August 24, 2017

The Hope jam here begins with some mediocre, meandering nonsense that is frankly pretty boring. However, as it gets closer to Robots, this gets darker, more ominous, and Magner has some wonderful leads with a really eerie/spooky synth tone. I like this. The jam out of Robots comes from the “Behind them all” segment, and the segue into Strobelights is absolutely flawless. This is so smooth and cool, I almost want to label it a highlight. Strobelights has some potential and some really neat stuff from Magner littered throughout, but ultimately this jam falls flat. The jam out of Gangster is shorter than I’d like, but this is pure Blissco. Wonderful, beautiful stuff! The jam in Spraypaint gets weird. There are a lot of toms in this one, and Barber uses his siren pedal a lot. Magner has a bunch of neat little effects that he plays around with, and Brownstein’s using a distorted bass. This has an almost tribal feel at times, and while I don’t think every part of this is great, it’s unique enough that I think it warrants a second listen.

Story has a pretty typical funk jam, although they eventually get away from the funk and into some more interesting stuff. They speed up to get to Crix, but I don’t think much of this is interesting at all. The jam out of Crickets takes a while to find its footing, and when it does, I’m not sure it’s all that worthwhile. Barber has this sort of ascending-descending riff that he plays around with for a while, and Brownstein seems to decide that sounds like fun, because he jumps on a very similar riff. Nice to hear them communicating so well, but I just couldn’t care less about what they’re communicating about. Champions features Brownstein teasing The Very Funk almost immediately. The jam out of Champions is pretty clearly headed for Story from the get-go, and that sounds exactly how you’d expect. Magellan really only has one jam here, and it’s more of a “festival” Magellan jam, if that makes sense. Not for me.

Highlights: Hope, Gangster**, Spraypaint*