by Dan Goldin, David Haynes, Tim Crisp, Matt Keim, Tom Alexander, Matt Sigur, Patrick Pilch, Abigail Miglorie, Hugo Reyes, Sabrina Cofer, Erin Bensinger, Aly Muilenburg, B. Levinson, Sarah Knoll, and Joe Gutierrez, Mick Reed, and Evan Welsh
Another year in the books. Felt like a long one… maybe its just me. We’ve been talking about the demise of music press for what feels like forever and this year sort of felt like the nails were hammered in to the ol’ coffin. In turn, Post-Trash has never felt more alive, ready to do whatever it is we do, with grace and excitement… or maybe we just share a bunch of music we like. Either way, there’s no shortage of it and more than anything, we hope we’ve helped you to find something new to listen to and to love. As the lines of genre continue to blur, experimentation runs rampant and with it comes interesting music.
Our “Year in Review" is a comprehensive guide to our favorite releases of the year without a pre-determined length. If we loved a record, we're including it. Simple as that (unless we just plum forgot it, in which case our sincerest of apologies). It's impossible to listen to everything released in a year and everyone has different tastes, but we feel pretty great about these particular records. Your next favorite band could be out there, it's just a matter of listening to something new. Journey down this rabbit hole with us. Together, we've profiled 100+ of the releases that make Post-Trash the site that it is, with countless others recommended as "further listening," a section for releases you might have missed, and we might not have spent enough time with. We're not saying these are the best albums, but rather our favorites. Discover something new. Buy some records. Support the music you love. Thank you for reading Post-Trash and help spread the word if you like what we’re up to. - DG
J A N U A R Y :
EIS Records
The thing about Dan Francia’s full length debut is that you’ve never heard anything quite like it. Come Back To Life is a singular vision in its compositional construction, but it's a thousand ideas coming together from a cast of near 40 musicians. Everyone plays their part (both big and small) to carry out Francia’s cinematic world of freak jazz, fractured twee, warm acoustic rock, and jerky punk. It’s unpredictable from song to song and from verse to verse within those songs. Anything can and will happen, thanks to guests like Emma Witmer (gobbinjr), Ani Ivry-Block (Palberta/Shimmer), Luke Chiaruttini (Bueno), and of course one of Brooklyn’s finest bassists, the man of hour, Dan Francia himself. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Joyful Noise Recordings
Netherlands trio Eerie Wanda’s sophomore album Pet Town was released via Joyful Noise in January, a record written by Marina Tadic during a period of isolation. The band recorded their individuals parts alone in different parts of the country to capture the feeling. “Moon,” the stunning first single most definitely carries that lonely vibe with it, the finger picked guitar and resonant bass notes so sparse and stirring you can feel them float through empty space. Each vocal line is delivered soft and clear, a blurring between reality and escape. The song’s drum machine produced rhythmic pulse is introduced in the second verse and while the tempo shifts ever so slightly, the dreamy euphoria remains blissful. The album’s second single presented a different side of the record, one less tranquil but every bit as captivating. “Sleepy Eyes” opens a repeated chord structure, sparse and somewhat grungy, and then the vocals hit with dazzling rhythmic quality, each word punctuated for stunning effect. With the rhythm fully established already, the introduction of the song’s percussion adds a great texture to the song’s cemented groove... and that’s before the sweeping keys bring the psych crescendo. From their the album shimmers with memorable songs that build upon one another, as welcome an escape as any. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Merge Records
The hooks throughout Mike Krol’s latest album loom larger than skyscrapers, his infectious fuzzed out jangle pop sticking each chorus like super glue. While the Los Angeles via Wisconsin songwriter has been using his sticky pop charm for nearly a decade, his music has never quite been so “hit” friendly as Power Chords, a focused gem of songs that instantly feel as though you’ve been listening to them your entire life, their first impressions as radiant as their tenth. There’s plenty of buzzing guitars and pounding rhythms, but nothing rings or pummels any more than it needs, the fuzzy riffs and deeply melodic hooks doing the heavy lifting in quick and catchy earmworm bursts. You’ll be shouting along in no time, it’s that kind of record. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Drag City Records
After a prolific streak of six records in a five year span, White Fence hasn’t been seen since 2014… but Tim Presley (the project’s sole creative force) has remained busy with a solo record under his own name and collaborations with Ty Segall as well as DRINKS (together with Cate Le Bon), both projects having released their excellent sophomore albums last year. He’s returned to White Fence again, this time as Tim Presley’s White Fence, releasing a new record, I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk at the start of the year. His knack for lo-fi psych and swirls of garage pop remains exceptional, mixing programmed and live drums to form the backbone for melodic wandering, Presley’s vocal melodies retaining the human element as the guitars explore texture and space. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Drunken Sailor / Anti Fade Records
Sometimes a new band comes along and leaves an immediate impression. Australia’s Vintage Crop leave an impression from the proper opening moment of the band’s “Company Man,” printer/copier machine sound not-standing. The band’s sarcastic and agitated garage punk / post-punk sound is similar to bands like Ausmuteants and Uranium Club, with the sarcasm and sharp wit fully in tact. Taking aim at the corporate wage slave and suit and tie capitalism, there’s a snide energy that ripples through their tightly wound tenacity, with dizzying riffs and a barrage of shifting hi-hat patterns that keep the groove while perpetuating the song’s jittery explosiveness. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
DEERHUNTER “Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?” | GREAT DECEIVERS “In Spirit” | OROBORO “D Y A D” | TØRSÖ “Build and Break” | TROPICAL TRASH “Southern Indiana Drone Footage” | WHELPWISHER “Stale Honey”
F E B R U A R Y :
Silver Age
In 2018 the trio of Czarface (Inspectah Deck, 7L, & Esoteric) teamed up with MF DOOM to release what I consider last year’s best hip-hop album, the critically underrated Czarface Meets Metalface. Keeping the theme of that collaborative record alive, the group are pairing up again, this time with fellow Wu-Tang Clan legend, Ghostface Killah. Czarface Meets Ghostface is quintessential Czarface, bringing the boom-bop of the early 90’s back with hard-edged beats, soul samples, and the crackle of the tape. Inspectah Deck, Ghostface, and Esoteric continue to bring classic line-for-line verses that only serve as a reminder that the veterans remain at the top of the game. For fans of what I’m going to call the “golden era” of hip-hop, the early 90’s, there is none more consistent these days than Czarface and adding the manic energy of Ghostface only makes things better. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify
Ramp Local
The legendary Buck Gooter have single handedly kept the VA DIY scene thriving for well over a decade, the duo marching to the experimental beat of their own drum (or drum machine). A staple of the underground, their sound has ranged from borderline inaccessible noise punk to clamoring industrial blues, ever thrashing it’s minimalist brutality with artistic promise. It’s rough yet focused, a sparse and ugly sound that drips along at its own mechanical ingenuity. Finer Thorns, the band’s eighteenth album (!) is a fantastic mix of primal blues punk and electronic psych, the band’s howling sound scrapping with rust against hypnotic grooves and programmed blips and bleeps of melody. It’s an abrasive record, walking a thin line between dissonance and dance-punk, but an essential listen for all with open mind and an artistic curiosity. RIP Terry Turtle and long live Buck Gooter. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
Talk To Me, the debut EP from Western Mass trio Editrix is the record we’ve all been waiting for, we just didn’t know it was coming. A new band formed by the incomparable Wendy Eisenberg, it marks their return to the wildly unpredictable punk format (since the untimely demise of Birthing Hips), following a pair of avant-garde guitar albums released toward the end of last year. While those records were fascinating in their own right, with Editrix, Eisenberg (guitar/vocals), Josh Daniel (drums), and Steve Cameron (bass) are shredding their way through post-hardcore and noise punk songs with a pop-centric core that sticks in sweet melodies and syrupy hooks. The playing is wild and technical at times and straightforward at others, a perfect balance of freaked out revulsion and pointed lyrics that take aim at shitty male behavior and unwanted sexual advances. Get very excited, this band is amazing. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp
Drag City Records
Following the band’s exceptional Castle Face Records debut and a single on Famous Class, Los Angeles’ Flat Worms have moved over to Drag City for their latest EP, Into The Iris, building on their incredible framework and adding a bit more noise into the proceedings. Still riding fast tempos and hypnotic motorik rhythms, the band are pushing into new territory while tightening their already signature sound, making songs that songs that rip and shred but allow you to zone out in krautrock bliss at the same time. Textured with paint-peeling guitars and vocals that are yelped and often sarcastic, Into The Iris is constantly boiling over and exploding under pressure. If you like your beats fast and rigid with your guitars blistering and loose, except no substitution. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Feel It Records
Virginia’s Fried Egg released their full length debut, Square One, in February via Feel It Records (The Cowboys, U-Nix, Protruders), having established themselves as one of the DMV’s most exciting hardcore bands in the past few years. The album sounds both classic and innovative, a relentless barrage of riffs of stampeding rhythms, jostling around with a reckless tempo that contorts and expands without warning, the guitars joyously feeding back in response as the vocals are barked in rapid disdain. This one seriously shreds with a carnival like back and forth that pulls from the Devo catalog before the band spit into a sludgier, noisier territory, packing the last lumbering punch. It’s a record that spits and smolders all in its path and it sure is great to listen to while at work. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
Natasha Jacobs, better known as Thelma, has one of those incredible powerful and versatile voices, the kind you may associate with Tori Amos, Joanna Newsom, or even Angel Olsen. There’s a sense of control as her pitch swings between low and high, with cracks and gasps in between. There’s a theatrical sense to it all, an otherworldly assurance that anything is possible if you believe it enough. It’s been a rough time for Jacobs since the release of her debut due to several severe medical conditions, but Thelma returned with a new album, The Only Thing, sounding as dazzling as ever even as the make-up of the project has changed and strayed a bit from guitar focused music. The songs depend on artsy rhythmic pulses, sustained synths, and more than anything, Jacobs’ incredible vocal range. Her gentle shifts and warbling hooks create an epic sensibility that plinks and soars in a real majestic, orchestrated, glow. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
ANEURYSM “Awareness” | THE COOL GREENHOUSE “Crap Cardboard Pet” | ENDON “Boy Meets Girl”| GUIDED BY VOICES “Zeppelin Over China” | HEADROOM “New Heaven” | TUNIC “Complexion”
M A R C H :
Suicide Squeeze Records
Every time The Coathangers have a new record I find myself saying something along the lines of “even as the band continue to refine their sound, the magic of their garage punk bliss only grows, with nuance and melody stronger than ever.” Well, it’s true and they’ve done it again, taking another giant leap further into sweetened studio pop, but retaining the bite and the ramshackle jittery nature that puts the spark in their fire. The new record is prettier than usual, with bouncing beats and bright vocal swoons driving in earworm hooks that kick up a bit of dust, contrasting and pairing well the hypnotic essence of their songs. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Disposable America
Horse Jumper of Love released an excellent album this year (So Divine), but two of its members (John Margaris and Dimitri Giannopoulos) also debuted as Community College with John’s brother Dan on drums. Their first album, Comco, has all the feeling of a low-stakes album; day-in-the-life lyrics, sleepy pacing, and a lo-fi recording style all lend themselves to an album that feels small-scale. Don’t let that fool you, though: Comco is a beautiful record precisely because of its vulnerability and care. This is slowcore flash fiction – slow, short songs that are populated with moods, characters, and aching humanity. Margaris’ lyrics, which blend the ordinary and the surreal, and the band’s stripped-back production draw you in so incredibly close, you’ll imagine a tiny band playing in your head. - Tom Alexander || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
The Flenser
Released in March, Elizabeth Colour Wheel’s Nocebo is a continuum of the band’s angst-ridden narrative of dark intensity and doom. For the last few years, they have been triumphant in their sonic achievements for this type of gothy mood with a powerful punch, weaving a vocal fullness that whispers and nearly breaks like glass, coloring gloomy drum lines that travel towards a void the guitars unlock. A cunning emotional echo glides in their wake. Although the soft ‘Pink Palm’ opens like a flower at night, this alluring vocal tone gives way to the band’s daring edge of noise that seems to bounce away and fall in an organized blend of dark harmony that laces the album together. Nocebo is the static underneath mental disarray and frustration, inviting you to the haunting and angsty introspection the record calls for, quite perfectly depicted in “Somnambulist” and then in the heavier, cascading “23.” The eclecticism Nocebo evokes is nothing short of expected, though, there’s a blinding cohesiveness to each song that truly embarks on the mental noise loop Elizabeth Colour Wheel just sank their teeth into and now you want to pull your hair out. - Abigail Miglorie || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Born Yesterday Records
St. Louis’ Glued have spent the past few years becoming one of the Midwest’s most exciting bands. Having released a string of increasingly great EPs, including last year’s Insides, the quartet’s songs are dense and unpredictable, shifting when least expected. While those EPs were all exceptional in short bursts, Glued released Cool Evil, their full length debut, in March via Born Yesterday Records. They’ve pulled back the fuzz and reverb that coated so much of their prior work, and every knotted guitar convulsion and snapped rhythm can be heard in clarity, the band sounding better than ever as the atmosphere crumbles around them. Much of the album is anxious and menacing, a deep dive into the post-punk and the progressive world Glued have made their own. Complacency kills and Glued know it, there’s a cynical bent to their lyrical hopelessness. As always with Glued, their instrumentals speak as loudly as the vocals, their tangled visions as brilliant as any. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Don Giovanni Records
The main narrative attached to the release of Laura Stevenson’s fifth record The Big Freeze was the story of major indie critics dropping the ball on covering one of this generation’s best songwriters. All of this is true, but more than a talking point for writers to direct ire towards certain publications, it’s that sort of “fuck this noise” energy that’s surrounds Stevenson’s compositions on The Big Freeze. This is a record made for Laura Stevenson by Laura Stevenson. She’s comfortable letting the songs go where they go—allowing her voice to guide us into darker corners on “Value Inn” and “Living Room NY.” The Big Freeze is a haunting 10 tracks; a standout record within an already accomplished catalog from an artist whose story is still being written. - Tim Crisp || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Double Double Whammy
Over the course of just sixteen minutes, singer-songwriter Hannah Read strums her way through a series of vignettes that delve thoroughly and unflinchingly into the heart of what it means to feel for another. Each track is brief yet perfectly measured, quiet yet self-assured, delicate yet unyielding; the album takes some of the more frequently discounted traits of lo-fi and spins them all into strengths, using the genre as a foundation on which she builds a masterpiece. Read’s latest release as Lomelda, M for Empathy, was recorded over a single weekend with her brother in their small hometown of Silsbee, TX, and released on Double Double Whammy in March 2019. Simply stated, it’s lo-fi bedroom pop in its most evolved form. The album’s short length and simple production allow Read’s skill as a songwriter to shine. - Erin Bensinger || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Thrill Jockey Records
With the release of Oozing Wound’s fourth album, High Anxiety, 2019 got a whole lot better. The Chicago trio known for their blend of thrash, punk, noise rock, and metal (without any genre posturing on their behalf), rip and shred with the best of bands. Balancing between speed and sludge, Oozing Wound create music that is steeped in dirt and a lyrical disdain for much of the bullshit that riddles the music industry and the world at large. They take aim at those who would use their popularity for toxic behavior, and Oozing Wound simply won’t stand for it, offering their own brand of crushing catharsis that kicks in the teeth of all that is shitty and privileged beyond consequence. Listening to High Anxiety is something like getting stoned with your friends and talking some well justified shit, personified in thrashy noise punk tinged metal. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Domino Recording Co.
