Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (June 12th - June 25th)

Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, our weekly recap of this week's new music. We're sharing our favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "further listening" section of new and notable releases from around the web. It's generally written in the early hours of the morning and semi-unedited... but full of love and heart. The number rankings are arbitrary and we sincerely recommend checking out all the music included. There's a lot of great new music being released. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music.

*Disclaimer: We are making a conscious effort not to include any artist in our countdown on back-to-back weeks in order to diversify the feature, so be sure to check the "further listening" as well because it's often of "countdown" quality too.

June 12 - June 18

1. MILKED | "White Punks"

Two spectacular singles into Milked's "official" full-length debut and we haven't even scratched the surface of this album's hook filled bliss. Kelly Johnson (formerly of Chicago's Geronimo!) has layered syrupy hooks in the form of guitar riffs and vocal melodies and "White Punks" is prime example, a song that acknowledges the privilege that many "punk" musicians are afforded over a bed of pounding drums, searing melodies, and infectious earworm perfection. Just wait 'til you hear the entire record.

2. HOLOGRAMS | "Shame"

Perhaps the sharpest of all the post-punk revival bands coming from Scandinavia and just about anywhere else, Holograms are back. "Shame," is the first single from Surrender, the Swedish band's first new album in four years. Sounding as desolate and detached as ever, Holograms rip through their gloomy return, digging into the hook with tightly wound rhythms before piercing guitars and bleakly howled vocals resonate the verses. The song's gripping intensity builds into a vibrant crescendo, showing signs that Holograms' sound has done a bit of expansion since Forever, adapting their formula into new territory.

3. DON GERO | "Fire Ball I," "Fire Ball II," & "Fire Ball III"

Portland, Oregon's finest mutant-electronic percussionist Don Gero (aka Zac Daghead aka Zach D'Agostino, once of Arvid Noe and Trach) is back with Wizarding, the follow-up to last year's shapeshifting Weirding. We're treated to a set of the record with "Fire Ball I," "Fire Ball II," and "Fire Ball III," a trilogy of stellar rhythmic grooves, krautrock precision, and manipulated drum triggered madness. Combining dense polyrhythms and modular synths, Don Gero creates experimental fusion, blurring world rhythms with hypnotic structures and mind-melting intensity. Get on up, go ahead and feel those rhythms... Don Gero is making dance punk for tomorrow's freaks (today!) and it's incredible.

4. CREATUROS | "Creaturos" LP

Creaturos (or CreaturoS if you will) are one of Boston's best kept secrets, an always dependable local force that has quietly created some of the best garage-psych this side of the Bay Area. Built from the ashes of the amazing Doomstar! back in 2012, the quartet make the type of records that are absolutely essential for any fans of (Thee) Oh Sees, Ty Segall, and Castle Face Records, offering their own hint of hometown grease and glory, a cesspool of spiraling psych, bright layered atmospheres, and colorful fuzz pop melodies. The band's latest self-titled effort is a triumphant collection of jangly songwriting, brawny surf punk, and distorted hooks, a "summertime" record if ever there was one.

5. TREDICI BACCI | "Swedish Tease"

Simon Hanes' Italian pop and spaghetti Western inspired orchestra, Tredici Bacci, is pure entertainment. Seeing them live is one of life's great joys; it's part comedy, part spectacle, and always incredibly performed. Last year they released Amore Per Tutti, a gorgeous record that brings elements of post-punk, free jazz, and absurdist humor to the group's classically trained orchestrated madness. The video for "Swedish Tease," one of the album's more cartoonish and surreal moments, features a gang of paper-mache looking businessman cutting loose, toying with lives, and naturally, getting naked. As I said... pure entertainment.

6. QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE | "The Way You Used To Do"

I've been wrestling back and forth on how I feel about this new Queens of the Stone Age, and in doing so I've listened to it a lot. While their new record's Mark Ronson production throws up a great deal of red flags, the fact is that QOTSA have used sleek production and big hip-shaking grooves for most of their career. "The Way You Used To Do" shakes and swaggers in signature Josh Homme fashion (somewhat reminiscent of Them Crooked Vultures) and it uses the word dingaling... so take that as you will. If nothing else, consider me intrigued to hear the rest of the record.

june 19 - june 25

1. BAKED | "Audiotree Live" Session

Brooklyn's Baked have a knack for sounding absolutely enormous in any live setting. The onslaught of guitars, keys, bass, and drums may creep at a sleepy pace, but their collective swell is something to treasure. On the band's recent tour in support of the spectacular Farnham LP, the band stopped by the Audiotree studio for a live session of stoned country twang, mountainous shoegaze, and brawny fuzz-punk. The session captures the essence of Baked and their eclectic sets with a wall-of-sound, slowly consuming the room like a cloud of thick smoke.

2. PARDONER | "Blue Hell"

As far as Post-Trash is concerned, Pardoner are one of the Bay Area's, hell... the West Coast's best new bands. After a string of exceptional EPs, including last year's Gravedigger on Smoking Room Tapes, the band has joined the venerable Father/Daughter Records for their full length debut, Uncontrollable Salvation. Built on influences that range from Polvo and Sonic Youth to The Wipers and Unwound, Pardoner hit all the sweet spots of corrosive slacker punk, noise splattered indie rock, and twitchy post-punk with a disengaged approach to their brilliant squalor. "Blue Hell" is a perfect introduction, a song that sounds both cavernous and unraveled, burying dense melodies in sludge and the sweetest of feedback. Pardoner could just be your new favorite band if you let them.

3. DOVE LADY | "One" LP

One is a difficult record to talk about without talking about all of it, a testament to it's many brilliant twists and turns. The cavalcade of sonic brilliance never ends and it never sits still, as radiant in syrupy fuzz detachment ("Uplifting Song") and warped prog-tinged funk ("Ferbalicious"), as it is with dreary noise pop freak-outs ("What's Wrong Roberta?"). By the time "Boar Switch" digs into it's hypnotic clamor, anything and everything is possible, and Dove Lady continue to dive further into the unknown, bouncing between spastic riffs and disjointed rhythms, embracing all that came before and all that is still to come. Want to feel excited about music? Listen to Dove Lady.

4. WU-TANG CLAN | "Don't Stop"

The first draft I had of this write-up opened with a barrage of complaints about modern hip-hop, but in the end I removed it because I felt like the "old man yelling at clouds". Instead I'll simply say, Wu-Tang Clan is forever, and thank god for it. The Brooklyn/Staten Island group remain the greatest to ever do it, a claim I don't make lightly. New single "Don't Stop" is a great representation of what they can do over a classic RZA beat, with one clever verse of signature street knowledge and hard punchline lyricism after another from three of WTC's finest, Raekwon, Method Man, and Inspectah Deck.

5. SABA LOU | "Lost And Found"

Saba Lou is a high school student who has been recording music since she was six years old. She also happens to be the daughter of the legendary King Khan, but don't let that distract you from her new single "Lost And Found," a gorgeous bedroom pop song from her upcoming full length debut, Planet Enigma. Built on Lou's soulful yet somber harmonies, gentle acoustic guitars, and warm organs, it's simple and effective, a song as inviting as a lullaby with swirls of floating nuance and layers of vocal beauty.

6. NAOMI PUNK | "Chains"

Naomi Punk have returned and their new double album, Yellow, is blistering with ugly and abrasive experimentation. The Olympia post-punk band have buried their sound into its most desolate with unnerving minimalism, uneasy noise, and bleak repetition. The album as a whole is inaccessible yet intriguing, a place for Naomi Punk to push new ground into the strange and dangerous. Lead singles "Tiger Pipe" (below) and "Chains" highlight that sprawling and hypnotic menace, slithering at the pace of molasses ever deeper into the shadows. Sunny days just got a lot darker.

FURTHER LISTENING:

June 12 - june 18