by: Al Crisafulli, Becca Barglowski, Benji Haywood, Chris Coplan, Cole Makuch, Dan Goldin, Dash Lewis, Delia Rainey, Devon Chodzin, Dominic Acito, Emma Ingrisani, Eric Foreman, Gianluigi Marsibilio, Jack Meyer, Jean-Michel Lacombe, Jordan Michael, Kris Handel, Mark Wadley, Matt Watton, Matty McPherson, Myles Tiessen, Patrick Pilch, Scott Yohe, Seth Daspit, Taylor Ruckle, Travis Shosa, and Will Floyd
Welcome to Post-Trash’s “Year in Review,” a feature with not much of a pre-determined length or no ranking, but a guide to the year that was. Things are tough out there for artists within the “underground,” but this isn’t the time or place to lament the struggle. This is a damn celebration. We like to think these features are about discovery and we hope you find something new to enjoy. The heart of Post-Trash is based entirely on our passion for music. Seems simple enough. As always, we encourage you to support the bands you care about. Buy music. Buy more music. Go to shows. Keep your ears to the ground. Have fun listening. We hope you’ll dig in and spread the word.
This list is determined mostly by our editors, a collection of the albums and EPs that we felt represented the best of 2022. Surprises abound. Stay tuned for our “Staff Picks” feature, with votes from many of our incredible contributors, who we could never be without. We’d like to thank everyone who reads Post-Trash, contributes to the site, and all the bands that trust us to cover their new releases. Constantly questioning our compulsions to share our opinions, all I can say is that Post-Trash is built on enthusiasm, and we’re here to fill a void. We’re excited to share the music we love with our corner of the internet.
Be sure to check out our “Further Listening” and “Staff Picks” features. Thanks. - DG
Rotten Apple
Bandcamp | Spotify
At some point this year the great Lumpy Records decided to call it quits, with Martin Meyer retiring the imprint and in turn starting a new one, Rotten Apple. Among the label’s first batch of releases is Forestdale Sessions, the latest from Northwest Indiana’s Abi Ooze, a record is exceeding pop and exceedingly punk, but most definitely not pop-punk. Each song is brilliantly immediate, there’s no posturing, no overwrought studio production, no holier-than-thou bullshit. Abi Ooze’s songs are constructed with hooks and melodies at their core then fused with raw distortion, short and sweet solos, and drums that pound away to keep things steady. Each and every track springboards with anthemic riffs that lead into even more anthemic hooks, as Ooze takes common relationship fodder and blasts it into basement punk oblivion. I wasn’t immediately sold (which is funny because it’s incredibly immediate music), but something continuously made me come back, a quality often found in the best of records. - DG
Profound Lore Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
My introduction to New York’s Aeviterne came courtesy of a friend who texted me, “Have you heard this? I think it might be right up your alley” prior to mentioning “crazy ass drumming” and an Aaron Turner comparison. With a description like that, expectations were high, but The Ailing Facade thunders above and beyond any imaginable expectations. The record is impenetrable, developed with thick progressions, harrowing dread, and the incredibly textured rhythms of drummer Ian Jacyszyn. It’s a record about the war within ourselves and contrasting mentalities, built on the most colossal mix of experimental sludge, death metal, and hints of industrial sprawl. There isn’t a moment you could describe as catchy, but from the embers and sheer destruction comes a scorched Earth landscape that bludgeons with its unflinching progressions, Garett Bussanick’s bellowing howls, and a forward momentum that feels like it will slowly demolish existence as we know it. This is art metal at its finest.
For an independent artist with universal acclaim and critical praise, Aldous Harding isn’t afraid to get weird from time to time. Her latest album, Warm Chris, captures the New Zealand based folk musician offering an intimate sort of stream-of-conscious, and well, sometimes things get strange. Delightfully so. While the album is minimal and primarily acoustic, Harding colors the tracks with her descriptive lyrics and the intermittent left-turns, adding flavor to her psych pop flourishes. The aura shifts from gentle and forlorn to whimsical and mystifying, each piece playing its intended part, flexing Harding’s ability to create worlds and slowly pull them all together. There’s a sense of adventure throughout Warm Chris, an exploration that feels aware of the times, but decides to resonate at its own frequencies in spite of it all. - DG
Domino Recording Co
Bandcamp | Spotify
Alex G is full of questions on God Save The Animals but intentionally avoids easy answers. It’s a record filled with anxiety but finds solace in the fractured nature of change. It’s a record with a whole lot of references to God but finds sanctification in the chaos rather than the structure of religion. It’s a record where God works as a placeholder term to describe how he copes with the uncertainty of life, morality, and just how necessary it is to have faith in something. After all, how else do you define the undefinable? There are moments in God Save The Animals where Alex G appears more free than ever before. Maybe it’s his earnesty in his voice, or perhaps it’s the lyrics, but Giannascoli clearly is finding some form of resolution in all of this, unburdening himself from the circumstances of this material world. The continual abandonment of all certainty, lyrically and musically, makes God Save The Animals so incredibly spellbinding. - Myles Tiessen
Anti Fade / Total Punk Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Jake Robertson has made all types of music throughout his relatively short career performing as Alien Nosejob. From punk and garage-rock to jangle power-pop, we now get Stained Glass, a celebration of rock n’ roll music in its purest form. Punchy classic rock riffs, catchy melodies, and absolutely blistering guitar solos kick this adrenaline-filled record into an untapped level of marvelous frenzy. Almost every song on Stained Glass mentions the music industry or gives a history lesson on rock music, so it’s safe to say the album seems pretty concerned with the current state of rock n’ roll. Robertson refuses to let any pompous entitlement of what that means weigh this project down. With his tenacity, humor, and sheer technical ability, he’s clearly having fun indulging the rock n roll mythos and living it up as a guitar god. For fans of Alien Nosejob’s rowdier material, don’t be worried; Stained Glass is still bricked. Barked muddled lyrics, dusty production, and playing the songs at break-neck speed give the album an organic, DIY feeling that exalts fun and sleazy guitar music. - Myles Tiessen
Polyvinyl Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Considering the band delivered their new album, Blue Rev, after multiple all-night sessions, just barely hitting their vinyl production deadline, and that it’s been five years since their last album, one might expect Alvvays’ third album to feel overthought. On the contrary, Alvvays have created their most surprising and rewarding album yet. Blue Rev holds on to what makes Alvvays great while adding the missing elements that had previously kept the band from feeling important. Molly Rankin’s songwriting chops have never been in question. 2014’s world-beating single “Archie, Marry Me” made her an indie-rock Dolly Parton, a talent of epic proportions comfortable writing from multiple perspectives. All this remains on Blue Rev. It’s clear Rankin is now more interested in what comes after expectations have gone unmet and what that does to us. What makes Blue Rev a good album is likewise connected. Whatever you might have expected, the music is visceral and diverse in a way not previously experienced on Antisocialites or their self-titled album. - Benji Heywood
“Out With The Bangs. In With The Twangs” reads one advertisement for the latest Angel Olsen album, Big Time. Country music enthusiasts will be thrilled to hear one of Indie music’s best songwriters bring her talents to the genre, while fans of Olsen’s music will be pleased to know that this album is not simply an Angel Olsen album dressed in western trappings. Big Time is a fitting title as this album feels larger in scale than her previous releases, with expansive instrumentation, horn sections and yes, even some slide guitar (that twang sound). Songs like the title track and “All The Good Times” would find themselves at home performed on Glen Campbell’s 1980’s variety hour TV show, but Olsen’s brutally honest lyrics would certainly be the distinction. - Dominic Acito
We were late to the Aoife Nessa Frances party, but it would seem Protector found us at the perfect time. The Dublin based musician released her second album via Partisan Records (The Black Angels, Just Mustard, Chubby & The Gang), a stunning collection of psychedelic folk music and stunning indie pop. With hypnotic references that seem to split between 60’s Laurel Canyon folk and the experimental dream pop of Broadcast, Frances glides between the past, present, and future, creating a sound intimate and lounge-y but intricate and full of personal expression. Her words sink with great impact as she explores desolate emotion (“Emptiness Follows”), a crumbling sense of community (“Chariot”), and feelings of longing (“Soft Lines”). Synths warble into the landscape, softly brushed drums keep time, and Frances’ gorgeous voice grounds us from drifting away on a gentle breeze. - DG
Duophonic Super 45s
Bandcamp | Spotify
There’s dissociation lurking around every corner on Astrel K’s debut album Flickering i. The solo project of Ulrika Spacek’s Rhys Edwards follows a period where the musician relocated to Stockholm and worked to record at night in an empty practice space. The results are pulled from the dazzling outer reaches of cosmic psych pop, with each song pulling you into its own disorienting bliss. The record is beautifully composed, with layered synths, warm strings, and the perfect fuzz captured in production. Released via Stereolab’s own Duophonic Super 45s, the similarities between Astrel K’s songwriting and that of Stereolab’s are apparent, but there’s a unique sense of soul to be found under the punchy drums and sweeping melodies of Astrel K. From early singles like the slinky “Is It It Or Is It I?” and the warped swoon of “You Could If You Can” to the detached and bubbling “Clicktivism” and spaced out voyage of “Forwardmomentum,” Astrel K keep us floating captivated in their own lush stratosphere, free of this world, and into the next. By the time we’ve reached the title track, dissociation has fully set in, as Edwards cements it with “are you here? because I’m not.” - DG
Stones Throw
Bandcamp | Spotify
Los Angeles trio Automatic return three years after their excellent debut album with Excess, a continuation of the band’s radiant electronic tinged post-punk. Their sound is minimal, with tightly wound rhythms bouncing between synthesized and human touches, like dance punk goes disco, but with a steely resolve. It’s well coiled, with every beat firmly in its place, but the band’s vocals give it a sense of character, a smooth sort of “coolness,” almost nonchalant, but well locked into their grooves. With tour plans that include runs with Tame Impala, Osees, Parquet Courts, and Idles, they are well engrained in “the industry,” but don’t hold it against them, this album is one hit after another. Excess is crisp and stark, with the bass grooves and drums snapped in, colored by additional programmed percussion, hypnotic pulses, and semi-sweet melodies that occasionally recall Slant 6 style punk with a cold ESG minimalist funk. - DG
Double Double Whammy
Bandcamp | Spotify
After six EPs over the past four years (including Sunk, which was released back in March), the time has finally come for Babehoven’s full length debut, Light Moving Time. Out just seven months after their prior record via Double Double Whammy (2nd Grade, Florist, The Glow), the Hudson Valley based duo of Maya Bon and Ryan Albert continue to make profoundly heartfelt music that really sinks in with repeat listens. Their songs have always ranged somewhere between great and exceptionally great, and familiarity only pushes them toward the latter. The same rings true on Light Moving Time, an album that is gorgeous upon initial listen but only gets stronger as you allow yourself to fall ever deeper into Bon’s lyrics. From the folk propulsion of “Break The Ice” and the realization we’re “standing on the great divide” to the stunning “I’m On Your Team” and its syrupy slow pacing where every twangy pick of the guitar strings given their full resolve, it’s a fully assured collection of songs. Bon’s vocals offer a comfort both in melody but in her lyrics as well, with a sense of gentle understanding. - DG
Griselda Records / Empire
Apple Music | Spotify
Tana Talk 3, released back in 2018, was the catalyst for Benny The Butcher’s rise to mainstream stardom. In the year’s since he’s become the commercial center of Griselda’s core (with Westside Gunn being the mastermind and Conway The Machine being the street poet). He’s paved a lane of coke rap and hard nosed hood tales while pairing together with other rappers and producers who have Top 40 crossover appeal, but for every “pop rap” leaning track The Butcher has released, he’s given us tenfold in gritty street raps, which is exactly what Tana Talk 4 offers. Teaming once again with Daringer and The Alchemist, Benny raps “this one is for the family,” and it feels that way, a back to basics record that finds him lacing majestically hard beats with equally hard stories of cocaine dreams and the violence that results from life in the game. Tana Talk 4 is able to straddle the line between the mainstream and the underground, an intersection that keeps Benny The Butcher is conversation both among those out chasing trends and hip-hop diehards alike. Where Conway’s latest brilliantly shows the man behind the mask, Benny The Butcher is keeping up all appearances, playing the part from start to finish. - DG
Backwoodz Studioz
Bandcamp | Spotify
The legend of billy woods is a story still in progress, one that’s hit underground high point after continuous high point. As the MC has established his own lane for gritty rap, freely associative lyrics, and lacing adventurous production with the greatest of ease, at some point in time, the mainstream has drifted closer, and woods’ duo Armand Hammer (together with ELUCID) have become outsiders within the mainstream, gaining widespread popularity while sticking to their guns. The duo has been busy but it’s been three years since woods has released his last solo records, which brings us to Aethiopes, an album that feels like an immediate classic. Together with Preservation on production, they take hip-hop to another level, matching beats and bars in the least likely of circumstances. From the twinkling jazz of “Asylum” and the dissonant bells and skittering drums of “Wharves,” woods rides whatever he’s given, offering shape-shifting introspection that only comes with multiple listens. There’s plenty to decode and confound, it’s an album that comes as much from the heart as it does the brain. There are a lot of MCs out there, but there’s only one billy woods. - DG
Backwoodz Studioz
Bandcamp | Spotify
When you reach a certain age, it starts to make sense that people turn to scripture. Life is a series of unanswered questions all woven into an enormous one. To face that down is difficult. While some folks open the Bible to cope, billy woods tears out a page of it to roll another joint. On Church, his collaboration with Baltimore producer Messiah Musik, weed is the coping mechanism when the questions become too great: How could we have worked things out? Why do belief systems turn toxic? Did the spot on 116th have the cops in their pocket? Messiah’s production is dense and knotty, twisting gnarled samples into works of boom bap beauty over which woods flexes some of his most poignant writing yet. Church doesn’t have the world-building scope of Aethiopes, focusing instead on the minutiae that piles up in the corners of our small lives. There aren’t any real answers, the search is inconclusive. Like the rest of us, woods can only wonder what’s next. “I hope it’s nothing but love in paradise,” he says with an exhale. - Dash Lewis
