Flush It Friday: Honestly?
For sure.
It’s that time of year in Atlanta when you’re not really ready to turn your heat on, so you fall asleep endlessly comfortable—the most comfortable you’ve been since spring—and wake up to immediately put on a hoodie and joggers before sliding back under the increasing number of blankets on your bed. You might have a flag of a certain house located at 704 W. High St. above that bed. You might be thinking about that house, about what it’s like in Urbana right about now (just a few degrees cooler!), about how if you were waking up near that particular house you might be a student at or work at or just have some sort of relationship to the University of Illinois, about how, if that were true, you might or might not give a shit about 704 W. High St. while you might or might not also give a shit that your Fighting Illini are playing the Wolverines on Saturday at Memorial Stadium while being ranked above that fucking team that would’ve lost last year’s Championship to Georgia if Georgia hadn’t lost to Bama, about how if you cared about both of those things (the house and the football game) that today is a pretty remarkable day.
Today, 25 years and just about one month after its initial release, American Football‘s American Football (now known as LP1) gets the fully authorized tribute treatment, with the band curating a Covers album.
It’s a beautiful arrangement of arrangements, 9 new exposures to the never truly overexposed edifice of that famous house. I’ll spare you the track-by-track review, even though I don’t find those reviews (especially of cover albums) to be that odious, so, suffice to say, that Covers gives you ample opportunity to hear these songs in fresh new ways while proffering space to reflect on all the times you’ve heard them before. As has been said over and over again, it’s not so much a breakup album as it is an album about the breaks that happen in life and the gauzy, filmy temporality you inhabit when you start to see it unfold and then stand on the other side of it. It’s an album that’s much sparser than any of its contemporaries, with fewer lyrics and more instrumentals, a focus on composition that highlighted the band members’ blossoming interest in jazz and classical. Iron & Wine have the unenviable task of taking on “Never Meant” and trying to make us hear that song all over again, but of course Sam Beam succeeds. The same can be said for Novo Amor, Lowswimmer, an immaculately named band I’ve never heard of, and the difficulty of re-rendering “Honestly?” to such great effect. Ethel Cain takes “For Sure,” a 3-minute song with barely 8 lines of crushing lyrics, and reimagines it as a 9-minute sweeping epic that taps into every part of her sound. Girl Ultra offer up a poppier, more fully indie-based version of “But the Regrets are Killing Me,” while Atlantans Manchester Orchestra shorten up “Stay Home” by a couple minutes, reminding us, as if we needed it, that “life… it’s so social.”
College towns, midwest emo, football, fall mornings, the surreality of life’s varying ruptures. There’s so much to love in it all.
And even if it’s all too see-through to be true, that doesn’t mean we can’t Flush!
The Monday Press (On a Tuesday) and This Toilet Tuesday (On a Wednesday). As always, much thanks to Stick and Roldy for all the work those posts take every week!
Sean Ghoulson slapped that sexy 5/5 on the new Oranssi Pazuzu. And who’s to argue?
Toilet Radio 522 finds Joe n Jordan watching The Guest with returning guest Maggie Serota!
Rolderathis gave us an exclusive look at the dirty, dirty, dirty new track from Necroferum.
Exclusive Track Premiere: Necroferum‘s “Profound Illusions of a Pathological Subconscious”
365 became One With the Riverbed through this exclusive premiere:
A holiday-shortened week had us all a bit condensed, but there’s still ample material for you greedy little oinkers. I hope you don’t have anything to do this weekend but to spend it exactly how you want to, whether that’s staying home or not. Drop your GBUs in the comments. All my love and adoration and kisses and hugs.