SASAMI’s self-titled album is a genuine masterclass in songwriting of all varieties, an introduction to Sasami Ashworth’s music that feels so expertly shaped and constructed it’s hard to believe it’s her debut. She’s spent time playing in Cherry Glazerr and recording together with Vagabon and Hand Habits, but she stands as a singular voice on her album. At one moment she’s digging into dream pop with bent chords and layered fuzz (think Alvvays meets The Cardigans) and the next she’s exploring hyper-cool motorik rhythms, transfixed in place so that she can color the spaces around the groove. It’s a personal record that feels like a shared experience, Sasami setting the tones with relatable lyrics and then burning the ground all around them, reflecting and reacting with unapologetic resolve. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
Our love for Shady Bug’s sophomore album Lemon Lime continues to grow with every passing listen. The record, built on hard opposing dynamics and gradually devolving melodies, never rests in one place and it never allows you to get comfortable (in a good way). There’s enough generic indie rock being made if you want something boring, for those who want a band that’s as divergently interesting as they are adept at dense hooks and bright melodies, Shady Bug have to be among the best. Built around Hannah Rainey’s incredible vocals and her deceptively shreddy guitar work, the entire band revolve around detached ideas, pushing their framework off its hinges and into new realms without notice, snapping right back into place with a dexterity and grace that few bands achieve. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
The Leaf Label
London’s Snapped Ankles describe their sound as “AGRROcultural PUNKTRONICA” and aside from the fact they essentially dress up at walking bushes, it’s still a pretty apt description. An easier concept to embrace however might be the fact that they truly sound like what Devo would have in the distant future, their punk riding anxious riddled synths deep into hyperspace. On their sophomore album, Stunning Luxury, the band keep their motorik punk and repetitive experimentations pulsating with quirky charm and tightly compacted rhythms that ensnare you with no choose but to feel the groove. While the songs are built of tribal rhythms and alien synth frequencies, their dance music from another planet is accessible and easy to obsess over. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Sooper Records
Brooklyn’s Nate Amos is one of those musical polymaths who is seemingly good at everything he tries. As a member of Water From Your Eyes, Thanks For Coming, Kolb, Anthony Freemont’s Garden Solutions, and beyond, his efforts have stretched across genres and temperaments with incredible results all along the way. This Is Lorelei is the best example of this, Amos’ long-running solo project where just about anything goes and everything can be explored (just take a stroll through their Bandcamp page). Keeping with his ever prolific streak, Sooper Records released The Mall, The Country and The Dirt, The Dancing, two new full length albums in March, as both individual records, and a limited edition double CD set. The compositions that make up these records are every bit as cinematic and brilliant as they are experimental and deconstructed, it’s a wild journey through sound and production that’s both refined and boisterous. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
NNA Tapes
Simon Hanes’ Tredici Bacci is a joyous celebration of nostalgia. Previous records like Amore Per Tutti and Vai! Vai! Va! are loving explorations of Italian cinema scores from the ‘60s. Their most recent album, La Fine Del Futuro (in English, “the end of the future”) is a flash forward in time, still retaining the brilliant precision and ear for authenticity that comes with the Tredici Bacci name. Instead of working within the genre boundaries of film score, La Fine Del Futuro branches out, not only into music of the ‘70s and beyond, but into American musicals (“Promises, Promises”, “Felicity Grows”), krautrock (“Minimalissimo”), and the wide-eyed avant-garde (“Impressioni”, “Ambulette”) as well. With an orchestra of over a dozen players, these songs are lush and larger-than-life. What makes this album of 2019’s best is that it feels like the first Tredici Bacci album that is uniquely itself – not a love letter to other styles of music, but a melting pot of all of these influences, transmuted into something new and exciting. Hanes’ compositions have never felt more direct, grand, or vital than this. - Tom Alexander || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Static Shock Records
The Cosmo Cleaners is truly mental. The latest offering from Minneapolis punks Uranium Club is a mind-shattering experience, but it’s also intensely cerebral. From the get-go, every song honors the arty post-punk of the past greats, embodying the Talking Heads lyric “Don’t touch me / I’m a real live wire.” Tracks like “Grease Monkey” go all out with some good ol’ crushed-by-an-industrial-society absurdity, while others (“Flashback Arrestor,” “Geodesic Son”) find the middle point between “Whip It” and overdosing on speed. Uranium Club experiments with spoken word on The Cosmo Cleaners: with “Michael’s Soliloquy,” they put their spin on “Parklife”-esque narration; the monstrous closer/quasi-title track marries the band’s wiry instrumentation to a kind of exercise in modern art soundscapes. The band’s influences are clear, but they wield them like a bludgeon rather than let them overwhelm their vast creative aspirations. - Wes Muilenburg || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
CHEEKFACE “Therapy Island” | CHRIS COHEN “Chris Cohen” | CROWS “Silver Tongues” | DARK TEA “Dark Tea” | DJ MUGGS & MACH-HOMMY “Tuez-Les Tous” | GLAZER / SPOWDER “Split” | HAND HABITS “Placeholder” | LEGGY “Let Me Know Your Moon” | LOW LIFE “Downer Edn” | R.M.F.C. “Hive - Volumes 1 & 2”
A P R I L :
Anti Fade Records
Of all the “egg punk” bands popping up over the past few years, there’s always been two that stand out from the pack, Minneapolis’ Uranium Club and Melbourne’s Ausmuteants, a scrappy band whose members are involved in countless projects (Alien Nosejob, Cereal Killer, School Damage, etc) but their combined efforts of twitchy futuristic and bitingly sarcastic post-punk is on a level all its own. It’s been three years since the great Band of the Future LP, but the band are back with Ausmuteants Present: The World in Handcuffs, a scathing concept album written from the deranged point of a view of a cop out for blood. It’s everything you hate about the police and law enforcement distilled into first person narratives of “justice,” with a massive heaping of sardonic scorn and tongue in cheek agitation. Tightly wrapped and warped around discordant synths and wonky rhythmic structures, the record is brilliantly dizzying. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Buzzhowl Records
The full length debut from Leeds trio Beige Palace could be the first truly great surprise for me this year. Entitled Leg, it’s a gift that simply keeps on giving with each repeated listen, an onslaught of minimalist abrasiveness. The band work prolonged progressions and feedback stretched beyond recognition into the mud, the slowly evolving mud that only seems to delight the more deranged it gets. In the tradition of incredible noise rock bands from the UK, both old and new (Mclusky, Kong, Blacklisters, Irk), Beige Palace achieve their charm in a menacing way, diverting expectations and bludgeoning just when you’ve been caught off guard. The album is dynamic and full of great atonal melodies and thick rhythmic thuds that work against each other in a perfect dirge. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Joyful Noise Recordings
The almighty Big Business never disappoint and yet they never really get the credit they deserve as one of the best gotdamn bands on the planet. It hardly needs to be said and at the same time should be shouted from the mountaintops. The colossal duo of Jared Warren and Coady Willis (a match nearly too perfect) have done it again with The Beast You Are, another stampeding testament to the band’s unique art-sludge sound, one that continues to expand into more melodic territory without abandoning any of the howling ferocity and utterly enormous rhythms that make the two-piece band sound more like an oncoming army. Big Business have always sorta sounded like the light shining on a new post-apocalyptic day, and the enormity of their six full length continues to find new ways to crush skulls and blow minds while digging further into accessibility in a way only these two can. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
Blending together fractured shards of garage punk, krautrock, post-hardcore, and experimental no-wave, Blessed’s sound is laser-beam focused and expanded further in every direction on their first attempt at album length exploration. Consistently pounding and pulsating with rhythms that feel near mechanical but shift without notice, Blessed swerve around intricate beats, their guitars and synths swarming like an infestation that grows between each tightened groove. It’s an uncanny ability to be both hypnotic and wildly divergent, keeping an audience transfixed despite an avalanche of sharp changes and knotted progressions. Songs like “Pill” and the immersive “Zealot” pride themselves in keeping expectations off balanced, never settling into place as the band follow their own warped rabbit hole downward into a vortex of unbelievably locked in and spaced-out punk brilliance. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Get Better Records
There’s no question about it, Philadelphia trio Control Top’s debut rips from start to finish. It’s irate and infectious, a perfect combination of cultural disdain and post-punk sensibilities, raging against those that would keep the marginalized down in fiery bursts. Ali Carter’s lyrics are finely tuned and directly pointed, screaming out with an intensity that feels genuine, an airing of grievances that isn’t so much for entertainment so much as something she needs to exorcise, captured in perfect on the quick and to the point highlight of “Office Rage,” as she sings, “Service with a smile? Eat shit.” The band rip and twist from one volatile post-punk song to the next, their intensity never waining and the record never sputtering. It’s wall to wall noise inflected pop bliss, each song packing its own well-directed punch to the throat. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Damnably Records
Otoboke Beaver are making punk music that actually feels dangerous. The all-female four-piece plays fast, starts and stops on a whim, and layers in an obscene amount of gang vocals. The overall effect is pure adrenalin, capturing the IDGAF that has always been the ethos of punk, but often seems missing. Their new album, Itekoma Hits, pushes its way into your head, shoulders past any intellectual thoughts, and batters itself senseless against your brain. The riffs and beats are a pandora's box of punk and hardcore from decades past, and the lyrics are either in Japanese or purposefully mispronounced English. Despite the difficulty parsing the lyrics, the rush of listening to four people pelt hell-mell through their songs having the time of their lives is such a high, that needing to understand what they're yelling seems very unimportant. - Matt Keim || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Fire Talk Records
Naming your album Essentials requires either serious guts or a good sense of humor. Patio have both. Their first full-length album is a collection of wry, cool post-punk hits, all of which feel like they could have been singles. Essentials is a record of life in transition: the turbulent way that life changes quickly and easily in the city. Relationships grow and crumble, esteem cycles between highs and lows, and the future is never certain (for better and worse). All of that uncertainty is filtered through Patio’s unique style and voice, which is humorous, self-deprecating, and very specific. The album’s centerpiece, however, is “Open,” the most serious track on Essentials, when listeners are allowed to experience the crushing weight of the death of a loved one. The fact that this nakedly honest song is on the same record as “Boy Scout” -- a wry tune that name-checks Washer and mentions retail therapy -- is a testament not only to Patio’s songwriting chops, but how easily they seem to be able to write about what it is like to be alive in all of its messy glory. Essentials lives up to its name. - Tom Alexander || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Hardly Art Records
La Luz’s Shana Cleveland (vocals, guitar) released Night of the Worm Moon, a new solo album in early April via Hardly Art. Exceptional title aside, the record is stunning, a delicate swirl of surf pop, cosmic folk, and what sounds like a Western flamenco influence in the guitar playing. Like the sun setting in the desert, there’s a chill in the otherwise hot air all around Cleveland’s lyrics and the song’s ominous acoustics. The melodies float with a cinematic quality, dangerous and beautiful, like a transmission lost in the dust, drifting in and out of focus. Cleveland is creating songs that both float and ramble through reserved arid soundscapes, her guitars accompanied by gently sweeping strings and her smooth comfort of a voice. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
A wild voyage into outer-space, Sharkmuffin’s Gamma Gardening is best experienced in full, a concept record of sci-fi origins that happens to shred beyond Earthly imaginations. The Brooklyn trio have never sounded better, their sound laser focused as they tear through sonic oblivion with surfy charm and stampeding rhythmic force. While best known for reckless garage punk and glam-grunge, the band are dipping their toes everything throughout these eighteen minutes, from prog to psych inflected hardcore, and it all works to flesh the story of one space dominatrix and her genetically altered baby and the chaos that comes with it. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Grand Closing