Partisan Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
We’re always here in the now, and that’s where The Black Angels have always been. Circumstances can change in the snap of a finger, and that’s why we need music. Ultimately, we need The Black Angels, and I believe that they understand; that’s why they continue to release seminal hallucinatory illusions through great psychedelic rock. Nico might be crying, John Lennon is dead, which means Yoko Ono is probably crying. Luckily, we have The Black Angels, and we have their 60s and 70s cinnamon relics. Clearly, they are a tight family that built something real. However, it sounds like a dream. - Jordan Michael
Rough Trade Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The spectacle is a timeless promise of a good time, and Black Midi live in service to the spectacle. They continually evolve to the theatricality of the spectacle. They will stop at nothing to conjure and bring us for the spectacle. At long last, Hellfire is their studio album level spectacle; available for home surround sound systems, car CD players, tape decks, or the transient online comatose system of the internet. Black Midi came bearing a signature gift of batshit-good riffs and ideas. These are the kind that attract a crowd of oldhead prog nerds, Mudvayne-apologists, Primus Suckers, and... ECM heads. If you love any of those bands, genres, or labels, then you likely enjoyed Black Midi's last album. Everything surrounding Hellfire's cover and the sound strike up a referential sidestep of Cavalcade. There really is not a massive sonic level of difference between the two–even mending the best of Schlagenheim’s blatant veracity into this go-around. There’s still wildly eye-winking technicality mixed with left-turn bridges and instrumentation that appeases a dozen or so different types of genre nerds, alongside sincere balladry, now more swooning and oozing greater confidence. - Matty McPherson
BMG
Apple Music | Spotify
The Roots’ Black Thought has been one of hip-hop’s best MCs for a very long time, but the common narrative is always that he doesn’t come up often enough on “Top 5 Dead of Alive” lists. Cheat Codes, the long awaited collaboration with Danger Mouse (whose last hip-hop album was the Adult Swim themed DANGERDOOM release), is nothing short of stellar. The production, which strays at times from traditional “beats,” allows Black Thought and the great curation of guest MCs to let their lyricism do the heavy lifting; poetic, direct, and abstract. While both MC and producer have earned mainstream status over the years, this one feels like a gift to the underground. Black Thought keeps his lyrics pointed and expansive, bodying the swelling soul beats with a cavalcade of veteran wisdom, intelligent punchlines, and the occasional braggadocios reminder that he’s been operating in his own league for a long time. On an album filled with highlights, the stand-out may be “Belize,” a song that pairs Thought together with the late-great MF DOOM. Dusty production, cascading synths, muted horns, and reserved atmosphere provides the framework for energetic wordplay that goes from brilliant to absurd and back again. - DG
Sad Tapes / EIS
Bandcamp | Spotify
Our heroes Blacklisters have returned, time to get weird. The Leeds’ based band released a new EP, Leisure Centre, the first of several, capturing a weekend of live-in-the-studio recordings. The band’s bold sense of humor and utter depravity remain unparalleled, thanks to piercing guitar attacks and dense as concrete rhythms, the entire thing slinking and convulsing in a slow motion tornado of filth and smirks. There’s a sense of exploration to these recordings, a changing of the formula that incorporates strains of no wave and post-punk into the band’s venomous noise rock boogie. Blacklisters offer odes to yuppy ideals, self-serious assholes, and audacious posturing, and it’s all just so damn welcome. Billy Mason-Wood continues to prove himself the best vocalist, hanging on notes and slurring words until they feel utterly manic and potentially dangerous. The fusion of all four members (and plenty of obliterating guest sax) comes together perfectly, violently raw and mischievously charming. - DG
Blessed’s new album Circuitous feels like the type of artwork whose construction is deliberate and masterful, without ever sounding forced or overwrought. It’s an album of patience, of geological time, of tension and eruption, of painstaking sonic architecture. Precision from chaos – it’s the goal of many who trade in the math-y post-punk of bands like Blessed, but few do it better or with such aplomb. Yet where the magic of Salt was its hairpin exhilaration, Circuitous benefits from a newfound conservatism. Consider the drumming of Jake Holmes. The drumming is often the linchpin of the best Blessed tunes, the engine propelling the band forward. Circuitous still provides tasty beats, but there’s a newfound prioritization of vibe over spectacle which allows the drumming to carry a certain girth, as if each strike of the skins was a perfectly syncopated hit of multiple drums sticks. Previously notable for playing atop the beat and pulling the band along, it’s the groove of songs like “Anything” and “Person” on Circuitous that makes these tunes satisfying in a way that feels innovative for the band. That’s not to say the twitchiness or beauty of previous Blessed music has been left on the cutting room floor – far from it; Circuitous has these moments in droves. - Benji Heywood
Nicholas Craven Productions
Bandcamp | Spotify
For the past three years Detroit’s Boldy James has been on a hot streak second to none, releasing nine full lengths, each one a hardened street treasure. Following a pair of albums with The Alchemist in 2021, Boldy kept on his grind this year, releasing album collaborations with Real Bad Man (who he previously worked with in 2020), Futurewave, and Nicholas Craven. Each one deserves to be among the year’s best, but we’re claiming Fair Exchange No Robbery the gem of the bunch. Produced in full by Craven, the pairing of his slow creeping samples and looped soul beats together with Boldy’s nonchalant gangsterism feels radiant, exuding a stoned confidence, felt in chopped repetition and Boldy’s ever evolving hood stories. Boldy’s lyrics feel restless, in the best of ways, manipulating his rhymes with double meanings and a steely cool delivery while bringing heart to the phone call interludes. “Power Nap” is Boldy and Craven at their most quintessential, an avalanche of hard earned thematic bars over a beat that’s a few RPMs away from nogding off. - DG
LocalHost3000
Bandcamp | Spotify
Brittle Brian is the nom de plume of Philadelphia musician Victoria Rose who has a handful of LP and EP's under the moniker. Biodiesel, her third full length, is full of wavering and creaky folk with an intensity that you can feel in your bones. Brittle Brian songs are often trips into some fragile situation or world that can be as frightening as they are gorgeous and often times prove to have hidden wonders inside that reveal themselves slowly with every listen. Rose's vulnerability and soul searching is always ultra-compelling and the willingness to be open creates even more intimacy between the artist and audience. She manages to bring an inventive and unique musical approach to her work that tends to absorb everything around it, probing into the quiet moments of unease in an often unrelenting fashion. - Kris Handel
Warp Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Warp Records have reached into the Broadcast archives for three new vinyl releases, pulling together rare and hard to find tour CDs, EPs, and the band’s renowned BBC sessions. Microtronics - Volumes 1 & 2, Mother Is The Milky Way, and the BBC’s Maida Vale Sessions have all been remastered for vinyl, and re-released into the world the first week of March. The loss of Trish Keenan remains tragic over a decade later but her music with Broadcast proves timeless and these releases are a welcome addition to their oeuvre, masterful touches that display the different sides of the band’s recorded and live depth. Maida Vale Sessions captures the band at different points in time, all of which highlight their strength as a live band with equally dazzling results as their studio recordings. The dreamy tension and swelling buzz of lounge synths and jazzy rhythms are in fine form as they form new worlds, ringing with saturated density but breezy resolve and nimble freedom. While so much archive material is for completists only, this is an essential addition to the band’s all too short catalog, proving why their influence looms so large. - DG
Founded in 1992, Doug Martsch’s Built to Spill has been a stalwart pillar of indie rock greatness for three decades: no mean feat. They’ve never released a bad album, and despite Martsch’s tendency to center the Built to Spill sound around his virtuosic guitar melodies and philosophical lyrics, the band has yet to grapple with the issue of staleness. This trend holds on When the Wind Forgets Your Name, the band’s tenth studio album and first set of original material since 2015’s Untethered Moon. Martsch’s ability to keep things fresh could be due to Built to Spill’s semi-regular lineup switches. When the Wind Forgets Your Name sees Oruã’s Le Almeida and João Casaes tag in to inform a new outlook. Martsch is still the ringleader, but the involvement of the Brazilian psych jazz duo slightly shifts the perspective. This is the trippiest offering from the band since Perfect From Now On. It’s a strong effort that manages to cater to longtime fans while finding opportunities to explore new avenues. - Travis Shosa
Ixor Stix Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The Casual Dots’ return after eighteen years is one of 2022’s great surprises, and Sanguine Truth, the trio’s sophomore album is as welcome a comeback as any we’ve heard. It’s a pleasure to hear Christina Billotte (Slant 6, Qui*xo*tic, Autoclave), Kathi Wilcox (Bikini Kill), and Steve Dore (Snoozers) come together again after all these years, their skeletal brand of garage, doo-wop, indie, and post-punk still shining as brightly as ever. With interlocked guitars and weaving melodies, Billotte offers both concern for the world at large and a power of self, reminding us that you can only be as strong for others as you are for yourself. There’s a grounded stability to the songwriting as the band dip in and out of genre experiments, digging into the sonics that have defined much of their careers yet subverting any expectations. This isn’t a retread of the past and it’s not a cash grab, it’s The Casual Dots returning to set things right, and seemingly having a great deal of fun with the songs in the process. - DG
Mexican Summer
Bandcamp | Spotify
Cate Le Bon writes with her body and her movements convey punch-drunk unknowable truths, not just through her voice that evokes longing. On Crab Day, where dada was a path to understanding, her sound’s freewheeling spider guitar music puzzled and kick danced its way into existence. Reward’s invocations of lost wisdom may have only had a quarter of that kind of freewheeling sense, often ebbing in stilted, bittersweet fashion; it still created a newfound sidestep with its lovelorn horns and spaced synth. Pompeii errs rather close to the latter across its nine songs, twiddling with a few horns here to be extra soppy and refining the synthesizers for extra woozy. The tracks invoke languid motions of a terminal present. In the case of one like “Harbour” or the title track, it leisurely saunters and fills the space. Every crevice of these nine tracks dare to become your new obsession if this sound clicks. Naturally though, that’s not the whole story; my ears were tuning to a novum. Pompeii happens to feature a reverb-saturated guitar easy to become enamored with. It’s an element that her last two releases have evaded. Yet every song it is featured on, whether as a trusted rhythm element or shock show-stealer, feels like an epiphany. - Matty McPherson
Relapse Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
It’s under unfortunate circumstances, but Cave In have rarely sounded better than they do on Heavy Pendulum, a return to form from a band that’s always kept things progressing. If they had called it a day after the release of Final Transmission, their album length eulogy to the band’s own Caleb Scofield, no one would have blamed them. Instead, nearly thirty years since their inception, the band return with their first record for metal juggernaut Relapse Records. With it comes the beginning of the next chapter. The quartet, now featuring frequent collaborator Nate Newton (Converge, Old Man Gloom) on bass, haven’t forgotten their past, but they once again sound motivated to crumble and reform it all into something new again. While their last record was built around grief and unfinished demos, it wasn’t particularly heavy. With Heavy Pendulum, Cave In return both heavier and more experimental, taking an almost prog rock approach to what made White Silence so effective over a decade earlier. The album is full of burly ripper and extended psych-tinged metal, built on buzzsaw riffs and brutal distortion, with an ease of aggression that welcomes you to the carnage that lies ahead. - DG
The setting of an abandoned toxic waste site is an apt one for Oklahoma’s Chat Pile. Listening to their highly anticipated debut album God’s Country is like inhaling lead dust while running from a killer chasing you with a bloodied pickax. “There’s more screaming than you’d think,” howls vocalist Raygun Busch on the album’s unsettling opener “Slaughterhouse.” The lyric might as well describe the experience of listening to God’s Country itself. It’s a masterpiece of sludge, noise, terror, and industrial hardcore. Standing on the shoulders of heavy music titans Eyehategod, Korn, and Ministry, Chat Pile have made an album that’s as terrifying to listen to as it is deeply lyrically unsettling. To call the bowel-loosening low end of God’s Country the century’s sludgiest is not hyperbole; Chat Pile deploy a lethal arsenal of detuned sonic bombardment that is nauseating, beautiful, and punishing, an ideal foil for the ravings of Busch, whose yelps, howls, and blood-curdling screams are relentlessly unhinged. - Benji Heywood
Post Present Medium / Bruit Direct Disques
Bandcamp | Spotify
Released late in 2020, Chronophage’s th’pig’kiss’d quickly became an underground favorite, a DIY basement punk album that mixed Sonic Youth destruction and Yo La Tengo jangle. In the two years since a lot has changed, both in the world and with the band. Their brand new self-titled album, out via Post Present Medium and Bruit Direct Disques, sounds downright refined. Gone is the ramshackle spirit and tape hiss, in their place however, the band’s songwriting shines radiantly, giving sight to the band’s more “pop” tendencies. With each and every listen however, it feels like the album the band has always been gearing up to make. The songs are great from end to end, loaded with their vibrant snare sound, strained and stubbed melodies, and the band’s penchant for hard spun indie chaos sitting side by side with big hooks, memorable twang, and jangle punk sweetness. - DG
Shady / Interscope Records
Apple Music | Spotify
Street rap superstars Westside Gunn, Benny the Butcher, and Conway the Machine have developed a sound intersecting the cold, grimy realities of their respective Buffalo upbringings and the silk laced high art symbolic of elite society. This juxtaposition is occasionally jarring but almost always well executed. However, swinging between surreal luxury and menacing threats may leave little room for an inward look at how this quest for better can chip away at one’s psyche. While he has always been the most introspective of the three, on his new record, God Don’t Make Mistakes, Conway the Machine weaves his iron clad bars within tracks exploring the depths of his trauma and insecurity on the way to the top. - Eric Foreman
