March Jams ‘25

March is kind of a nothing month. It’s not particularly cold and its not particularly warm. We’re all sick and tired of winter but spring isn’t in full swing yet, but things are starting to happen. The neighborhood is becoming more active with joggers and dog walkers, and gigs are starting to pop up more frequently. As we stand here today, there is a promise of a better tomorrow. Not in a general sense in the United States, but in a sense of people coming out of hibernation and coming together. The new releases that I listened to this month were largely good with one exception that I have and will go into at length. Unfortunately, I often find it easier to talk about the things I don’t like than to talk about the things I do like. It could be my inherent pessimism or my inability to allow myself to be happy generally, but we don’t have time to go into all that right now. For now, forgive me for focusing so much on the negative. Ideally I won’t ever be disappointed by music so I won’t have to talk about it here, but such is life. Anyway, onto the jams!

Explanation of Concept: I’m not good about talking about the technical aspects of music so I will primarily focusing on how these song made me feel and a little bit of what I got from the lyrics. To assist in making my points about the quality of the albums I have employed a comparison system between the albums and some of my favorite jams (the ones you spread on toast). Check out January Jams ‘25 for more details.

I want everyone to take a moment to just sit and think about how awesome of a vocalist Courtney LaPlante is. When she was introduced to me as a member of IWABO I was impressed by her screaming ability but her clean vocals have come a long way over time and she’s now able to do some truly beautiful sounding things. Tsunami Sea by Spiritbox is what I’m talking about if you didn’t know. A lot is made over the concept of a sophomore slump in both athletics and music. Shane Told of Silverstein talked about this on an episode of Lead Singer Syndrome a few years ago. It often occurs with artists because their debut album has been curated over a long time and it takes a while to get noticed by labels to put their album out to the masses. Now that they are on label, that label wants them to keep putting out music so they have less time to put into their follow up album and feel more pressure. Is this a sophomore slump? Absolutely not, is it as good as Eternal Blue? I don’t think so but it’s still very good and comparison is the thief of joy so I will not make any more comparisons for the rest of this blog. I promise. I really like this album so I’ll talk very briefly about the few weak points for me. I’m not super into the robot-voice thing they do especially in “Black Rainbow,” I think something that sounded more like what they did on “No Loss, No Love” would’ve been better. “Crystal Roses” and “Ride The Wave” are pretty meh and “Deep End” is good but not as strong of an album-closer as I would have liked it to be. Now onto the good, “Fata Morgana” is a great opener and a good statement of intent and I like the ethereal effect it has. The six songs after “Black Rainbow” are all very good to great. One of the strengths of the album besides Courtneys cleans sounding better than ever, strengthening the choruses, is the lyrical themes of the flow of water and contrasting that with the peace and tranquility of the forest. “No Loss, No Love” is my favorite song on the album, I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I feel what she’s saying and its just heavy and awesome. “Perfect Soul” is the best showcase of the clean vocals. “Keep Sweet” is a pretty powerful song when you dive into the lyrics. “Soft Spine” “Tsunami Sea” and “A Haven With Two Faces” are all heavy recommends as well.

Jam Comp: Blueberry, very good but not the best.

Alright lets get this over with, Big Ole Album Vol. 1 by A Day To Remember is not a good album. They compare themselves to 2016 Lebron on this album, but they’re really more like Shaq on the Celtics at this point. This album feel incredibly disjointed, it seems like they were trying to do a lot of different things and not many of them worked. It’s like if you go to see the Savanna Bananas and every time they do a dance before the pitch and they throw the ball into the dirt 5 feet before the plate. It goes from being entertaining to “alright maybe stop fucking around and throw a damn strike.” Before I go into specifics about songs, I won’t be talking about “All My Friends” here because I discussed it at length in a previous blog. If you want to know my opinion on that song go give it a read, it’s titled “The Worst Song Ever?” The album opens with a classic a couple songs that sound like mid-to-late 2000s nu-metal, so we’re off to a hot start. That’s nothing against the likes of Skillet or Rev Theory, when they did it at least it sounded genuine to who they were and it had it’s time. When A Day To Remember does it, it just sound lame and try-hard. I touched on this briefly in the Worst Song blog, but ADTR is trying SO hard to sound tough on this album and it really just feels corny, notably the line “If I want your feedback, I’ll let you know motherfucker” at the end of the song “Feedback.” Again, addressing haters is a really tough line to walk between sounding defiant in staying true to yourself and sounding like you had your widdle feelings hurt (Ronnie Radke). A few of the songs on this album have Cody Quistad credited as writer and you can immediately tell because they just sound like Wage War light. The legend Will Putney manages to save the album with a couple of pretty good songs that he produced “Miracle” and “Silence” which many say just sounds like a Gojira song, it sure as hell doesn’t sound like ADTR, why is it here? “Flowers” sounds like the seventh best song on Common Courtesy. “Die For Me” was a Bring Me The Horizon demo given to them and it sounds like it. “Lebron” is inoffensive enough to be enjoyable. A couple songs on the album remind you that Shaq could still put up 20 at age 38 but then needs a couple days of rest. The best song on the album and probably the only one I will ever actively seek out in the future is “Closer Than You Think” which is a very sweet song which is about dealing with your child’s first heartbreak. It’s the only song that I would say is very good. “Flowers” “Miracle” and “Silence” are pretty good and the rest are not good to bad or okay due to being saved by pretty good breakdowns.

