welcome home everynyan!!!!!!! i'm so excited to be back today in particular because it is my BIRTHDAY!!! so to celebrate i wanted to talk about my favorite album ever made, which just so happens to be spirit phone by lemon demon :3

here's another HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT for you, this review marks the start of summerpiledriver, which means there will be one BRAND NEW music review EVERY SINGLE DAY from today until the end of June!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YYYYAYYYYYYY REJOICE, my little pile drivers !!!!!

this album is very special to me, for about the last 6 years every single song on this album has been on my mind almost all the time. his last few albums were more about making silly goofy music, while i'd say that this one does good in choosing an occult theme to follow throughout. SPOOOKYYYYY!! talking to GHOSTS n shit!!! the whole concept of the album is like calling all sortsa ghosts on your cool Spirit Phone and hearing their stories n whatnot, which is just so much fun.

i love neil cicierega a whole lot man, he's such a freaking nerdy dude. the other day i was listening to the spirit phone commentary track with my brother and the very first thing he says not even 10 seconds into the recording is "HEY BUDDIES!!" which i find hilarious every time. u can really hear how much of an absolute geek he is in every second of the music on this 1 which just adds such a layer of charm that i haven't been able to find anywhere else.

can i just say how much of an ABSOLUTE BLAST it is to hear this one front to back? every track flows into the next and it's textured so well all throughout. not just that but every single hook written on this record is incredibly well produced, like there's not a single bad one.

by the way, the funniest part from the commentary track is when he's talking about cabinet man and he says something like 'yeah idk where i came up with the idea of a guy shoving all his organs into an arcade cabinet.... that was kinda crazy like seriously i have no clue what i was doing when i made that' dude it kills me every time.

it's important for me to say that Soft Fuzzy Man is not just my favorite song ever but it's also the best two minutes and fifty-five seconds of music to ever be recorded in the history of the world. i don't really know why i love it so much i just think the end bit where he makes you see spots and floats through the air while every instrument on the planet harmonizes will forever be the greatest sound to me.

soft fuzzy man is a high point for a lot of people but even the lower points are some of my favorite songs ever. like man made object. i hjave a visionnnn of a man made object!!!!! i have the money!! i have the means!! i HAVE THEE STRANGEST DREAMS!!! also just wanted to say that you're at the party could have been on the record i think it sounds done. also redesign your logo.

spiral of ants is one of the best ending tracks of all time. that song is incredibly peak man. for a while, and this may in part be due to the enigmatic lyrics, but i thought there was some sort of strange meaning in the song that eluded me. that was until i heard the commentary track where he specifies that one has absolutely no meaning whatsoever and he just wanted to sing about bugs.

in conclusion i love music. thank you neil cicierega and happy birthday to ME!! absolute cinema

FAVORITE TRACKS: Lifetime Achievement Award, Touch-Tone Telephone, Cabinet Man, No Eyed Girl, When He Died, Sweet Bot, Eighth Wonder, Ancient Aliens, Soft Fuzzy Man, As Your Father I Expressly Forbid It, I Earn My Life, Reaganomics, Man-Made Object, Spiral of Ants

LEAST FAV TRACKS: *gulp

greetings, everynyan!!!

welcome to the third official galacticpiledriver review

today we will be discussing Clancy, the 2024 album from twenty one pilots

this 1 goes out to scarlett snyder who is one of the only people i know that shares with me a deep love for twenty one pilots

this review comes to you from an absolute clikkie (first time using that word in at least like 6 years). ever since i heard Stressed Out (which i think is not that great of a song by the way) i completely fell in love with twenty one pilots. Blurryface was probably the first album i listened to from beginning to end when i was like 10 and is still one of my favorites to this day. all that isn't even mentioning Vessel which is one of the greatest musical projects ever to be worked on by human hands, minimal glaze by the way. i also have a very very deep love for Trench, which i think is also a legendary record. that said, i only ever heard the singles for this record when it came out and haven't listened to it yet, so i'm glad i'm getting around to it. this is TØP's first release since Scaled and Icy, which was the tonal equivalent of careening off of a cliff. Clancy definitely feels like a course correction, i can definitely feel some of the songs from this record belonging on Trench, which is the record that sounds the most similar if you ask me (they literally call it the sequel to trench). we're back to darker, more psychological songs, which is a way more comfortable sound than the radio-chasing pop from Scaled and Icy. there were also a weird amount of self referential lore lyrics? not sure about that but for fans of the dema plotline (me me me me me) it wasn't so bad. it was definitely weirder than the lorebuilding of Trench which felt a lot more like an extension of the lyrics and themes rather than the focus. the strongest lyrics were definitely when Tyler was able to forget about any lore and was able to sing plainly about his emotional vulnerabilities. as i was listening to it, i was increasingly more and more confused by scarlett's absolute refusal to like a single song from this record. i genuinely was really enjoying it man this record RULES. there were a couple times where i got a whiff of Scaled and Icy but it wasn't really enough to derail the entire thing for me. one of my favorite songs from this 1 was Oldies Station, which felt like a loveletter to people that grew up listening to TØP (ME ME ME ME ME ME M) so that was a really nice feeling. overall it was a very sincere return to form.