Slauson Malone—the moniker used by Jasper Marsalis—dropped a beautiful document of abstract hip-hop on his solo debut A Quiet Farwell, Twenty Sixteen to Twenty Eighteen. As a former member of the New York collective Standing on a Corner, Slauson Malone has been one of the key players in the sLUms Collective of sample-heavy, loop-centric lo-fi hip-hop some refer to as the Lo-NY Renaissance. Malone has branched out on his own, departing SOAC last year, and constructed a lovely little world with A Quiet Farwell. Beats, samples, and Malone’s bars all meld together in ensemble. There are tracks where Malone’s voice is so quiet in the mix it functions more as a bilabial beat; but his voice is prominent throughout this collage, no matter how he chooses to use it. - Tim Crisp || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Gogul Mogul Records
Brooklyn rapper Your Old Droog just released what could be one of the year’s best hip-hop albums, and he did it with little to no warning or press buzz. He’s been one of the more promising MCs for the past few years since his great second album Packs, shinning the light on the early 90’s focus on lyricism without the nonsense that runs rampant through today’s mainstream rap. The songs on his latest, It Wasn’t Even Close, rarely have hooks, and they’re better for it, Droog simply going in conceptually with each song, enough clever bars to create a classic. He’s honest about his place in the rap game as he’s laid low when the industry came calling but also reminds you on the opening rhyme “quiet as kept, I’m the best, but it’s like if you ain’t screaming it all the time, it ain’t true, there’s no depth.” The record is built on non-traditional beats (“Babushka,” “Funeral March (The Dirge)”) and dusty boom-bap perfection, each lending themselves to Droog’s fiery lyricism, rapping circles around the otherwise casual soundscapes, his poetic nature popping off the page in every track. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Porcelain Music
Pretend you’re a parent. Pretend you’re a parent and your kid is a total space cadet. You’ve gotten the hang of keeping this tiny human alive and now they’re becoming a picture-in-a-dictionary idea of a person. They could be sweet or shy or silly but this is the third note home this week and you can’t just paint your face in the middle of class and I know you like painting but where did you even get this paint? Now they’ll only answer to Sputnik which you really don’t mind and it’s actually kinda cute but when you’re cleaning the paint out of Sputnik’s overall pockets this kid wants to show you the picture they made for you and they take your hand and tell you to close your eyes and say “COME IN!!!” You open your eyes and walk in and sure it’s all over the walls but it’s beautiful, like, beautiful-beautiful. Now you’re speechless and this kid’s just standing there beaming and you can’t even be mad so you crack a smile, step back and take a picture. - Patrick Pilch || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
CLUB NIGHT “What Life” | THE CRADLE “The Glare of Success” | GUIDED BY VOICES “Warp and Woof” | PROTRUDERS “Poison Future” | REAL BLOOD “This Is Gonna Hurt” | RENATA ZEIGUER “Faraway Business” | SCRAP BRAIN “A Journey Into Madness” | WAND “Laughing Matter” | ZULA “Stepping”
M A Y :
Southern Lord Records
With A Gaze Among Them, released via Southern Lord, BIG | BRAVE’s music is a special kind of indescribable, the heavy kind that sounds like pieces of all your favorite bands, but reconfigured in a way you’ve never heard before. Their album has elements of post-metal, doom, and eerie drone, but their sound is far prettier than it is heavy (at least in the traditional sense of the word). It’s as heavy as slow pouring concrete, but more in the emotional heft, than any pummeling. BIG | BRAVE do it with atmosphere and extended structures but the key to the minimalist menace is the gorgeous vocals of Robin Wattie, her voice carrying through the dust and desolation as the band rip and contort through serene landscapes and tension filled dirges (think Scout Niblett meets Aaron Turner… yep, that good). I’ve never heard anything quite like it and I’m now officially obsessed. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
4AD Records
Perennial fan-favorites Big Thief can’t be stopped and why would anyone even want to try. The indie rock stalwarts have excelled at introspective folk since their first record and they’ve continued expanding that world with each release since. Building off what came before, with the strength of Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting at its core, the quartet have gone otherworldly with U.F.O.F., a celestial record that soars beyond our gravity and into the next while retaining their gentle and thoughtful craft. It’s an album brings the depths of their radiant lyricism and warps the music to something more alien, more experimental, without subverting the accessibility. This is Big Thief’s meditative bliss, a serene plane of aural existence that paired with Two Hands’ raw approach prove they remain one of indie rock’s best. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Mexican Summer Records
On her fifth album, Cate Le Bon orchestrates an eccentric collage of post-punk and art-rock. Reward feels like a room, with trinkets and souvenirs scattered across the floors and shelves, a glimpse of each initiating an eerily familiar pang in your gut. The singer delivers her lines with a breezy elegance and cool, expressing autonomy and yearning in the same breath. She’s backed by a tight group of musicians adept at the minimalist execution each composition requires. The attention to craft shines through. Le Bon’s mix of zany wordplay and woozy hollers makes for an astounding listening experience, one easily escaped into and worthy of frequent visits. - Joe Gutierrez || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Prescriptions Music
Christian Fitness have released their sixth album, You Are The Ambulance, and we’d be damned if it isn’t one of the best records we’ve heard so far this year. The project of Andrew “Falco” Falkous (Future of the Left, Mclusky) have outdone themselves yet again with a collection of songs that return to “form” with jerky punk anthems that can be shouted along to with increasingly insane delight. It’s sardonic and sharp tongued as ever, but there are more than a few enormous hooks, usually where you’d least expect them. Tracks like “Hey Dave, Don’t Date Yourself” and “Getting Stuck Is Funny Sometimes” continue the experimental aspects of last year’s exceptional Nuance - The Musical, subverting the formula while remaining undeniably within Falco’s unique strengths. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp
So Hard Young Boy Records
After nearly fifteen years of records, it’s amazing to see that Boston’s Dust From 1000 Yrs continue to get better and better. Last year’s A Sweet Thing Turns Sour made the case as being the best album Bone has done to date, a release that was rooted in bad times-folk and sincerely nuanced songwriting. Less than a year later Dust is back with Born To Itch, a new full length out now via Bone’s own So Hard Young Boy imprint. After playing some stunning banjo on Puppy Problems’ album, he’s picked it up again for his own record, paying homage to outlaw country and the great wide open West with a dampened twang, gothic folk, and an eerie resolve. The rattling atmosphere and arpeggiated chords are still very much Dust From 1000 Yrs, and the personal tension is as heavy as ever. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Get Better Records
The Philly band’s first full-length sounds celestial and savage all at once, like skating gracefully over shimmery ice with the looming threat of it all falling out beneath you. Catherine Elicson’s ragged guitar swirls and Garrett Koloski’s ferocious drumming are a vehicle for delivering syrupy melodies through Elicson’s voice and the keyboards of Emily Shanahan and Randall Coon. Songs erupt and dissolve, leaving behind serene soundscapes reflecting off stalactites in the sun. Vocals topsy-turvy between shrieked gusts of anguish and angelic, dripping declarations. There’s fury here, and there’s grace. Empath is adept at both. Active Listening demands attention and focus, eyes and ears deliberately squinting to see something in the night. - Joe Gutierrez || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Relapse Records
There’s something very special about Full of Hell and their brand of extreme grindcore. Highly combustible and demonic sounding, the Ocean City, MD band could bring the apocalypse with them and we’d be too immersed in their utterly disgusting grooves to care. Weeping Choir, is a menacing swarm of vocals both croaked and grumbled, a sound like several nightmares personified at once, as the band absolutely destroy structural sensibility of the name of innovative chaos. It’s brutally fast and unapologetically heavy, but there’s a great deal of nuance in their convulsive destruction, howling with demonic fury in a variety of tones to appease the pickiest of grindcore fans. Weeping Choir is a repulsively explosive mix of grinding technicality and disgusted doom-like sludge. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Double Double Whammy
A lot has happened since Gemma’s first album, As Ever. Singer Felicia Douglass expanded her roles in Ava Luna and Dirty Projectors, multi-instrumentalist Erik Gundel released a few solo records (including the fantastic ambient Worn Of My Strings), and the band has signed to Double Double Whammy. As a result, Gemma’s second album, Feeling’s Not A Tempo, is even bigger, even better than their first. A psychedelic trip through pop and funk, Gemma’s multi-layered music is romantic, beautiful, and so much fun. With astounding attention-for-detail, Feeling’s Not A Tempo is dynamic, layered, and exciting. Come for the catchy romps through New York City (“’Til We Lose The Feeling”) and stay for the show-stopping ballads (“Out In The Open”). - Tom Alexander || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Anti Fade Records
If you look to the sky, you’ll catch a glimpse of Hierophants, the cosmic punk band that brushes by Earth roughly every three years. They’re like Halley’s Comet, if Halley’s Comet was from Geelong, Australia and wrote great music. What did they see in the far reaches of space? If their album, Spitting Out Moonlight, is any indication, Hierophants saw lots of dancefloors and fog machines in the ether. Hierophants have never been strangers to a good groove – their last album, Parallax Error, was laden with great rhythmic hooks – but they really lean into that demented disco influence. The band walk a fine line of piss-taking punk and dance-ready melody - the galactic amuse bouche for a wild trip of an album; prepare yourself now and check it out. - Tom Alexander || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
At album number seven, Pile is still improving and creating worthwhile records after more than a decade as a band. Songs move from the emotional devastation of “Hair” to the pummeling effect of “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller” on Green and Gray. Singer Rick Maguire is at his most lyrically plain, shedding his more obtuse lyrics of the last couple records. As a whole, Green and Gray is able to synthesize the best parts of the last two records to create a wonderful addition to Pile’s ever growing discography. - Hugo Reyes || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Roolette Records
Melbourne post-punk band Pinch Points have quietly released one of the year’s best albums, a statement I’lm still happily defending come December. It’s really something else and I can’t stop listening to it. The spindly riffs and sharp rhythmic contusions are restless, jittering from moment to the next, but it’s the band’s ultra thick sarcasm and social skewering gymnastics that put them in a class all their own (right down to the fact they’ve been wearing matching Pinch Points shirts for the entire album run), so biting I nearly hesitate writing this and giving them easy fuel for their fire. That being said, they bring their sardonic sprawl to perfection with a never ending wave of tight shifts and impeccable gang-vocals and harmonies. The lyrics, delivered deadpan and often doubled (and tripled) are offered with such articulation that you’re not going miss a word, as they cut through the fat and roast everything in sight with such a hilarious resolve that it feels brilliantly distasteful. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Ba Da Bing Records
The always amazing She Keeps Bees returned with a new album, Kinship, and the record is… amazing. The duo have been a favorite of ours since we first caught them back in 2010. Jessica Larrabee’s stunning and soulful voice continues to melt our hearts. Together with drummer Andy LaPlant, the band’s music is stark and stunning, using bare bones techniques to address important issues from loss and love to environmental concerns, body images, and empowerment. There’s few bands that give me goosebumps the way She Keeps Bees do, Larrabee’s desolate guitar strums are the perfect balance to her delicate swoon and passionate howls. I have a deep seeded admiration for this band and their new record, a concept album of sorts about the environment and natural spaces, is stunning and transportive. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Wharf Cat Records
Part of what makes a band exciting is that feeling when you never know exactly what comes next. In the years since Urochromes began in the basements of Western Mass, they’ve kept the formula shifting. Adopting new sounds into their erratic punk with touches of hardcore, electronic, no-wave, and sludge, Urochromes expanded their sonic capabilities beyond any expectations commonly reserved for a duo. Trope House, their full length debut via Wharf Cat Records, finds the band using the extended running time to dig deeper and stretch further than ever before into territories both strange and dare I say… accessible. If variety is the spice of life, than Trope House is one spicy album. The band play it weird and loose, bouncing around the walls as they close in around them. Their take on hardcore is delightfully unique and their album is necessity for anyone looking for outsider punk. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
AMYL & THE SNIFFERS “Amyl & The Sniffers” | CHRISTELLE BOFALE “Swim Team“ | CLINIC “Wheeltappers & Shunters” | DEHD “Water” | DRAHLA “Useless Coordinates” | EXHALANTS “…Trample The Cross Underfoot…” | THE GOTOBEDS “Debt Begins at 30” | HALFSOUR “Sticky” | LUNGBUTTER “Honey” | MIKE DONOVAN “Exurbian Quonset” | USA NAILS “Life Cinema”