Silver Age
Apple Music | Spotify
If nothing else, Czarface are undeniably prolific. The trio of Inspectah Deck (Wu-Tang), Esoteric, and producer 7L have released eight albums in past nine years, including album length collaborations with MF DOOM and Ghostface Killah, keeping the golden days of “boom bap” hip-hop alive and well for near a decade. If you’ve heard one Czarface album then you know what to expect, and Czarmaggedon! is surging with hard hitting MCing, an avalanche of comic book references, and lyrical swagger teetering off the charts. It’s not “conscious” rap by any means, but Czarface is still making hip-hop for the thoughtful set, with punchlines and boasts worthy of fine art. 7L and his Czar-Keys cohorts keep the beats knocking with block bangers and summer fried soul, the backdrop for Deck and Esoteric to floss and swerve their rhymes with veteran status. It’s rap music about rapping, the culture, cinema, and the flier shit in life, brought to life over beats that never miss. - DG
Hand In Hive
Bandcamp | Spotify
Six years after their first singles (with subsequent singles and an EP since), London’s Dama Scout have arrived fully formed with their long awaited full length, Gen Wo Lai (Come With Me). Released via Hand In Hive, the album was worth the wait, an ominous and disorienting record of damaged art rock, noise pop, and dreamy experimental psych. The trio, led by Eva Liu, have made something so visceral and cerebral that it’s easy to get lost in the fog, wandering through thick clouds toward a mysterious glow in the distance. The band lurch into collapsing grooves and surrealist melodies, slinking between a calming serenity and outbursts of abrasive noise as they explore feelings of displacement and cultural alienation. With profound structures and a penchant for unpredictability, Dama Scout make music that’s wildly beautiful and sonically adventurous, finding that middle ground between memorable songwriting and expanding boundaries. - DG
Anti Fade / Feel It / Spoilsport
Bandcamp | Spotify
On the heels of two solid 7” releases showcasing an entertaining, catchy approach to post-punk, Melbourne five-piece Delivery evolve their sound and vibe with debut album Forever Giving Handshakes. Channeling wiry post-punk as much as psyched-out garage and hooky power pop, Handshakes rides a wavering line between tightly-wound momentum and raucous partying, the result a collection of twelve nervy, shout-along earworms. On paper, there’s too much going on here. Three guitars. Synths. Four vocalists, multiple songwriters. But Delivery is a band with surprising restraint. Driven forward by the nimble, propulsive rhythm section, the guitars and synths stay focused and direct, finding moments for clever harmonies and lead lines while leaving lots of room for the vocals to do their thing. And the vocals are so good, ranging from nursery rhyme chant to wry bellow to singsong slacker. Rather than feeling disjointed, Delivery’s stylistic diversity gives the record a distinct atmosphere and narrative through-line, individual voices coming in and out and joining together for cathartic instrumental breaks and giant choruses. - Mark Wadley
Defer Records / EIS
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Heading into 2022, there wasn’t an album I was anticipating more than Disco Doom’s Mt. Surreal, and while that statement could be true for the past six years or so, the time has come and the album has finally arrived. The Swiss quartet, led by Anita Rufer and Gabriele De Mario, return after an eight year absence with a brilliant warmth, finding the comfort in unease. With a history of expansive tonality and a knack for analog recording, Mt. Surreal plays to Disco Doom’s strengths, twisting and subverting expectations with layers of guitars, synths, and rhythms that work in unexpected ways, shifting structures to resonate with new frequencies, often landing a good distance from where they began. Pairing tranquility and dissonance against each other, Disco Doom have the ability to make abrasive sound feel meditative. It’s in that process that everything about the record feels exciting, from the fractured bliss of “Pic Nic,” and the rattling attack of “Patrik” to the blistering patchwork of “Static Bend” and the slow burn beauty of “Clic Clac”. Mt. Surreal is an album best experienced in full, an escape to get lost in. - DG
Self Released
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Disheveled Cuss’ debut album was released in the summer of 2020, a great record released at a not so great time. While Covid was raging, it wasn’t “a pandemic record” for Nick Reinhart’s (Tera Melos, Bygones, Undo K From Hot) project, as the songs had already been written and recorded prior. Instead, Into The Couch is that “pandemic record,” an album that Reinhart made while sitting around bored during lockdown, with the intentions of being primarily acoustic. The results aren’t entirely acoustic and he’s not exactly alone either, with the album boasting guests that include Jimmy Chamberlin (The Smashing Pumpkins), Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Lisa Papineau (Big Sir, Air), among others. While it may imposing to have these musicians in Reinhart’s musical world, the album is still very much the magnificent vision of Reinhart, a subtle reflection of a wandering mind. The album weaves his quintessential melodies with an otherwise sparse arrangements, flexing an empahsis on songwriting over splattered guitar effects. This one is free of shredding and knotted freakouts and yet the song still remains radiant, highlighting Reinhart’s ability to create minimalist earworms. - DG
Numero Group
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There were those who thought it might be a cruel April Fool’s joke, but rest assured, Duster surprise released a new album, Together, and we’ve been floored listening to it ever since. Following the band’s self-titled comeback album from 2019, the trio’s latest builds on their legendary “slowcore” with a dark, dissonant, and ominous glow over the proceedings. From the slow-dripped atmospheric sludge of album opener “New Directions” to songs like “Teeth” and the muscular fuzz of “Making Room,” the album explores a wide array of tonality, the static crackling with an understated tenacity as the band ease into tempos ranging from a crawl to damn near lively. While the band drift further away from the cosmic aura of their early material, they continue to reward those with a patient ear and a love for rich texture. Together (which was mastered by Stuck’s Greg Obis) is an aural treat of bent melodicism and fragile sentiment. - DG
Tan Cressida / Warner Records
Apple Music | Spotify
While the contents of SICK! aren’t exactly sunny, it does feels as though the clouds are finally parting above Earl Sweatshirt. The mercurial rapper’s fifth album features a clarity that’s never been seen in his music, and while the subject matter remains terse, the delivery is shinning, with his words picking up apart beats and not the other way around. He’s still very much doing his thing, lacing psychedelic beats and chopping them up at his whim, but Earl isn’t buried and the vocals aren’t warped, this is straight forward in terms of the album’s mix, as if he wants you to hang on each word. SICK! revolves around circumstances of tragedy amid the pandemic and seclusion, but in turn it’s pushed him to create his most immediate of records, each rhyme carefully focused and his wit razor sharp throughout. - DG
Editrix, the Western MA based trio absolutely decimate from start to finish, showing a rare dexterity, capable of damn near anything. It’s not always heavy, but it’s always captivating. They pull from a wild assortment of aggressive and artistic sources, weaving them flawlessly together, with a touch of improvisation that only makes their wonderfully complex songs all the more stunning. Their new album, Editrix II: Editrix Goes To Hell, is one of those brilliant records that only Editrix could pull off. While some folks compare it to nu-metal and hardcore, to me this is noise rock at it’s best, full of sludge, warped atonal riffs, stuttering rhythms that shift so casually, and of course Wendy Eisenberg’s always thought provoking lyrics. There’s a raw open sensibility to the world around and within, and then they just obliterate from there. Between guitar shredded bliss that rages between one jaw-dropping riff and solo to the next, Steve Cameron and Josh Daniel, dig into the crust of the compositions, erupting as tempos slide and clamor, collapsing beats in perfect time. - DG
Backwoodz Studioz
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Armand Hammer have been making some of the most resonant and forward thinking hip-hop of the past decade, and unsurprisingly, the same can be said for ELUCID and billy woods’ solo albums. woods gave us the quintessential Aethiopes earlier this year, and ELUCID has followed suit with another cosmic hip-hip classic, I Told Bessie, a cerebral rap masterpiece of experimentation and a futuristic tribute to the past. It’s a surrealist dedication to his grandmother, Bessie, the matriarch of the family, who shared both wisdom and support for ELUCID as he was getting his footing in rap. He’s a long way from the early days, and stands among the greats, painting swirling pictures of the city in psychedelic grime, the dirt and free association becoming hard to separate. Like woods, ELUCID’s lyrics provide endless analyzation, with each carefully worded bar delivered with thought and abrasion, rooted in the struggle of the city but spiritually in another realm. With production from The Lasso, Alchemist, Messiah Musik, Child Actor, Sebb Bash, and more, ELUCID wanders through abstract beats and warped grooves with brilliantly blunt rhymes, adding yet another wondrous addition to his already stellar thought-provoking catalog. - DG
Castle Face Records
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The ever shifting sounds of EXEK are in full splendor on their latest record, Advertise Here, an enthralling record with a magnetic grip. Blending together krautrock, dream pop, post-punk, psych, and maybe even a touch of tranquil funk, the entire record locks in with a singular vision, though the Melbourne based band take many diversions in the creation of that vision. These songs are sparse but so rich in texture and atmosphere that you feel instantly pulled into their world, one where nothing appears quite as it seems, as the band warble between synth punk, dub, and colorful stabs of noise to create the picture at large. Advertise Here works both as an album to zone out to and one to listen to in great depth, led by the hypnotic slink of “Unreasonable Warmth” and the eerie drift of “Sen Yen for 30 Min of Violin”. - DG
Dark Descent Records
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There is no escape from the decimation of Faceless Burial’s impenetrable new album, At The Foothills of Deliration. It’s fitting that an album title that alludes to losing your mind is able to bend, contort, and utterly obliterate our senses through the sheer dexterity of the band’s brutal riffs and earthquaking rhythms. Released via Dark Descent Records (Malignant Altar, Vacuous, Imprecation), there’s a great balance to Faceless Burial’s brand of classic death metal, as the band give weight to the low end by offering an onslaught of ear bleeding solos, weaving texture into the eternal darkness. Their latest album is unrelenting but it’s the ever shifting nature of their progressions and combustible drum fills that really set the trio apart. The musicianship is otherworldly, with a scourge of impeccable technicality (Max Kohane’s drumming is in a league of its own) that pays service to the songs, steering away from “tech death” clinicality. Faceless Burial latest embraces the rawness and guttural tension of primal death metal with an urge to obliterate repetition in favor of a constant state of flux. - DG
MATH Interactive
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Fievel is Glauque is a singular band. The band is led by French vocalist and artist Ma Clément and American guitarist Zach Phillips backed by an expert crew of musicians, they write a kind of lo-fi prog-jazz that is both cerebral and visceral. Their sophomore album, Flaming Swords, transports you back in time to a bizarro Parisian nightclub, where jazzy guitar chords mix with prog-rock licks, smooth saxophones squeal with angular bursts, shuffling drums flirt with breakbeat rhythms, and a sultry vocalist hypnotizes with off-kilter melodic sprechgesang. The album offers eighteen short, punchy songs of non-stop, attention grabbing jams that weave expert musicianship with unexpected song structures and a sense of whimsy. - Matt Watton
Feel It Records
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The latest album from Cleveland’s Flea Collar is triumphantly obnoxious, depraved, and agitated. The band, comprised of members of Woodstock ‘99, Bad Noyds, and Cement Shoes (among others), released their self-titled record via Feel It Records in November, just in time to bring it home for holidays. Their amalgamation of crusty basement punk, juggernaut riffs, and nasal howling feels instantly Midwestern and unnervingly reckless. The band squirm between greasy rock ‘n’ roll barn-burners and demented hardcore punk. They’re always ripping, but everything feels wonderfully off. Sparky’s vocals sound manic and cartoonish, like he’s just been walloped in the nose by a giant boxing glove, and is now ready to explode while a mischievous smirk remains plastered on his face. Flea Collar embrace the filth and slime. - DG
Sub Pop Records
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After a decade of releases, one might imagine they have Frankie Cosmos figured out. You’d be wrong though, and the band’s latest album, Inner World Peace, is a testament to that. Essential (if not primarily responsible) in this era’s re-emergence of bedroom pop and lo-fi twee-pop recordings, Greta Kline has proven to be a profound songwriter over and over again, but the band’s latest album shows another profound growth in the project, leaving behind the more minimalistic homemade sounds for something that feels conceptually other-worldly. On an album that was never guaranteed, the New York band experiment with structure more than ever before, creating their own soft yet surrealistic landscapes where the music takes as much importance as Kline’s vocals. It’s a stunning mix, reshaping the band’s tried-and-true formula, and improving it with extended melodic drifts, textured harmonies, subtle rhythmic shuffles, and a resounding desire to explore the outer ranges of their music. - DG
Feel It Records
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A recent post on the "budget rock" facebook group featured a 2006 UK garage punk release by a band called Hipshakes. The original poster commended their live intensity and double speed tempos. A comment offered a window into how far we'd come: "Andy Hipshake is in Freak Genes, maybe best band at last Gonerfest". Having caught both their Gonerfest and afterparty sets I am in agreement. Both showcases where absolute tranced-out rage rock was executed. Pure energy or gas station magic? Whatever it was, the show had gumption; the kind where the bassist knocked into merchandise, leaned in on one chap, AND chastised someone for making fun of the queen before blowing a raspberry as a joke. The man was deep in a bit that was unfilmable and indescribable; savoring in it as much as inviting us towards every moment on that dive bar backroom stage. Their tour tape, last year's Power Station and this year's knockout Hologram is the work of Andrew "Hipshakes" Anderson and Charlie Murphy at its core (the aforementioned bassist and equally nutty guitarist). With new contributions (bolstering the band to a five piece live), the resulting vision is a dozen wired pulp-punk frictions and spasms. It's practically a jukebox. One spitting deep-oven fried Suburban Lawns and A Certain Ratio 7"s into antimatter discotheque dance punk of all mutant fusions. The shit-fi's crunch n' charm radiates stronger, even as the sound is cleaner than before. - Matty McPherson
