In my previous article, I said I wasn’t sure why it took me a full year before ranking the albums from the first mystery box I purchased. I do have an answer; before making this list, I want to make sure I understand each album within the wider context of its creator’s discography. Which is a fancy way of saying that, like the madman I am, I shove every studio release from each artist into a single Spotify playlist and listen at random, getting a good feel of each artist’s stuff and giving me a new perspective on the album I received. I even plan to check which albums I enjoyed the most in that playlist, and will buy those too.
Why yes, my music collection is big, why do you ask?
I purchased a second box in late 2023 and received it in early January 2024. This has given me a year to hear these albums several times (some more than others) and do that deep discography dive. I threw into that playlist every studio album from these artists, and for good measure, I also included any new albums from artists I had already heard (from the previous list) and who had new stuff out.
Another 11 albums, once more ranked from favorite to least favorite. Remember that if I rank an artist lower, that doesn’t mean their stuff is bad – it can just be that it didn’t click with me. Maybe it will click with you. Oh, and the previous article was too long, so this time, I’m splitting it into two parts. Starting with…
Nick Lutsko – Swords
The sad clown says it all.
Nick Lutsko, from Chattanooga, Tenenssee, has been releasing music since 2012. He made a name for himself providing comedic songs for Netflix and CollegeHumor, including a longer stint making satirical tunes for entertainment company Super Deluxe. He has albums that are satirical, albums that are more comedy/horror (he has released a few songs every Halloween since 2021), and the occasional serious one, with today’s album being an example of the latter. He performs live with The $100K Band.
Keeping up with the news, even if to do funny stuff with it, means being constantly exposed to everything messed up about the world. Lutsko came out of a long period of writing satirical songs, I paraphrase his words, “disillusioned with the zeitgeist”. If there’s a group of people that’s painfully aware of the state of the world, it’s comics and comedians.
Swords is an odd beast; Lutsko hesitates to call it a concept album, though the signs are there. Each title is a single word starting with S (so… S-words?). Most songs are about a deeply troubling aspect of the world we live in. Starting with self-destructive willful ignorance (Sideshow) and xenophobia (Superior) and moving on to social media addiction (Straitjacket), hopelessness (Sometimes) and more. If the lyrics to Software, the closing track of the album’s original version, were too subtle, the video spells it out: It's about the general unwillingness to prevent school shootings from happening so damn often in the U.S.. Ouch. The songs are tied by recurring motifs and lines, and the instrumentation to many tracks incorporates circus-like music in some capacity. The result is indie alt-rock/progressive pop that sounds incredible from beginning to end.
Although this album has elements of his career up to now, it also stands as his most serious. The cassette I got included the tracks from “Seven Inch Swords”, a minidisc follow-up that includes Spineless, a song so good I keep thinking it’s part of the original Swords. It also includes two demos and two live versions. I think Swords is his best work so far, and I love it, even though he himself admits to it being “a bit of a bummer”.
If you want to hear more from him, Nick has the satirical Songs on the Computer duology; and he compiled his recent Halloween songs onto HAUNTED, released in 2024. He has also been working on a follow-up to Swords titled Ends, and I am HYPED for it. One single has already been released.
Favorite track:
Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears – Flight of the Knife
A concept album about aviation? Sure, why not?
Bryan Scary began composing music in 2005 in Brooklyn following his degree in film production from New York University. His first album, The Shredding Tears, was released on October 31st, 2006; he then named his touring band after that album. The group then worked on the follow-up, which I’m going to talk about, released on April 1st, 2008.
Flight of the Knife is the story of Airship Valentine, a pilot who aspires to pilot the Knife, a legendary machine shrouded in mystery. Between the first and final song, every other track is a vignette of this world, with lyrics always connected in themes but not always with each other as a cohesive storyline. There’s enough strangeness here to make the world feel fantastical.
Genre-wise, I’d say the album is closer to art rock and prog rock, with song structures that feel manic on first listen. Like a lot of good prog (trust me, I know what I’m talking about!), it takes a few listens for the songs to sink in, and that’s when you grow to love them. The complexity never becomes a burden for the emotion, and everything gels together very well. Bryan Scary’s musical inspirations are felt all over, with moments reminiscent of Electric Light Orchestra, Queen, Genesis and the Beach Boys, to name a few cited in reviews of the album. The Bandcamp page also cites psychedelic pop and alternative.
In 2024, Flight of the Knife was my feel-good album, and listening to Bryan Scary’s discography made me appreciate the artist even more.
Favorite track:
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Live in Bonnaroo ‘22
Yep, still addicted to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (KGLW). Can’t help it, they’re doing everything to keep me hooked. Sure, they only released one studio album in 2024 – their 26th! – but they also released as official bootlegs damn near every single concert of their North American tour. If you want to get into this band, you’ve got plenty to check out. Needlejuice has issued all the “official live bootlegs” up to 2023. This mystery box contained two of these live bootlegs.
