I wanted to do something very different, a surprise article for once, something that would allow me to showcase some stuff I enjoy. This is an article about music, not gaming – and it’s an easy one to do while I work on the reviews proper.
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| My 2022 box also included a shirt! |
I figured I would help with their visibility in my own way, by listing down the albums I obtained in that first box from the one I enjoyed the most to the one I enjoyed the least. This is all subjective, and that I didn’t like a band or artist doesn’t mean they’re bad – merely that their stuff didn’t click with me or fit my personal preferences. Even with the ones I didn’t like, I’ll do my best to be positive. In summer of 2023, thanks to Spotify, I did a deeper dive into all these bands’ larger discographies, so my adoration for the bands may not match the position they’ve been given here - I’m ranking the albums themselves. I’ll also include an embed to my favorite track off each album.
If anyone from Needlejuice reads this and notices some facts that are incorrect, tell me and I'll correct them!
Starting with...
Nuclear Bubble Wrap – Problem Attic
I’ve been following Nuclear Bubble Wrap (whose frontman Jace McLain is also one of the founders of Needlejuice Records; shortened "NBW") since roughly 2010, when I discovered the band through a forum dedicated to "Weird Al" Yankovic. Back then, the band did both parodies and original comedy music, but evolved in the following years to ditch parodies and focus on a psychedelic sound, albeit retaining a comedic and often geeky edge. They appear a few times on this list.
Problem Attic (geddit?) has been described by McLain as the last album of a trilogy, and whereas their previous two albums discussed anxiety and depression, this one covers the sources of both in modern society for the younger generations. The first half is more comical in tone, with tracks about murderous AI, late-stage capitalism, and conspiracy nuts. Side B is where the facade breaks, with songs about sexist legislators, climate change, police brutality and the growing dread towards the future. The title track is a brutal takedown of the older generations who allowed, if not encouraged, things to get this bad for their personal benefit, their children be damned.
It is, as far as I can tell, their most socially charged album, and will probably remain such. It’s a bleak but sobering listen with biting satire and only a few alleviating moments, like a song about how the Mars rovers are awesome or another about T. Rexes being perfect creatures because they can’t jerk it. Yes, you’ve read that right.
Jace McLain and the second singer, Kyle Thorne, offer great performances. I cannot recommend this album enough, it’s a great display of their skill. I’m so hyped for their next full-length release.
Favorite track:
Eldren – Miss Information Aged
A psych-rock band from Denver, Colorado, Eldren were one of the first major discoveries I made thanks to these mystery boxes. That vinyl's been spun a couple times. Putting aside this album from 2018, and a self-titled from 2013 unavailable on Bandcamp, their full-length releases include one titled Welcome to Deathville in 2015, and a cover album titled the Separation Sessions in 2021. Information on them has been somewhat difficult to find, which is unfortunate.
Two singers here as well: Tyler Imbrogno (who has also done some mixing work for Needlejuice) and Nasir Malik. The band has known some success locally in Denver. Their sound, self-described as "a psychedelic dream rock super pop soundgasm", counts on heavy synths and even includes a violin at times. Imbrogno's voice, which I can best describe as androgynous, helps with the unique feel of their work. (I've played their video clip for "We Just Want The World" several dozen times, it's so charming.)
Miss Information Aged doesn't quite fit the bill of a concept album, the best we get is a nod to several previous songs' titles in the nearly 9-minute closing title track. Still, the effort feels like a cohesive whole when its 43 minutes are heard front-to-back. I do hope to see them release another record of original material. I also bought Welcome to Deathville this week.
Favorite track:
Nuclear Bubble Wrap – Multiverses
I mentioned upon purchase of the box that NBW was one of the only bands I knew from the label. Multiverses came out on January 1st, 2016, and is the "depression" album according to Jace McLain (see my previous mention of a "trilogy" that closed with Problem Attic). NBW improved on their 2014 album Psycho Delicacy's sound by delving into space rock and shoegaze.
Multiverses retains their propension for filk (a term for songs whose lyrics are about pop culture properties, making it a genre closely associated to geekdom). Examples here include songs about Star Wars (The Fault In Our Death Stars), Doctor Who (Multiverses) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Dissociative (Ford, I Think I'm A Sofa)). Adding to this are songs about space, mental wellness and the occasional silly one (Shout-out to Healing Hand).
Although I thought (and still think) that the album is solid, Jace McLain has expressed dissatisfaction with its final mix and has been working on a remix that will be more in line with the desired vision. I'm looking forward to it!
Favorite track:
Blinker the Star – We Draw Lines
From Pembroke, Ontario, Jordon Zadorozny, better known under his artist name Blinker the Star, isn't officially on Needlejuice yet. Or rather his albums aren't. My mystery box included a test pressing for his album We Draw Lines, from 2012, hinting at a future addition to the label. It’s a bit of an open secret on the official Discord.
