If It's Too Loud...

There's only one thing that I enjoy about March, and it's that every year Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys participate in the February RPM Challenge and write, record, and produce a new album! Every year their submissions get weirder and somehow better than the ones before. 2023 has given us Ghost Parade. The title track is quickly becoming a favorite, and I can see it becoming a beloved live show staple and ending up on many Halloween playlists, with it's spooky vibe that reminds me a lot of classic cartoon music. Immediately following that is "MEET ME ON THE MOON," a ballad which sounds like Walter Sickert is shooting for the Adult Contemporary charts or a Grey's Anatomy needle drop... but through their own odd filter. I always thought 2020's RPM Challenge album THE CUTTING HORSE  would be the Toys' strangest release, but what makes Ghost Parade  so intriguing is how almost mainstream it ends up being. "KEEP MY HEAD" is a gothic...

February is the worst month of the year. Everyone is sick of the cold and snow, and everything is starting to get that gross late winter sludge on it. Even when the snow melts, it just makes the world muddy, and we can't even start to consider Spring being near yet. The one good thing about February is the RPM Challenge, where bands write and record a full album during the month of February. The highlight of that lately has been Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys' contribution! This year's RPM Challenge album is Permanent Fire, and is their seventeenth overall(!) . This is a much more scaled down sound than we're used to from Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys, but I hesitate to called it stripped down or sparse. The production on the album is unbelievable, especially when you consider how quickly everything had to come together to make it. Calling the album Permanent Fire expressly lays out the theme of the album. This sure sounds like a reaction to...