Dick Tony's Albums of 2015, pt. 1

This blog is part one of a three part series regarding my favorite records of 2015, along with an accompanying Spotify playlist. 

Alex G

Beach Music (Domino)

Every review or article I've read about Alex G since the release of last year's excellent DSU features the same smattering of vague descriptors one might decipher as praise; prodigy, bedroom, Philly, Elliott Smith, eclectic, etc. Sure, these terms all apply to varying degrees, but they do little to describe the sonic pallet the 22 year old Havertown native utilizes on his Domino debut. Beach Music is, quite simply, its own animal. I could grab my copy of David Byrne's How Music Works and write a dissertation on this record, but it still wouldn't adequately depict anything. This is why we have ears, and this is an album that cannot be summed up by Pitchfork.

Highlights: Kicker, Mud, Brite Boy

Cloakroom

Further Out (Run For Cover)

Cloakroom's follow-up to their excellent debut Infinity is an absolutely mammoth mothefucker. This midwest trio borrows more from 90's era "slowcore" (think Bedhead or Codeine) than the now beaten-to-death shoegaze misnomer they've been tagged with. The bass tone on this record is absolutely flawless and, coupled with a percussionist dead set on putting his entire fist through his snare drum, drives Further Out's 10 tracks while Grown Up's alum Doyle Martin croons tales of witchcraft, the moon, and the power of the leaf in a tone that would likely have David Bazan confused and looking in the mirror to make sure it wasn't coming from his own mouth.

Highlights: Outta Spite, Moon Funeral, Paperweight

Title Fight

Hyperview (Anti-)

Anyone that has followed the trajectory of this Kingston quartet shouldn't be surprised by the so-called "drastic" sonic shift Title Fight displays on their third LP. This album is going to inspire a legion of bands to trade their flannel t-shirts and Dan Yemin records for a chorus pedal and Jesus and Mary Chain LP. Hyperview impresses on multiple fronts; at its best, tracks like Rose of Sharon exemplify the same urgency as any standout from Floral Green or Shed while managing to achieve a new level of audial dynamic and vulnerability. This is hardcore?

Highlights: Rose of Sharon, Chlorine, New Vision

Air Formation

Were We Ever Here (Club AC30)

2014 was the year of the shoegaze revival; Slowdive reunited, Nothing sold more merch than Wawa did hoagies, and I finally convinced my friends to play songs with me through a bunch of DD4 pedals. 2015, in contrast, was mostly a year of inevitable backlash. Whirr pissed off the entire internet (and, according to most, were never even good, bro) and most of the new bands that popped up in the wake of Guilty of Everything (including the band that made it) disowned the title and started writing Smashing Pumpkins b-sides. Lost in the shuffle, unfortunately, was the reformation and new EP from UK legends Air Formation, a group so criminally underrated that I don't believe they've ever even stepped foot on US soil. Were We Ever Here is as beautiful as it is brief and serves as a nice foot note to an excellent discography. Fans of Souvlaki-era Slowdive and Lush should be all over this.

Highlights: I Could Stay, The Wasted Days

Earl Sweatshirt

I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside (Tan Cressida/Columbia)

Simply put, Earl Sweatshirt has come a long way from the cringe-worthy shock rap of his teenage years as a member of the infamous Odd Future collective, while managing to capitalize and improve upon the potential shown within the group's first releases.  I Don't Like Shit is a sparse look into the mind of a 20-something, and it plays as depressing as it does enthralling. This record oozes with equal parts pun and mommy issues, yet the self-depreciation doesn't sound contrived. Earl is an interesting anomaly within the present day rap game; this kid is either going to become the next Nas, or in a worst case scenario, the next Kid Cudi.

Highlights: Faucet, Wool, Grief

Rivers of Nihil-Monarchy (Metal Blade)

Rivers of Nihil's sophomore release for Metal Blade, to put it bluntly, will fucking devastate you. As heavy and musically proficient as any of their peers, the Reading, PA based quintet have managed to up the ante in every conceivable way the second time around, crafting a truly progressive and captivating album in a genre that considers the mere discovery of a clean channel to be innovative. Guitarist Brody Utley isn't afraid to let his various virtuosic influences show here; the record's second half shows strong shades of Steven Wilson and David Gilmour while still remaining cohesive to the whole piece. Jake Dieffenbach's vocals sacrifice no intensity in their annunciation, and Adam Biggs gives credence to the concept of a lead bass guitarist. Monarchy features the heaviest and catchiest material the group has recorded to date.