Zadorozny has been releasing music since 1993 and has an impressive resume and career, having worked with important names in the industry for various projects. He is still very active – in fact, he has released one album per year since 2019, with the latest one, Animal Math, published on November 24th, 2023. As for We Draw Lines, it’s well along the lines of Blinker the Star’s indie alt rock, perhaps a bit more on the softer end overall. The album includes a cover of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, which I do enjoy, but I preferred to feature one of the original Blinker the Star compositions for my favorite track.
For what it’s worth, after going through the Spotify playlist, I found a couple more albums of his that I enjoyed enough to purchase. The box already achieved its goal of making me discover new artists!
Favorite track:
Ookla the Mok – Nerdvana
Needlejuice has a lot of Extended Plays in their catalog, and I received a few. This one is comprised of only five songs. Ookla the Mok, like Nuclear Bubble Wrap and several others signed on to the label, are also part of a collective known as the Funny Music Project (FuMP), grouping comedy-based bands, several of whom were born thanks to the Internet. Many of these bands are openly geeky/nerdy or focus on filk songs (described earlier). Ookla the Mok is no exception, taking its name from a character in a short-lived cartoon series named Thundarr the Barbarian.
Checking through their discography reveals a lot of music about pop culture, making them a rock band dedicated to filk tracks. Nerdvana was created while Rand Bellavia and Adam English, the main two members of the band, were working on a different album called Vs. Evil. The album would be comprised of songs about villains, mostly from Marvel and DC Comics. This EP, released in 2012, is made of five songs composed at the same time, that didn’t fit the theming.
The EP has only one filk song, Tantric Yoda. It must be heard to be believed. Other tracks here include musings about math, imagining what a daredevil like Evil Knievel would be like in medieval times, and a high-energy, impassioned plea to go to bed. The opening track is equal parts a celebration of nerd culture and a mockery of its less glorious aspects. Really, the big issue of Nerdvana is that it’s not long enough to be a proper introduction to Ookla the Mok. (And some gags are now dated – twice here are jokes about Star Wars having six movies...)
Favorite track:
Bazooty – Nailbiters Anonymous
Another EP, this time the solo work of Kyle Thorne, the second singer of NBW. Bazooty's Nailbiters Anonymous reminds me of NBW quite a bit musically, with a lot of variety in the sound of each track, but the lyrics overall feel much more serious. Anxiety is a running thread here, as emphasized by the title. Another topic here is that of missed opportunities (Dream Motel).
However, what to me brings the EP together is Fight from The Inside, a melancholic look back at the early days of the pandemic. Nailbiters Anonymous was released on May 28th, 2020 according to its Bandcamp page, so I would believe it if the song about the pandemic was recorded last. It has that feel of being made when the world-changing event was not just fresh but at its earliest. The page also states that the artist wanted to get this album made before he turned 30, and it can feel like these circumstances were the final push to get this passion project completed.
Bazooty is a project that currently has, as far as I can tell, only six songs to its name, five of which are here, but I do hope Thorne expands and adds to it.
Favorite track:
Nuclear Bubble Wrap – Problem Attic Bonuses
Kinda cheating here, but I’m including it anyway. NBW loves to include bonus content; when I contributed to their Kickstarter to get Psycho Delicacy made, my reward was a CD full of bonus songs, most of which ended up making it into the sequel, Multiverses (discussed earlier). Mystery boxes that included Problem Attic on any format were given over two extra hours of music to check out.
This selection includes tracks already on NBW’s Bandcamp or on compilation albums by the FuMP; different versions of PA songs, like early mixes, experiments, or babble tracks (that is, versions with the wrong lyrics in to know the actual beat and length of each line); demos of brand-new songs that may or may not make it onto their next album; a few live tracks; topped by a 26-minute track of ambient noise, meant as an homage and reference to one of their musical inspirations, The Flaming Lips. (Not a fan of that track, to be honest, but I should check out the Lips.)
Obviously, I cannot link to a "PA demos" album. Nor do I feel comfortable discussing the demos of new songs (even if several are standouts); therefore, the favorite track chosen here is one that was already available on NBW’s Bandcamp.
Favorite track:
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Teenage Gizzard
If I ranked the bands rather than the albums, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard (which I’ll shorten to KGLW) would be in a hot competition at the top of the list. They’re my new musical obsession since 2023. The band formed in Melbourne, Australia, has been active since 2010 and has a simple strategy: Saturate the market. Since 2012, they’ve released 25 studio albums in a wide variety of genres, but always with a bit of psychedelic (I wrote that word a lot today) flair to them. Then there's their encouragement for indie labels to bootleg and sell physical formats of stuff made available for that purpose on their website: 13 live albums, but also collections of demos, one studio album, and this. Needlejuice Records was in part created thanks to this initiative, and as a result, though KGLW aren’t "signed on" proper, they’re one of the biggest bands in the label’s roster, if not THE biggest.
