{"id":818,"date":"2016-08-26T05:35:26","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T09:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=818"},"modified":"2016-11-09T00:01:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T05:01:15","slug":"new-release-roundup-quin-galavis-katy-goodman-greta-morgan-cass-mccombs-l-a-salami-and-dietrich-strause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2016\/08\/26\/new-release-roundup-quin-galavis-katy-goodman-greta-morgan-cass-mccombs-l-a-salami-and-dietrich-strause\/","title":{"rendered":"New Release Roundup – Quin Galavis, Katy Goodman + Greta Morgan, Cass McCombs, L.A. Salami, and Dietrich Strause"},"content":{"rendered":"

MUSIC<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

1. Quin Galavis<\/a> \u2013 My Life In Steel and Concrete<\/em>
\nLet\u2019s say you woke up this morning and said, \u201cToday\u2019s the day. Today\u2019s the day I don the black robe and hood I\u2019ve been keeping in the closet for the past several years and show the world that this body is merely a shell that protects them from the purging hellfire within, which I will finally unleash and burn the evil and the mundane until I have cleansed the world and every living thing from now on shall enjoy peace and beauty I hath wrought through my sacrifice to bring forth eternal Eden.\u201d You\u2019re in a mood, say. But before you do all that, pick up a copy of this album. It is the perfect mood music for your quest. That is the length to which I have to go to communicate the amount of dark drama on Quin Galavis\u2019s new double album, My Life In Steel and Concrete<\/em>. He plunges straight into the black from the first droning, distorted guitar and strains of moaning cello on the opening track, \u201cHand of Light,\u201d a primal scream against confusion and despair. The obvious comparison, both in sound and approach to story, is Nick Cave, who, I think it\u2019s fair to mention, is namechecked in the press materials. Admittedly lazy of me, but no less apt. They are both storytellers who understand how to channel menace and melancholy into something angular and captivating. The music for \u201cPowell\u2019s Rose Garden\u201d is all sawing cellos and ringing, distorted guitars, with several voices competing for space in a spoken word piece that sounds like a walk through a nightmare of a neighborhood. \u201cI knew this block was diseased the moment I set foot on it,\u201d Galavis laments. What Galavis knows that some others that attempt to go this dark forget is the resistance. Someone just screaming is far less compelling than someone doing it and thinking they might actually get some relief out of it. After the bleakness of much of the early material, he ends up somewhere very different on the final two songs. With its strummy acoustic guitar and plunking banjo, \u201cThose Little Dreams\u201d sounds like Harvest-era Neil Young, and Galavis sings, \u201cIt\u2019s on you grow on this spinning rock\/I hope you know the power you got.\u201d On \u201cWake Up,\u201d the final track, the narrator goes from bargaining to acceptance, begging his lover to wake and then begging her not to, singing, \u201cAll life is just a scam\/Please lord keep her in your hands.\u201d That last movement makes all the difference.
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