A Collective Feeling 2: Hugo Reyes
Music for travel, by foot or by train
This week’s playlist is from Hugo Reyes, who writes the zine Violent Treatment and also hosts the Violent Treatment podcast with Eli Enis where they chat about punk, hardcore, subculture, and things of that nature. Without any further ado, here’s Hugo’s playlist along with some words about the playlist:
Bandcamp playlist via BuyMusicClub
I honestly had trouble coming up with a theme at first. Music is just a constant presence in my life, the soundtrack to whatever I am doing. Most of my listening is oriented around some kind of movement. If anything is described as chill or relaxing, get it away from me. That kind of music is what plays in the background at a friend’s house party that I forget about within minutes of leaving. Part of that opinion is informed by living in Chicago my entire life. The faster the tempo, the more it lines up with my walking pace. I spend most of my life walking in 30-minute increments. “Oh, there’s a show at some motorcycle shop, and it’s only a 30-minute walk.” The way the walk becomes bearable is with whatever sounds good in my ears. Sometimes, that means listening to one EP on repeat or even a song (in one case Straight Ahead by Straight Ahead 15 times in a row). So my playlist is an assemblage of what I could be listening to any train ride or walk while traversing Chicago as a 31-year-old who has never once had a car in their life.
Society’s Waste-B Town Ex
I love a lot of what is coming out of Bloomington’s hardcore scene. It is an actual youth scene and has very little of the annoying shit that hardcore attracts. What I love about this song and demo is just how unpolished and raw it is. I can still feel the humans that made it; not every decision made is the correct one, which makes it awesome. It actually channels 80s Boston hardcore, which so many spend their entire lives chasing without feeling like a copy.
Neurosis-Obsequious Obsolesence
I never really dug into early Neurosis until recently. A friend’s new band is heavily pulling from it, so I thought I’d listen to it. I was really blown away. I think sometimes the definition of hardcore, when talked about on the internet, is super, super narrow, with too much of a focus on style. When I listen to this Neurosis song, I find it to be as hardcore as Cro-Mags. There are so many different ideas, and they are all exciting to me. It sounds like an extension of what Black Flag would try to do on later material but with some better execution. The bass is as much the lead instrument as the guitar, and it holds my attention for five minutes. I would love to have seen a version of Neurosis that made at least another album like this.
Feverchild-See Through Wedding Gown
I shouldn’t turn a song entry into some diatribe or state of the union about emo writ-large. A recent episode of Endless Scroll about Origami Angel summed it up pretty well. It would be worrisome if I were still identifying with the lyrics of teenagers. Feverchild hits a certain sweet spot that is familiar. I look at the album art and know what they are going for. Initial Records, Christie Front Drive/Boys Life Split. Revelation Records when they went emo. It does not feel exactly like a Xerox of a thing I like. It can be really easy to give the comment, “Oh, it’s good, but it isn’t reinventing the wheel,” like the most annoying MRR reviewer ever to exist. The song just scans as someone who knows their references without doing some of the obvious cheat notes, like what I like to call the “Texas Is The Reason chord.”
CSTVT-Stranger, You Know
If you asked me on the right day CSTVT is one of my favorite bands ever. I never got to see them, and I still wish I could have been a cool enough high-schooler to see the era of Chicago emo they existed in. Listening to them conjures such a specific feeling of transit to me: that feeling of walking down a side street at midnight that is a little too quiet, and the only means of comfort is the bright streetlights that envelop each block of Chicago. It makes me think of Chicago winter; contemplative but still with plenty of movement and parts to keep me engaged.
Defiance, Ohio-Chad’s Favorite Song
I had some bigger ideas germinating for a blog last year on Defiance Ohio and folk punk as a way to talk about punk during the George Bush presidency. As easy as it is to make fun of folk punk as a phenomenon, the feelings in the songs still resonate. On the best of it, you are hearing young people creating their politics and ideologies in an unvarnished way. I do not feel as if I am being sold a product. Sometimes, the ideals sung about are imperfect or seem hamfisted (looking at you “New World Order). I remember being 18 and being that annoying guy in class who just read Howard Zinn and felt like everything I had to say was so important. That genre of person will always exist. I saw a version of it at an Anarcho spot when I went to a hardcore show recently. “Chad’s Favorite Song” doesn’t totally encompass all of the ideals of leftism in the early 2000s. It is mostly about being worn down by capitalism and a job. I mean, who hasn’t had a job that made them contemplate suicide and found some solace in the opening line, “do you remember passion/it’s buried beneath a concrete world.”
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Take care, see you next week