as always, Josh Dun deserves extremely high praise for the drumming he provided on this record. he truly is the Satoru Gojo of drumming (no glaze). a lot of the enjoyment i got from this record came from the drums giving almost a backbone to each and every track (minus the craving ofc). special thanks to my absolute goat of goats Josh Dun. by the way the highlight of the TØP concert i went to was the part when he took off his shirt. omg who said that.

overall really really loved it i will be adding several tracks to my main playlist. thank you twenty one pilots for reminding me why i was ever so few so proud and so emotional.

welcome to another one of these damn things, my little pile drivers

today's album of choice is John Coltrane's absolutely INCREDIBLE spiritual jazz album, A Love Supreme. it's 32 minutes long and from 1965.

yep we're doing more jazz i lowkey have been liking jazz more and more lately as u can tell since i recently reviewed Takanaka's samba jazz record. this is a relisten btw. i wanted to review a jazz record cus i just rewatched Soul which is a fireballin move by the way.

A Love Supreme is a special jazz record because it is the very culmination of Coltrane's devotion to Christ. imagine you have trained yourself to the very peak of physical and mental martial arts, and by the time you are forty, you have nothing else to do, so you go meditate on top of a mountain. then while you're meditating, you realize that above all, you feel gratitude. so you do 10,000 punches of gratitude to God every single day.

this album is very much like that but instead of being really good at martial arts you got really good at playing the saxophone and instead of doing 10,000 punches everyday, you decide to play your heart out in the form of jazz music as a show of your gratitude to God for giving you this gift.

that's pretty much the backstory of this record, and man even before i knew that, i could tell the music was something so so special. the way everything splits apart and comes together is so satisfying to me. every single instrumentalist playing on this recording was absolutely in flow state for the entire 30 minutes u can completely hear it all in the music.

you hear it you hear the intro the first 5 minutes of the record and then he starts to vocalize, a love supreme... a love supreme.... and then you can't stop hearing it after that. that same riff stays with you the entire record. a love supreme a love supreme a love supreme. i picked this up on CD not too long ago by the way just fun fact. kind of the crown jewel of my CD collection, which doesn't have much icl... well i've got fifty shades darker soundtrack and MBDTF and Remain In Light which is a larp and is lowkey gonna be the next review. THAT DRUMMER JUST CAN'T STOP, MAN!!!! i don't know who that is but dude he is going HAM!!!! just absolutely going wild the entire runtime!!! not to mention the saxophone which is one of the best sounding instruments to me. i think playing the saxophone is one of the purest ways to express yourself in the entire world. which makes it perfect for this spiritual record. i lowkey wanna learn how to play the saxophone, but it'd be too much trouble. still, in a perfect world, i'd absolutely kill it at sax.

what is jazz, this has got mostly what other jazz music has. it's got a piano, a saxophone, a drumset, and a bass. that's pretty much it for most standard jazz/bebop stuff but what truly sets this shit apart is the a love supreme chant that makes it less of a jazz record and more of a prayer. seriously, they got in the stu and started praying as hard as they could with their instruments, it's absolutely CRAZY how much that can come across.

absolutely lovely music a love supreme will stick with me for a very very long time now i hope to hear jazz music that's just as good.

a love supreme

FAV TRACKS: Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm

LEAST FAV TRACKS: no such thing

welcome home everynyan!! i wanted to do something different today so we're listening to or should i say booting up dream OS by alyzea! this is a purely atmospheric and instrumental record released in 2025 and only lasting 19 minutes.

i think the idea is that it's the music the fictional dream OS would use for certain things, which are the song titles. for example, 'home menu' or 'interface loading'. this album leans REALLY heavily into the frutiger aero side of technology and user interfaces, which is sadly a bygone era. i love love love staring at all kinds of frutiger aesthetics, especially the interior decorations and computer interfaces.

we as a society moved on from this type of maximalist, utopian type of theming for our computers and so on. i gotta say though, the pastiche work that people do of this sort of thing in retrospect really hits the spot. this one especially, a lot of the music hits you really hard right in the nostalgia bone, even though i was born in 2006 so most of the computers i used growing up were on the tail end of the frutiger stuff.

