by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

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 list is in alphabetical order and we sincerely recommend checking out all the music we've 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 top-notch quality too.

BLUE RAY | "Open Sesame" LP

Blue Ray's latest is another aggressively blown out batch of perfected weirdness. Squealing distortion is used like paint on the canvas, coloring in songs with otherwise common structures, dropping enormous bursts of noise and feedback with a haphazard sensibility. It's not just noisy and freaked out for the sake of being noisy and freaked out though, Johnny Steines has worked his fuzzy lo-fi clamor into something magical, accenting each song with an enveloping wall, his shrieks and dissonance creating a stronger reinforcement to the melodies skewed just beneath it. The ten tracks of Open Sesame are aggravated but lively, a dismantling that resides somewhere between unfolding insanity and catharsis via sound therapy.

GREG ELECTRIC | "Greg Electric" EP

Greg Electric, which features current and former members of Nine of Swords, Ted Nguyent, and Loose Tooth, released their self-titled debut EP, a furiously skronky beast of hardcore yelps and tangled chord progressions. Rachel Gordon's (Nine of Swords, Baby Mollusk) vocals offer that perfected bite and bark balanced with detached concern, teaming with disdain between a melodic and rhythmic approach. The band, Mike McGilloway (guitar), Dan Wolf (drums), and Kian Sorouri (bass) dart back and forth, guitars intertwining as the rhythms quake behind them. It's all delivered with an agile chaos, densely working up fits of sputtering rage and sludgy grooves. The band set up sing-song melodies just to shatter them with brutality moments later. It's all pretty menacing and abrasive, and it's a most impressive debut.

JUNE GLOOM "California"

Local heart-throb and all around inspiration Jesse Paller (Tall Friend) is back once again with June Gloom, his radiant solo project, this time stripped down to voice and guitar. Set to release the split Subletter / Something Solid with Rock Solid next month, "California" is a gorgeous alt/folk song, a reflection of a relationship ending and escaping town to return to a life more familiar, your childhood surroundings. It really tugs on the ol' emotions, channeling an Elliot Smith intimacy, full of soft melodies and relatable lyrics for sad people worldwide to enjoy. It's all real beautiful, with lush harmonies and layered acoustic guitars that add some warmth to Gloom's longing.

KEREM ATALAY | "Summer 1"

Tranquility is king in Kerem Atalay's "American Primitive" guitar music. His songs are sparse and without accompaniment. It's finger picked guitar, and that's it, and it's pretty damn amazing. There's such a warmth to his playing that the brilliant instrumental drifts don't really need anything else, stripped down to its core elements and radiant in its front-porch simplicity. The Maryland based guitarist is completely self-taught and naturally gifted when it comes to composition. Set to release Summer Winter on June 22nd via Dust Etc. (Space Mountain, Dust From 1000 Yrs), first single "Summer 1" is the perfect introduction.

MOMMA "Interloper" LP

Los Angeles' Momma is the project of two life-long friends, navigating their way through high school (yep, they are that young) in exceptionally surreal vignettes on their debut album, Interloper. Songs like "Caterpillar" take a sparse melody and use it to imagine life as a confident bug with no vertebrae, while the relatively grungy warble of "Belong On The Bed" is built on self empowerment and washing machine metaphors. The entire album highlights the duo's songwriting with bare compositions that rip just a little too much to call bedroom pop, and for that we're thankful. Their songs are full of harmony ("Sidewalk"), bent pop ("Pipe Thing"), and dreamy indie rock ("Work"), making Interloper a truly impressive debut from a young band we hope to be hearing about for years to come.

OH SEES | "Overthrown"

In all the years of Oh Sees' glorious time as a band, they've never been short on "rippers". Even their folkier albums have a ripper or two, but hot damn, the band have never quite ripped like they do on "Overthrown," the first single from the upcoming Smote Reverser LP, due out this Fall. While last year's Orc, one of my personal favorite albums of 2017, led the band further into a psych prog and art-metal realm (while still sounding like the Oh Sees, of course), "Overthrown" is a deep dive into that heavier territory, absolutely decimating from one movement to the next, like a hellish beast of propulsive energy spitting ash and fiery sludge in every direction, destruction with no bounds. The double drums act as a battering ram as John Dwyer's riffs roar between crushing fuzz distortion and spaced out reverb. Between this song, the album art, and the font on their newly establish Bandcamp page, I could not be more excited for this record.

OVLOV | "Spright"

It's the return the world has been waiting for, except no substitutions. Ovlov have announced their long awaited sophomore album, TRU, for a July release and the first single "Spright" is a gentle wall of sound reminder that they do that whole fuzzy shoegaze/sludge pop thing better than anyone. Steve Hartlett and Morgan Luzzi's twin guitars sound dense and enveloping, but never overtly noisy, the sound floating just above Theo Hartlett's colossal rhythm and nuanced fills. The song takes its punches and cracks with a subtle touch, an easy drifting melody that pulls us right back into Ovlov's cloudy dream-punk. Just wait until you hear the rest of the record.

WINDED | "Soap Dust"

The solo project of Tallahassee's Thrin Vianale, Winded is set to release it's full-length debut Schwartz Goes To Heaven next month on Community Records. The songs are quiet but never subdued, full of natural emotional shifts. Vianale's lyrics and earnest vocals offer gentle reflections of life, sputtering and often disappointing, but ever evolving. Just as "Soap Dust" has lulled you in with its lo-fi din (the album was recorded by Big Heet's David Settle), the song reminds you nothing comes easy with a wall of distorted guitars, boosting both the frequency of the message and a nice swift kick in the teeth as far as volume goes.

Further Listening:

Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (May 21st - May 27th)