HYLI Vol. XCIII - Sabella and Wild Pink

Andy sends Patrick some beatdown from New York and Patrick sends Andy some not-beatdown also from New York

Sup. Everyone doing good? I’m (Andy) am good. I flew to Austin, TX to watch my shitty football team get absolutely obliterated, all while my sack-of-shit athletic director is too much of a chicken shit to do anything about it. Who cares. I ate some sick food and spent time with my friends and had a great time (Patrick: sounds lovely, what is spending time with friends like?).

Sabella - Easy

Andy: So I really like this band called Sabella. They dropped a few EPs and a short full-length album in 2017 called Dog Daze (an incredible album—13 songs, 27 minutes, an absolute heater) and then fucked right off. Disappeared off the map. No tours, no posts, no music … total radio silence. For nearly seven years. Then—surprise!—an 18-track, 51-minute album randomly dropped. Out of literally nowhere. Blessed be the gods!

My good friends, I love Sabella. I love 'Alternative beatdown/down-tempo hardcore,' or whatever bullshit you want to call them. This music is absolutely my brand. I can say, with confidence, we do not need this album to be 51 minutes long (Patrick: you don’t say). Cut half these songs and release another album next year. These songs would do better in a shorter set. With that said … they are so back? Why did they even leave? I need answers here someone help me out. Easy is simply fantastic if this genre does anything for you at all (I know those of you may be few and far between but you know who you are).

Sabella continues to walk that hallowed ground between pissed-off and beautiful. It strikes a perfect balance between crushing heaviness and beautifully crafted melodic sections. This contrast makes the music so dynamic and emotional to me. Easy takes the next step building on their indie rock melodies and heavier soundscapes. It is stripped-down, more simplified version of an already simplified style. This is not Dog Daze II by any means. Yet still, for me, it works extremely well. It feels more intentional, less chaotic, but somehow angrier. Big, fat, juicy chugs with harsh wails, punchy drums and the occasional dreamy guitar line. Brother, I just love when they chug.

“five” is a classic Sabella track. “seven” is that “Apriled” or “Whisper” vibe from Dog Daze. “eight” has an absolutely disgusting feature from … someone? Not sure because there is no real information on this goddamn album out there. I think “nine” and “fourteen” are my favorite. Fuck song names am I right!

It took me a while to figure out Easy, but I cannot deny the album. Like I said, it is very Andy-coded. I loved this and expect it to be pretty high up on my EOTY list. I’m guessing, with some confidence, that it won’t make Patrick’s list despite how much he has grown as a metalhead over the last few years (Patrick: thanks for that). Hope I’m Wrong And You Like It!

Patrick: So, like, I certainly did not hate this. I’d say I generally was mostly Fine to Positive on almost everything here. However, there’s a chunk of like four or five songs here that do absolutely nothing for me. Moreover, by the end of the record, I felt like I had just gone through a leg day at the gym and needed to lie down. 51 minutes! What the fuck!! If you cut out that chunk of songs, this is probably a much more palatable album for me and something I’d probably return to occasionally (Andy: Give us a nine-song album now and use the other nine as an album next year, especially since it splits itself pretty seamlessly). As it stands, I’m glad I checked this out, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be running this one back.

To start with the positives since I’m a nice friend, there are moments where I really like what is going on instrumentally here. “two” almost reminds me of Thrice at times, with the movement of the guitar part and the lower tuning kind of recalling some of the stuff off Major/Minor but heavier. “three” and “four” also have some great guitar and drum passages and “seven” is my favorite on the record, definitely nailing that AbsolutePunk.net post-hardcore kind of sound while being heavier than anything the babies that posted there (read: me) listen to. “five” is one that doesn’t fully work for me, but with how it almost sounds like a protein smoothie mixing Underoath, The Chariot and Knocked Loose together, I totally get why Andy likes it.