Rack Off Records
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Hot damn! Future Suck’s debut album, Simulation, is a great listen, built on pissed off hardcore and old school punk. Every listen through is so damn fun. The Melbourne band (which includes members of Blonde Revolver and Super X among others) play with an unfiltered fury, raging from social concerns to poor relationships, trading bad behavior for an assault of the senses. They dig into riffs and stampede through drums, as Grace Gibson’s vocals truly tie all the shredding together, with such captivating disdain and charismatic menace, it feels like a real joy to hear her yelp and shout. Even at blistering tempos, the band create memorable songs, weaving through walls of distorted guitars and an ever present pummeling with so much personality. It’s a no bullshit punk record, just off-kilter enough to keep up the propulsive energy, locking in your attention with each rattled moment. - DG
Shout Recordings
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It’s a rare occasion to feature an in-studio session on a year-end “best of” list, but here we are. Olympia’s Gen Pop are a great band and this session makes that abundantly clear. If you haven’t heard them, it’s worth digging into their entire catalog, but 2020’s PPM66 is the real gem (and a great place to start). While we eagerly await new music from the band (whose members also play or have played in Star Party, Vexx, Table Sugar, Rik & the Pigs), they’ve joined the ranks of band’s to release a Beat Session cassette via Shout Recordings (Uranium Club, Warthog, Marbled Eye), capturing an in-studio live recordings. The session includes several new and unreleased songs, including “Senseless Action,” the release’s first single. They’re all short and sweet, wasting no time highlighting the band’s brilliant Pacific Northwest fury, rattling and raw, with sweet duel vocals and punchy rhythms. The songs roar into existence and their immediacy never wanes, shaking between visceral progressions and syrupy harmonies. Everything is wonderfully tight and delightfully artistic. Gen Pop make art punk that’s undeniably thoughtful yet feels loose and instinctual. - DG
Rough Trade Records
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Gilla Band’s noisy post-punk precedes the so-called post-brexit new wave by quite a few years. Nearly ten years into their career and a name-change later, it seems like the times have finally caught up to what they’ve been onto from the start. At the peak of their exposure, the band has decidedly not reigned it in on Most Normal, opting instead for their most abrasive, chaotic, and decibel-blasting project yet. Anyone who has ever attempted to combat depression by wasting money on “shit clothes” like the narrator of “Eight Fivers,” will understand why the feeling of sheer emptiness that results absolutely warrants one of the most brutal cacophonies of the year. Most Normal attempts to sonically render the imperceptible, disgusting sound of capitalism's vulgarities, humming below the surface of its ever-captivating distractions. It ain't pretty, but it's also hard to look away. - Will Floyd
Feel It Records
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It was less than five months between when Green/Blue released their excellent sophomore album, Offering, and their latest record, Paper Thin (their second of the year), not to mention the exceptional 7” single that followed. The latest from the quartet led by Jim Blaha (Blind Shake, Shadow In The Cracks, Jim & the French Vanilla) and Annie Sparrows (Awesome Snakes), picked up where Offering left off, with a rhythm heavy surge of basement post-punk. The band mix cold melodic senses and dampened minimalism with raw energy, with a force that recalls Wipers and a heavy reverberation in line with The Jesus and Mary Chain. There’s a constant momentum, a frenzied tornado that seemingly whips around everything Blaha does. The album is built on propulsive songs smattering with low end boogie. There’s a natural swagger to their drive that instantly reminds us of Swami John Reis, keeping it locked but fluid, hard charging and full of grit. Sparrows and Blaha add tight harmonies throughout, lifting the songs from their directional pull and adding in thick hooks and a shadowy sort of noise pop etherealness. - DG
Guided By Voices Inc
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Led by the compulsively prolific Robert Pollard, Dayton indie rock titans Guided By Voices have become a well-oiled machine. Their 35th full length record Crystal Nuns Cathedral relies on their modern brand of rock and roll with some added quirks as a nod towards their more experimental history. Much like many of their recent albums, the instrumental quality is clearer and more fleshed out. Pollard’s sugary melodies are the centerpoint of each track but these more recent recordings flesh out the rhythm section giving the songs a fuller feel. The changes they present in the first half of the record ring welcome by well worn fans of the quintet, however the straightforward rock jams truly stand out. Guided By Voices history reads like an endlessly fascinating underdog story. Their understandably loyal fanbase is still with them all these years and albums later, creating a sense of camaraderie in the listening experience. Their throwbacks are nostalgic and their current rock standards are consistent. On what feels like an extended victory lap, Crystal Nuns Cathedral feeds deeper into their emerging legacy. - Eric Foreman
Marthouse Records
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The unbridled post-punk disco energy of Gut Health’s debut EP has arrived in full and we’ve been hooked like bait since we first heard “Inner Norm,” a true song-of-the-year contender. Electric Party Chrome Girl, released via Marthouse Records (Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice, Heir Traffic, It Thing), is oozing with vitality, set in place by thick elastic bass and drums, cementing the immediate groove, operating as both the backbone and immediate core of their sound. Influenced by queer and non-binary rave culture as well as the no-wave scene of the 80’s, there’s definitely some James Chance and Blondie to be found within Gut Health’s music, built upon taut punk songs flooding your senses, punchy and sparking with passionate yelps. Athina Uh Oh is the perfect front person for the band, bending colorful vocal melodies and expanding syllables for nuance, throwing in the ever impeccable “whoop whoop” that you’d never guess you needed, but can now never live without. Everything congeals into a tornado of dizzying dance punk bliss on a sure fire debut. - DG
Wrong Speed Records
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The story has it that Ghosts, the title of Haress’ sophomore album, is more than just the name of the record, but a presence found while recording in an unused water mill. If ever the dead had to be conjured from the great beyond, Haress’ sound would be a pleasant one to re-acclimate to the world with. The band, led by Elizabeth Still and David Hand, make guitar based music as its most beautiful and serene, with droning meditations and long resonating ambience that blankets the minimal recordings. Joined by Thomas House (Sweet Williams), David Smyth (Mind Mountain), Chris Summerlin (Hey Colossus), and Nathan Bell (Lungfish), the band create such a lush and reflective landscape, as open as their British countryside surroundings, slowly evolving in a way that reminds me more of Cosmic Americana, minus the twang. Primarily instrumental, aside from House’s vocal contributions, there’s a warm folk sensibility with a swirling dose of tranquil psych. When the vocals do come into focus, House’s molasses pulled melodies are the perfect match. - DG
There used to be a particular band from Providence that was universally enjoyed for their insane guitar tones, but they are probably lost forever. So here’s Seattle’s Haunted Horses taking the clamoring, clandestine torch. The Worst Has Finally Happened is a siren call from the Goth Police, industrially equipped with sharp, bleeding edge horror. The shimmering thunder is relevant and oddly soothing. Elastic punches and quivering gloom clouds present an ominous environment not worth avoiding. Knowing that Haunted Horses maybe ripped something else off almost makes me gawk, but I really don’t care. The floor is theirs now. - Jordan Michael
Self Released
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We’ve said it before and I’m sure we’ll say it again but Michael Falcone only writes hits. With a vast knowledge of the radio friendly classics (and beyond), his band Hellrazor make brilliantly raw punk songs that feel “pop” at their core, without watering down aggression or volume. The band’s long awaited sophomore album, Heaven’s Gate, comes six years after Satan Smile, but upon a few listens, you’d swear these songs have been ingrained in your head your entire life. The songs are all buzzing with overdriven guitars and thick melodic density, tangled with enormous hooks and earworm guitar harmonies to ensure maximum impact on songs like “Globbed” and “Jello Stars”. It’s not all an avalanche of accessibility however, as the band definitely turn toward some of the 80’s and 90s weirder moments on songs like “Demon Hellride,” channeling the Melvins and Butthole Surfers in their prime, and the slow dripped Nirvana-esque sludge pop of “Phantasm”. It’s a study in great songwriting, with songs that stick like glue. - DG
Run For Cover
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About halfway through Horse Jumper of Love’s new album, during the relatively up-tempo “Sitting on the Porch,” the Boston trio slips into the refrain, drums and guitars unified in a steady 3/4 build, all pointed toward a smoldering finish. That is until a few drawn out, dislocating guitar bends arrive in its place, breaking up not just the buildup, but the propulsive chug gluing the rest of the song together. Like the air getting sucked out of a balloon you were blowing up to burst, it’s satisfying in a way—just not the way you were expecting. These sorts of quasi anti-climaxes, littered across Horse Jumper’s third album, Natural Part, suggest a band negotiating brighter production and tighter songwriting with a more unpredictable and, at times, challenging sound. Waste permeates the language of the album - trash covering room floors, skunks scavenging through garbage, half-eaten food, split ends of hair inside a plastic bag. An almost embarrassing accumulation of life seems to weigh the music down as frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos groans “does it make sense, does it matter” under slowcore percussion and hazy scrapes of guitar. This conflict between the lightness of letting go and the hard-won significance of sitting with disorder till it has something meaningful to say lingers at the corners of many of the songs’ impressionistic sketches. - Jack Meyer
Listening to Comradely Objects is like watching a time lapse of a skyscraper being built — but closing out the video before you see the completed structure. The final product isn’t what’s interesting; it’s watching the small details gather together, swirling around each other until they fit just right. Horse Lords are meticulous craftsmen, finding and filling each empty space in a composition with another tiny element. Songs sometimes collapse into drone or noise, but it feels more like planned destruction than unleashed chaos. Their tightly wound grooves are propulsive and hypnotic, but leave enough slack to change shape. It’s mesmerizing. Comradely Objects is Horse Lords’ masterwork, deftly combining krautrock, free jazz, Afrobeat, and classic rock influences into something completely new. - Dash Lewis
Matador Records
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You don’t have to buy into any of the narratives around Horsegirl and their meteoric rise to know that Versions of Modern Performance is one of the year’s best albums, you simply have to listen to it. The idea of a “guitar rock” savior is ridiculous (especially if you’re a regular Post-Trash reader) as rock music hardly needs saving, but if the mainstream is catching up with what the underground already knows, then we’re thrilled to see Horsegirl lead the way, a deserving band that writes songs well developed beyond their years. The Chicago trio have a deep understanding of their vision, a rich tapestry of post-punk, shoegaze, and “college rock” influences, peeled, stripped, and collapsed only to be reshaped and repurposed as it suits their songs and the very complete landscape of their debut album. The record is impeccably structured, with one great song washing into the next, as noise freakouts and segues bridge everything together. The band write what feel like pop songs, with little to no reliance on hooks, a fact that’s hard to believe on first listen, but becomes increasingly apparent. Horsegirl rarely rely on repetition, instead focusing emphasis on mesmerizing harmonies and melodies so thick they only need one pass to be memorable. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp
At some point within the last year and half, Melbourne’s Ill Globo decided to call it quits, but not before self-releasing their posthumous full length, If The Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me. Following 2019’s furious and wonderful Check The Odds, the band returned to the studio with none other than Jake Robertson (Alien Nosejob, Ausmuteants, Modal Melodies) on drums. The resulting album expands the hardcore framework of their debut, but the aggression remains and the frantic energy is still burning at the core of Ill Globo’s sound. Pulling elements of post-punk’s more corrosive tendencies and the reckless nature of garage punk, the band collide headfirst into pounding rhythms and guitars that scrape and peel the paint from the walls. There’s a dynamic nature to it all, at times embracing hardcore informed chaos while opting for dizzying structures and buzzsaw propulsion. There are tracks with proto-metal touches and others with d-beat abandonment, and everything works in the swirling glory of their gone-too-soon farewell. Thanks Ill Globo for two great releases. - DG
Strategy of Tension Music
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Recurring Dream is not a Sunwatchers stand-in; a fact made noticeable only ten seconds into the album when Jeff Tobias takes to the microphone to inform us, “By the time they learned who the real fascists were, it was already too late.” It’s a bit of a surprise to hear Tobias take to the microphone. Not just because he’s more hushed than his saxophone implies. He takes the quiet implications of what Sunwatchers have tried to set forth and does so LOUDLY, with a level of swaggering discontent and wry wit nonetheless. Tobias may be modest in his range, yet across Recurring Dream’s ten tracks, he paints vivid portraits of “money poisoning” and consumer malaise run amok; opine a vision of “what happened in Venezuela,” and most importantly, our impending doom at the hands of the white male gaze. The vignette stories are easy to latch onto and find yourself caught up in. It’s not just because they feel like they are literally staring into the abyss, but that they look at class and power in a way Sunwatchers were limited. - Matty McPherson