Jam Comp: Blackcurrant Jam that has been left open outside for days downwind of a landfill.

Lucy Dacus is rather good at doing the music. Forever Is A Feeling is the first album released by any of the Boygenius crew since they went on hiatus and frankly, I’m okay with it because if we’re gonna get an album like this and whatever Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker put out, its worth, as the gamers would say. This album is very much about being sad and lonely in every stage of a relationship for various reason but I wouldn’t call it a sad album. It’s not sad because there is an underlying theme of being happy in her current relationship which makes the expressions of regret and loneliness more palatable. Often times she is talking about how lonely she is feeling because she is not with the person she loves, that is sad in a sense of course but its a good problem to have. It also is just kind of how people can think in a relationship if they’re someone who has a hard time allowing themselves to be happy. For instance in the song “Ankles” which is about finally just going for it, sexually, and how that can become the start of a beautiful relationship she says “How lucky are we to have so much to lose?” there are also songs that talk about loneliness before a relationship in the form of unrequited love, and after a relationship in a reflective manner accepting that it wasn’t meant to be. I think the best aspect of this album and Dacus’ songwriting is finding a beautiful balance between happiness/loneliness and optimism/pessimism. The song “Best Guess” has one of my favorite lines in the album because it is a very optimistic song and it contains the line “If this doesn’t work out, I would lose my mind and after a while I will be fine but I don’t want to be fine, I want you.” I don’t know exactly what I love so much about it, maybe its the defiance in hearing “time heals all wounds” and saying “fuck that.” I may be the outlier but I thought this able was very sweet, sad and sweet a lot, but overall very pleasant. Songs I would recommend are “Ankles,” “Best Guess,” “Limerence,” “Most Wanted Man,” bonus points for “Lost Time” feeling like and album closer, and “Bullseye (feat. Hozier) TAKEMETOCHURCH!

Jam Comp: Sweet Jalapeño, sweet but it hurts just a little bit.

Do ya like satan? If yes, you might like Hate Cult Ritual by Whitechapel. You can tell they were having fun with this one. Whitechapel has gone through a good amount of change sonically over their nine albums, and this most recent change has them returning to their past. It pains me in a way that this album is so good because I know that the deathcore elitists, arguably the most insufferable people in the world, are happy. The songwriting on this album is much more refined than in their early works, obviously because Phil Bozeman has grown as a songwriter, and that makes them more effective at capturing the feelings and telling the story they want to convey. They used their talents to create some truly disgusting and disturbing imagery but like in a fun way? Let me explain, this is a concept album about a dude that starts a satan-ish cult and has all his peeps going around committing atrocities and goes into another dimension and I’m pretty sure winds up killing God and in doing so turns the universe into a void. This to most doesn’t sound like their idea of a good old fashioned shindig, but they say things like “we are the means to a messiah-bolical end” which is just the best line ever in any medium. The first few songs on the album they’re just really going for it in terms of being brutal and downright objectionable and its honestly a lot of fun. It is mostly good-to-very good with a couple of lulls in the middle but by the end the concept is fully realized and enhances the experience of the last couple of songs. At some point our… protagonist? becomes a god I guess in the song “Mammoth God” and this leads to the amazing line “I am the mammoth god, I am the slayer of gods. Therefore, I should kill myself so I can claim all their heads.” “Therefore” gets me every time. I would recommend reading along with the lyrics of the first and last couple of songs there are some real gems in there “Hymns in Dissonance” in particular. I would say the particular lines I’m thinking of but I really don’t feel like I can. Bonus points again for the final song sounding like the final song. Song recommendations are “Prisoner 666,” “Hymns in Dissonance,” “Diabolic Slumber,” and “Nothing Is Coming for Any of Us”

Jam Comp: Bitter Orange, it makes you make that sour face

Though there were none this month I will be keeping a running list of albums which have received the vaunted comparison of Grape Jam:

Keep Planting Flowers - Stick To Your Guns

The Sky, The Earth, & All Between - Architects