#pyres

on friday, i went to a baseball game with finn and fall, and i drank a beer, and we ate hot dogs, and we watched the fireworks after the game like it was two thousand and twelve or something. it was a really nice night

we ran into one of their oldest friends at the game, someone they have known so long, i don't know if they can even remember meeting. i accidentally talked to her boyfriend as though he spoke my own language and it i guess it scrambled his brain for a bit, but i think he'll be alright

my dad usually takes me to a baseball game around my birthday, but a few days before the date of this year's game, i mentioned that i was looking forward to it, and he seemed confused. then he said, 'oh, that fell through,' and that was the end of that

this week has been full of unexpected, dark developments in the lives of people on the edges of my life. my usual experience of the world lives somewhere on the scale of tired sadness to hopeful joy, but this whole last week was stained by the lurking potential for tragedy

last night i dreamed about swimming through the crystal clear waters of a drowned city and massive waves would lift me up twenty stories in a moment and then drag me down into the depths. i dreamt about eating a package of ramen that tasted like a fried chicken sandwich with dill pickle chips, and i dreamt about finding a nest full of baby squirrels waiting to be fed

To be fair, there’s just about as much grunge in Pyres’ sound as there is sludge, and grunge’s relations to melody are much less fraught. Still, Pyres’ playing is at its most exciting when the band is channeling Alice in Chains at their most scabrous, as opposed to the later Soundgarden’s tuneful turns. See “Granular Flow,” which commences with a cosmic groove orbiting “Superunknown” (and meh…) before it bottoms out into tougher, nastier riffage that gestures toward the blues. More significant is the feeling tone pervading those sorta bluesy passages. Pyres just sounds like they’re having a better time when the music slows down a beat and struts.

Still, there’s more than a sniff of the progressive to the proceedings on Yun, edging several songs toward qualities referred to with words like “technique” and “composed.” The desire to prettify sludge is prevalent (see records by big bands in the subgenre, like Torche and Helms Alee, if you must) but strange. This reviewer prefers sludge that focuses its intent on the ugly in the music: Noothgrush, Iron Monkey, more recently the mighty Primitive Man. On occasion, Pyres achieves an effectively unpleasant intensity; check out the closing minute of “Nova Cruciatus” or the mournful second half of “Old Dogs.” Sometimes new tricks just aren’t necessary.