A Ton of Stuff In Brief

So I listened to a lot of stuff yesterday and today, having driven all over the place recently.  Here's a quick rundown.



So Porcupine Tree's Voyage 34 is one of the most drugged out albums I've heard in a while.  With only four tracks, none of which are shorter than 12 minutes, this album blurs into a vocal-less trip into bizarre drones not unlike a Pink Floyd pysche-fest full of sound samples of LSD-related dialogue.



This Against Me! EP features primarily songs from their first album performed completely acoustic and stripped down to their bare essentials, basically one sparse guitar and one very raw voice.  They generally come off very well and the fifth track not to be found on the first album fares as well as the others.



Casket Salesman features ex-members of the screamo outfit A Static Lullaby and marks a considerable departure for them.  As a representative of the new prog trend that seems to be gaining a little momentum in recent years, this release falls sqaurely somewhere between Cave In's Jupiter and Coheed and Cambria's Second Stage Turbine Blade.  I felt it had much more creativity to it than anything produced by A Static Lullaby but occasionally felt a little lost in the swirling guitars and spastic drumming.



Considered by many to be the best of Wire's trilogy of very good albums (along with Pink Flag and Chairs Missing), 154 marks a significant change in Wire's sound.  No longer the punk upstarts of Pink Flag or even the mid-tempo post-punk twitch of Chairs Missing, 154 slows things down to a menacing crawl, featuring haunted melodies that get underneath your skin and brood.



Six Finger Satellite's Law of Ruins shows considerable growth for the spastic and abrasive band whose first album I spoke of last week.  Two albums were released between that one and this, and it shows.  Yes, the crazed jitters and screams of Pigeon are still present and accounted for but Six Finger Satellite has also seen fit to include much more of a kraut rock and post-rock influence in their music.  "Sea of Tranquility Pts. 1 & 2" is a nearly twelve minute opus that sounds like something that would not have been out of place on Can's Tago Mago.