Hooked On Hebronix

     Greetings from the post-Apocalyptic hellscape which is Willowick, Ohio. You know it's been a bad week when having hernia surgery was the high point. The procedure went well, I'm just sore and recovering. However, I am writing this post under the influence of Vicodin, so if it's more entertaining than usual that's the reason. Anyhow, here's a quick recap before I get on with official Sound Mind business. First, I didn't go to the Wire show because I had to be at the hospital by 7:00 AM Thursday morning. Hopefully, some of it is on You Tube. Friday / Saturday there was a severe thunderstorm, which woke up my wife and I at 3:00 AM. I looked outside and noticed there was standing water halfway up our driveway and asked my wife if she heard the sump pump running. Since I had just had surgery and couldn't go up and down stairs, she went to check and discovered our basement was flooded. We didn't know it at the time, but almost every basement in Willowick was flooded. My wife was on the phone with Nationwide and Serv-Pro right away and neither of them have done jack shit as of yet. Nationwide "is on your side", except when you have an insurance claim and need their help. And the city is run by ineffectual time servers who couldn't find their own asses with both hands. But I digress. Since I couldn't lift anything, or bend over or climb, it fell on my wife to start cleaning up the disaster. We had to throw out almost everything in our basement, including carpet, furniture, drywall and doors. We lost our hot water heater, furnace, washer and dryer. The whole town looks like a refugee camp with tons of garbage piled up by the streets. Of course, this is when the thin veneer of civilization falls away and people from other towns drive in and proceed to loot the trash heaps. I don't believe in Hell, but I hope there's a special place in Hell for these bottom feeding pieces of crap. Sorry, I didn't mean to use my blog for a diatribe, but apparently I needed to vent.
     I'm not really hooked on Hebronix .It just struck me as a clever title for this post. Once again, it could just be the Vicodin talking. I've mentioned before that Hebronix is the new project of ex-Yuck frontman Daniel Blumberg. I don't know why he felt the need to leave Yuck, rather than record side projects and continue with the band. Hopefully, he doesn't end up like Porcelain Raft standing on a stage playing with a tape loop machine. Anyhow, I love Yuck and was disappointed by this news. Incidentally, Yuck have just released a new song called "Rebirth" from their forthcoming album. It features Max Bloom on vocals and is quite shoegaze-y. It's good, but I hope it's not indicative of how the rest of the album will sound. Damn, I can't stop digressing. The standout track on the new Hebronix album is the title track "Unreal". The song is good and Blumberg embraces his inner-Mascis. The one flaw with this track, as well as the album in general, is it's too noodly and unfocused. Unreal has many great moments, but they are lost in a sea of self-indulgence. The album only has six tracks, but they all run over five minutes with little pay off. In fairness, I've only listened to it a few times, so it's possible that it will grow on me. Also, my judgment is probably clouded by my feelings about Yuck. Bottom line is Unreal needed a good producer to keep it focused. Peace.