J U N E :
Black Soprano Family
While Benny The Butcher has been at it for the better part of the decade, both with his peers in Griselda and as a solo artist, 2019 really saw the Buffalo, NY rapper emerge as one of the best. Following last year’s great Tana Talk 3 and appearances on just about every hard-nosed rapper’s singles, Benny The Butcher released The Plugs I Met, hand’s down our favorite hip-hop record in a year that had no shortage of them (even if you’re an old picky boom-bap head like myself). Benny steps out of the Griselda shadows and proves to be one this generation’s strongest lyricists, weaving gangster rap rhymes about both the social struggle and well… moving drugs with the greatest of ease. Rhyming together with legends like Black Thought, Pusha T, and Jadakiss on the record, Benny holds his own (if not outshines) lyrically, cementing himself as an MC worth dissecting each and every clever rhyme. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify
Rough Trade
Black Midi’s debut album Schlagenheim is a masterpiece. The U.K.-based band’s blend of math rock, grunge, post-punk, post-rock and more create a chaotic collection of tracks. From the opening track “953” down to tracks such as “Ducter” and “bmbmbm,” the band showcases their range of talent in their respective instruments. The guitar tone is sharp and precise. It is powerful with enough space to make room for the bass and drums to have their moment. Overall, the album is extremely impressive in it’s scope of sounds and songwriting for a debut album. - Sarah Knoll || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Hydra Head Records
Last year the world lost the inimitable Caleb Scofield of Cave In, Old Man Gloom, and Zozobra, one of heavy music’s greatest forces and a musician that helped form so much of my collective musical tastes. Just before his untimely passing, Scofield and the rest of Cave In had met to record demos for a new album, their first since 2011’s incredible White Silence (a genuine classic). In honor of his memory, the remaining members decided to use those demo recordings for the new album, fittingly titled, Final Transmission. The record recalls the Jupiter era of the band’s sound, heavy as a ton of bricks but warped with “space rock” guitars and dizzying melodies that float over the dense low end quake. They’ve never stayed in the same place for long and yet Final Transmission feels like quintessential Cave In. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
The meteoric rise of Crumb is something special. It’s all happening (seemingly) organically and on the band’s own terms, and it’s well deserved as their specific blend of artistic psych pop has been radiant since their debut EP. With Jinx, their full length debut, the anticipation continued to build with immediate earworm singles that are as direct as we’ve heard from the band. The gorgeously disorienting record delivers on all their promise, slinking into a laid back jazzy grooves that sways with the incredible vocal melodies and the swirling blissed out whir of guitars and textural synths. Just as you’ve become transfixed (it happens pretty much instantly), the album is over, every moment tightened to perfection, demanding to be replayed over and over again. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Keep Cool / RCA Records
Five years ago Freddie Gibbs & Madlib teamed up together for Piñata, a record that paired together one of this decade’s brightest hopes for modern hip-hop and the legendary producer responsible for Madvillainy and so much more. The results were pretty much every bit as good the collaboration would sound on paper, Gibbs crafting his own informed and worldly gangster rap over a variety of unusual and artistic beats that never loose focus even as the shapes shifted. The duo return together with Bandana, an album that continues to push their forward thinking hip-hop into new realms, with Gibbs’ steady flow proving he’s one of this generation’s best. A fish out of water in this era of trap and Soundcloud rappers, he’s someone who could rap circles around most and does so on every gloriously detached beat, running over everything Madlib offers with a hard-nosed ease. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify
Southern Lord Records
Friendship is sort of a misleading name for the monstrous Japanese metal / hardcore / grindcore band, their sound doesn’t necessarily recall images of good pals and light hearted fun. On the other hand, if your idea of a good time is music that pushes that lines on all manners of brutality, well, than Friendship’s sophomore album, Undercurrent, could just be one of the best heavy releases so far this year. The ten tracks dig through distortion and crusty monolithic howls (reminiscent of last year’s impeccable Erosion album) with rattling tempos and riffs that go from crushing to sheer decimation, turning your head to soup in the process. Ever since Post-Trash’s own Jonathan Bannister recommended this one, I haven’t been able to stop listening, the band’s intensity matched only their chops, playing rough and ragged but technically adept to shift at a moments notice from d-beat hardcore, to stampeding grindcore, and to skull shattering metal. Maybe Friendship isn’t for the faint of heart, but then again maybe it’s the catharsis we all need. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp
Triple B Records
Massachusetts metal band Fuming Mouth’s full length debut, The Grand Descent, is real fucking heavy. The colossal terror of the band’s attack comes with no warning, no calm before the storm (unless you count the time before you hit play) and it’s that immediacy that plays a big part in their sound. Mixing together elements of grindcore, sludge, and hardcore, the band are at times reminiscent of gone-but-not-forgotten Trap Them, as they decimate with pummeling three chord grooves and freaked out rhythms. The brutality on The Grand Descent is unrelenting, forever burning the fires within, and pour out in bile and unparalleled fury. It’s no-nonsense metalcore, the kind that will appeal to Converge and Botch fans alike, with an intensity that’s matched by technical ability, without going over the top. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Run For Cover Records
We’ve waited patiently and at last, Boston’s Horse Jumper Of Love released their sophomore album, So Divine, in June. One of our favorite bands making music these days, there’s something special about returning to the world of HJOL, a slow dripped territory that feels majestic and surreal, where nothing is quite as it seems, but everything tends to amaze. Their new album, expectations and all, is stunning with little nuances and textures that radiate from the crawling tempos, every tonal shift accented in small bursts of brilliance as they paint the larger picture at hand. I don’t always know what Dimitri Giannopoulos’ lyrics mean, but that doesn’t make them any less spectacular as he offers glimpses into distant dreams and streams of conscious thought. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Epitaph Records
At the end of a full play of Patience, I always feel like I just did 26 minutes of cardio, unearthed a deep personal truth in therapy, and had a round of drinks with my best friends all at once. The absolutely stellar “Drunk II” is the album’s thesis, and the rest is just gravy: the aggressive punk of “Cream” and “F.U.C.A.W.” pairs beautifully with the gut-wrenching, slow-burning alternative rock track “Fear/+/Desire.” Patience is an indictment of inequity, oppression, and violence, which is to say it’s a reflection on what it is to live this life in a body that is not a white, cisgender man’s. It’s almost unbelievable how much self-assertion, catharsis, and fuzz is packed into this brief record, but we have no choice but to believe it, and Mannequin Pussy has really raised the bar by pulling it off. - Erin Bensinger || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Paradise of Bachelors
“Never smother that mystical song that sits deep inside of you/ alone,” Mega Bog aka Erin Birgy, the oracle, advises in the midst of “Truth in the Wild,” one of Dolphine’s standout tracks. This isn’t any oracle’s advice to an unwitting seeker, Birgy heeds her own wisdom and basks in the reward. As though from a mentor to a mentee, she reveals the truth to sight itself, only shortly after falling back: “I want to play with the one I love/ I want to be with the one I love.” Wise ones have desires too, bickering inside and begging for space. On Dolphine, Birgy transcends, opening desires and sorrows and letting them breath with flowering strings, synth, guitar, drums, voice. It inherits hues from 2017’s Happy Together, but Birgy pushes them bluer, darker, and deeper. She makes them sweet, burgundy too. Dolphine absorbs and transports like signals from another time and place, somehow summoned, the result is a lasting impression and mood, airy as it is. - B. Levinson || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
DC’s Mock Identity are carrying the torch of their cities punk scene and making music that speaks for the downtrodden. It’s bold and brilliant, post-hardcore music that flexes more brains than it does brawn… but it most definitely rips as well. Last year the band released their full length debut, Paradise, to high praise from all who managed to come across it, and the quartet have followed it up with the clamoring Where You Live EP. Led by the stunning and commanding voice of Adriana-Lucia Cotes, their tightly knotted punk is rooted in a collective passion for “experimentation, social awareness, and a desire to disrupt the toxicity infecting society.” It’s a welcome interruption and a pointed fuck you to those that stand in the way of common decency. With unpredictable shifts and erratic rhythms, the band at times recall hometown heroes Shudder To Think, Bikini Kill, and even Mi Ami at times, a compliment we do not use lightly. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Polyvinyl Records
At its core, Black Friday is a record about love: romantic or platonic, tender or vengeful, toward a body or toward a soul. Ellen Kempner’s distinctive breathy vocals pair beautifully with twangy guitar riffs and light, shimmering percussion on every track. “Aaron,” a delightful folksy-indie-poppy ode to Kempner’s partner and her joy at witnessing his gender transition is a standout. On the other end of the emotional spectrum, the neo-murder ballad “Killer” poignantly channels the righteous rage that sometimes lives alongside love: “I wanna be the one who kills the man who hurt you, darlin.” Kempner’s melodies and emotional insights always stick in my head for days after each listen, pulling me back to Palehound again and again. - Erin Bensinger || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
I Complain is sort of a second start for Alex Molini’s (Pile, Stove, Jackal Onasis) Philary project. After an emotional EP of moody and depressive songs, the full length debut takes a different path altogether, one that would rather decimate its feelings in sludge and enormous fuzzed out metal riffs, delivered in short bursts of anxiety and cathartic aggression. Quick and to the point, the songs on I Complain are ruthless in their approach, blistering at all times, and free of anything remotely “clean” in tonality. The colossal riffs dig in and leave a path of destruction in its wake. Molini’s vocals act as melodic counterpoint, a semblance of (occasionally screeching) pop on an otherwise unrelenting wave of noise. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Ramp Local Records
We were introduced to Chicago’s Spirits Having Fun last Spring and were blown away by “Electricity Explorer”. Having mentioned the band’s debut album would be released in the “not-too-distant future,” the day has come with Auto-Portrait out now via Ramp Local. The record is a jittery and chaotic piece of tangled art-pop, the kind of sound the band (which includes members of Tredici Bacci, Wei Zhongle, and Cowboy Band) do so damn well. Led by Katie McShane (guitar/vocals) and her visionary approach to deconstructed pop, Auto-Portrait sounds on the verge of collapse or collision at all times, the interwoven guitars and bass taking a funky tonality before diverging again and again, shifting at the speed the average person blinks. They keep it altogether throughout, a tight and dizzying bit of wonderment that’s sewn together with the left-field hooks in the unlikeliest of places. Sounds weird? It is, and we love it. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
XL Records
The city has swallowed Thom Yorke whole on his latest solo album, ANIMA. Throughout these nine tracks, Yorke is in peak dystopian form. Twenty some-odd years ago, he and Radiohead would create warning with guitar rock and prog-like bursts. Today, Yorke has sharpened his electronic style, using shuffling hi-hats, trip-hop drum kits and warped keyboards to mimic the rush of modern-day traffic and white noise. Always prescient, Yorke paints a portrait of a world driven to madness by technology and anonymity. The core of ANIMA, like most of Yorke's work, is humanity and that slight bit of hope that keeps us and him going. On the beautifully sparse "Dawn Chorus," he sings of second chances without the usual mystery. "Back up the cul de sac, come on, do you worst...if you could do it all again, a little fairy dust...if you must, you must." Like the best of us, Yorke is afraid of what this weird world might hold, and he just wants one more day to hold close who and what he loves. In the next world, we're all seemingly paranoid androids who want nothing more than to slow down. - Matt Sigur || LISTEN: Spotify
Fire Records
Seemingly out of nowhere Vanishing Twin arrived and immediately whisked us away to another world. One of space age reverb, tropicalia rhythms, and hushed melodies. They make the same futuristic bliss that worked wonders for both Stereolab and Broadcast, and they do so with a light on the toes grace, gliding from astral plane to plane, experimenting with fractured harmonies and jazzy nuances. Strings lilt in time with echoed vocals and keys that land only to sputter in a multitude of different directions. It’s an incredible debut album from the London based band that has catapulted them to “buzz band” status and for good reason. It’s easy to swoon over The Age of Immunology, their luscious debut album, textured to perfection and carving out their own serene space in psychedelic pop. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
