Sugarbomb's "Bully:" Pick On Someone Else

Review and discussion of Sugarbomb’s 2001 release Bully

This was a 2003 top ten album (in retrospect)

Keep an eye out for a review of Bully’s "sister" album Tsar.

Who is the More Foolish? Glass Hammer's "Chronometree"

There was not a lot of music that made it through the divorce. Most of what I was into at the time was rendered unlistenable for quite awhile. The good news was, however, that I could listen to whatever I wanted to without fear of judgment or complaint. When I started brushing the dust off my shoulders and standing on my own again, I was relatively free to delve into whatever progressive rock nuttiness I pleased. For several years already, I had been listening to several variations on the “neo-progressive” style. Spock’s Beard, Porcupine Tree, and The Flower Kings had already proven to be bands with distinctive sounds worth a devoted following, but, predictably, I was convinced that there was more out there.

Although my horizons were widening in the progressive rock scene, there was a lot out there I could not get behind. The founders of the progressive style made music that I identified with, but I was mindfully critical of “clone” projects. Every argument could be made that Glass Hammer falls into this category. Especially in their more recent iterations, they wear their influences on their sleeve. Back in 2000, however, when Chronometree was released, it seemed that they might have the potential to take a different direction than they have.  Certainly, they still toggled between Emerson- and Wakeman-isms with fluid ease. However, aside from these stylistic keyboard affectations, I thought that Chronometree was relatively distinctive, and I really came to enjoy it in the wake of my newfound bachelorhood.

The primary way in which Chronometree stood on its own was due to the contributions of vocalist Brad Marler. In some circles, Marler had received some criticism on this release, but I always thought that his unique style stood in opposition to Jon Anderson, Greg Lake, and other classic singers in the style. Most importantly, Marler was impassioned without coming off as overly melodramatic, which is the downfall of many progressive rock singers.



Like many classic progressive rock albums, Chronometree is a concept album, and in this regard it really shone above its contemporaries. The protagonist in its narrative is a pot-smoking prog-rock junkie that starts to think that aliens are trying to contact him through lyrics. In the end, he drags his friends out to a field where he waits, “Great Pumpkin”-style, for four-dimensional alien enlightenment. In other words, it’s a rock opera/concept album about a guy who listens to too many rock operas/concept albums.

Obi-Wan Kenobi once posed the question, "Who is the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?" Chronometree makes the hard-core progressive fanboy its fool. At its core, it is a self-referential satire, gently poking fun at the listener for looking too closely at its meaning. It’s more musically derivative moments reinforce this point while paying respectful tribute to the pioneers of the style.



I hoped that Chronometree would be the baseline for further work, so I followed Glass Hammer. None of the albums that followed, however, really stuck with me. While the level of playing and composition on Lex Rex and Shadowlands are respectably high, they seemed a little sterile in execution. There were also constant lineup changes that prohibited a clear chemistry from arising between anyone but primary writers Babb and Schendel.

The consistent participation of Jon Davison in recent years has seemed to lessen this issue, but has also strengthened their status as a Yes clone project in my mind. His rise to prominence as Glass Hammer’s ad hoc lead singer occurred after I stopped following the band, though, so this opinion is based on an outsider’s impression. Glass Hammer has gained some visibility recently, however, due to the installation of Davison as the lead singer of Yes. His participation in Glass Hammer seemed to help the group gel in more recent years, and it is my hope that his presence will do the same for Yes in the band's twilight years.

Dawes' "Stories Don't End:" Yesteryear's Rainy Afternoon

It rained for two days after she left. I spent most of my time on a well-worn yellow naugahyde couch staring out the window trying to figure out how what had happened and what I was going to do next. On the third day, it finally stopped raining and, in attempt to find some closure, I wrote a short, desperately worded letter to her. I rolled it up and corked it into one of those small jars she used to inexplicably keep around and went out for a walk in the cool, wet afternoon.

There was a creek that ran through the neighborhood, and it was bloated from the rain. It was my intent to throw my message in a bottle into the current and watch it float downstream. When I found an appropriate bend in the creek, I tossed in the jar, but, rather than bobbing in the waves as I bid it a tearful farewell, it simply disappeared into the stream with an unceremonious "plop.” I never saw it again. No poetry or romance - it was merely swallowed up into the muddy water.

Dawes wasn't around in 2002 back when I struggled to come to grips with my marriage ending, the reality of what had happened, and my delusion surrounding the whole thing. Stories Don’t End\ ended up in rotation earlier this year, however, and its brilliant lyrics reminded me of the way the world seemed when I was emotionally numb and fragile. I don't mean to say that the narratives found on  Stories Don’t End directly map to my experiences. On the whole, it’s not all about dealing with life in the wake of finding yourself suddenly alone (although that situation does come up).



What Dawes does so well, though, is speak profoundly about the paradox that arises as we look for something meaningful and poetic in the world and are instead presented with something we perceive to be mundane. From a different perspective, the profundity often arises when we notice poetry and beauty that is inherently embedded in the mundane.



When that jar slipped beneath the surface on that rainy afternoon, it seemed like a slap in the face, but it soon came to have meaning. I made a few vain attempts at kickstarting a songwriting hobby by mining the experience for lyrical ideas, but I was not, nor have I even been, the type of musician that could adequately capture this kind of humorous realism in words. 

Stories Don't End, however, ruminates on the dissonance that seems to exist between how things are and how they are subjectively seen. Due to my walk that day and the path I took in its aftermath, both positive and negative, I genuinely admire Dawes’ capacity to consistently capture these esoteric feelings in lyrics.