Music and pro wrestling have a lot in common—the stratification of the big leagues and independents, the necessity of hitting the road to put bodies and livelihoods on the line, the harsh reality of playing to empty rooms. Brooklyn band Jobber clearly understand the parallels, their love for wrestling coming through in their name, artwork, song titles, and lyrics. On their debut EP Hell in a Cell, Jobber adopt wrestling’s insider language to explore workplace discontent and the struggle to be a good person in a shitty world. It’s a gimmick, sure, but it works. Jobber set thoughtful lyrics to smartly-written pop songs with massive guitars, a potent combination that pulls as much from the locked-in power pop of The Cars and the catchy alt-rock of Helium and The Breeders as their more obvious guitar-worshipping predecessors in Helmet, Hum, and Failure. That’s a lot of sonic ground to cover, but Jobber manage to find a great balance of heavy riffing and sweet melody, dissonance and delicacy all contained by sharp songwriting and powerful, layered production. - Mark Wadley
Polyvinyl Records
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Julia Jacklin’s songwriting can be so intimate and direct that it can be, at times, discomforting for the listener. It’s not a case of too much personal detail, but because she gives voice to many of our own unspoken thoughts. We mistakenly assume we’re alone in our feelings, but when Jacklin hits an emotional nerve, we’re reminded that many of our suppressed thoughts are universal. There’s a noticeable shift in sound on PRE PLEASURE from previous releases as Jacklin trades her butterscotch blonde Telecaster for the piano, which when accompanied by her resonant voice, gives the recordings a distinct warmth. The opening song, “Lydia Wears a Cross,” might be the closest glimpse we have of her songwriting process. A drum machine sets the rhythm and sparse piano chords ring out as Jacklin’s voice pivots around a captivating melody. The songs of PRE PLEASURE are a melodious, lyrical expedition in the valley between what we want and what is expected of us, serving as a reminder that meeting someone else’s expectations, might not be what we want. - Dominic Acito
Temporary Residence
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At first listen, June McDoom’s voice is pure, chilled air, hovering over buried guitar grooves and wafting toward distant, thunderous percussion. But just beneath this whispery delivery is another, lower register: deeply anchored, with a rich, finely controlled vibrato. The mingling of these distinct voices, as they blend with and overtake each other, is enjoyably discombobulating. It sets the tone for a daring and lovely debut EP that doesn’t just bounce between polarities, but actually unfixes them. McDoom has spoken of the influence of Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, and Judee Sill, but June McDoom isn’t an acoustic, stripped-down-and-turtlenecked kind of debut. The album blends folk-rock sounds with elements of McDoom’s other formative interests, among them the groundbreaking textures of ’60s and ’70s reggae, the bright Philly Soul tones of The Delfonics, and the airtight intensity of Spector production. The album stirs these phrases and effects into a shifting ambient background, transforming them further as it flows. There’s a prevailing DIY murkiness to it, but it also packs sonic power, approaching the sublime while still retaining nuance and scale. It’s a Wall of Sound that’s been deftly dismantled and rebuilt. - Emma Ingrisani
People can often be hesitant to embrace change, preferring stagnation and the familiar as a comfort. Sometimes though, change is for the better, case in point, Kal Marks’ new album My Name Is Hell. The Boston band’s fourth full length album (depending on how you count their releases) brings with it a new line-up, a new sonic fidelity, and what can be viewed as their most assured work to date. It’s not to say the old line-up(s) were anything short of incredible (they’ve always been a phenomenal band), but there’s a rejuvenation that can be felt with new life breathed into a project that’s been pushing forward for over a decade. The main differences come in realization of having duel guitars, with Carl Shane joined by Christina Puerto, giving the band a deeper sense of melody amid abrasion. There’s still plenty of sludge to enjoy and embrace, but the signature rhythmic stomp of Kal Marks’ songs has been transplanted into a wider array of melodic earworms and a sordid take on the overtly catchy as opposed to brute dissonance. - DG
Drag City Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
There’s a strange elegance to Kamikaze Palm Tree’s sophomore album, Mint Chip, a delightfully unusual art rock album that has grown to one of our favorites of the year. The Los Angeles duo have built their own world, with idiosyncratic songwriting, that feels pulled from alien planets, with melodies that are often hard fought but undeniably captivating. Recorded together with Tim Presley (White Fence), there’s definitely lo-fi magic abounding from every nook and cranny of their songs, with unlikely percussive elements, detuned guitars, and impeccable wonkiness that never finds solid ground but stumbles in a fancy state of grace. With elements of Deerhoof, Sic Alps, and Cate Le Bon all making a presence in the Mint Chip recipe, Kamikaze Palm Tree are able to warp disparate sounds together into something magnetic and radiant, their songs becoming unbelievably memorable not just for it’s melodic subversions, but its most unlikely hooks end up the most gluey. - DG
We missed the roll out on King Hannah’s new record, I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me, but upon its arrival, the album had immediately caught our attention. There’s a great deal of 90’s influence at the core of the Liverpool duo’s music, drawing well deserved comparisons to both PJ Harvey and Portishead, thanks in part to it’s blunt lyrics but more so Hannah Merrick’s smokey vocals and the sonic landscape they choose to slink through. The album lurks in the shadows musically, but the vocals are clear and present, focused and determined. Piercing feedback is met with complex drum patterns, with stunning tone and songs that patiently work themselves into a frenzy. The duo balance acoustic tension with harrowing realism and breathy vocals (occasionally reminiscent of Goat Girl’s Clottie Cream) that seem to recall experiences of youth and the mental health struggles that comes with it. - DG
Static Shock / Sorry State Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Last year we were introduced to the brilliant and ballistic hardcore of Lasso via their debut EP, nine minutes of rattled death rock tinged punk. The Brazilian band return with their second effort, Amuo, upping the intensity this time around, while keeping the pace blistering and the guitar leads impeccably engaging. For a hardcore album that’s sung entirely in Portuguese, the band make incredibly catchy songs, with big riffs that chug from the odd surf punk influence to more thumping brute abandon. There’s a balance between art rock intelligence and unfiltered angst, oozing into the tempos, the shrieking intensity of the vocals, and the interplay between members, peeling away at times only to double back with a middle finger to our failing societies. - DG
Daptone Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Lee Fields has been releasing soul records since the late 60s, and while the majority of his peers are either gone or retired, he’s still at it, and it’s safe to say he’s made the soul album of the year. Having previously released a handful of singles together with Daptone Records, his latest album, Sentimental Fool, marks his first full length for the label, an album created together with Daptone founder Gabriel Roth and featuring members of modern soul stand-outs Menahan Street Band (Charles Bradley) and Thee Sacred Souls. The results feel like a lost classic from the glory days of the 70s, an album that fits side by side with Curtis Mayfield, Bobby Womack, and Delfonics collections. In his early 70s, Fields sounds vital, blending soul with a bit of blues and funk, adopting elements of the James Brown playbook to spin tales of love, hardship, and gospel. The band lay out slinky horns, organs, rolling drums, and swooning backing vocals, keeping the essence of retro-R&B, and creating a perfect backdrop for Fields’ bluesy longing. They play it impeccably downtempo (“Ordinary Lives”), funky (“I Should Have Let You Be”), and upbeat (“Two Jobs”) on a record that gets better with every listen. - DG
Flower Sounds / Feeding Tube Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The Lentils’ latest album blasts out a beginning with busted horns, humming chugging bass and a trickle of a guitar chord, asking: “What good is memory? And why do words have no taste?” Luke Csehak, writer, singer, instrumentalist, and producer of the album Budget Alchemy and the band The Lentils, seems to be having a crisis on the usefulness of language. His fondness for words and his troubles with them are articulated clearly and strangely throughout the album, proving his point. It’s the repeated thought of collaged sounds and clinging melodies (memories) that hold these words together in this dizzying and special collection – an experimental album that immediately feels colorful in anti-seriousness, yet deeply moving with soulful layers. Budget Alchemy presents catchy, messy yet totally in-control music, like a demo that’s crystal clear. There’s lo-fi guitar scritches along deep bass blankets, there’s whistling saxophone breaks, some faraway bells and shakers – opposites attract, avant garde and pop song. - Delia Rainey
Born Yesterday Records
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Crowd Can Talk is a masterclass for rhythm sections and for making the most of three musicians. The EP adds to Lifeguard’s already-impressive body of work with the group’s catchiest riff writing, punchiest song structures, and most explosive-sounding recordings to date, ranging in dynamics from moody, driving post-punk to screamy post-hardcore. Kai Slater (guitars, vocals) and Asher Case (bass, vocals) trade melodic duties, playing off each other to create cohesive parts that are cemented by Isaac Lowenstein’s (drums) thematic direction and underpinned by detached vocals. The trio quickly establish catchy grooves propelled forward by off-kilter time signatures and Lowenstein’s impeccable feel for transitioning from theme to theme. They cycle coolly through rapid-fire ideas in a way that leaves the listener unsure of what’s coming next, but always confident where they are when they finally arrive. - Cole Makuch
Dear Life Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Austin based duo Little Mazarn released their new album Texas River Song back in August, the band’s first for Dear Life Records (Wendy Eisenberg, MJ Lenderman, Anne Malin). It’s a great fit for the oft-experimental folk-influenced project, joining a label known for forward thinking songwriters, and Little Mazarn’s beautiful home-spun songs are most definitely forward thinking. Built primarily on vocals, banjo, and singing saw, the band introduced their new album via “Dew Nears Yay,” a song that welcomed us into their world of natural bliss, gentle harmonies, poignant lyrics, and just a touch of haunting aura that seemingly comes with the times. Much like the lead single, the record is seeded with open spaces and a wandering spirit switching between brevity and expansive meditations, with some of the most beautiful banjo playing we’ve heard. - DG
Self Released
Apple Music | Spotify
On a week that saw the release of both Meyhem Lauren and Daringer’s Black Vladimir and Roc Marciano and The Alchemist’s The Elephant Man’s Bones, there was also a surprise, the return of Mach-Hommy and Tha God Fahim’s Dollar Menu series. When discussing the path to the two MC’s legendary status in the hip-hop underground, the Dollar Menu series plays a big part of it. Built on laid back but always evocative beats and stream of conscious rhymes, Mach and Fahim bring out the best in each other and Dollar Menu 4 is another highlight for both of them, each leveling up their lyrical gymnastics. Fahim is razor focused, almost like he has something to prove in comparison, but if that’s his motivation, he delivers on every single track, with some of his most potent flows, offering a sense of sage like wisdom to Mach’s psychedelic poetry. With production from Fahim, Fortes, and Sadhugold, the duo play off one another’s verses, attacking the lo-fi beats with magical chemistry, weaponizing their verses to explode at a drop of a bar. - DG
Incredibly idiosyncratic - albeit not to one another, the Atlanta-based quartet Mamalarky communicates amongst themselves in a tongue all their own. Their most recent release, Pocket Fantasy, is not an invitation into their world, but an overheard discussion felt so intensely that it is carried home by casual passerby. Mamalarky travels through their sophomore LP with an omniscience that is undeniably present but purposely withheld; the listener - stunned into silence by the band’s seemingly effortless synchronicity, is deliberately told nothing and shown everything. Unconcerned with contradictions of sound and style, Pocket Fantasy is strung together like a stream of consciousness. Singer Livy Bennett isn’t tied down by the rules of logic as she flows from thoughtful contemplation to unprompted revelation without warning. - Becca Barglowski
Skeletal Lightning
Bandcamp | Spotify
Brooklyn’s Maneka have always taken an experimental approach to punk where nothing is off limits. The solo project of Devin McKnight has an expansive pallet, known to incorporate touches of shoegaze, psych, jazz, post-hardcore, and hip-hop into the mix as it suits the unpredictable trajectory of each record. Dark Matters, the second full length from McKnight and co. (including frequent collaborator Jordyn Blakely) takes as many risks as his debut, but there’s a refined sense to it, a relaxed atmosphere, even in the face of personal and societal turmoil. The songs manage something special, simultaneously sounding more experimental in structure and yet more “pop” as a cohesive whole. It’s less jarring and more focused, both lyrically pointed and adventurous but part of a reflective piece that shifts naturally with highlights like “Runaway” and “Maintain” leaving instant impressions of the record’s duality. - DG
Mello Music Group
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Marlowe, the North Carolina based duo of Solemn Brigham and L’Orange return with third album, fittingly titled Marlowe 3, proving their blend of hip-hop noir beats and chameleonic flows sounds more impeccable than ever. Out via Mello Music Group (Homeboy Sandman, Apollo Brown, Quelle Chris), the pair expand upon their first two albums by embracing loose structures and a knack for good times hip-hop, lacing L’Orange’s creative production with Brigham’s ceaseless delivery, whether he’s expanding syllables to hit the beats or rhyming in triplets over them. Everything they’ve been working for lands, from the triumphant wordplay and surf noir beat of “My People” to the fiery looped futurism of “Godfist,” the whole record feels like a playground for both MC and producer to dive into subconscious and flood the album with their creative spark. The beats are astounding. The rapping is astounding. Long live Marlowe. - DG
Swami / Big Scary Monsters
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Chicago’s Meat Wave followed up last year’s Volcano Park EP with the excellent Malign Hex, their first full length in five years and their Swami Records (PLOSIVS, Night Marchers, Mrs. Magician) debut. The record is propelled by an incessant rhythmic density and pinched harmonic attacks, pulling the band’s post-hardcore approach in new directions as they slow the tempo ever so slightly, using the muscular repetition to make the resolve of anti-hooks hit harder. Meat Wave’s sound can at times feel like the intersection of Drive Like Jehu’s driving discordance and the locked in dynamic of Jawbox, and their latest is a perfect encapsulation of that nuanced pairing. It feels as though Meat Wave have sharpened the corners and upped the tension. There’s a patience to be found, building atmosphere before blasting through the foundation, leaving rubble and smoke from well earned angst. The trio have shown a lot of promise for the better part of the past decade, and it’s with great joy that we can say that Malign Hex is their best record yet. - DG
Domino Recording Co.
