by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

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

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

BAD HISTORY MONTH | “Waste Not”

Where do we even begin with this one, quite possibly the most intimately profound song we’ll hear this year. Bad History Month, the solo project of Sean Sprecher (once of Fat History Month), has returned with his first new album in three years, the impenetrable and stunning, Old Blues. Due out in late April, the collection is bookended with “Waste Not” and “Want Not,” two extended pieces that shine a light on the fact that Sprecher is without a doubt one of our generation’s best lyricists and abstract minds. First single “Waste Not” uses every last moment of it’s thirteen minute run time to craft tension and release, a tale of crushing lows and hopeful resilience. This song deserves the deepest of dives, the lyrics an inspiring well of ideas, both personal and relatable, my personal favorites being “Having aged several years, lost a mother, and some hair, I've been living lots of days that are trashed in advance, beached on the shore of a backward glance” and “It's nice and quiet here, and nothing can touch me. My limbs and heart beat slow, and no one can rush me. My fingertips and toes resolve themselves into a steady engine, I am a submarine: silent and safe and absolved of tension”. There is no better. This one is what legacies are built on.

FURBIE | “PWDR”

Three singles into their recorded output and Furbie are operating at a consistent level of greatness. Their latest effort, “PWDR” is more restrained than “Skiball” and “Butterfinger,” but no less effective as the Chicago quartet shuffle through a haze of sweetly harmonized vocals and skittering drums that brush and roll off splintered in every direction of the snare. It’s a dreamy track that envisions a more ideal man, this one made of powder, and well… it sounds pretty damn nice. The band’s sense of minor chord progressions is as brilliant here as their debut singles, and even in the stripped down state feels both transfixing and loose, with just enough fuzz and distortion to keep everything rattling into a cloudy atmosphere. Furbie are that band to watch.

LITHICS | “Hands”

As one of the ongoing (and going and going…) post-punk revival’s absolute best, Portland’s Lithics work with a steely resolve, one that sparkles with personality by offering a blank facade. It’s not drab experimentalism or overly hip posturing, but a musical (and vocal) deadpan that feels robotic and yet radiant in its repetitive melodic ideas and unshakable rhythmic excitement. The quartet will release Tower of Age via the venerable Trouble In Mind Records in June (trust us, it’s worth the wait) and lead single “Hands” is a great intro to the album, a song built on their hypnotic punk charm that really lets the guitars wander off track with disjointed and distorted leads that add a corrosive texture to the otherwise regimented.

OHMME | “3 2 4 3”

I’m late to the Ohmme party, and I do apologize for that. As we always like to remind our readers though, it’s never too late to discover a band (whether they’ve been widely praised for years or they’ve been working in obscurity) and I can’t stop listening to “3 2 4 3,” the first single from the Chicago duo’s upcoming sophomore album, Fantasize Your Ghost. Due out in June via Joyful Noise Recordings (who happened to release two or three of our absolute favorite records in 2019), the single takes the band’s art-rock aesthetic in a raw and primal direction, working with a determinedly dense rhythmic framework and vocal harmonies that weave together and apart as the tension permits. It’s a song about watching gentrification in real time, captured in both mood and the refrain, “different today, but I’m the same.”

VIAGRA BOYS | “Sentinel Island”

Sweden’s Viagra Boys have returned with a surprise new EP, Common Sense, a new collection of songs that promises a record to come, and a new directions explored. Known for a sordid sense of humor and a depravity that still feels like it comes from a good place, their full length debut Street Worms is one of those records you can’t help but love. Each repeat listen leads you deeper into the realization that what can be so dumb can also be increasingly brilliant. While the lead single and title track hints that maybe Viagra Boys are taking themselves slightly more serious (resulting in something that sounds a bit like Protomartyr), the very next track “Lick The Bag” proves they’re still the drug-addled knuckleheads we’ve grown to cherish. “Sentinel Island” could be the half-way point between aesthetics, a song that strides with the best of Street Worms, their tongue in cheek post-punk lyricism colliding head first with their agitated skronk and motorik boogie.

Further Listening:

Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (March 2nd - March 8th)