Highlights: Monarchy, Perpetual Growth Machine, Terrestria II: Thrive

Pears

Letters to Memaw (Fat Wreck Chords)

It only took Pears 4 minutes and 7 inches of wax to outdo every other punk record of 2015.

Action Bronson

Mr. Wonderful (Atlantic)

Action Bronson's persona is, admittedly, perhaps the best explanation for his career's meteoric rise, but that isn't to say his musical output hasn't been commendable. Known for his flat out ridiculous subject matter, Bronson's first proper full length sees the Fuck, That's Delicious star shed his reputation as simply a mixtape rapper. Mr. Wonderful is one of the most cohesive records of the year, in any genre. Tracks like Falconry and Only in America are certified lyrical bangers, but it's the combination of interlude Thug Love Story 2017 and standout City Boy Blues that give the album its identity as the year's best soulful hip hop record. 

(Yes, I heard To Pimp a Butterfly. It's a wonderful album on every album of the year list, and I don't feel the need to write about it.)

Highlights: City Boy Blues, Baby Blue, Easy Rider

Drinking with an Asshole: an Evening with John Lindsay

John Lindsay is not the prototypical published author. By all accounts, he is not quite a prototypical human being.

Lindsay is a 27-year-old homeowner and an admitted (functioning) alcoholic.

His website dontevenreply.com, a crass collection of email threads in which he “fucks with gullible assholes for profit”, netted him a book deal with Sterling Publishing, a contract with an entertainment agency and meetings with the likes of Viacom to pitch a pilot produced by Joel McHale, all before his 26^th birthday.

The key to his success?

“Not giving a fuck, I guess. Or just being an unrepentant asshole.”

I am acquainted with Lindsay through a collection of mutual friends, but tracking him down for an interview has been daunting. Over the last few months, he has been in and out of the United States performing his “adult” job as a solutions consultant for a small collection of undisclosed insurance companies. Writing has always been a hobby of Lindsay’s, but only a series of fortuitous circumstances lead to it supplementing his income. Talking about his writing, subsequently, came across as the last thing he felt like doing.

After a few weeks of text messages back and forth, I finally track him down on a Friday night after agreeing to meet at the Sprout Music Collective in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I walk in to find Lindsay sitting at the bar sipping a double Jameson neat. “I just got back from Puerto Rico last night on a redeye,” he tells me, his voice sounding worn.

“I’m leaving for Ireland in two days. Don’t make this feel like work.”

I casually try and jump into conversation by asking him how he likes Puerto Rico. He tells me that he enjoys the weather, but he is in and out of taxis and meetings too frequently to enjoy the local culture.

“The beer is shitty, anyway,” he warns. “Seriously, it will make you shit your pants.”

“I work with computers,” he tells me when I ask about his day-to-day work. “I let rich people who run insurance companies look at their iPads to figure out they can jack up insurance costs on women who drive SUVs. “

John Lindsay’s sense of humor is rooted in vulgarity and shock tactics. He tells the type of jokes that don’t need punchlines, and he sells them with a stonewalled poker face that makes you wonder if he’s actually kidding or if he’s really that fucked in the head. Any semblance of political correctness is foreign to him.

There’s a funk band, complete with a horn section, half-assing their way through a Black Sabbath medley.

“This band is fucking AIDS,” he deadpans.

His expression reminds me of the last time we were in a room together. We played Texas Hold Em’, and the man took everything but my underwear.

I ask him if he’s played any cards lately.

“Yeah, I flew out to Vegas for a weekend a month ago. I got comped rooms and the flights were cheap enough. I lost 500 bucks, but fuck it. The booze was free, too.”

Lindsay tells me he is a “spontaneous kind of cat” when I press him on the spur of the moment vacation. This type of spontaneity is what sparked his entire writing “career”.

The entire thing was an accident.

“I didn’t have a car. I was on craigslist trying to find a cheap vehicle and every time I thought I found a deal, I kept getting dicked around by people. I was getting pissed off and then I saw this stupid bitch’s ad. It was just…it was just so entitled.”

“It read something like ‘I need a brand new Ford Explorer for me and my 3 beautiful children and it’s gotta be this and that and ‘blah blah blah’ and it’s gotta be 1500 bucks. I was like “fuck this”, and I just started messing with her. I tried selling her O.J’s Bronco, all torn to shit, stuff like that, and she got so upset that I just kept doing it because it was so funny. I got her 4 or 5 times and then I decided, “eh, that was pretty fun.”

