Maria Bamford's Ask Me About My New God - An Album Review

In recent Louis CK specials, Louis has helped us laugh at the awkwardness of divorce and the grossness of narcissism. Patton Oswalt points fingers at parenthood and religion, while Sarah Silverman stays fairly well focused on race relations and bed-wetting. Mike Birbiglia’s most recent album actually made his sleepwalking disorder interesting, heartbreaking, and oddly hilarious. Tig Notaro, in an unexpected turn at the Largo Theater last year, brought her breast cancer into light and reiterated how vital comedy can be to coping with personal disaster. If comedy accomplishes anything profound or great, it’s this: it teaches us to laugh in the face of unpleasantry, even despair.

And there’s a good chance no one has touched as closely to the void as Maria Bamford. Those familiar with Bamford know her comedy revolves primarily around her bi-polar disorder and her debilitating paranoia. Those unfamiliar with Bamford may not be prepared for her unique approach to comedy, which relies exclusively on character voices, random internal dialogues, and winding explorations of her family’s inability to understand Maria as a fragile teetering being. (In fact, Bamford’s family is extremely supportive of her comedy, as her parents declared by serving as the sole audience for Bamford’s SPECIAL SPECIAL SPECIAL recorded earlier this year in their living room.)

            

As a huge fan of Maria Bamford, I think her newest record – Ask Me About My New God – is her best yet. It’s tough for me not to use words like “genius” or “masterpiece” or “more inspiring than a Soul Surfer / Dead Poets mash-up” when discussing this record, so I’ll just say it’s really super crazy awesome amazing. Here Bamford further tackles her mental instability, as well as her inability to function within her family and society, but she also addresses (at length) her suicidal tendencies and temptations. She even offers profound reasons to stay alive, such as spite. This is not the stuff – depression, anxiety, mental illness, suicide – one expects from the year’s best comedy record, but Bamford is a brave one, revealing all her unwanted thoughts without reserve. As really good comedy should do.

Kylesa's Ultraviolet - An Album Review

According to Online, the term “kilesa” comes from the Pali language of Central India. In Buddhism, “kilesa” (spelling dictated per dialect) refers to a mental state of emotional distress or thought poison. The band Kylesa, from Georgia's fair city of Savannah, where the trees pull more tourism than the pecan pie or the hospitality, seeks to embody this cerebral slide. I can't speak to all that, except to say that when you're writing an animal attack death scene into a story, Kylesa is the perfect tonal inspiration.

Also from Online, one learns the band Kylesa fulfills most of the musical genres my mother considers “devil worshipping” – sludge metal, doom metal, death metal, stoner metal, psychedelic rock, fuzz rock, crust punk. I’m too new to Kylesa (and all this genre lingo) to say who worships who here. Kylesa's syrupy guitars and spiraled bass pry-back an Inferno-reflective doorway into the sky, assuring that Up remain rooted in Down, and Hope swings hinged on Despair. Vocally the album swims: yells, cleans, choral, shared male and female leads. Lyrically, Ultraviolet questions the validity of Absolute Truth. And the Christ follower in me, prone to similar curiosities, welcomes their inquiry.

Point blank: this record works. Slow and dire. Thick but beautiful. Ultraviolet pierces sensation, dividing the blur between conviction and suspicion. I’ve found profound creative inspiration in this record. And, called back, I’ve found Kylesa’s discography genre-ly scattered but consistently progressive.

Avenged Sevenfold's Hail The King : An Album Review

I never liked these guys, but they sell a shit-ton of t-shirts. When I taught high school English in Kansas City back nearly a decade ago, every other t-shirt was either Avenged Sevenfold, Fall-Out Boy or Bob Marley. I listened to some Avenged Sevenfold back in their City Of Evil days, and it did not move me. The guitars were finger-plucky, weirdly erratic, like darkly electric blue-grass, and the vocals were operatic, but they did not move me.

This new Hail To The King record is a lazy continuation of Avenge's already turgid reign. As a progressive metal record, AHTK fails. As a retrospective hat-tip to the slim history of late 80s hair metal, Judas Priest, or any Ozzy album featuring Zakk Wylde, the album serves as a catchy karaoke track of drunk sung nostalgias. I can't shake the notion that this record would have killed in the early 90s. But this ain't the early 90s. Avenged Sevenfold hallows-out a fine tribute to their predecessors and influences, but, like so much of their cultural fodder, I predict they'll shrink in the wash and fatten moths.