This concert was recorded at Bonnaroo, a music festival in Manchester, Tennessee, on June 17th, 2022. This 75-minute set prominently features songs from the band’s then most recent release, Omnium Gatherum, their second album that year (they would release three more in October 2022 – no, I’m not kidding). The band filled out the remainder of these 11 tracks with fan favorites.
The selection doesn’t represent the sheer number of genres KGLW have played with, as it showcases mainly their psychedelic and metal sides, with a bit of hip-hop (as 2022 is the year they began toying with rap verses). Several tracks are lengthened from their original studio versions. My two favorite songs on this album, Magenta Mountain and Work This Time, are both three minutes longer, owing to incredible closing solos courtesy of Stu Mackenzie and Joey Walker, respectively. Only disappointment: The concert ends with a 13-minute version of The Dripping Tap, whose studio version is a whopping 18. Hey, it fits on a single CD at least.
The best part? That album from Needlejuice comes with a Blu-Ray recording of the concert. Now I just need a player. (The concert can also be found on YouTube.)
They’re “not a jam band”? Yeah, right!
EDIT: Just a few days before publishing the article, KGLW were announced as headliners at Bonnaroo '25! Just sayin', if you're going...
Favorite track:
Worm Quartet – Carpe Tedium
Of course the box would contain another album from an artist of the Funny Music Project (FuMP). This one is from September 2023, so it was very fresh when I got it. Timothy F. Crist, better known as ShoEboX in the community, has been making music since 1991, and released his first album as Worm Quartet in 1999. Carpe Tedium is ShoEboX’s first full-length album since 2012. Beyond comedy, Worm Quartet’s music has been described as synth-punk.
My Spotify discography dives let me explore each artist’s body of work. Crist has openly stated that he considers Carpe Tedium to be his favorite collection of songs, and yeah, it’s my favorite album of his, too. The first thing that stands out with Worm Quartet is the sheer number of minuscule songs (read: Shorter than 30 seconds) across his work. I affectionately dub those “musical brain farts”. They’re too short to have anything beyond a single gag. On Carpe Tedium, most of them are relegated to tracks 15 to 29, for a runtime of 3:30. Not that the rest of the album has long songs, either, with the longest one not even four minutes long.
In there, we have straight-up silly songs (Entire Dog, It’s Raining Tacos, Mic Stand), some about adult life (10 Goto 10, Fueled by Angst), and others that mock awful aspects of the world (like one song about celebrating getting a poncho at work instead of a raise). I think the best songs here have funny moments but make important points about society, like Infobesity, which is about social media, and my favorite (below), about the rise of stupidity and anti-science/anti-truth sentiments across online platforms, despite all the science it took for those platforms to exist in the first place.
I own the CD with the original album art, which was pulled for reasons I won’t get into here to not bog down the list. There isn’t a new album art to replace it yet, but I might edit this article when it’s updated.
Favorite track:
Marc With A C – Thanatophobia
Another musician who has been associated with the FuMP, Marc Sirdoreus of Orlando, Florida, has been releasing music under their moniker “Marc with A C” (you have no excuse if you spell it wrong) since 1999. I counted 17 studio albums under their belt. Up to the 2020s, Marc admitted to mostly writing songs under a persona represented by their stage name. They had been thinking of moving onwards for a while, from a Phase 1 to a Phase 2 where the name would be kept but the exaggerated persona would be retired. However, while Marc had planned for a break between Phases in 2021, life decided otherwise: As explained on the album’s Bandcamp page, they wound up facing a misdiagnosed type of cancer and a botched surgical procedure. This led to them spending a lot of time in waiting rooms and in hospitals, a time they used to write this album’s songs. Two of its eleven tracks are covers.
Even putting aside its backstory, Thanatophobia (“fear of death”) is an odd beast in Marc’s catalog. It was recorded only with instruments the singer-songwriter had on hand and knew to play back at the start of their career in 1999. Despite that, it’s possibly their most experimental album. What’s more, the album comes with a second version on CD, titled Phobophobia (“fear of fear”), which can be played alongside the original at a slightly lower volume, and you’ll get a new experience out of the synchronization, with a handful of details you can only hear that way. But Phobophobia is indeed just a bonus; the album itself is complete on its own.
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| Will admit, it IS very satisfying when you manage to sync it perfectly. |
Vibe-wise, I don’t know if it’s an impression from this album alone or something that could be said of Marc’s larger discography, but there’s something very earnest to its lyrics. No idea if it really is due to the persona drop, as a lot of Phase 1 songs also gave me the impression that they were much more honest than jokey (you could generally tell when a song was comedic versus when it had a more serious intention). First hearing this album without knowledge of their larger discography, I came out of it with an interpretation that may be wildly off-base, I’ll take the blame for that if it’s wrong. But Thanatophobia, considering what its creator went through, felt like it could be read as someone who, in the face of an announced death, decided to sort out their life.
Favorite track:
Come back next Monday for the second half of the list.
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