(Australia’s Werewolves are still on track to release 10 albums in 10 years or kill themselves, and our guy DGR continues running right along with them. This time he has managed to write up their newest album (the 7th in the sequence) before its release — which arrives tomorrow via Back on Black.)

Early on within the bounds of the new Werewolves album You’re Weak and You Know You’re Weak, there is a moment in which vocalist Sam Bean declares, “I thought I told you to fuck off on the last album,” and I honestly had to check.

I understand that time gets the best of us all, and truthfully, none of us is getting any younger – though I don’t seem to be speed-running the baldness race at least – but I will admit my memory isn’t what it used to be. The sectors of my brain originally meant for family members’ birthdays that I have since overwritten with things like bands and its constituent members’ side-projects are slowly failing as well, and I know this. So when the philosophical maestros behind Werewolves are asking me if I was in fact told to fuck off somewhere in the liner notes of last year’s album The Ugliest Of All, perhaps they did.

But truthfully, at this point in our tacitly agreed upon “an album every year” suicide pact, perhaps the crew and I are at the “old men at the retirement home yelling at each other across the room” stage of our lives. Am I weak enough to know that I’m weak if I can’t remember that I’m weak in the first place? Continue reading »

(DGR‘s been killing some brain cells with Werewolves again, whose new album is out July 12)

I’ve discussed this before, and our cohort Andy has also brought this up a few times, but the idea of listening to hundreds upon hundreds of albums a year – as if the larger the number the more impressive it is as a metric of how clever and cultured you are – has always bit at my side a little bit.

Of course, it’s worth noting that I am a fool with bad management skills, so it is therefore feasible that you could actually have listened to 3-4 times as many albums as there are days in the year – and in my younger days I too, would’ve bragged the same.

But focussing on the numbers makes things kind of ephemeral and disposable doesn’t it? As if all music were just a fleeting experiences designed only for your immediate satisfaction and nothing else.

Surely, the artist who has strived for months over songs, figuring out transitions, how to layer and arrange things, chased tones for hours, before finally settling on the specific composition being played before you deserves more than to be added as just one more point on an infinitely increasing bar on a graph?

Early in my writing I used to be proud of the fact that I was on time (or early) with many albums. But nowadays that’s less the case, as I like to deep dive into things and absorb the release for everything it has to offer.

I still do land the occasional early or on-time review but much like a baseball player slowly coming off of ‘roids, those stats are cratering and cratering hard. Everything instead finds room when the olde’ brain machine manages to turn enough cogent thought into something to discuss with you, the reader, when it comes to a new album. I care more about the discussion and experience of a release than I do the timeliness of it.

Which brings us to Die For Us… where absolutely none of this bullshit applies.

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