A DEER A HORSE “Everything Rots That Is Rotten” | AVA LUNA “Pigments” | BAD BREEDING “Exiled” | BEAK> “Life Goes On” | BENCH PRESS “Not The Past, Can’t Be The Future” | CEREAL KILLER “The Beginning & End of Cereal Killer” | DROIDS BLOOD “Be Free” | DUMB “Club Nites” | GOLDEN PELICANS “Grinding for Gruel” | JEANINES “Jeanines” | KALEIDOSCOPE “After The Futures…” | MARBLEMOUTH “Nest” | SHELLAC “The End of Radio” | SKIN TAGS “Skin Tags” | WHELPWISHER “Good Fortune” | YOUR OLD DROOG “Transportation”
J U L Y :
Relapse Records
When Cherubs, Austin’s legendary noise rock trio, returned in 2015 after twenty years apart, it would have been fair for expectations to be low, and yet the band’s come-back album, 2 Ynfynyty found the band in prime form. With one of the best albums of that year, Cherubs proved they still had a lot of life left in them, having since released an EP and playing a handful of shows around the US and abroad. In December the band announced they had joined the ranks at Relapse Records, and now they’ve released Immaculada High, one of the year’s best albums. “Sooey Pig,” the album’s first single was a great re-introduction to the band’s non-traditional noise rock sprawl, full of loud and decimated guitars with serrated melodies that could be construed as “pop” in another timeline. Big riffs, big dissonance, and psychedelic ugliness. Cherubs make loud and twisted music in their own image, and they do better than most. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Double Double Whammy
2019 was an incredible year for lo-fi, minimalistic, and self-produced music (lumped together by some into a category called “bedroom pop,” regardless of genre). Florist’s record Emily Alone, a solo effort by songwriter Emily Sprague, is a delicate, stripped-back, and tenderly crafted folk album at the very top of this category. The entire album gives the listener the solitary, cozy feeling of being alone in a remote cabin, detached from everything and yet connected to so much more. Sprague’s songwriting is immersive and entrancing, and the metaphysical themes of each track — darkness, water, self — are as comforting as they are terrifying. - Erin Bensinger || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Urban Icon Records
Between a busy touring schedule with Wu-Tang Clan in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the seminal 36 Chambers and a never end release schedule with Czarface, the legendary Inspectah Deck still found time to release his fifth album, Chamber No. 9, over the summer. Despite limited fan-fare in terms of a roll-out, The Rebel INS is still proving to be of the WTC’s best and most consistent. He’s the MC that no one wants to rap after (even after a career of setting off many of the best Wu tracks) and he goes in throughout Chamber No. 9 without any flash, favoring instead classic street rap (“No Good,” “What It Be Like”), elder status and a love for hip-hop (“Can’t Stay Away”), and general boasting (“24K,” “Game Don’t Change”). Inspectah Deck is rapping for the love of it, spitting his effortlessly cool rhymes over a collection of dusty beats that always work to his advantage. It’s such a great listen for fans of Wu-Tang and anyone that hard beats and braggadocios MCing. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify
Sad Cactus Records
Cut from a similar cloth as The Cradle, Lrrr (the solo project of Tundrastomper’s Skyler Lloyd) works experimental music into the dreamier folk realms, creating a record that is both mystifying and utterly gorgeous. Recorded in bedrooms in Hadley and Easthampton, Lloyd’s use of lo-fi textures actually work to bolster and unite the detached entries from his mind, providing cohesion to the lush acoustics and gentle vocals. From the disorienting psych pop beauty of “Not Even U” to the field recorded sound of “Lyme” every song is painstakingly beautiful, with classical finger picked guitars, delicate harmonies, and the occasional diversion of earworm nuance. It’s the cool breeze on a hot day and the warm blanket on a cold one. Sparse in instrumentation but never in execution (see the lush “Sumac”), Lloyd’s ability to make vocal and guitar pairings sound this radiant is impressive. Lrrr floats through eleven songs in a cloudy bliss, exploring themes oft-mundane with a brilliant resolve. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
Maneka is a profoundly personal project and Devin is the band’s most confident release yet. Devin McKnight takes full creative control for a stunningly genre-knotted debut focusing on introspection, celebration and growth. The guitarist grapples with family relationships and the cycle of gentrification, but according to McKnight, Devin is primarily about “black pride and addressing [his] confusion as a minority in white indie rock scenes.” The record reflects McKnight’s tangled influence, as he weaves elements of noise, jazz and thrash into bold songwriting excursions that fully live up to his idea of “genre trolling.” Maneka’s first full-length is very good and “Never Nowhere” is one of my favorite songs ever. Check it out. - Patrick Pilch || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
At the time of Rare Occasion’s release, it had been less than a year since Boston’s Pet Fox shared their debut album, but for the band - Jesse Weiss (Palehound), Theo Hartlett (Ovlov), and Morgan Luzzi (Ovlov) it’s felt like a lifetime. The three ever gifted and eagerly prolific musicians unleashed their sophomore album, compacting a galaxy of intricate fuzz pop and tightly wound art rock into place, with shifting polyrhythms, bright harmonics, and Hartlett’s gorgeous vocal melody. The songs twist and turn, spinning on their own axis, careful not to disconnect from their structural progression, all the while staying firmly rooted in a tangled web of pop splendor. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Drag City Records
With Purple Mountains, David Berman leaves us with a final swan song. While Silver Jews songs were full of weird, beautiful imagery, Berman stripped away the images in favor of brutal honesty. Songs like “Margaritas At The Mall” give us a taste of the monotony of adult life, and the searing pain of loss. The album’s opener, ‘That’s Just The Way That I Feel,” is a gut-wrenching recount of lifelong struggles and recent tragedies. He sings, “You see, the life I live is sickening / I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion / Day to day, I'm neck and neck with giving in / I'm the same old wreck I've always been.” The music is also different than Berman’s past work, with auxiliary percussion and organs providing a 70s feel to the record. Though some of the whimsy of Silver Jews is gone, Berman proves his poetic brilliance on Purple Mountains. - David Haynes || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
As if you enter a funnel cloud of noise and chaos, RONG’s latest LP Wormhat screams, literally, with excitement among the noise that surrounds us in our psychotic environments. Ruthlessly assertive and in-your-face, RONG calls on you to grasp what they throw, experimenting with rolling drum lines and high energy dancing guitar parts in a jarring assault. RONG wants you to feel this, quite noticeably in perhaps the album’s most arty tracks. The edgy and eccentric nature of RONG evokes a sort of call and response effect within the band’s deep-cut layers: there’s a mirroring honesty hidden in their tone throughout the entire record that scratches and pulls at you, hitting quite abrasively, against the band’s interior. Their piercing elements don’t clash though and actually work as an adhesive to Wormhat’s inner soundscape of noisy and cluttered defiance, and you’re left to make sense of the destruction. - Abigail Miglorie - LISTEN || Bandcamp
Self Released
Rachel Brown’s project, Thanks for Coming, is deceptively ambitious. At first blush, an album of lo-fi recordings with song titles like “thanksforcoming.bandcamp.com,” “don’t wanna be here at all,” and “stephen hawking’s goldfish analogy,” you might be excused if you initially thought this was a “slacker rock” album. No Problem is anything but that. Instead, No Problem is a 24-track album, filled to the brim with catchy melodies and funny, introspective lyrics. Oh, and it also premiered with a music video accompanying each of those two dozen songs, all created by different filmmakers. No matter how ambitious Thanks For Coming’s album is, its real strength lies in the way it uses simple ideas to grapple with bigger, messier ones. When is the last time you can remember singing along with a takedown of the DIY music arms race (“late capitalism”), the insecurity of friendships (“friends forever”), or a critique of online communication (“thanksforcoming.bandcamp.com”)? - Tom Alexander || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
20 Buck Spin
It feels like metal is needed now more than ever. The power and aggression work to drown out the chaos in our world. “Dig deep and destroy yourself” Max Klebanoff growls on album opener “Beg for Life”. Over the next 40 minutes you can do just that. Planetary Clairvoyance is the band’s most interesting, layered, and tightest album to date. It’s a bright light in a slew of killer death metal records in 2019. One you’ll find yourself returning to again and again. Tomb Mold’s horror cred is strong but their interests seem more otherworldly this go around. Aliens, dimensions, and astral planes inhabit the lyrics. Planetary Clairvoyance feels more aggressive and direct than last year’s awesome Manor of Infinite Forms. While that album had hints of doom, this one has no time for wallowing in the murk. Guitarists Derrick Vella and Payson Power drive through their riff progressions like they’re being chased. Klebanoff’s drum patterns on the same level, weaving in and out of the guitar lines, rarely staying on a straight up blast beat. - Jonathan Bannister || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
ALL THE SAINTS “Look Like You’re Going Somewhere” | BIG K.R.I.T. “K.R.I.T. Iz Here” | IMMORTAL BIRD “Thrive On Neglect” | ISS “Alles 3rd Gut” | KNIFE WIFE “Family Party” | THE MAD DOCTORS “RIP” | TORCHE “Admission”
A U G U S T :
Father/Daughter Records
New Orleans’ Esther Rose released her sophomore album, You Made It This Far, in late August via Father/Daughter Records, an exceptional set of Rose’s genuine country tunes (not that “country pop” we’ve been led to believe is important). Her songwriting is full of smokey twang and confident vocals, but it’s the slight inflections (sometimes a single word or melodic phrasing) and natural grace that really makes these songs so incredible. Album highlight (among many highlights) “Sex and Magic” is a slow front-porch rocker, a ramshackle country tune that’s dreamy and drawn out, like a warbling lullaby from the dust bowl. Accented by howling strings and lap steel, we tumble through Rose’s words like the gentle breeze. There’s also a passing shout out to Minor Threat… Esther Rose really knows how to write an exceptional song. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Born Yesterday Records
Let’s get it clear, there is something very special about this FCKR JR album. The debut from the Chicago quartet hits fairly unassumingly upon first listen but there’s something to it, something that draws you to listen again… and again… and again, until you’ve reached the point where you feel like you’ve been listening to it your entire life. The nine songs are less than twenty minutes in length, but every moment is used to perfection, Ben Grigg’s syrupy fuzzed out songs sticking like super glue with enormous hooks… the type that act all casual and simplistic but have been blowing my mind repeatedly since this under-appreciated gem was released. They haven’t reinvented the wheel but their understanding of the wheel is operating at a whole new level, and each song bursts like it’s own little supernova, with songwriting sharp as a knife, getting sharper with every listen. If you pick one obscure release from this list to fall in love with, let FCKR JR be the one. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Karma Chief Records / Colemine Records
The past five years of Ghost Funk Orchestra’s output has all been leading up to A Song For Paul, the collective’s immaculate new album of indie soul, breezy jazz, and the kitchen sink of influences that come from an extended musical background. Those ideas belong to the maestro of it all, Seth Applebaum, the brains behind the beauty and bliss that is their new record, a freewheeling and unflinching retro masterpiece that feels lost in time. From the shimmering soul melodies and utterly dazzling drums to the thick bass grooves and spirited horns, everything falls into place in a psych odyssey of traditional sounds delivered in non-traditional fashion. A Song For Paul is the vivid dream and cinematic vision we never want to wake from, unfolding in serene glory from start to finish. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
ATO Records / Flightless Records
Australian psych rock shapeshifters King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard never shy away from a good gimmick. They’ve spent the last few years deeply entrenched in them, releasing new music at the speed of light, some of it well worth a listen, some of it less so, but to each their own. When a band records as often as they do, it’s worth tuning in just to see what they are up to each go round. With that said, this summer the band decided to release Infest The Rats’ Nest, a tried and true thrash metal record, and easily our favorite album they’ve ever recorded. It’s metal, sure… but it’s really fun, and while certainly thrashin’ at every moment, it’s not particularly heavy in the grand scheme of things. There are plenty of big dumb shreddy riffs (we mean this as a compliment), stoned interplanetary howling, and dense thudding rhythms, and we can’t help but feel it’s the album they’ve always been meant to make. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Captured Tracks