the music itself has a lot of the underwater ambience instruments you hear in Donkey Kong Country or Mario 64. or old-school nintendo music. it's that type of thing, but with a really satisfying drum or synth break thrown in occasionally.

it was especially satisfying trying to pick out all the UI sounds that were sampled, like i distinctly remember hearing a lot of Nintendo Switch sounds.

really i just realized that back in the 2010's people were making vaporwave records romanticizing the 90's (though they still do that). now we're in the 20's romanticizing the 00's. i wonder if in 20 years people will romanticize the type of stuff we've got right now.

at the end of the day guys it's a really really lovely record. so satisfying and chill to listen to. nostalgiabait in the best way possible. i got so much homework done listening to this bad boy. what an absolute blast to listen to. i wonder what it'd be like for a late 90's gen z person would feel listening to this, the nostalgia would probably explode your brain.

FAV TRACKS: home menu, interface loading

LEAST FAV TRACKS: distant ocean

welcome back everypony!! this is technically meant to be summerpiledriver day six. apparently there is a vicious rumor going around that i have a mental aversion to posting one new review per day. stay safe guys don’t believe everything you hear on the internet, my detractors are relentless

this is a historic moment for the pile driver because this is actually the first review of an album that was recommended to me by someone that i don’t actually know in person, this was a recommendation from someone that actually read my bullshit n liked it and commented an album rec which i think is the most wild thing i’ve ever said in my entire life. thank you curewishdoesalot I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU even when i make it to the top!!!!!!

okay anyways onto the music!! i saw this one is rated as indie pop/rock which as we have already established is totally my shit. also geek rock which apparently spirit phone falls under and is actually the #7 ranked geek rock record in the world that’s kinda wild.

so yeah man i heard the first couple tracks and just immediately fell in love, i was reminded of lemon demon (my favorite shit on the planet) on the first track. it’s like if neil cicierega got a band and made actual indie rock instead of uhhhhhhmmmmmm whatever he’s doing now.

so much personality just absolutely all over the place, i really love and value that. mostly ive realized that my favorite records are ones where the artist is doing whatever they want, like just making music cus it sounds good and they’re having fun doing it. i do think this one falls under that category and it definitely makes for bonus points in my book.

there’s something so charming about how playful the whole thing is. not like goofy or anything just that it feels alive and like i said it’s like you can tell the band was just having a blast recording ts.

this record also hit me at a good time, summer pile driver has had me listening to a buncha shit i normally wouldn’t and that’s not a bad thing or anything in fact i really like it, it’s just nice to feel at home.

songwriting wise one of the coolest records i’ve heard so far after starting this blog. it gets really dark at times like on What Are You Thinking and then it gets back to lighter silliness. really really cool i think this is mostly what you want out of a indie pop album.

really glad i enjoyed this one, a bunch of it went into my personal playlist. which i am willing to share i guess just ask for it guys. anyways i thought it had an incredible start but sorta lost steam around halfway through. that being said i can already tell you that Better Than Aliens is going to be one of my favorite songs ever.

thank you sElf!! thank you to my first and only moot!!!!!!

FAV TRACKS: The End Of It All, Kill The Barflies, Uno Song, Breakfast With Girls, Better Than Aliens, Placing The Blame

LEAST FAV TRACKS: Suzie Q Sailaway

greetings everynyan!!!!!!!!! welcome home to galacticpiledriver!!

today we'll discuss joji's 2017 debut EP In Tongues. it's only 16 minutes long which i didn't actually expect because i've heard that one song worldstar money when it was popular on tiktok and it has interlude in the title, so i expected an LP going in. worldstar money rules by the way.

just to get it out of they way, YES i heard a bunch of filthy frank music and YES this is funny pink internet guy but DUDE. after hearing that first track Will He i remember thinking woah man this dude actually has something here.

i really should have listened to this back in high/middle school, back then that lofi sound where it's almost like it's being played from through a wall was totally my shit. i was OBSESSED. i even made a few lofi beats of my own using free loops on bandlab lol. i still like it but man my thirst could not be quenched and this totally scratches that itch.

this entire record is the sound equivalent of staring out the car window while it's raining, very very atmospheric and melancholic. that said it's on the more minimalist side production wise, which worked well for this record and its vulnerable lyrics. especially on Demons.

LOVELY LOVELY LOVELY starting point for the Joji project. that's sort of what it came across as to me, not just because of the 16 minute runtime, it felt like a proof of concept. and as far as that goes, it does that exceptionally well.

i do feel like i heard Will He and worldstar money and i was just waiting for the other tracks to be as fucking fire but i didn't get it, except a little bit on Demons and lowkey Window too.. maybe i'm hating for no reason idk.