Bandcamp | Spotify
It's easy to think of records on a kind of binary, either being overly sad and contemplative or especially happy and less thoughtful. That structure makes things easy to accept and ensures songs are more readily digestible, especially if we see them as yet more direct pop tunes, but as Melody’s Echo Chamber demonstrates on this record, emotions are infinitely more complicated — and thus all the more interesting. It's quite possible to mourn what was and accept what is and hope for a greater future all in the span of a single note. It's more noble to accept a jumbled mess of emotions and ideas than it is to compartmentalize feelings. Life is messy, and by sharing that message through these perfectly constructed pop songs, Melody Prochet seems to have landed on a capital t Truth. - Chris Coplan
Black Truffle Enterprises
Apple Music | Spotify
Perhaps the best compliment that can be paid to Meyhem Lauren is that he is the epitome of rap’s golden age. He’s hip-hop in its purest form, unadulterated rawness, rapping as if there was never another choice. What his music eschews in conscious lyrics and social concerns, he replaces with the criminal element, a blueprint of drug talk, expensive tastes, and immaculate fly shit. Together with Daringer, Griselda’s always in demand in-house producer, the pair have constructed an album glistening with the kind of dangerous head splitting beats that Daringer has made his signature.The record knocks hard with piercing tones and a low key griminess, a raw backdrop for Meyhem and guests like Conway The Machine, Action Bronson, and Westside Gunn to rip up with street tales, hustle tips, and general braggadocios joy. Meyhem Lauren rides the beat like he’s lounging in a foreign car behind tinted windows, flexing and flossing in equal measure. He bodies everything Daringer puts before him, lighting up haunting samples and eerie loops, bringing us back to the glory days of effortless MCing. It’s cold as ice but too damn fun. - DG
Since the dissolution of Two Inch Astronaut back in 2017, Sam Goblin has poured himself into Mister Goblin, a solo project that really hones in on his unique songwriting perspectives and sense of humor. He’s released an album or EP every year since 2018, primarily built on acoustic ballads that swoon and sweep with post-hardcore influenced chord progressions. With Bunny, the project expands to a trio, as Mister Goblin moves from Maryland to Indiana, and nothing is ever the same again. Together with Seth Engel (Options) and Aaron O’Neill (Cumbie), the trio reimagine Mister Goblin at it’s most dynamic. The song’s are heavier and more intricate, diving deeper into murky waters with a pop sensibility still afloat. The band format will definitely remind long time fans of Two Inch Astronaut, but throughout Bunny, Goblin and co. prove this is no retread, as they move through heart on sleeve alt-pop jams to combustible post-hardcore. At the center of every song though remains Sam Goblin’s sense of melody and his sharp observational lyrics, taking a different look at the world around us. - DG
Dear Life Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
MJ Lenderman’s solo work carries a heavier, slower pace, and slightly more solemn weight than the work of Wednesday, with a feel closer to some of the twangier projects of Jason Molina, Simon Joyner, and a little Neil Young (amongst many other influences) thrown in along the way. On his third full length release Boat Songs, Lenderman shows off a strong wit, mixing in pop culture references to his songs, adding a strength and tenderness when called for. This record has a ramshackle feel to it that is warm and welcoming with a bunch of enchanting twists, revealing a bountiful of pleasures within each song. Although recorded mostly by Lenderman and Colin Miller, some of his Wednesday cohorts lend a helping hand on an album that treads its own unique path, filled with an extreme creativity that is unexpected as well as welcomed. - Kris Handel
Anti Fade Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The shift from punk music to art pop and dance music has become increasingly common. With the artists setting aside the aggression of guitars and drums in favor of synths and programmed beats, it allows new worlds of synthetic exploration, following impulses less travelled. While it can feel clunky and almost pandering to the “poptism” trend for many, there are others who embrace their own synth pop wave with utmost sincerity, which brings us to Modal Melodies. The duo, comprised of Violetta Del Conte-Race (Primo!) and Jake Robertson (Alien Nosejob, Ausmuteants), released their self-titled full length debut via Anti Fade Records, a triumph of slow dripped disco and mutated synth pop. It’s a gorgeous record, avoiding pastiche to slink along with their own unique vision. There’s syrupy slow disco beats and synths that sustain themselves into the ether, while the bass squiggles around.. It’s light and airy, but there’s a shadowy undercurrent, like the sound of disco as the 70’s faded into the 80’s, and new wave emerged from the ashes. - DG
Polyvinyl Records
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Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten have complimented each other’s riffs and molded their voices into one since their 2016 EP, Thanks Come Again. Following up with two albums – the straightforward, melodic songwriting prompts in Interloper and the conceptually aspiring album Two of Me – has led Momma, now along with producer/guitarist Aron Ritch, into Household Name. Obsessions with bending the mainstream into 90s culture and reaching Kurt Cobain-levels of fame have dominated their new direction. Momma seems to be wearing that kind of influence on their sleeves. In terms of championing the 1990s, Momma wrote – in my mind – Gen Z’s “1979” in “Speeding 72”. Based on Ritch’s chord progressions, the faded, go-lucky attitude and timelessness around the song is the car anthem today’s youth need to be able to call their own – something their parents of the grunge era can’t claim themselves. - Seth Daspit
Anti- Records
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Released less than a year apart, Jazz Codes was billed as a companion album to Moor Mother’s Black Encyclopedia of the Air, but this is more a sequel than a mere addendum, a record every bit as important as her last. With one foot in cosmic poetry and another in jazz influenced hip-hop, Moor Mother aka Camae Ayewa truly subsides genre, opting instead for art in its unique vision, where words of hope come from celestial change and the focus on her Black Quantum Futurism movement, an ideology that embraces a better tomorrow for both women and people of color. With one foot in the future and the other in a revisionist history, Ayewa seems to glide and float without ever touching the ground, morphing soul and spoken word poetry with shapeless jazz, allowing her words to explore the outer reaches of our galaxy while remaining grounded in a quest to find equality, a place where the outsiders have a home, a place built on actual freedom. - DG
Sub Pop Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
With life (and a never ending run of bad politics) seemingly kicking us in the face at all times in recent memory, it feels great to sink yourself into Naima Bock’s solo debut, Giant Palm, as gorgeous an escape as they come. The former Goat Girl member steps out on her own, leaving behind that band’s perfectly dusty post-punk twang in favor of embracing her roots, opting for lush folk and orchestral pop, delivered through an ever changing lens of Brazilian influences (where Bock spent much of her childhood), electronic textures, and stunning classical touches. Every song offers something a bit different, with Bock’s beautiful voice the constant, sitting perfectly in a mix of sweeping strings, woodwinds, choirs, and beyond. Tracks like album stand-out “Toll” offer an ever building mix of acoustic instrumental layers and a genuinely stunning progression, with Bock’s locked in melody at its heart. Her voice is among the most gorgeous we’ve ever known, with an impactful resonance to every word of Bock’s evolving introspection. Her compositions really fuse disparate textures together with grace, the results gentle but nuanced on what could be the year’s best album. - DG
Temporary Residence
Bandcamp | Spotify
After a twelve year absence from music, singer/songwriter Nina Nastasia made her welcome return with Riderless Horse, a new album of solo vocals and guitar, out via Temporary Residence (Eluvium, Envy, Mogwai). The record comes from a place of brutal heartbreak, the end of an abusive relationship and subsequent suicide, topics that are as heavy and personal as they come (you can read more about it on her Bandcamp). Despite that emotional heaviness, which resides over the entire record, the songs don’t feel entirely committed to doom and gloom. The album has a classic folk story-telling nature to it, with lyrics that wind into gentle patterns, even as they explore depression and the desire to simply give up, rather than dealing with the issues at hand. It’s an escape, but not one that enacts any change in the situation, but Nastasia makes it sound appealing and nearly blissful, despite itself and the hurt at hand. - DG
Quiet Year Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
We’ve been waiting six long years for Nine of Swords to release a new record, and lo and behold, it was worth the wait. The Philadelphia based hardcore band have shared Beyond The Swords via Richmond’s Quiet Year Records, their first since the underground classic You Will Never Die. The band’s welcome return shows that the quartet haven’t missed a step, with the intensity and aggression as blistering and corrosive as ever. The band grind and trash, with harsh distortion and TJ Stevenson’s feverishly blasted drum fills. It’s a cathartic way to spend your listening time, as the album is said to come from a place of optimism, so go ahead and release your toxins and reset. Rachel Gordon’s vocals toe the line between blood curdling and “a good talking to” as she screams with pointed hostility and stern importance. We can often be our own worst demons, but Nine of Swords are here to forcefully remind us there’s help for us all. - DG
Secretly Canadian / Sooper Records
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Among its other meanings, Please Have a Seat is an earnest request on NNAMDÏ’s part. The Chicago songwriter says he wrote each song on his latest LP for maximum indie pop impact, and sure enough, his melodic craftsmanship is unimpeachable, but they’re also best enjoyed in a single sitting. Not just for the comedic skits where NNAMDÏ plays the furniture salesman trying to sell you a chair to sit in while you do, but as an exercise in mindful engagement that rewards your full attention in its sleek, judicious production. NNAMDÏ strikes a perfect balance of the heartfelt and whimsical, everything finished in just the right portions of strings, pianos, drum machines, and the odd midwest emo guitar. It adds up to an ambitious catalog entry where each song could stand on its own four legs, but they’re all better off pulled up to the same table–everything fits together smoother than an Ikea set, and twice as sturdy. - Taylor Ruckle
Joyful Noise Recordings
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After 25 years together, it’s safe to call New York’s Oneida a legendary band, at least in the forward thinking art-rock, punk, psych, circles they’ve have made their experimental stomping grounds. While the band rarely stay in one place for more than a record or two, there’s a constant growth in their sound, seeing just how far they can push repetition and the pulse of their splattered guitars and kinetic rhythms. Following the electronic leaning Romance back in 2018, the band return once more with Success, an album that seems to bring them back to their earliest roots, with psychedelic motorik punk and buoyant indie rock energy making good time rock ‘n’ roll for these bad times. The band chug and storm through blistering solos and walls of squealing guitar fury, throwing earthquakes of abrasive abstraction to songs that are otherwise happy to blissfully jangle and mesmerize. They sound refreshed and primed to engage, sweeping into explosive riffs and syrupy hooks with reckless abandon. - DG
I’m Into Life Records
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Enter Open Head, a wildly experimental band from Kingston, NY, whose debut album is the flagship release for emerging Los Angeles-via-Upstate New York label I’m Into Life Records. Joy, and Other Sufferings is a confounding, exhilarating, empowering, and breathlessly batshit experience. Based on this collection of tunes, Open Head are one of the most exciting guitar bands to come around in years, the stateside answer to Canada’s Blessed or the UK’s Black Midi. Joy, and Other Sufferings is a statement album, a line in the sand, a challenge to all other modern guitar bands. As a band who liberally borrows from weirdo-90s-rock, Open Head is fortunate that three of the bands they remind me of are no longer active and are showing little sign of resurrecting: U.S. Maple, Sonic Youth, and Fugazi. Specifically, Open Head play the kind of challenging chaotic no-wave noise music championed on Sister/Daydream-era SY albums, Long Hair in Three Stages/Talker-era Maple, and pick-your-fav Fugazi (feels like In on the Kill Taker to me, but there’s no wrong answer). - Benji Heywood
Castle Face Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The Osees may just be our generation’s best prog rock band. Sometimes in the traditional sense, but more often than not in the sense that they are constantly progressing, their sound ever evolving to meet their whims over the course of 25 years, drawing upon what has come before, but never content to simply recreate it. They’ve made garage records, punk records, folk records. They’ve played around with no wave, krautrock, proto-metal, prog, and of course psych rock, and they’re giving hardcore a go with their latest album, A Foul Form. It may seem at first glance to be an odd choice, but the band have rarely sounded better. A Foul Form is blistering with buzzsaw menace and deviant psych colliding headfirst at full speed. The jerky rhythms and barked vocals are spiked with bite, consistently thrown from their axis with duel drums and guitars that stomp in agitated bursts, eventually spiraling out with last gasps of divergent rhythms. There’s a crust and scuzz that can be found permeating each track, inspired by the hardcore of the 80’s but flipped in the revved up image of Osees and boundless energy. The band has gone fully berserk, and we’re reaping the rewards, with bugged out synths and guitars raging like a chicken with its head cut off.. - DG