The wait for Lina Tullgren’s long awaited sophomore album is over. Free Cell was released in late August via Captured Tracks and the New York-via-New England songwriter sounds stunning, pitting warm melodies and delicate instrumentals against melancholy lyrics and a detached procession of guitars sputtering in and out of focus. The vibrant mix of shimmering pop and off-centered melodicism swirls around itself, slowly evolving and devolving with glorious attention to detail, searching for shared emotion just as everything begins to slip away into disorientation. Each delicate line of Tullgren’s vocals and piano arrangements fold back into each other, a circular melodic drift, that feels weary but remains gorgeous regardless. With keys that burst like sunspots against the rest of the instrumentation, Tullgren sings about falling in love too quick, only to be disappointed, accenting the thoughtful reflection of heartbreak. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Trouble In Mind Records / Anti Fade Records
When the Tree Bears Fruit is the very impressive debut full length from Australian quartet Parsnip who combine eccentricity and a wide-eyed innocence with agitating and crashing garage pop. The quartet prove themselves quite adept at ramshackle melodies indebted to the late 60’s psych scene via early Flying Nun bands and an abundance of folksy whimsy. Parsnip do not steer away from the oddities in life with their music and instead embrace the energy found in new experiences and a genuine sense of curiosity. Throughout this record there is a chaos laying underneath everything, which provides many fruitful avenues for the band to travel and a blank slate for Parsnip to play around with and create freely. - Kris Handel || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Tiny Engines
“Why do some thoughts fade while other thoughts they seem to stick?” Peter Katz of Peaer asks on “Have Fun!,” the last track of the dynamic and thoughtfully woven A Healthy Earth. If a year ago someone had told me that a math rock album would be one of my favorites of 2019, I would’ve cackled then asked what the hell math rock is. Collecting small and big moments then whispering or spitting them back at you, depending on the mood, this album supersedes genre—it’s just damn good. The delightfully bass-y, crunchy single “Don’t” is what you come for. Its arpeggiated guitar and bass ignite some sort of primal instinct that begs you to scream along as Katz cuts into an obtuse, awful person: “Why do I even need to say this? You act like you’ve never been in public.” But you settle in for Katz’s observations, the eye-opening, life-changing realizations we often come to, then shrug off. Katz doesn’t want to move on, he wants to sit with them, as he waits for a prescription, contemplates his other universe’s self, and wonders if anyone else realizes that everything is just a fucking circle. Rife with melodic earworms and full-belly-satisfying musicianship, this record will stick for a long time. - Sabrina Cofer || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
The Natural World is light years ahead of its time. The record is such an unsung outlier it’s only a matter of time before the world catches up, if ever, to Kjell Hansen, the mastermind behind the Maryland-based DIY-prog rock outfit Spring Silver. For the band’s full-length debut, Hansen wears just about every hat; guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards, percussion, Đàn bầu, not to mention programming duties, engineering, production, lyrics and the illustration for that kick ass cover art. The Natural World is a massive feat, a queer metal tour de force that is remarkably consistent and fantastically executed. The penultimate “Surrogate” is ten minutes long and it’s honestly some next level shit. Classically modern, a modern classic. The sheer ambition behind this project will make you want to fork over your digital dollars (which you should), and one can only hope for a physical release of this massively overlooked record. - Patrick Pilch || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
RCA Records
I grew up “a Tool kid” and while the band and everything that comes with them doesn’t resonate with me the same way it once did (though Ænima forever) I’m still grateful for the years I spent idolizing their music and ideologues. They introduced me at a young age to progressive structures and heavy forward thinking music (also indirectly introducing me to bands like the Melvins and Isis), putting an artistic vision over commodity mindset in my impressionable mind. After thirteen years, a lifetime in the span of most bands, they returned with Fear Inoculum, an album that feels very much an expansion of both Lateralus and 10,000 Days rather than a reinvention, and I’m thankful for that. The same patience that applies to waiting for a record for thirteen years also applies to the album itself, a sprawling and mountainous set of songs, each ten minutes or longer (not included the segues), built on the back of Danny Carey, who remains the world’s most incredible drummer. It’s not a “hip” record and if you didn’t like them before it most likely won’t change any opinions, but damn, it sure is nice to hear them doing their thing once again, making brilliant “art metal” with a psychedelic tinge. At nearly an hour and a half run-time, it’s a lot to unpack but worth the effort… seriously, Danny Carey is a freak of nature. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify
Joyful Noise Recordings / Flightless Records
If the end times are coming, we’re grateful to be spending them with the carnage of Tropical Fuck Storm’s sophomore album, Braindrops. The band have outdone themselves this time around (no small task following their incredible debut) making something that both captures the chaos of our real world and serves cynical narratives of a future and past that never were, corrupting the corrupt into imaginative despair and colorful mayhem that always reads as poetic. Tropical Fuck Storm wield their instruments in the same augmented reality, every chord bent and warped into new shapes, whammy-ed into experimental abandon over layered percussion, soulful breaks, left-hook harmonies, and all the mangled narrative poetics of Gareth Liddiard at his best. Tropical Fuck Storm have released one of the absolute best records for the second year in a row and we hope there’s no slowing down. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Drag City Records
On what is near his 20th album (depending on how you count these things), the ever consistent Ty Segall is still creating garage psych at a level above the competition, even as he contorts his style yet again. First Taste, his second record of the year following the live Deformed Lobes LP, is an album that works its magic with little to no-guitar in its compositions, though plenty of other stringed instruments are used, and surprise, Segall is good with those too. There’s an emphasis on garage pop and easy psych, but there’s still plenty of California sun-fried atmosphere in his songwriting, jangling and careening with different shades of the same trusted paints. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
0 STARS “Blowing On A Marshmallow In Perpetuity” | BOOJI BOYS “Tube Reducer” | DAS DRIP “Das Drip” | FLORAL PRINT “Floral Print” | LUNCH LADY “Angel” | MAUNO “Really Well” | MULTICULT “Simultaneity Now” | OH SEES “Face Stabber” | POSSIBLE HUMANS “Everybody Split” | RUTH GARBUS “Kleinmeister” | SHOCK NARCOTIC “I Have Seen The Future And It Doesn’t Work”
S E P T E M B E R :
EIS Records
It’s always exhilarating when bands make a “jump,” expanding and improving with each successive release. While Party Naked Forever was full of memorable moments, Bethlehem Steel’s newest self titled release shows that there’s still room for new discovery in “guitar music”. The addition of Christina Puerto as the second guitarist expands each songs possibilities, allowing the two guitars to intermingle and trade between the duties of lead and rhythm guitar. It’s a record full of slight turns, never quite taking the path you’d expect them to. - Hugo Reyes || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Artoffact Records
Michigan’s Cloud Rat make intense and visceral grindcore with the most artistic of abilities. The structures, pummeling and chaotic, feel unique in their ferocity; ripped from their very being in an outpouring of relentless brutality. There’s nothing cloaked and mysterious in their approach, it’s brash and executed with an incredible immediacy, and that make their latest album Pollinator a distinctly wild ride, uncompromising at every moment and without any respite or momentary lull. Even with intensity at a constant fever pitch, the band are able to convert and contract expectations, darting between blast beats and caterwauling carnage with a dynamism that is rare in these extremes. Each jagged shift, careening flood of distortion, and throat shredding bark is played with nuance… nuance and crippling heaviness. It’s so violent and primal, but most certainly from a personal place, these songs are based in feeling. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
King Pizza Records
New Jersey’s Francie Moon create psych rock that is heavy on soulful influences. Led by Melissa Lucciola, they blend in dusty folk, ear-bleeding country, and a touch garage punk, letting their guitars shred and eviscerate with an open air. Lucciola’s voice has always been something special, a gloriously commanding presence that sounds as new and uncommon as it does worn in and retro, and now the band’s songs are holding equal ground, rooted within the cosmic realm of psych’s wandering feedback. Francie Moon’s latest album, All The Same, combines the tracks from this year’s New Morning Light EP with five brand new songs, each one a sonic compliment to the last, Lucciola’s howling vocal melodies and walls of guitar fuzz linking everything together into a cohesive record. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Sub Pop Records
The logic of DIY rarely leaves room for an unusual grace, but on Close it Quietly, the new album by Frankie Cosmos, there is room for passages and interferences of pure softness. Greta Kline seems to have found, after a long search for several LPs and albums, a structure and a clearer way to an ideal of limpid and moving beauty. Close It Quietly doesn't need definitions and labels, it's an ultra-personal record and the alternation of simple elements, both in the sound and in the words, shows it. As for intensity, there's something very close to Lomelda's record, released earlier this year. Kline's pen doesn't write music, it’s the gentle touch of a feather, and they’ve recorded the most adult and mature album of the Frankie Cosmos project. - Gianluigi Marsibilio || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
Boston noisemakers Kal Marks know how to stir up a racket, to put it mildly. Never has that been more apparent than on their latest EP, aptly titled Let the Shit House Burn Down. Impossibly rivaling the intensity of their heralded tinnitus-inducing live shows, the recording finds the trio fully exploring the enormous range of their established sound. The five song release serves as a document of their transformation from humble beginnings as a lo-fi solo project into the gnarled, monolithic beast that the project is today. The band’s willingness to experiment and indulge in their more extreme tendencies is immediately apparent on the record’s first two tracks “Nu Legs” and “Kimmy” which boast two of vocalist and guitarist Carl Shane’s most guttural vocal performances to date. - Torrey Proto || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Adult Baby Records
KAZU aka Kazu Makino is best known for her work in the legendary Blonde Redhead but this year she’s released her debut solo album, Adult Baby, a stunning record that draws from a similar framework while expanding it deeper into manipulated pop and experimental electronic sounds. There’s less structural integrity to her songwriting, using that to her advantage to simply explore and see where she can push and pull to create something immersive from loops and dreamy arrangements. The album’s third single “Come Behind Me, So Good!” is built upon vocal loops that construct a good majority of the backbone, her words cutting over various samples of her voice, the layered effect creating something that bubbles and trickles in melodies wherever they may fit. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Soul Assassins Records
Continuing their collaboration streak that began with 2017’s Gems From The Equinox and 2018’s Frozen Angels, Meyhem Lauren and DJ Muggs teamed up once again on Members Only, a short but focused EP that brings the pair to the world of car culture. It’s business as usual for them, Muggs suppling haunting beats with huge drums and Mayhem Lauren stunting all over them with hood bars and lavish tales of money and sports cars. One of New York’s most consistent MCs over the past decade, he’s quick with wit and an ability to body any beat, and it’s ever apparent with Muggs’ classic 90’s sound. There’s a sense of grime to it but this is modern hip-hop, with beats that are minimal, allowing Laurenovich to spit his Queens slang while boasting of lobster flown in on the daily, riding the streets in fancy cars, and lines like “it’s like lifting weights trying to rock my own necklace.” - DG || LISTEN: Spotify
Broken Circles
Brooklyn’s own Operator Music Band released their latest album, Duo Duo, this September, their first “official” full length (depending on how you look at things). Still firmly rooted in futurism, funk, krautrock, and warped post-punk, the band continue to find that sweet spot that keeps them among the best of their craft. Their sound is clean and labored over, everything fitting perfectly in place, each decision benefiting the next as they glide between explosive synths and motorik hypnosis. The chemistry between the band’s Dara Hirsch and Jared Hiller is ever apparent as they trade vocal melodies back and forth amid warbling synths that scrunch and bounce around their heightening atmosphere and the utterly remarkable rhythms courtesy of Gabe Pittleman (bass) and the ever incredible Alejandro Salazar Dyer (drums). The record whirs and blooms, opening to a swell before dipping back into a caustic boogie of their funk psych hybrid. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Domino Recording Co.