OVERALL i loved it. i regret not listening to it sooner. also bonus points because it's pretty satisfying seeing someone reinvent themselves in this typa crazy way. like at least now i know that there IS indeed a walking internet meme -> sadboy lofi crooner pipeline.

FAV TRACKS: Will He, Demons, worldstar money LEAST FAV TRACKS: Bitter Fuck

greetings everynyan! uhhhhh last friday was day 17 of summer piledriver and for that day we are talking about brat by Charli XCX! i didn't hear it in 2024 when it was a whole big thing so i figured i'd listen to it now and have my own fucking brat summer with nobody else in the world because i'm late to the party.

so uhh i went into it like around 37% ironically expecting it to be slop internet phenomenon with the music mostly absent but dude ts is actually like really good. it really makes no attempt to appeal to mass pop fans even thou they all ate it up. i really enjoyed the electronic sound i mean what a way to do it.

also i know absolutely nothing about charli xcx i understand she's had like an entire career up to this point but i seriously am completely unfamiliar. all i know is that this record rules. it's a dance pop record with exceedingly sharp production to the point i'm really shocked it appealed to so many people that one summer.

where the album really clicked for me is the songwriting. underneath all the partying and confidence and obnoxiously catchy hooks there's actually a surprising amount of insecurity on this thing. charli spends a lot of the record talking about jealousy, self-image, fame, getting older, constantly comparing yourself to everybody else....,,.… it's way more vulnerable than i expected and i really liked that.

good lord the production though i really feel like every beat was engineered for maximum peam. there's so many glitches and textures that do nothing but add to the songs. i only heard this record but charli has been pretty cemented in my mind as a titan of pop music.

it has been brought to my attention that the track So I is a tribute to the late producer Sophie which i really admire. it's a really courageous and emotionally raw thing to do, it wasn't just a tribute for the sake of a tribute i really liked how Charli discussed the complexities of their relationship and expressed regrets. bro the line where she wonders if she would like this one really got me.

btw this album is best experienced loud as shit. i first heard this last week in my car but hearing this again in my headphones (i like to listen to the records i'm reviewing while reviewing them) is kinda the shit. they're genuinely cooking down there.

overall i totally get why ts became a huge cultural event. also i know brat summer became like a total meme but i really think the message i got from the record is way cooler than that. it's basically 'maybe you're a little insecure and messy but so what, you can still dance hard as shit' i feel like i can really identify with that and so does probably like everyone else.

thank you Charli XCX

FAV TRACKS: 360, Club classics, Sympathy is a knife, Talk talk, Von dutch, Everything is romantic, Rewind, So I, Girl so confusing, Apple, B2b, Mean girls, I think about it all the time, 365

LEAST FAV TRACKS: I might say something stupid

welcome back everynyan! day 16 of summer pile driver, here goes!

today's discussion is about heat death of the universe by Dead Butterflies. it's a 24 minute album from 2025. i saw this one was the #2 ranked electronicore album on rym and i clicked on it over the #1 ranked album because it had a really awesome album cover i mean look at ts.

also the name is pretty good. it's an emo album and naming your shi heat death of the universe is just cheating i mean instant theming. dude listening to ts i had no clue what to expect it has listed just about every fucking genre under the sun i mean here's what's listed: Screamo, Electronicore, Midwest Emo, Shoegaze, Bedroom Pop, Metalcore, Emo Pop

yea it was pretty emo and hearing some of the songs on the final act of ts was genuinely making me ascend bro. checkered arms and exploding heart syndrome had me locked bro. emotionally, i mean this shit completely rules. emo is not dead guys this was released last year

vocally i really liked the contrast too really liked how a lot of the time there'd be regular emo vocals with a layer of hardcore metal vocals over it i thought it was a good effect it didn't really feel overproduced. i was pretty captivated by that.

shoutout to whoever mixed this because they had to get a genuine jack of all trades for ts. mixing shoegaze in the same song as a metal breakdown. takes skill and it really fits the album ridiculously well. also despite scarlett’s protests this is pretty electronicore.

i think the songwriting also does a lot of heavy lifting for the music especially when the songs kinda lean a little heavy into the genre and you can hear the building blocks. honestly i didn’t ever mind because most of the production and like 100% of the lyrics made it feel like they weren’t just checking boxes

overall this was a really heartfelt record that swung between loud complex mixing and vulnerable midwest emo. this record was an absolute ton of fun.

thank you dead butterflies p.s. is that a reference to sal vulcano’s infamous punishment

FAV TRACKS: ramona’s theme, midnight, star fall on our lonely planet, exploding heart syndrome, checkered arms

LEAST FAV TRACKS: beneath the surface