#60: Unrelatable content

Black Crystal Wolf Kids; Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean; Thank You, I’m Sorry; Baby Got Back Talk; Damn the Witch Siren

Oct 13, 2022

Black Crystal Wolf Kids

If the name sounds like an amalgam of early ’00s bands, there’s a reason for that: Black Crystal Wolf Kids bill themselves as “the world’s first indie rock tribute band.” That means “paying costumed homage to the best music of right now… as well as indie’s storied past.” For the best of “right now,” they cite the Killers and MGMT, which fits their early-aughts conceit, but then they also toss in Billie Eilish, which feels 100% tacked on to sound current.

But that choice speaks to the true scope of the band’s repertoire, looking at the songs section of their website. (“We’ll even learn songs just for you!”) Sublime? Red Hot Chili Peppers? Eminem? Fucking Smashmouth? Six Huey Lewis songs? Hey, clients like the Los Angeles Times, Mariott [sic], and something called Wpromote don’t go for that indie shit, pal. People wanna get loaded at the company party, rock out to “Allstar,” make a pass at a co-worker, then wind up in HR the following Monday.

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean

Says Bandcamp user maxlikesound, “Considering these guys are named after a song by Thou, I think it’s fairly obvious what these guys aspire to be as musicians.” NO SHIT, DUDE. SOOOO OBVIOUS. Like we don’t all have 2007’s Tyrant on repeat. I plan to dance with my daughter to “With a Cold, Life Extinguishing Elegance” at her wedding.

That Thou song is actually called “Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean,” which was apparently a bridge too far for this Massachusetts doom-metal band. That said, 2020’s The Vestige kicks off with a song called “Confusion Hath Fuck His Masterpiece.”

The Vestige collects on a double LP Chained’s previous light-hearted romps Decay and Other Hopes Against Progress, I Carry My Awareness of Defeat Like a Banner of Victory, and Tell Me What You See Vanishing and I Will Tell You Who You Are. It includes songs like “The Dead Who Climb Up to the Sky,” “Hollow Feeds the Emptying Death,” and, amazingly, a cover of Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart.”

There’s also a cover of Devo’s “Gut Feeling,” because Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean is full of surprises. “It’s a little less doom, and a little more sludge,” adds maxlikesound. YEAH WE KNOW, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS. That guy.

Thank You, I’m Sorry

Every day, music writers and editors receive press releases with enough pronouns to make MAGA types storm their local capitols. It’s almost expected when some singer-songwriter’s new album explores their non-binary identity—in fact, a quick search for “non-binary” in my inbox returned 11 such press releases since May.

To wit, three of the four members of Thank You, I’m Sorry use they/them pronouns, with only guitarist Abe Anderson holding it down for TRADITIONAL AMERICAN VALUES. Thanks to his bandmates—Colleen Dow (guitar/vocals), Bethunni Schreiner (bass), and Sage Livergood (drums)—Thank You, I’m Sorry won’t get invited to perform at next year’s Conservative Political Action Conference!

The quartet hails from Chicago (says their Bandcamp), or maybe Seattle/Minneapolis (says their Twitter), or just Minneapolis (their Facebook), so apparently they can’t settle on hometowns or single-gender pronouns. IT’S LIBERALISM RUN AMOK!

They don’t even have the decency to explain their name’s origin in an interview that shows up in search engines! All I’m getting are results about the transformative power of the phrases “thank you” and “I’m sorry.” Do I have a cuck filter on my results?!

OK enough. Kudos for the song titles “How Many Slugs Can We Throw Against the Wall Until We Question Our Own Morality” and “Manic Pixie Dream Hurl.”

Baby Got Back Talk

Baby Got Back Talk bills itself as “The Most Interesting Band in the World,” though may I suggest “Band Whose Name Sounds Like a ‘Before & After’ Wheel of Fortune Puzzle.” Hmm, probably too clunky.

The quartet also describes itself as “a D-I-why?-because-we-gotta punk party from New York City,” which tracks with the band’s super melodic, smart and smart-alecky pop punk. See 2020’s Genre Reveal Party and songs like “Historically White College,” “When They Go Low, We Go Six Feet Under,” and “Unrelatable Content,” or their latest, an EP called Existential Shred. If you’re looking for a Motion City Soundtrack-style take on notorious affirmative action litigant Abigail Fisher, “Model Minority” is ready and waiting!

Damn the Witch Siren

You don’t often see websites like Damn the Witch Siren’s anymore. You don’t often see band websites often anymore, period, because they aren’t really necessary, thanks to various social platforms, Bandcamp, and streaming services. Often a band will just buy the URL and throw up a splash page with social links.

DTWS’s site has a full-on nav bar with nine options. It’s a blast from the past in a lot of ways, and not just because one of the options is called “web links” (which, curiously, offers to take visitors to their website—which they’re already on). The blog goes to a page that hasn’t been updated since 2015, but fortunately that last post explained the origin of the Columbus electropop duo’s name.

It’s too long to quote here, but it has to do with the Salem Witch Trials, the sirens in The Odyssey, and how culture tends to portray powerful women as treacherous. Singer Bobbi Kitten put it more succinctly in a 2014 interview:

It’s inspired by a lot of mythology. And I’ve always been obsessed with witches. I thought it fit well: I wanted to make seductive, sexy pop music that felt like spell-casting, luring you in.

The only other post on their blog is from 2014, when the band said they wouldn’t play the Fashion Meets Music Festival because R. Kelly was headlining.

So when Bobbi and I are begging the festival committee to kick R. Kelly off the bill, we are doing so because we think it is symptomatic of a much larger problem at hand than R. Kelly coming and playing what I’m sure will be a great show, if that’s your cup of tea. We are asking Columbus, and society as a whole, to WAKE UP AND STOP IGNORING THE SERIOUS PROBLEM OUR CULTURE HAS WITH GLAMORIZING PREDATORY MEN AND IGNORING THE VICTIMIZATION OF WOMEN.

Blogs aren’t known for aging well, but nice one, Damn the Witch Siren.

POST-SCRIPTS

Damn the Witch Siren ended up pulling out of the festival. Five days later, organizers canceled R. Kelly’s performance. I’m sure the nervous sponsors helped that happen, but kudos to DTWS for taking a stand when so few did—Kelly headlined the Pitchfork Music Festival the year before.
Says Bandcamp user christopher_jerome of Thou’s Tyrant: “like slicing my neck, slitting my wrists, and blowing my brains out, all at the same time, hoping my sacrifice is fractionally worthy in respect to the immense sound that just pulverized my entire being & beyond.” Dudes. Lighten up.
Band name for free: Hath Fuck
Baby Got Back Talk did a long interview with Punknews that’s quite heady and insightful. It’s a nice counterpoint to the sentiments of aged music fans bemoaning the death of punk or whatever. Punk’s doing just fine, y’all.