“So I started trying to bait other people into shit like that, and it just became it’s own thing.”

That thing quickly morphed into an internet phenomenon. dontevenreply.com, equipped with Google’s advertising services, started generating John upwards of a  few hundred dollars a month. Reddit and similar website sharing communities ate it up, and soon enough copycat pages were attempting to recreate and, in some cases, flat out plagiarize his work.

Through it all, Lindsay kept pumping out new material.

He tried to convince a woman looking to find after-school transportation for her daughter that she needed an armed motorcade and military convoy, complete with a Deer Hunter-style testimonial from a colleague.

He tried to sell a fully automate Glock 18c handgun “disguised” by a plastic Solo cup to a man looking for stealthy weaponry. When the man declined, he offered a case of Sprite containing a “badass M16” as an alternative.

He offered an 18-year old college kid looking for summer employment a job cutting up dead horses with a chainsaw and disposing of them in his neighbor’s lake.

He even tried to barter his “whore of a wife” for a 1994 Jeep Wrangler.

“All I needed was an idea, and with the amount of dumb shit you see on craigslist on any given day, it wasn’t hard. Once I had someone on the hook, I just wanted to take it as far as I could. I was weaving it into my day to day. I could do it from work, or at home, or even at the bar.”

Entertainment agents flooded his inbox, and talks of a book deal materialized. Lindsay started to realize the potential for monetization was high.

“Maybe after a year, some guy emailed me and was like ‘you know your ads are the wrong size?” So I changed them and, then…holy shit, pretty much.”

Lindsay signed with an agent and started taking meetings. He eventually signed a deal with Sterling Publishing, a New York based company not exactly known for their work in the comedic non-fiction world.

“When I went in there, it was all young kids, and one of them came up to me and said ‘dude, thanks for writing this book, because we do mostly self-help shit and it’s boring as hell, and this is the first exciting thing we’ve ever had.”

His towering epic, Emails from an Asshole, was released on April 1^st, 2010 to moderate critical acclaim and, according to his agent, impressive sales. It contained 70% new material and a “greatest hits” collection from the website.

“It’s like Sasha Baron Cohen on the internet,” proclaimed Jane Wells of CNBC.

Show runners at MTV and Comedy Central starting calling, intrigued by the back-and-forth interactions within the book. They envisioned a Crank Yankers style show based around his ideas, with live actors reenacting the dialogue.

Meanwhile, Lindsay continued updating dontevenreply.com and started considering ideas for a follow up.

“We were supposed to have a second book, and in the final stages they made me an offer for more money than the first one. Then they pulled out.”

“We found out the president of Sterling was super fuckin’ offended by the first book and wanted nothing to do with me going forward.”

What started as a few running gags on a crudely designed website was making actual waves in the publishing world.

“They pretty much burnt their bridge with ICM (the entertainment agency representing Lindsay) with that one.  I don’t know what happened after, but from what I’ve heard, that really fucked up their relationship with (Sterling).”

He went on to take a few meetings in Los Angeles with a group of television executives, but after talks of a possible holding deal, nothing ever materialized.

“They said they were trying to get away from the whole ‘reality’ thing, which is weird because that shit is bigger now than it’s ever been.”

Although his experience working within the entertainment field may have ended abruptly, Lindsay is still receiving royalties from sales of the book (“apparently it’s selling well in France, which is fucking bizarre,” he quips) and advertising revenue from dontevenreply.

He seems content with how his foray into the publishing and entertainment industries played out. He owns a house in West Goshen, a suburban neighborhood 35 minutes southwest of Philadelphia (“a fucking tree fell through my roof last summer,” he casually mentions) and clocks 40+ hour weeks at his consulting job.

As Lindsay orders another double Jameson, I ask him if his experiences with the industry left any lingering bad taste in his mouth.

He looks as if he is in deep thought and inhales deeply as the tone-deaf funk band continues hammering away in the background.

Then he snickers and calls me a pussy for ordering a beer instead of whiskey and gives me the kind of candid answer you might expect from a guy who’s only published works label him an asshole.

“There’s a ton of those blog-to-book things now, and it’s their desperate attempt to cling onto the way times are now with the internet. They have to deal with Amazon and Kindles, e-readers, all that shit. They’re, I don’t know…trying to capture youth again?”

“Fuck ‘em.”