By all accounts Otoboke Beaver have only become more unbound and free-wheeling since 2019’s ITEKOMA HITS, an album that sounds like a pop masterclass compared to much of Super Champon. The melodic guitar licks have been largely replaced by wiley noise passages, and track lengths have somehow been curtailed even further; most songs here are a full minute shorter than the majority of the songs on their debut, which averaged about two minutes. For concert-goers with early bedtimes, I have to imagine their live set is a dream. As other reviewers have noted the predominant theme of the band’s music is a simple ‘No’—no to capitalism crippling demands, no to patriarchy, and not to common decency. Their songs might be best understood as 2-minute adult tantrums. That remains truer than ever on Super Champon: they are not maternal, they will not dish out salads, they will not be called mojo, they want to be left alone, but they don’t want to die alone. While nothing radically new has been added to the band’s repertoire on Super Champon, they retain their position in an elite group of acts who can afford to risk repeating themselves thanks to their sheer originality. They’re also part of another burgeoning elite group of musician-humorists, whose lyrics and musical motifs derive much of their catchiness from expert comedic timing. - Will Floyd
Saddle Creek
Bandcamp | Spotify
The world has been patiently awaiting the return of Palm, waiting to see what the Philadelphia quartet capable of seemingly anything would do next. While four years isn’t such a long await, with a band like Palm, who’s never released the same record twice, it can feel like an eternity, but Nicks and Grazes has arrived, and Palm have once again successfully leaped over any expectations into their own stratosphere. With their new album, released via their new home at Saddle Creek (Black Belt Eagle Scout, Disq, Feeble Little Horse), Palm presents a new form for the band, one far deeper immersed in experimental electronics but still somehow with “rock” at it’s core, even at its most alien. With a cavalcade of “how’d they do that” moments, it quickly sets itself up as on of the year’s most albums, with a maximalist array of sounds and shapes moving about with freedom. It’s the kind of album you listen to on repeat, finding different nuances with every listen, where nothing is quite as it seems and everything feels exactly in orbit. There’s a great deal of experimentation at play, but with dynamics warping and shifting in constant motion, Palm never loose sight of the songs themselves, creating something with forward-thinking momentum as catchy as it is defying. - DG
Temporary Residence
Bandcamp | Spotify
Whatever your thoughts are about one Party Dozen track, the odds are they won’t be the same by the next one. The primarily instrumental duo have been making a ruckus throughout Sydney and beyond for the past five years or so, leading up to their third album, The Real Work, the band’s first together with Temporary Residence Records. Structurally built on the skeletal framework of saxophone and drums, there’s little minimalist about Party Dozen’s swarming and boisterous sound as the duo embrace chaos and creativity in equal measure. Picking apart and reshaping post-punk, noise rock, free jazz, stoner doom, motorik punk, and a deranged sense of pop, the band are able to manipulate percussion and effected sax skronk to sound limitless, ripping through sludge one moment and into a hypnotic boogie the next. It’s experimental in the sense that you haven’t heard anything quite like it, built the way it is, but the songs are accessible and the album easily enjoyed for anyone that appreciates music both weird and heavy. - DG
Pet Fox are a Boston based trio, combining powerhouse musicians from Ovlov and Grass is Green (amongst many others), that take a cerebral and surprisingly intense approach on fractured post-punk and pop that truly blossoms over time. A Face in Your Life is the third full length from the group and on this record the music continues to smolder with shockingly complex songwriting and a wonderfully flexible approach. There are tinges of early-mid 90's Dischord Records influences here but there’s a little more apparent vulnerability and some interesting textural and jazzy moments that spring up unexpectedly. The connection that has formed between Theo Hartlett, Morgan Luzzi, and Jesse Weiss is extremely evident as the record flows in a remarkably smooth manner due to the interplay between the three. A Face In Your Life is thrilling and continues to grow in manner of refinement and technique. - Kris Handel
Mistletone Records / EIS
Bandcamp | Spotify
Pinch Points’ second full length, Process, is a record that only gets more profound with each listen. There’s two sides to the coin throughout the album. On one hand there’s the sarcastic approach and aggression pitted against gendered violence, sociopolitical issues, police brutality, and the dangers of continuous damage to our environment, the band raise issues that are local to their home but undeniably global. On the other, there’s the equally forceful but radiant positivity that sets the band apart, with songs that offer self-help reminders and personal mental health check-ins. The Melbourne based quartet make some of the absolute tightest post-punk anywhere in the world and they do it all void of any posturing. They do it to share messages of both personal and sociopolitical concerns, all the while tearing through an incredibly clean twin guitar attack that rips from one jagged riff to the next. Process is an important record, an album that could topple with concerns and anxieties if the band weren’t taking aim and decimating them one by one. - DG
Real Bad Man Records
Apple Music | Spotify
Pink Siifu is a true hip-hop polymath, seemingly capable of just about anything, as evidence by his output these past few years. His albums are all highly conceptual, standing on their own as a point in time in his artistry, each adding another side to his legacy from the abrasive noise tendencies and socio-political nature of NEGRO to the Dungeon Family indebted soul of GUMBO’!, and the smoked out record store raps of his collaborations with Fly Anakin. His latest, Real Bad Flights, is a compilation of rap tunes produced entirely by Los Angeles’ Real Bad Man, the production team best known for a pair of Boldy James records. While it’s billed as a compilation, the cohesiveness of it is undeniable and Siifu brings his GKFAM along for the ride, adding another degree to his mind bending hip-hop odyssey. While the vision may not come entirely from Siifu’s design, Real Bad Man shapes the tracks to highlight the casually profound delivery of Siifu’s more laid back side. As the songs are spit with a weed fried atmosphere, everything feels essential, an invite into Siifu’s thoughts, where he’s not concerned with any of the bullshit, posturing, or politics of the industry. This is rap as art, rap as conversation, rap in the pursuit of creativity. The record pairs Siifu together with both his GKFAM and peers like Armand Hammer, Boldy James, and Chuck Strangers, setting a familial tone, while watching some of hip-hop’s best draw inspiration from one another. It’s a reminder to pave your own path, and to just do you. - DG
Universal Music
Apple Music | Spotify
Following what we’ll call “the most welcome catalog reissue campaign” in recent memory, PJ Harvey’s incredible archives remain open with the boxset release of B-Sides, Demos, & Rarities, a real treasure trove of the vaults. The 6xLP collection pulls together unreleased recordings with soundtrack appearances, alternate takes, and beyond, a welcome addition of music that wasn’t covered within the recent album demos releases that accompanied their studio counterparts. Blending together demos that always feel fully formed together with non-album cuts that sound rather immaculate and catalog single b-sides that really feel essential, the collection takes us from Harvey’s earliest days to the present, weaving nothing but magic throughout the years.- DG
RoachLeg Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Following two truly great EPs (that came together to create one truly great LP), Philadelphia’s Poison Ruïn have become one of the most in demand punk bands, combining old school hardcore, dungeon synths, and proto-metal. Their recordings are delightfully lo-fi, giving a damp basement aura to their medieval chaos and brute riffs. As they continue their ascent to becoming “your favorite band’s favorite band,” Poison Ruïn are back with a new EP, Not Today, Not Tomorrow. Released via NYC’s RoachLeg Records (Sørdïd, Xero, Tower 7), the three track effort is built upon everything that makes Poison Ruïn so great. There’s the gnarly metal riffs, the hard pounding drums that resonate with sheer density, and the psychedelic touches that make their death rock tendencies sound so damn epic. There are moments when Poison Ruïn almost feel like our generations answer to the Wipers, but the band shift around within their own sound enough that any comparison is fruitless. They are their own beast, and all the better for it. - DG
G.O.O.D. / Def Jam Recordings
Apple Music | Spotify
Clearing the elephant from the room, we do not condone Kanye West and his ignorant hate speech. It’s dangerous and disgusting. We considered removing this album from our feature, but we’re not going to hold it against Pusha T. We hope moving forward he chooses better collaborators. As someone that grew up and remains a die-hard fan of 90’s hip-hop, I consider the 2000s to belong to the Clipse, with their first two records cementing themselves as undeniable classics, flawless albums of “coke rap” at it’s most clever with Neptunes beats that range from near perfect to perfect. Since the end of the Clipse, Pusha T has become one of mainstream rap’s biggest stars. His solo material has often dipped into the pop realms, working with a whole new era of MCs, but despite all that, Pusha T has always remained 100% Pusha T, spitting his bars with an unwavering brilliance and the ability to describe selling coke in a million and one different ways. In that regard, It’s Almost Dry is no different, the coke is still being cooked, bagged, and flipped, and Pusha T is still finding inventive ways to tell his tales of connects and empires of snow. The big difference with this album though, is that Pharrell Williams has once again joined the circle to share production duties, a reunion that proves to hit just as hard as it did in the Clipse days. Pharrell makes beats designed for Pusha (as opposed to other producers who bring Pusha to the beat, and not the other way around), with gangster funk that bounces and grooves with the silk and poison of his delivery. Star Trak forever. Bring back Fam-Lay. - DG
Northern Spy Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Reconstructing memory is never simple, of course – it is difficult, if not impossible, to address experiences of our pasts without projecting some of the present moment onto those memories, using contemporary interpretive lenses to evaluate instances where we may have lacked those insights. For Renata Zeiguer, that’s an exciting problem to have, and an opportunity to make sonic magic. On Picnic in the Dark, Zeiguer does not hesitate to whisk her listener away to a lush, reverberant world of her own design. By blending contemporary indie pop’s structures with vintage drum machines, old Hollywood strings, and dalliances into bossa nova territory, Zeiguer becomes the architect of her own memories. Creative impulses that seem disparate in time and in place inhabit the same sonic space, resulting in an inimitable record that represents the idiosyncrasies of memory. - Devon Chodzin
NYC trio Ribbon Stage is all ragged, fuzzed-out, minimalist pop. Enter Hit With The Most, the band’s latest. Intended as a love letter to its obvious early ‘80s pop influences but hitting those same sweet spots as Austin’s Chronophage or even NYC’s Weak Signal, the album’s eleven tracks are mostly distorted guitars over mid-tempo slacker rock. Ribbon Stage is big on subtlety, vocals back in the mix and nary a cymbal on the record – the result is an almost unwavering focus on simplicity and melody. It isn’t until the deliberately off-key opening seconds of the album’s seventh track, “Her Clock Tower,” a genuine guitar freakout, that the band’s noisy punk roots really make themselves known. They remain front and center for the balance of the album as the tempo picks up with “Hearst,” followed by the softly-spoken vocals and off-kilter riffs of “It’s Apathy” – one of the album’s strongest tracks. - Al Crisafulli
Domino Recording Co
Bandcamp | Spotify
The music of Newcastle’s Richard Dawson encompasses a world all its own, a destination not quite past, present, or future, but some weird hodgepodge of all three, where baroque folk music and broken down prog reside with forays into electronic soundscapes, the use of open ambient space, and controlled dissonance. It’s in Dawson’s music that we can step outside of reality and simply exist within his sound. The Ruby Cord is third in a trilogy that began with Peasant and 2020, this time focusing on the future, but not necessarily our future, rather the idea of the future and the disconnect from reality with our embrace of the virtual. Themes aside though, it’s a stunning work of brilliance, built on patience and understanding, warmth and comfort. Sure, “The Hermit” is 41 minutes, which to some is going to be an impenetrable obstacle, but for anyone willing to experience the moment, to close themselves off from the outside noise of the world, and allow yourself to be pulled into Dawson’s orbit, it’s worth every last moment. Opening with detached strings, plucked and bowed in time with gorgeous brushed rhythms, and some soft washes of piano, it feels meditative, with each resonate note fading into the ether. As the song progresses, Dawson’s signature vocals spin tales like a traveling bard from medieval days, presenting a world part surreal but situated in the nature of this reality, from grand mountains to mushrooms and moss. By the time we reach the song’s coda, with choir intact, we’re adrift on a boat out to sea, centered between smoke and rainbows, a life both destructive and beautiful. A taper of rainbows, faintly aglow, forever. - DG
