Record Revue: Tami Neilson, Dead Method, Deathcruiser & Haywood
Welcome to Record Revue, an EP and album review series
2022 has been another absolute dumpster fire. It seems fear is the agenda of the time. But thank god music has continued to heal and comfort and prove an ample escape. In today’s long-overdue Record Revue return, we peer into a smorgasbord of talent to uncover personal and universal truths, the kind that shake your soul and leave your breathless. Whether it’s Dead Method’s brightly-hued catacomb or Tami Neilson’s blustering firestarter, there is something to extinguish and cleanse your being. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Dead Method, Future Femme
“I’ve murdered myself a thousand times / Death by the violence of my mind,” Dead Method scrawls in symbolic blood. In “Cosmic Saviour,” a spooky organ swirls and dips between cobwebbed synths and crackling vocal distortion. His inevitable undoing pumps through musical veins, eliciting a throbbing effect that’s hypnotic and wonderfully provocative. Future Femme manifests human connection as a salve for depression (“Community), answers to the desperate search for renewal (“I’m trying to feel alive,” he conjures on “No More Heartache”), and combating hatefully-biased barriers in the music industry (“Rat Race”). Dead Method’s latest outing levels up from Queer Genesis, his 2020 studio set, in every conceivable way. Vaulting from the Britney Spears-injected “Sex/Drugs/Violence” to the crystalline confessional “There are Bombs Falling on Eden,” the record is a manifesto of living as a queer person in the world, particularly as it currently stands as a total dumpster fire. At least we have Dead Method to get us through the apocalypse.
Tami Neilson, Kingmaker
The first dusty guitar chords of Kingmaker are haunted, tortured even. Tami Neilson sweeps and spirals down from the air, breaking the clouds and casting her shadow on everything far down below. When it comes to vocal interpreters, there are few as agile and slithering and capable of squeezing the hear dry. It’s tragic how her name is so often left out of the conversation of the all-time greats. But no matter. Her work, as displayed across her latest 10-song set-piece, shoves the competition into the ditch. “Careless Woman” rhythmically charms with its hand-clap parade and Neilson’s serpent tongue, whereas “Baby, You’re a Gun” sublimates Nancy Sinatra into howling conjuring spell, an elegant and painstakingly vocal performance that puts everyone else to shame. “King of Country Music” asserts that it is actually women who are the genre’s irrefutable royalty, lacing in her own rich musical lineage and orbit into the spotlight. “Could the King of country music be the daughter not the son?” she ponders. From the electric shoot-out “Mama’s Talkin'” to grief-riddled “I Can Forget,” Kingmaker leaves you breathless and pleading for more. It’s as timeless as a record as they come.
Haywood, Pressure on My Heart
Pressure on My Heart is a salve. It’s sinewy musical veins throb and pulse. As singer-songwriter Leah Haywood, going by simply Haywood in her work, detangles the highest and lowest points of her life, the listener is provoked to confront their own. “It’s just another day in another damn life,” she exhales. The crunchy thump of percussion splinters her words, excavating the emotional center like a worm chomping through an apple’s core. This lyrical demonstration shines neon reds, blues, and yellows across 10 other songs. “Thinking of God” kneels about the altar of faith, friendship, and personal transformation, exposing those rotted layers we all eventually must repair. “Everyday is slipping through the cracks, and I can’t keep up,” she sings through parted lips. In “New York,” Haywood ritualizes her experiences in the City That Never Sleeps, those tiny sacrifices made on grimy streets and beneath a scorching sun. Perhaps among the year’s best songs, “Human to Fall Apart” powers up connective orbs around pain, sorrow, and suffering as universal structures, electrifying reminders that we need not be so hard on ourselves when life collapses down around us. Haywood has written songs for others for decades, and this is very first time we’re hearing her singular voice in bright, visionary beauty.
Deathcruiser, Self-Titled EP
Adam Roth responds to the cascade of the world burning with Deathcruiser. His brand new EP sinks like a lead balloon into the 2022 marshland with a resigned lip and a pen that carves into the epidermis. “I want to leave this world behind and burn down the castle in my mind,” he signals with brutal honesty on “Under Your Skin.” A theme of cleansing by fire soaks the record. Roth douses standout moments like “Night on Fire” and even the prickly and profound Lydia Luce-featuring opener “Life Number Two” with the sentiment, both explicitly and subtlety. “Don’t give up on yourself,” he encourages with the latter cut. But the heaviness still hangs off his tongue. It’s an acidic droplet waiting to free fall into the air and go “splat!” on the concrete below. Decorated in lacy piano, “Night Machine” is the exhale. It’s the reprieve after a necessary wringing through heartache and sorrow. It’s freeing. The space between Roth’s voice and the star-adorned arrangement rejuvenates down to the membrane. Roth’s first outing as Deathcruiser is as impressive as debuts come, and it’s abundantly clear he’s already mastered a singular songwriting voice of his own. And that’s the most thrilling thing of all.
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