Teenage Gizzard, as the title implies, is a collection of the band’s earliest efforts, recorded in 2010 and 2011. A very lo-fi psych surf rock dominates the ten tracks of this 29-minute album. The collection was made available in 2020 through their website and, like the other bootleg-friendly KGLW albums, can be found under "bootleg gizzard" on Spotify. I’m personally not a fan of lo-fi, I like when I can understand the lyrics, especially in English (I blame that on English being my second language), and I prefer songs with a cleaner sound in general.
This collection is fine, but it’s like checking an artist’s earliest demos; of course it’s gonna be rough around the edges. Since the band grew and changed so much, Teenage Gizzard is fun to have, but it’s not very representative of KGLW's sound. For that, I would recommend some of their studio albums. Hard to pick one, though, since there are so many and they toy with genre so much. Float Along – Fill Your Lungs? Gumboot Soup? Omnium Gatherum? I’ll go the obvious route and recommend the "bootleg it, we allow it" album, Polygondwanaland, which you can get for free.
Favorite track:
desert sand feels warm at night – New World Disciples
Vaporwave is a rabbit hole and a half to fall into, and I don’t know nearly enough to discuss it in depth. It’s one of the weirder genres born from the Internet, a mix of jazz, sampling, distortions, other musical effects, and gratuitous Japanese. And it’s got more subgenres than you can shake a stick at.
desert sand feels warm at night is the pseudonym of UK musician William Halworth-Cook, says the Needlejuice website. They specialize in the subgenre of slushwave, best described by its own fans as drawn-out, slow-paced, melancholic songs with heavy reverb and sounding like what you’d hear while your senses are being numbed by anesthesia during a medical procedure. Bit mean to say, but not inaccurate, based on this album I heard a few times.
Song lengths on New World Disciples range from 3 to 23 minutes, and the singing, if any, is slow, modified with effects, and incomprehensible. Judging from the title, the intention may have been to sound like the chants of, well, disciples of some unreal belief. It does sound relaxing, dreamy even, so the spirit is there. desert sand has an extensive discography comprised of (at time of publishing) 19 albums, including one that’s three hours long, so if this sound is what you’re attracted to, then you’ve got a lot more waiting to be heard.
Vaporwave isn’t for me. Aside from maybe one album in the genre that sounds too intriguing to ignore, it doesn’t seem like my jam, y’know? That said, if through this article I’ve connected someone with this genre they didn’t know existed and they become a fan, then I’ll consider my part done.
Favorite track:
Icosahedron – World Wild Web
I’m gonna be critical, I’m sorry.
World Wild Web is the synthpop/new wave creation of Icosahedron, an artist from the UK. Unlike albums with serious themes earlier on this list, this one is meant to be an all-fun, easy-listening, geeky venture in a world of keyboards. The blurb made it sound like this would be a concept album about the Internet, I was disappointed when it turned out not to be. Oh well, it happens.
On the positive, Icosahedron’s musical compositions are excellent. I was hooked by the opener (Resurrection), I like the pleasant music of the title track, the bouncy beats of On the News, the slower and moodier tone of I Don’t Know... My favorite track is Raindrops, a kickass instrumental. The album ends on another instrumental, The Curtains Draw to a Close, which is also fun in its own way.
Now the negative: For starters, the lyrics could have done with rewrites here and there. Several lyrics feel baseline, simple (if not simplistic), like they were recorded at the stage of early drafts. It’s notable in several points where easy rhyming shortcuts are taken. Her interpretation is frequently off-key, unfortunately, even to untrained ears like mine. And a few songs (notably Robot Attack!) see her attempt vocal challenges that would be difficult even to singers with a range beyond hers – but at least, she gets points for the self-imposed challenge.
Icosahedron, in case you see this, you may have a few things to work on, but I can tell you absolutely love making music. Don’t let my critique affect you, don’t let that spark die down – you've got a great base and immense potential, so improve on other aspects and your next works will be fan-tas-tic. Hell, I should give the new tracks you often post to your channel in the NJR Discord server a chance.
Favorite track:
Bubbo – bubbo + dinky
Final album in the box and the one that appealed to me the least, bubbo + dinky, released in 2021, defies classification. I can best describe it as electronic, experimental and noise. Most tracks don’t feel like compositions as much as they feel like instrumental snippets haphazardly Frankensteined together. The core idea is that these two critters, Bubbo and Dinky, are the makers of that music. You can even hear Bubbo "speak" in wah-wahs on a few entries. We get seven tracks from each, separated on the CD release by eight minutes of ambiance labeled "unlisted".
I have a slight preference for the Dinky half, which isn’t to say I love it – at best the songs feel a little better thought-out. dinky vii, closing the album, has bits from previous Dinky tracks, implying it’s learning and combining its ideas, so that’s nice. Despite that, no matter how much I listen to any of the album, it just doesn’t click with me. It’s a bit too far into the experimentation for my liking, I guess.
But their creator should keep on making their art. The world is a fuller place when all express themselves as they want. And even if I’m not super positive about this album, if my description left you intrigued or interested, then give it a listen, even if just out of curiosity.
Favorite track:
That’s it! Phew, sorry this got so long! I’ll resume with actual reviews soon.
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