Ever since Alex Giannascoli added the parenthetical name to his prolific DIY-bedroom project before the release of his 2017 album Rocket, it seems as though he has set forth on the project of creating art that can only really be categorized as his. On Rocket, and now House of Sugar, Giannascoli takes listeners exactly where he wants them to go—he is the one in charge and the option of listening to a (Sandy) Alex G song as just another haphazardly thrown together cut from a Bandcamp indie artist is no longer on the table. Amongst a sea of other things that this album unveils itself to be on different listens, House of Sugar is a shrine to indulgence that only rewards those who decide to take part in its unsuspecting lavishness. - Evan Welsh || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Gringo Records
Listening to Brighton’s Sweet Williams is similar to finding something shiny in a pit of mud. You’re already in the mud, so cleanliness be damned, but it turns out there’s something spectacular deep in there, covered in dirt but radiant all the same. Thomas House has been focused on Sweet Williams since the 2011 release of the band’s debut album, Bliss, and his brand of scorched earth post-punk and sludge induced drone has grown with each successive release. The band’s line-up has shifted and changed shape over the years, leaving House on his own for Where Does The Time Come From, the first new Sweet Williams album in three years. The glisten and the grime of their murky art-rock still sounds as though it’s been crushed by a herd of elephants, each dirge filled moment slammed into the ground, in the most brilliant of ways. The guitars are still layered thick and with that kind of distortion that removes rust from scrapyards, each stretched progression and melodic vocal line pulled to the point just shy of warping. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Fire Talk Records / Kanine Records
Weeping Icon’s blend of noise rock, punk and even elements of metalcore bring forward a terrific heavy-hitting debut record. The Brooklyn-based band certainly deliver on a unique sound that is driven by dense rhythms and chaotic vocals. You can feel the energy of this record through every single track. Weeping Icon is chaotic and abrasive to the ears in the best way possible. - Sarah Knoll || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
AMAR LAL “Gardening” | THE BERRIES “Berryland” | GHOSTFACE KILLAH “Ghostface Killahs” | GIRL BAND “The Talkies” | GLOOP “Smiling Lines” | KAPUTT “Carnage Hall” | THE MIND “Edge of the Planet” | SLUMP “Flashbacks from Black Dust Country” | SQUID “Town Centre”
O C T O B E R :
Jagjaguwar Records
All Mirrors is, simply put, an epic. Its dramatic orchestral arrangements, synthesizers, and drum machines set it apart from the rest of Angel Olsen’s catalogue, but her vulnerable yet cutting lyricism and versatile vocal style are as strong here as ever. The album pulls together a whole host of themes and influences — from synth pop (“All Mirrors”) to true country (“What It Is”) — and uses them to build a narrative about growth in the wake of loss, examining every possible facet in the process. The attention to detail in each track is stunning; from the dark violin flourish midway through “True Love Cassette,” to the calculated pitch warble of the music box-esque synths on “Spring,” to the cymbal crashes at the climax of “Impasse,” it’s clear that we’re witnessing Olsen at a career peak. - Erin Bensinger || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
4AD Records
Big Thief has been the subject of widespread acclaim, and for good reason. Recorded mostly live at Sonic Ranch in Texas, their second record of 2019, Two Hands, feels as bare bones as possible. Yet, it feels like their most rock and roll record to date. The guitar tone in “Forgotten Eyes” is one of the most satisfying sounds of the year, and possibly the decade. The drums sound dry, yet with this spark of something. Adrienne Lenker’s voice once again drips with sorrow and hope, in almost equal measures. “Shoulders” is such a good example of what this band does best – they just write damn good songs. They’ve tapped into something singular, like The Velvet Underground or Pavement before them. Two Hands is my favorite Big Thief record to date, and I’m excited to see where the next decade takes them. - David Haynes || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
Curse Word, a new band comprised of Matt Powell (Bulletin, Trespasser, a stint in Grass Is Green), Darl Ferm (Speedy Ortiz), and Jake Waldman, are a scrappy trio that have warped and bent the sound of bands like Polvo, Jawbox, and Faraquet (much like their peers in Two Inch Astronaut and Grass Is Green) adapting it into their own, opting for accessibility in the face of complex progressions and tangled rhythms. For every mangled and detached slide into math rock dexterity on their debut album, Your Name, they’ve matched it with Powell’s warm vocal melodies and a jittery brightness. The songs throughout are fully realized and impeccably composed, jarring one moment and swooning the next on songs like “Over You” and the propulsive dissonant charm of “Big Fingers.” The tightly wound rhythms are as muscular as they are skittish, recalling a primal approach to something brilliant, swerving from one moment to the next with a chaotic fluidity seen in “Customer Service” and the jagged stop/start bliss of “Stress Vomit.” - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Relapse Records
Since their early metal mag, xerox cover art adorned demos, Gatecreeper have received a good deal of well-earned adoration for their dry-rot flavored brand on traditionally freezer-burnt Swedish death, with a distinctive glaze of ‘00s melo-death, served with the enthusiasm of a ‘90s kid who just discovered how uncomfortable the name Cannibal Corpse makes their parents. Like their necrotic neighbors to the north, Tomb Mold, the desiccated deviants of Gatecreeper build their songs around memorable guitar hooks that are as anthemic as they are disarmingly desaturated. Deserted stacks up easily against its predecessor in the band’s discography, 2016’s Sonoran Depravation in both mastery of form and devastating impact of execution. The most distinguishing factor between the two is the slightly clearer production on Deserted, which is not surprising given who was involved in the post-production (with co-production duties handled by Ryan Bram, mixing by Kurt Ballou, and mastering by Brad Boatright, it’s a wonder they’re not charging the listener by the second for this garish auditory gold). - Mick Reed || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
NNA Tapes
To listen to Guerilla Toss is to step into an alternate universe. Each release is an extraterrestrial soundscape equal parts disorienting and transcendent. Through the years the band – comprised of vocalist Kassie Carlson, drummer/producer Peter Negroponte, guitarist Arian Shafiee, keyboardist Sam Lisabeth, and bassist Stephen Cooper – has crafted a unique brand of electro-psychedelic dance punk. You have to go in with the understanding that you’ll probably be thrown around quite a bit, jerked in new, unexpected directions, but you’re definitely going to dance your ass off (even if you can’t quite figure out the timing) and love every second of it. Their last album, Twisted Crystal, saw the band embracing a slightly funkier sound, and this latest EP, What Would The Odd Do?, is probably the band’s most accessible music to date. They’ve rounded out some of the more aggressive, dissonant edges, but remain as engaging as ever, constantly finding new ways to surprise you and pull you into their complexly layered, angular world. - Michael Seidenfeld || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Matador Records
After all this time, the legendary Kim Gordon has released her proper solo debut album, No Home Record, via her long-running label home Matador Records. Best known as a pioneering member of Sonic Youth, Gordon has stayed busy since the band’s demise, releasing a pair of avant-garde albums with her Body/Head project as well as collaborating with a slew of other musicians, but with this record Gordon returns to form with an expression all her own. Still noisy and experimental, the record is texturally rich and vibrantly abrasive, but ultimately constructed in song form and relatively accessible. The last single, “Hungry Baby” is a blistering rock song with some no-wave skronk and bleeding guitars, the kind of swarming chaos and forced melodic grit that made Gordon a generation’s musical hero. She’s able to bring a glamorous touch to sordid and relentless punk in a way that’s often duplicated, but never replicated. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify
Mello Music Group
For those paying attention to underground hip-hop, Seattle’s L’Orange has without a doubt become one of the most dependable producers of the past decade. Last year he teamed up Solemn Brigham to form Marlowe (who released one of the year’s best hip-hop records) but back in 2015 he joined together with Jeremiah Jae to release the sample heavy boom-bap essential, The Night Took Us In Like Family, an exceptional album from it’s collage beats to the narrative driven lyrical depth. The duo are back again with Complicate Your Life With Violence, another conceptual record where lyricism and production reign supreme together, a matching of their talents that recalls the best of joint efforts in quality and artistic unity. Locked in with grim beats and slowed soul flare, L’Orange sets the scorched Earth for Jae to do his thing unfettered, his words pouring out while effortlessly riding the beat. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Thrill Jockey Records
When the news breaks that a band has “cleaned up” their sound, it’s rarely a positive change, especially when that band is an institution of their own noise, such as the Rhode Island pioneers Lightning Bolt. Their jittery and raucous brand of punk is their signature but sometimes just a touch of refinement goes a long way and Sonic Citadel is indeed “cleaner” from the guitars to the vocals. That newfound clarity provides an enlightening look into the songwriting of the duo, with the vocals far less buried in the mix and the tangled web of clamorous drums and distorted riffs evolving ever so slightly into something more digestible (but just as deranged), though let us not forget we’re still very much talking about the same Lightning Bolt. It’s a cavalcade of crashing rhythms and caterwauling noise, but that refinement has the band sounding bigger are better, the fog beginning to clear from the trees. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Domino Records
I was first introduced to the majesty of Richard Dawson wth the release of Peasant back in 2017 and it’s been an honest joy to dig backward into this catalog in the years since. The enigmatic UK auteur makes experimental folk that borrows from prog, extended noise rock composition, and traditional bard storytelling, in the most captivating of ways. Peasant was an incredible album that felt from another world, like a lost release sent from middle earth. Following his work last year with the amazing Hen Ogledd, he’s back with a new solo album, 2020, via Domino. The album’s lyrics are incredible and Dawson’s voice is perfectly pulled from days long since past. His sound is one that only Richard Dawson could make work. His lyrics are as literal as can be, and yet, it’s pretty amazing. Impossible you say? Not in the hands of pretty much the only current musician I’d call a modern day bard, his words and cadences poetic and delivered with an honest elegance. His vocal approach remains brilliant as a story teller with a flare for the epic. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Buzzhowl Records / EXAG Records
From the unnerving vacuum filtered carnage of “Commemorative Coin” and it’s cynical anti-religious anthem, Thank set the tone of big hypnotic grooves, bigger noise, and plenty of hilarious scorn. Explosive and bitingly sardonic, vocalist Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe’s (also of Beige Palace) lyrics manage to often steal the show on a record where there’s never a dull moment and every piercing note and throbbing rhythm is maximized for abrasive bliss. “No Respect For The Arts” is a stand-out, a tongue-in-cheek screed that begins “punk music is bad and the people that like it are idiots” like a mantra of disdain for their own craft, claiming “he’s got no respect for the arts, and I hate you for that.” The song peels away at a nervous rhythm, layered and dynamic, and shoves a blaring high-pitched tonal assault on top together with a cavalcade of acerbic guitars to match. With the flood of sound crashing like a monsoon, everything is able to finds its own place in the eye of the storm, and Thank miraculously never sound muddy. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
Somebody Else’s Song, the third album from NY duo Water From Your Eyes in as many years, is a calculated study in dualism. Tracks alternate between beat-driven electro that often amounts to near-techno, and gorgeous and varied pop. Songs repeat themselves in pairs (for example, the title track is reworked from a Beatles-esque acoustic tune to a thrilling synth banger). However, the repetition doesn’t reek of laziness. The sonic reinventions the duo pull off are in service of greater thematic creativity, whether it be a dance track or campfire ballad. Somebody Else’s Song hides this remarkable depth like a private gift reserved only for those who spend the requisite amount of time immersed in its complexities. Each new listen strengthens the soon-to-be unshakable bond being formed. - Wes Muilenburg || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
BLACK BEACH “Tapeworm” | DESERT SESSIONS “Vols. 11 & 12” | EXHALANTS “…And Draws A Crucifix Down His Arm…” | GOLD DIME “My House” | GONG GONG GONG “Phantom Rhythm” | HOMEBOY SANDMAN “Dusty” | NICE GUYS “Nice Guys” | PATTI “Good Big” | PROGRAM “Show Me” | SCREAMING FEMALES “Singles Too”
N O V E M B E R + D E C E M B E R :
Iron Lung Records
