As Americans around the country gather for Thanksgiving this week, Band Name Bureau is feeling reflective. Let us, too, give thanks for what we have seen, heard, and endured in 2022. In no particular order…
Justin Bieber sex-doll reviews
The world of Band Name Bureau is full of rabbit holes, and I fell down this one while researching the rather ho-hum name of Just-In Beaver back in February. Since I wrote about the artists claiming variants of “Just-In Beaver” as names, the Bieber sex doll has apparently sold out on Amazon, despite the overwhelmingly negative customer reviews. “We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock,” the page says, mournfully.
Perhaps, Amazon suggests, you’d be interested in something called Pipedream Travel Size John Blow Up Doll? It gets marginally better reviews in aggregate, but caveat emptor: “The love doll is infant size. This is not a sex doll. The penis is soft and limp. It is not human or adult size. The worst.” That’s basically the average review for the “Justin Bieber” one, whose face looks like this:
I can’t wait to see what products the Amazon algorithm recommends for me now.
The hilarious pretension of VR Sex
Compared to cheaply made vinyl dolls, virtual-reality sex seems better, but in the case of LA band VR Sex—featured in May—the dolls are far less annoying. That’s because VR Sex’s shtick is so pretentious it’s comical, and not intentionally so.
Take for instance, frontman Andrew Clinco, who performs under the stage name Noel Skum, which the press release calls an “acerbic anagram” of Elon Musk. Listen, everyone really hates Elon Musk these days—and rightfully so—but that barely-an-anagram hardly makes VR Sex provocateurs. But “Noel Skum” is key to understanding VR Sex. The depth of the group’s “fascination with the seedy, surreal margins of low-life Los Angeles, doomed to dead ends of vanity, lust, and technology” goes no deeper than the kind of shallow revelations made by stoned college students in dorm rooms late at night.
Right around the time VR Sex was featured in BNB #26, the group shot a video for “Snake Water” in its practice space. Plenty of bands have made music videos in their practice spaces, but because there’s nothing VR Sex can’t make pretentious, “Snake Water” was shot on a vintage Saticon tube camera and recorded directly onto 2-inch tape. OK, fine, but the press release credits a director, producer, cinematographer, editor, titles artist, and three others for a video of VR Sex performing in their practice space. You’d think they were making “November Rain.”
The lunacy of Electric Machine Gun Tits
Let’s keep the R-rating going with this San Francisco “erotic extremist psychedelic punk duo,” also featured in BNB #26. Shortly after that issue published in May, Electric Machine Gun Tits released an EP called Tokyo Rafflesia. While it doesn’t boast any songs with titles as eye-catching as “Where the Hell is Hello Kitty’s Mouth?!” or “Corona Fuck Off,” the five-song EP has lots of pleasingly off-the-wall garage rock.
Oh, the drama
Back in BNB #28, we discovered that the melodrama of early ’00s emo is alive and well in If I Die First, whose most recent EP has this cover…
…and features song titles “People Like You Make People Like Me Disappear,” “Just Another Body at the Bottom of the Lake,” “Glass Casket,” and “Time Moves Faster When You’re Dancing in a Graveyard.” It all throws back to early-aughts screamo, from the music (metal-tinged guitars topped by vocals that alternate between high-register singing and guttural screams) to the histrionic lyrics:
Oh surprise, I’ve bled my solace dry.
I’m craving substance but the pain is oh so intricate.
So I cave in, don’t wait for me.
At least If I Die First has some spirit. Sadeyes, featured in BNB #29, can’t even muster the energy to be histrionic. It’s all about the wallow, as you’ll notice with a quick skim of Spotify’s “This is sadeyes” playlist: “you deserve better,” “don’t cry,” “my feelings are hiding,” “you’re my everything,” “i fall apart,” “home isn’t home,” “i’m not okay,” “cryin too much,” etc. etc. Its 50 songs clock in at two hours, and I defy you to make it all the way through.
But melodrama isn’t the sole province of emo. Metal can also mope down, as BNB #31 showed with Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean. The Massachusetts doom outfit has albums with titles like I Carry My Awareness of Defeat Like a Banner of Victory and Decay and Other Hopes Against Progress. Just in time for Christmas, the group is releasing a three-song EP called I Tried Catching You But You Fell Through Me. It’s currently available for pre-orders, with a link to send as a gift! Spread a little cheer with this cover:
Let “With This Dagger in My Heart I Shall Turn the World to Ash” tell your loved one everything you can’t say. There’s also “Decadence in the House of Rats,” which is on brand, as is “Suffering is a Gift from God”—helpful perspective for when you’re having a bad day!—though that title also works as a country song. It’d fit right in on the latest Luke Combs album.
All in on Wisconsin
You could argue that everything went downhill after BNB #24, which featured Beercan Pentagram. It’s a name so perfectly Wisconsin that to continue the Band Name Bureau enterprise after it is folly. I mean, this Facebook photo:
All Busch Light cans, aside from a single Milwaukee’s Best Light? It is utter perfection. Beercan Pentagram are nothing if not connoisseurs of garbage beer.
Then just this month we also met the Jaggernauts, who, like Beercan Pentagram, hail from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Sadly, Bandcamp doesn’t let you search by hometown, but it does let you search “Eau Claire” as a tag. Hmm, I need to dig in and see what other treasures await near the Minnesota border. (And no, I don’t care about Bon Iver.)
These can stay
As the official Band Name Bureau Spotify playlist evinces—over the course of 13 hours!—the groups herein spotlighted seldom become go-to listens. But I want to shout out the bands who appeared this year that I ended up liking. Absinthe Father (BNB #30) has a new one called moving forward (the title and all songs are lower case, but I don’t hold that against them), and it’s really solid. Haley Butters (again, great name) has gone from lo-fi bedroom experiments to fully realized and self-assured indie rock, and it’s great. European bands I Love Your Lifestyle (BNB #22) and Captain Asshole (BNB #24.1) have mastered the sarcastic, shouty, and ragged style I associate with Midwestern punk. There are no frills, but plenty of hooks and charm. The story behind the name of the St. Pierre Snake Invasion (BNB #23) will live on in my nightmares, as 2019’s Caprice Enchanté has lived on in my Spotify listening. Their bio promised new music in 2022, but doesn’t look like it happened. Get on it, y’all.
POST-SCRIPTS
If you like If I Die First, Twitter also recommends you check out Dying Wish, who has an album called, oh lord, Fragments of a Bitter Memory.
Something called GigSalad.com recommends this when I search for Eau Claire bands. Hired!