Review

Ethan Swan, over at Jabs Records, and who wrote the one-sheet for The Sun Is Not True, write a great, heartfelt, and sometime biting post to Instagram, in reference to the state of music these days, and how it related to the compilation LP. I wanted to share it here, in case those on this list don't follow he or I on instagram, or you know, aren't even on one of the death spiral algorithmic platforms.... :) Enjoy! And yes, the LP is still definitely available, if you haven't grabbed it yet!

"John Schoen described this record as “A sonic bulwark against the weaponized death algorithm” which is a very good sentence but I only just started to think about what that means. I feel so permanently magnetized by the US VS. THEM aspect of punk and of course the “death algorithm” means “them” but I don’t always resist. And it is against us! I cannot tell you how often instagram suggests I check out Brand New or the Refused. Over my dead body! They have defanged everything for so long, every line in Blood Sausage’s “Fuck You and Your Underground” still distressingly relevant. There’s a common type of band right now, a band that sounds like a deeply beloved band—Life Without Buildings or Détente or Grouper—but where those bands made tough decisions, laid surprises, took the song down the hardest path, these new bands make the easy choice every time. The return to chorus, the major chord, the flaccid politics. A defanging. I hate it! Or I think about an up and coming band on Matador, these handsome white kids who stole a record design from a JABS artist. And I feel despair, I feel fragile. In need of a bulwark. An armoring. The artists on THE SUN IS NOT TRUE are truly that armor. There isn’t a sonic thread or a structural similarity binding all these songs together, there is instead that dedication to the tough choice, the frontier, the swimming so deep you might not resurface. I listen to the David Nance song on here and realize that a whole world of Mumfords and Obersts and Kahans cannot undermine the impact of a guy with a guitar and a sharp feeling. I listen to the Spatulas song and understand that half the songs I’ve heard in my life have way too many instruments. I listen to the Graymouth songs on here and my brain is scrubbed of microplastics, replaced by some pre-language wonder and fear. Every song here is a revelation, a case made for the various undergrounds that we (I) cannot live without. It is something to revel in."