Outside of the length, which I do really want to hammer home how fucking long this thing feels, I did have a few issues with this though. The vocals aren’t my favorite but probably not for the reason Andy might assume. It’s just a little one-note and samey to me. You either have the dude doing his clean singing thing which is way too polished and mid-00s MySpace to me or you have him screaming. I’m actually tempted to say I like his screaming voice more than his singing one but he screams in the same register the whole album. Shake it up a little bit! Go lower on occasion, man. Again, not really bad but hitting the same note repeatedly for 51 minutes really wears on you. Also, while I generally like the guitar tone on this record, they do the occasional super downturned br00tal chugging thing and it sounds like the fakest guitars imaginable (Andy: grow UP man). Not my thing, never has been. Overall, though, I get what the band was going for on Easy and, with some editing, I think I would have enjoyed this a lot. As it stands, it is simply Fine to me and something that makes me feel like I need a nap after listening to the whole thing.

Wild Pink - Dulling the Horns

Patrick: Wild Pink is a favorite of mine and their new one, Dulling the Horns, is probably my favorite of theirs since Yolk in the Fur, which if I recall correctly, Andy was a giant baby about when I made him listen to it a few years ago for the newsletter (Andy: I was). He complained that the guitars sounded too pristine. My brother, the guitars on Dulling the Horns dirtied it up for you and then some (Andy: and it is so much better for it).

I don’t really agree with Andy’s criticisms of that record since it’s one of my favorites of the last however many years but the added distortion that is on most of the songs on Dulling the Horns is a welcomed addition (Andy: extremely). In general, there’s just more of a propulsive energy to these songs than most other Wild Pink records. Don’t get me wrong, again, I love those records and the pristine nature of the production on them sounds like a million bucks. But give me some guitars sounding like they’re blowing into the red on the interface they’re plugged into and I’m fully sold.

There’s a running joke on this newsletter that Andy likes to run with that lyrics don’t matter (Andy: it isn’t a joke? They don’t matter…) (Patrick: they only don’t matter when you listen to bands who don’t have anything to say) but John Ross is one of my favorite lyricists going right now. I’m not going to just sit here and copy/paste passages from Genius Dot Com at you but the emotion conveyed from the lyrics just connects with me every time and there’s just enough humor and sports references mixed in to make it a home run for me. A song like “Catholic Dracula” - one of the more adventurous songs the band has done - really melds all of the elements of Wild Pink that I love together. In one song, you get the modal tunings of the guitars, the great lyrics, the vocals sitting just perfectly in the mix and then you throw in the new elements to their sound from this album like the distorted guitars and the horns. I’m verging on doing a Music Review at this point instead of Just Blogging so I’m going to wrap it up but I really love this record. It is so cool when one of your favorite bands just continues to evolve. I hope Andy likes this one and doesn’t cry like a little baby about it again.

Andy: Hi, its me, the guy who was a big giant sniffling baby the last time that Patrick gave me a Wild Pink album for the newsletter. Guess what. This one was fun! It didn’t sound like it came directly from the “perfect sounding music” factory. The fuzzy guitar tones here are fun as heck, man. It is incredible what a good dose of fuzz can do for a band! I didn’t even realize this was the same band until Patrick rightfully shamed me!

There is an interesting, unintended coalescence of the two albums picked this week. Yes, I said what I said. You might have to squint hard to see it, but it is there. Both lyricists use a poetic, introspective style, filled with questions, blending a sense of sadness with dark humor in a stream-of-consciousness delivery (Patrick: hmm sounds like you’re saying lyrics matter). Both bands' writing styles combine intense, heavy sounds (literally or figuratively) with melodic, beautiful moments — capturing both aggression and tenderness. See! Joint tour when?!

There are so many fun moments on this album! We got a saxophone on “Disintegrate,” which, as a blossoming ‘Jazz Guy’ I loved. There is a steel guitar at the end of “Cloud or Mountain” and a fun Celtic bop at the end of “Bonnie One” - good shit. I love when they just don’t give a shit and shove “the Montrеal expos went to DC and Baltimore fans never really got on board” in as one line.

I really enjoyed this one. I felt it worked great in tandem with Sabella this week. I Liked It and sorry I was a baby last time (Patrick: growth!).