’s not that. Am I saying this is a sexy album? Not exactly, but it’s in the ballpark. Rating: 9.4

Listen: “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)”

No. 1251: Serena-Maneesh - s/t

The throughline with much of the records I bought around this time, at least the ones that weren’t new records from bands I’d either newly discovered or new records from longtime favorites, is a desire to rediscover something I already loved. Sometimes maybe even records I forgot I had loved. 

Serena-Maneesh’s debut album is one of those records, the sort of record that feels ripe for rediscovery in an era where TikTok teens are discovering shoegaze and making bands like Duster into festival reunion acts (who saw that coming? Not me! Also, Duster will make an appearance on this blog/newsletter). As far as I can tell, the Norwegian group still exists but is a lot less active these days, or perhaps just never bothered to tell anyone they broke up? But they released two albums between 2005 and 2010, the first of which—that’d be this one—is a lost classic well worth unearthing for those who haven’t in a while, or if you’ve never heard it and you love the sound of noisy, but melodic guitars. 

Their story is kind of a familiar one to anyone who followed indie blogs in the ‘00s: The Norwegian release of the album got some blog and Pitchfork attention, which led to them being signed to Playlouder, a label founded by another blog and which as far as I know doesn’t exist anymore. (The link I found to their website is in fact a MySpace. You can’t make this up.) I don’t think they could be classified as blog-rock because A. they’re not North American (pretty sure that’s a qualification, right?), and B. they’re definitely shoegaze/neo-psych. The group kinda blends My Bloody Valentine and Spiritualized with some other elements here and there, like Stooges-y garage rock and blissful Stereolab-like jazz-pop textures. But mostly it’s a big and noisy guitar record, and the leadoff track “Drain Cosmetics” hits that My Bloody Spiritualized sweet spot perfectly (especially if your image of Spiritualized is in the dronier Lazer Guided Melodies era). But when they really get the aggression going on “Sapphire Eyes High,” they’re burning jet fuel. 

This hasn’t been reissued in some time and I tracked down a random Discogs copy as I usually do, but as noisy guitar records go it’s been a strangely comforting one to have, reminding me of an era that no longer exists, and which I don’t necessarily feel nostalgic for. But there’s a naive version of myself back there who’s just excited to be getting on the ground floor of all this great music and I don’t know, maybe I envy him a little bit? I mean, I feel like I’m a lot more patient, responsible and more grounded than he was, but hey, youth is wasted on the young as they say. Rating: 9.1

Listen: “Drain Cosmetics”

No. 1252: Cloakroom - Dissolution Wave

Another shoegaze-y record, and clearly I was in a particular mood for dense and hazy guitars or something like that, especially considering just a couple weeks earlier I had picked up Hum’s Downward Is Heavenward on vinyl. But see, here’s the thing: A lot of bands right now that are influenced by Hum just don’t do that much for me. There’s an argument to be made for bands that improve upon their influences, and I could make the argument that Portishead’s Third is actually better than the Silver Apples’ debut for instance (but I go to each of them for different reasons). But see: very few bands, if any, improve upon what Hum did. A lot of the grunge-gaze bands of the past decade or so make competent and forgettable pedal-chain worship that leaves me cold. Most of it’s totally fine and I just don’t want to listen to any of it because it all sort of blurs together to me. 

Cloakroom is different, and it has a lot to do with their other influences. They’re avowed fans of Jason Molina and Songs:Ohia, and I’ve interviewed them about this before (and I’m pretty sure I pre-ordered this record immediately after that interview), and you can hear that kind of hypnotic open space in their music and a kind of weathered beauty in what they do. I fell hard for their 2017 album Time Well, and its follow up Dissolution Wave is a more concise and immediate continuation of that record’s charms, with fewer of the sprawling, misty dirges. (I love those, for the record—gimme all the dirges.) Here they sort of swing between heavier bursts of distorted guitar and more subdued jangle-pop songs like “A Force at Play.” And it all pretty much works. They’re also nice guys and fall firmly into the camp of bands I’d describe as “Treble-core,” and I’m sure being similarly inspired by Jason Molina helps. Regardless, they transcend the tropes of modern shoegaze in my estimation, and for that reason I remain a fan. Rating: 9.0

Listen: “Dottie Back Thrush”

No. 1253: Jenny Hval - Blood Bitch

I've always found Jenny Hval's music to be something of an enigma. More than that, I find her to be an enigma. Ostensibly she makes pop music, but she talks about her songs and records as if they're dissertations or theses, conceptual in nearly academic ways. And not in always ways that make sense to someone on the outside. For instance, she released an album of songs that she described as "soft dick rock." What does that mean? I have no clue. I often think of her like indie rock's Maude Lebowski, and the rest of us out here are like The Dude, just trying to keep up (you mean coitus?).