If you hear a great punk band in Australia, there’s a good chance Jake Robertson is in it. The extremely prolific musician plays in Ausmuteants, School Damage, Drug Sweat, and Hierophants, but still finds time to record solo as Alien Nosejob, his synth-embracing disco pop project that has managed to release four records in the past two years (with a great new full length soon to come). Having already released the new-wave inspired Buffet of Love back in March (via Aarght! Records), the project has released a very different EP, HC45, via Iron Lung Records. Shifting away from pop altogether, this one is a furious hardcore, one that spews a bit closer to Ausmuteants, but far more aggressive and built on blast-beats galore. First single “I Still Call This Punk Scene My Home” is a walloping good time, furiously darting from one section to another at the speed of sound, a colossal flood of fills and shredding lo-fi hardcore catharsis, and the rest of the EP follows suit. The record is harsh, frantic, hardcore with fuzzy punk tendencies and it’s here to ravage your ears for about eight minutes. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
King Pizza Records
Post-Grunge Revival is Banana’s first release since 2017’s Die Alone Pt. 2, taking a big step forward sonically with an enormous and primal EP full of buzzing guitars and left-field shifts. Chelsea Ursin's songs come to life with an added heaviness, digging into monstrous riffs with a quirky charm on songs about cow’s giving birth, graceful weirdness, and beyond. It’s a goofy record but it’s also real sludgy, and the combination of the two is pretty refreshing. While their previous releases were certainly great in their own right, the band’s King Pizza Records debut feels like the record they’ve been working toward. We’re eager for the Banana future. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp } Spotify
Disposable America
Providence, Rhode Island has long been a breeding ground for weird music to truly thrive and it also happens to be the home of Beverly Tender, a duo who have been making great records since 2015. None of them have been overtly weird but there’s always been an experimental bliss just beneath their noisier songs. This all changes with the band’s upcoming third record, Little Curly/boy is a Bird, an album that has the band “jumping further into the computer.” They embraced all the weird and the glorious, making one of this year’s most intriguingly strange and abrasive noise pop records. The band wriggle around post-punk rhythms and experimental glitched out melodies, no idea is too out there, and nothing is compromised. The record travels in a non-linear path, the parts moving in their own detached patterns, each section offering a new mindfuck of brilliant weirdness. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Dark Descent Records
It’s a real sight to see when an all out death metal band is crowned “buzz band” earning praise across the spectrum, earning adoration in equal parts from fans of the genre to say… the Taylor Swift crowd. Blood Incantation’s latest album, Hidden History of the Human Race, has been deemed essential by the powers that be, and on the surface (while we may not entirely understand how that happens), we’re okay with it because the album certainly rips. Demolishing riffs and rapidly pounding blast beats get ugly on an outer space voyage into sci-fi’s darkest realms, exploring alien life and galactic catastrophe with demonic howls and blitzkrieg force. There’s definitely a psychedelic element to the album as guitar solos are allowed to wander beyond the reach of the rapid fire drums (though never for too long) as their celestial nightmare is focused and intrinsically relentless as it grinds and thrashes through an unstoppable sonic assault, for this planet or any other. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Portland, Maine and Hudson Valley, NY’s Blood Warrior don’t sound as heavy as their name may suggest. The duo of Greg Jaime (O’Death) and Joey Weiss have been making stunning folk-inspired music for near a decade, creating natural landscapes and lush acoustics with big harmonies and gentle resolve. Animal Hides was inspired by these unstable times we’re living in and the need to find a sense of community and a place to call home in the world. There’s comfort in Blood Warrior weariness like a knowing nod from a dear friend that no matter the circumstances, maybe, just maybe, things will be okay in the end. It’s a spiritual record in the sense that its tranquility is probably healthy for your soul, a step away from the rat race and toward general grace. Everything feels personal, combining life’s highs and lows together for an introspective look at the core of it all. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Inflated Records
After five years Celestial Shore has returned with a new record, Sunnyland, and while the band remain broken up, we’ve been gifted a posthumous album one of the Brooklyn DIY scene’s finest. Recorded back in 2015 by Deerhoof’s John Dietrich, it’s a clear reminder that trio’s psych-pop ripped harder than most. With their head still firmly in the clouds, Sunnyland is both wild and heavy, diving between jagged moments, noise and gentle melodies, Celestial Shore bend in every direction but they never break, keeping tight amid the wildest of progressions and structures. They may not be “back” (though each member remains busy) but this a welcome return even if it’s the last new music we get from them. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Housecore Records
This year, like most years since their inception back in 2006, has seen Child Bite busily releasing singles and splits, keeping their manic chaos alive, one (to three) tracks at a time. After a three year wait however, the Detroit noise rock band released Blow Off The Omens, a new full length due out on Housecore Records. The record is built on caustic grooves, the guitars and bass both screaming out in noisy disdain. Shawn Knight’s vocals take several different shapes, low and warbling at times, yet growled and garbled at others, occasionally doubled and approaching hypnotic, as they twist structures and corrode one section into the next. Child Bite twitch with an unnerving energy through the mud, blasting complex rhythms beyond the encompassing sludge and primal freak-outs. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Muddguts Records
Following last year’s reissue campaign, Duster announced their highly anticipated self-titled album, their first in nearly twenty years. The results are nothing short of spectacular, with songs carrying a new clarity and weight that wasn’t always present on their previous albums. Built on the same fuzzy and weary structures that made them lo-fi luminaries to the next generation of bands, the songs work with layered textures to create something serene, spaced out, and insightful. It’s a lush landscape of staccato jabs and twinkling ambiance, the low-key fields of distortion fused together with a gluey experimentation (somewhat similar of drummer Jason Albertini’s own Helvetia). Clay Parton’s vocals sit ever so slightly buried in the mix, perfectly audible but never pushing through the blanket of outerspace squiggles and pinched harmonics, with the massive “Summer War” a real highlight. Providing a depressive melody that fits in exactly where it belongs, the vocals are merely another brilliant texture in the shimmering haze, from a band that has truly mastered layering dreamy textures upon textures. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Castle Face Records
It’s been nearly a decade since Eddy Current Suppression Ring released a new record but the band’s own Mikey Young has earned a spot among the busiest people in music between Total Control albums, solo material, and mastering just about ever great punk record in recent memory. It’s an incredibly welcome surprise that ECSR have returned, noted very casually in a routine email from their new home at Castle Face Records as the band reportedly asked “not to make a big deal of it.” It is however, a big deal, as the band were a pivotal part of our current wave of post-punk bands, Australian and beyond. All In Good Time is everything you want from the band, built around off-kilter jangle and discordant pop with a raw intensity and sharpened guitars that dart with laser focus. It cuts around tight corners but maintains an anthemic aesthetic, as welcome a return as they come - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Tan Cressida / Warner Records
Few artists making records today are as heavily attached to biography as Earl Sweatshirt— whose surreal teen years colored his first half of the decade, while personal loss and grief fueled the abstract avant-rap music of I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside (2015) and last year’s Some Rap Songs. Dropped with no build and little explanation, FEET OF CLAY is the first Earl Sweatshirt record which forces us to judge only the work as it is. What we find is a reminder that Earl is still one of the best pure MC’s living. His flow is of a more precise tone than on Some Rap Songs; bars on “74” remind us of the quick and clever Earl who described himself and his crew as “feeling as hard as Vince Carter’s knee cartilage is” on Doris. The production is less kinetic than Some Rap Songs, but the hypnotic loops and reverse percussion sounds on droney album closer “4N” are still wildly out there. Earl’s clearly continuing on a path, FEET OF CLAY is here to remind us that he’s capable of going anywhere he chooses. - Tim Crisp || LISTEN: Spotify
Sad Cactus Records
For Brooklyn duo Gorgeous, there are no straight lines on Egg, their debut album, but there’s a whole lot to grasp onto. The band recorded the record with Kevin McMahon, capturing their sparse but spontaneous songs with a live energy and a mix of noise-pop charm. Dana Lipperman (guitar/vocals) and Judd Anderman (drums) pound through nine twisting and turning pieces of sweet yet sludgy math-rock indebted songs, but their element of pop (almost verging toward twee) remains heavy and focused on an exceptionally promising debut. From the wonky start of “There Is No There There” and it’s gentle introduction that eventually bursts into an jittery rush of stops and starts, to the Deerhoof-influenced detached boogie of “Metalhead,” Gorgeous use their guitar and drums set-up to create something far bigger than your standard duo. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Paradise of Bachelors
Spring is Kayla Cohen’s latest Itasca record after close to a decade of dusty loner-folk reveries and baroque finger-picked guitar fantasies. These songs sink their teeth a little more deeply into the pop canon, swaying along the horizon lines of Gene Clark and Judee Sill. The album conjures up visions of dirt kicked up on desert roads, Cohen’s voice emitting authority and conviction across each track. Piano, violin, drums, and bass all feel woven into the patchwork of chords, creating a collage of great American daydreams. When Cohen sings, “If the sun rises tomorrow/ I will be okay,” I can’t help but think: Spring is gonna get me through the winter. - Joe Gutierrez || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Self Released
One week after announcing plans to release Liturgy’s fourth album, H.A.Q.Q., surprise - that record arrived! While the physical record won’t be out until early next year, the album itself is here and the Brooklyn experimental metal band sound as vital as ever. Their self described “Transcendental Black Metal” is pushing and clawing in all directions, though it feels more focused than 2015’s The Ark Work, as H.A.Q.Q. retains a common thread throughout (in part to the classical nodding “Exaco” segues), but the brutality of the record feels beautiful, like a blissful catharsis that blossoms in violent eruptions. From glitched out electronics to skull crushing repetition and heavenly melodies, Liturgy have once again thrown in a cavalcade of artistic ideas and overtly intelligent structures to create something cohesive and fantastically punishing. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
EIS Records
Is Path Warm? is both an easy and interesting listen, an album of catchy earworms and Elliott Smith-esque intricacies. Acoustic ballads (“Between You and Me,” “The Forgettery”) seamlessly wedge themselves between punky bangers with a softer edge (“No Crime Here,” “SFYL”). Regardless of the tonal feel of a track, the lyrical depth of each Mister Goblin song provides food for thought beyond the intrigue of the music itself. Topics stretch from suicide and violence to love and existential crisis, examining what mental health can look like within a society that doesn’t know how to handle it. When you can draw a comparison between the disappointing plot-line of Halloween III and the disappointing way your friends gloss over your problems, you know you’ve got a solid record on your hands. - Katie Hanford || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Decoherence Records
Recipe for SHIMMER:
Add 1 part Simon Hanes to 1 part Paco Cathcart. Mix with ⅔ a Palberta.
Wrap in foil.
That’s not enough foil.
Whisk noise and silence, chaos and focus. Pour over deliberation. Stir strobes and flashlights, graveyards and parked cars. Toss with throat shredding vocals, a shiny cape, ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓅. Film a visual album and record it to an 8 track. Rip through eleven no-core numbers in under twenty minutes and make me cry on the bus.
Listen to SHIMMER, reflect and refract, vanish into the mass. - Patrick Pilch || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
Dog’s Table
Portland's Woolen Men have released a wonderfully varied album of post-punk tunes to shake your hips and release your minds. The album, Human To Human, continues the band's penchant for bringing the ethos of original indie rock bands like Minutemen into our current time. With their tight, danceable beats, stabs of melodic guitars, and grooving basslines, the instrumental powerhouse behind Woolen Men can reach points of near-righteousness before crashing down into driving grooves. The vocals float over the music with a deadpan delivery that does nothing to cover the earnestness behind it. This earnestness, their powerful grooves, and a willingness to throw their weight behind more relaxed tunes make this a top-to-bottom ear-shaker, and floats it above the rest of post-punk skittering around these days. - Matt Keim || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify
FURTHER LISTENING:
ACTION BRONSON “Lamb Over Rice” | BLUE RAY “Live Laugh Love” | CATE LE BON & BRADFORD COX “Myths 004” | CZARFACE “The Odd Czar Against Us” | FERN MAYO “Week of Charm“ | THE FRAGILES “The Fragiles” | GANSER “You Must Be New Here” | GRISELDA “WWCD” | GUIDED BY VOICES “Sweating The Plague” | PEEL DREAM MAGAZINE “Up and Up” | RED DEATH “Sickness Divine” | RUSSIAN BATHS “Deepfake” | TREADLES “And The Rocks And The Trees And The Empty Air Between”