But after hearing a few songs that I absolutely loved, like "Ashes to Ashes" and "Year of Love," I finally said to myself: OK, let's dive in. And while I won't say all of her records are amazing, about half of them truly are. But they're all different, and she's not an easy artist to summarize. Blood Bitch is, ostensibly, about vampires. It's also about menstruation. It's also an homage to the Cocteau Twins, who had a song titled "Blood Bitch" on their debut album Garlands. It's a lot of things.

In fact, this album is kind of all over the place, with spoken pieces and interludes and instrumentals that sound like film score compositions. But it also has some great standalone songs like "Female Vampire" and "Conceptual Romance." I wouldn't call it "goth" (though Pitchfork did, perhaps understandably) but there's a sensual darkness to it that certainly fits for dark, haunting nights. More Hval to come. Watch this space. Rating: 8.9

Listen: “Female Vampire”

No. 1254: Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8

This one’s sort of the outlier in this batch, less shoegazey, less guitar-driven (I think there’s maybe no guitar on this album?—Fact check: incorrect, there is, but it’s subtle, and it’s jazz guitar.) Nala Sinephro arrived basically at the perfect time for a record like Space 1.8 to be as well received as it was. I’m not saying it’s not great regardless of the circumstances that surrounded it—it’s a wonderful record regardless. But it arrived in September of 2021, a pandemic-year set of ambient jazz driven by dreamy synthesizers and otherworldly harp playing. And despite that, it sounds very little like Alice Coltrane or Dorothy Ashby, more attuned to contemporary electronics. The full record is essentially like a long suite—individual tracks standout, but it’s about the whole more than the pieces.

Which is to say, yeah, it totally makes sense that a world with anxiety on overload was the right audience for a soothing space-jazz record. It’s full of dynamic performances and brilliant chemistry. But it’s also just a gorgeous chill-out record, and sometimes that’s exactly what you need. Two-plus years later, I often still do. Rating: 9.1

Listen: “Space 6”

No. 1255: Emma Ruth Rundle - Some Heavy Ocean

One of my pandemic-year pastimes was snatching up all the (necessary) studio albums by my favorite artists. Seems obvious, sure, but collecting records isn’t necessarily cheap and is often subject to the whims of the marketplace. For instance: Emma Ruth Rundle’s debut (not counting Electric Guitar) was out of print for some time and yielding wholly unreasonable prices on Discogs. Same goes for her previous band Marriages (which is still out of print, in case you’re wondering). 

Some Heavy Ocean finally got a reissue back at the end of 2021, and she’s since been playing a lot of the album live since it turned 10. I missed her last show here in Richmond mostly because it was on a Tuesday and not a particularly convenient one at that—ordinarily she’s the kind of artist I’d move heaven and earth not to miss (Marked for Death, On Dark Horses and her Thou collaboration are all-timers for me), but alas, it was not to be.

Though I have heard her play a good number of these songs live, regardless, and while this is far from her best album, it’s still gorgeous. Far more “folk” for lack of a better word than her other albums, it’s rooted more in stripped-down acoustic songs, with a few more instrumental interludes, and some more climactic standouts like “Haunted Houses,” “Run Forever,” and “Living With the Black Dog.” You hear the spark of the absolutely devastating music that she’d end up writing, and while some of these songs are a little starker in their arrangements, the emotional weight is there and the sophistication of songwriting. She sounds fully formed, regardless of how much farther she’d travel. Rating: 9.0

Listen: “Living With the Black Dog”

No. 1256: Nightshift - Zoe

We close this week’s batch of seven records with Zöe, the debut album by Glasgow post-punk group Nightshift. I spent the better part of the pandemic era scouring Bandcamp for great underground punk and post-punk records that scratched a very specific itch—namely kind of raw, kind of weird art-punk stuff that could be either lo-fi or hi-fi, but at the very least not overly polished, probably with some use of saxophone, maybe with some weird experimental elements, and so on and so forth. I don’t know why this became such a prevalent craving in 2020-2021, probably something to do with feeling restless because of so much time spent inside, but regardless of the why, I did my best to satiate that craving as frequently as possible.

The funny thing is that Nightshift is a band I’d been pitched a year earlier but for some reason didn’t spend as much time with as they warranted. I typically listen to everything that Trouble in Mind sends me; everything they release is, more or less, fantastic. (Treble put together a starter pack of releases to check out, for those seeking more.) Nightshift is no exception, and when I returned to this group after realizing I’d slept on them, I became hooked pretty much instantly. They’re less Joy Division post-punk and more like a mixture of Raincoats and early Stereolab or something along those lines (or if you know the band Klang, featuring an ex-member of Elastica, which you probably don’t! Kinda like that)—krautrocky, droney, with bursts of clarinet and weird avant garde tendencies. They shifted gears a little bit on their second record (which is also great!) but this is a solid if attractively elusive kind of record, catchy in unconventional ways, mysterious without being unapproachable. I’ll take as much of this as you can give me. Rating: 8.9

Listen: “Make Kin”