Relapse Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
It’s all in the name they say… and well, Ripped To Shreds are certainly painting an appropriate picture, but there’s so much more to the Bay Area death metal band and their name could just be an understatement. Following 2020’s exceptionally destructive 亂 (Luan) LP, the band signed to Relapse Records (Boris, Full of Hell, Yautja) for their long-awaited new album, 劇變 (Jubian). One of modern death metal’s best records of the year (if not the absolute best), the album takes on themes of being a minority in America, and giving a voice to Chinese born Americans with the metal community. The entire thing is a colossal avalanche of dismembered beats, volcanic solos, and guttural vocals that pull from desperation and righteous fury. The guitars are often unpredictable, at times violent and corrosive at other times legitimately melodic (but don’t worry, the melodic nature of it never lasts too long). Andrew Lee’s riffs are caustic, turbulently shifting from one avalanche to the next, with the utterly wild dexterity and multi-faceted speed of drummer Brian Do stealing the show (a near impossible feat). - DG
Griselda Records / Empire
Bandcamp | Spotify
There’s an unmistakable quality to Rome Streetz’s delivery that reminds me at times of the late great Big L, his flow a well woven delivery of sharp and concise bars, bodying the beat without remorse. Known to drop several albums in a year since he emerged half a decade ago, the Bed-Stuy based MC laces his rhymes over minimalist beats, opting for the darker recesses of hip-hop, but his lyrics always pop, bringing a ferocious venom to his hip-hop shit talk, tales of the drug trade, and his ability to ascend it all to become a champ in the making. Kiss The Ring is his Griselda debut, and with it comes the production that Griselda was built on, with beats by Alchemist, DJ Green Lantern, Daringer, Camoflauge Monk, Conductor Williams, and Denny Laflare. As an MC who commonly works with a single producer (DJ Muggs, Futurewave, ANKLEJOHN), Rome Streetz has a definite understanding to a unified sound, and he delivers over any beat he’s given, from straightforward boom-bap to cascading psych rap, driving with quick punchlines and hard hitting bars that feel delivered from a time when the hip-hop mainstream wasn’t even on the radar. - DG
Northern Spy Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Shilpa Ray is one of the best songwriters of our generation. There’s an observational wisdom to her words, a poetic sensibility that examines life, often at its ugliest. The strength of her voice is unmatched, setting tone and disdain in place, whether over dreamy pianos and synths or hard driving punk. Portrait of a Lady is an essential album, one that explores sexual abuse, horrific male behavior in the age of Trump, and coming out as a survivor on top. In the same way that Door Girl took a personal approach to paint a picture of New City’s lows, Portrait of Lady does so in regards to the shit women have to deal with and the nature of entitled scummy men. The scope of the songs is ever changing, a gift that Shilpa Ray possesses better than most, moving between ballads (“Heteronormative Horseshit Blues”), noise rock rippers (“Manic Pixie Dream Cunt”), and 80’s tinged post-punk (“Lawsuits & Suicide”). All the pieces fall into place, and the mix of harsh and surreal feels intentional, shaping life as we know it, for better or, more likely, for worse. - DG
XL Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify
What is really left to say about Radiohead and the side-projects that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are capable of designing? The point is not only anchored in artistic bravery but in the ability to structure music around an imaginary that is always new and personal. It also happens with The Smile, thanks to the rhythmic consciousness of Tom Skinner. A Light for Attracting Attention is a record that lives an independent existence, and yet it carries with it a baggage that comes from a sound that touches on OK Computer, The Bends, and in some insights even Amnesiac and A Moon Shaped Pool. The baggage is comprehensive, complex, but not weighty, because Yorke and Greenwood's cross-media paths have offered an endless array of suggestions. The overall feeling of A Light for Attracting Attention is that of hearing a new, incredible, but recognizable and consistent album. The Smile has a sound collimating on the vast sonic experiences and knowledge of its members. They still manage to build an experience that for Radiohead fans is extremely religious, a structured suitcase of everything that Greenwood and Yorke have always emphasized. - Gianluigi Marsibilio
Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Material is Smirk’s first proper full length, and it confirms that Nick Vicario (who writes, performs, and records all the music themself) is among the best punks in the game right now. Quality songwriting is the backbone of Smirk’s infectious charm. This batch of songs is more polished and refined without rounding off any of the sharp edges of Smirk’s earlier material, falling somewhere on the spectrum between the egg punk chaos of Gee Tee and catchy alternative of Parquet Courts. The vocals are sardonic and melodic, guitars a crisp buzzsaw, all rounded out with vibrant live drums. Highlights are the hard-hitting “Symmetry” (what a wicked ending!), the punk ripper “Revenge,” and the surprisingly tender “Souvenir.” - Matt Watton
PRAH Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify
London’s Sniffany & The Nits introduced themselves in 2020 with The Greatest Nits, a ferocious and charismatic debut EP that was equal parts chaotic and catchy. The quartet (which includes former members of Joanna Gruesome), blend a mix of vibrant hardcore, rattled post-punk, and a touch of deranged pop, creating songs that are vulnerable beneath their muscular pummel and sarcastic edge. The Unscratchable Itch, the band’s first first length, expands the anxiety, animosity, and aggression of their EP with blunt force guitars, rhythms that pound their way into oblivion, and the always acerbic wit of Sister Sniffany. It’s her vocals and lyrics that truly set the band apart, taking situations of heartbreak and sexual exploitation and giving it all a swift kick in the teeth. The Unscratchable Itch is a cavalcade of character studies and personal exhortations, shouted and yelped over a constant stampede. The noise and fury never relent but the hooks find their way in, and there’s room to interpret the scorn and disdain in Sniffany’s world of cheating spouses, submissive behaviors, and empty promises. - DG
Electric Outlet
Bandcamp | Spotify
Nashville’s Snooper gives us everything we could ever want from an egg punk EP: ripping-hot riffs, shrieking guitar, pummelling drums, half-sung vocals about modern malaise. Their latest five track EP, Town Topic, clocking in at less than eight minutes, sounds like a Devo record mistakenly played at 45 RPM. But this is no trite rehash of punk tropes, and the band’s ear for tension-and-release melodies and lo-fi, chorus-soaked vocals makes for an infectious, eminently relistenable batch of tunes. Opener “Powerball” is a ripper, but makes use of space with wailing, half-in-tune bends and punchy, melodic drums, before completely falling apart at the end (just so you don’t get too complacent). “Town Topic,” driven by staccato vocals and guitar, finds the whole band bouncing in unison; the melodic “Xerox” lilts along as vocalist Blair Tramel sings disaffected couplets about uninteresting posers. Go listen to Snooper. I can’t think of a better way to spend seven and half minutes. - Matt Watton
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
Hailing from Perth, the notoriously isolated capital city of Western Australia, Sooks may have released our favorite demo of the year, the appropriately titled, Demo 22. The band’s approach to raw riffs and buried melodies can at times feels reminiscent of the Wipers’ catalog or the more corrosive end of Bikini Kill, with elements of lo-fi hardcore and noise pop thrown into the attack. Even as the aggression boils, it becomes apparent that Sooks’ framework comes from disparate places, as they take momentary shifts into gothy post-punk and whip directly back into the frothing bite of their more caustic nature. It all commands your attention, roaring with relentless momentum, offering a lyrical spurn of false accountability, crypto bros, and self-serving friendships. - DG
Epitaph Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
On Diaspora Problems, Soul Glo's first LP for Epitaph Records following a string of increasingly daring EPs over the last several years, the Philadelphia hardcore punk band is taking its largest swing to date. At once manic, deeply affecting and celebratory, this is Soul Glo at the height of their powers. Yes, Soul Glo's music is political. A band composed primarily of people of color, with lyrics that speak angrily, thoughtfully of the Black experience, operating within a largely homogenous punk and hardcore community, in a country that systematically does everything it can to violently uphold that homogeny, will inherently create political art. But to only speak of Diaspora Problems' achievements in those terms is reductive of its staggering emotional resonance and poetic plainspokenness. - Jean-Michel Lacombe
Nuclear Blast
Apple Music | Spotify
Hipper sites than thou don’t want you to know that the latest Soulfly album is a colossal ripper. Their loss. 37 years after Sepultura’s debut release, things have come full circle for Max Cavalera, a pioneer of both death metal and thrash. When Cavalera turned to Soulfly in 1998, the band were engrained in the nu-metal and “groove metal” of the era, but the past four years have found Cavalera and co. channeling the genres he helped forge. Totem embraces the grit of thrash and the dexterity of death metal once more to create something monolithic in its heaviness, ripping with solos and savage intensity. Joined by producer Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Red Death, Pissed Jeans) both behind the boards and on guitar, the band sound revitalized, bringing their brand of primal aggression into the modern era of metal. They aren’t reinventing anything, and they remain in tact with their roots, but it’s a Soulfly album that should scratch an itch for fans of classic Sepultura. - DG
Wax Nine Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Maryam Qudus is concerned. She has every right to be: there is an impending climate crisis that threatens the existence of all life on Earth, yet the US political establishment is more concerned with punishing immigrants for existing in US jurisdiction. All that anxiety was getting in the way of her creative work as Spacemoth until Qudus realized she could channel her concerns through her synthesizers. The end result is an impressive debut album for the sought-after analog producer – the 13-track record, No Past No Future, is some of the most potent retro-futurism out there. Layers of vintage synthesizers, accompanied by forward-thrusting guitars and drums, mesh with Qudus’ spectral vocals to craft a catchy art-pop/space-rock mixture. - Devon Chodzin
Fat Possum Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Thirty years after their debut album, Spiritualized are still at it, and Jason Pierce aka J. Spaceman and co. sound as vital now as they did upon their first emergence. Whether you’ve been listening this whole time or a total newcomer to the band (I fall in the latter category), their latest album, Everything Was Beautiful, is a high note in the catalog, an album that blends the band’s knack for light touch “space rock,” gentle indie structures, and Iggy Pop influenced garage rock, all swirled together among the broken spirituality and ethos of Pierce. The album is loaded with sweeping gestures, from chorus’ of backing vocals and heavily arranged strings, to warm fuzz and gospel-tinged soul. It’s a reclamation of a lost past, a record that breathes with new life, and a veteran swagger, with every decision sounding more as an inevitable certainly than an option within each’s progressions. - DG
Goodbye Boozy Records
Bandcamp
After a slight delay, Spodee Boy’s Neon Lights EP has arrived, and it was well worth the wait. The Nashville band, led by Connor Cummins (Snooper, Safety Net, Body Cam), continue their descent in Western cow-punk twang, and they’ve never sounded better. With each new EP, the band lean further into their cowboy depravity to accent their already agitated post-punk, adding one reckless nature to another, channeling bands like The Gun Club and Dow Jones in equal measure. Everything gets mangled and reassembled, the band reimagining bar room brawl rock in its most punk temperament, with quick tempos, sweeping distortion, and enough fucking boogie to get any boots grooving. There’s plenty of attitude, from detached aggression to personal disdain as the band collide headfirst into feedback and harsh fills, their sense of urgency always leading the way. - DG
Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Last year Chicago art punk band Spread Joy released their self-titled debut, one of the best album’s of the year. It was full of unbridled energy and tightly wound post-punk riffs, led by the charismatic twists and turns of Briana Hernandez’s vocals. Released just over a year later, the band return with II, expanding on last year’s effort with another shot of rapidly driven punk songs that feel both recklessly free and razor sharp. They play fast and wonky, retaining complete control while it sounds like chaos as most songs dart to completion in less than two minutes. Spread Joy don’t often waste time with hooks, the band instead create memorable nuances, usually coming from Hernandez’s vocal inflections, which often color outside the lines in the best way. There’s a strong attention to detail as she flicks accents and exaggerates enunciation with amazing results, truly having the best of times and giving Spread Joy the ultimate flair. The entire album in a non-stop blast of blissful grooves and bizarrely wonderful melodic sensibilities. - DG
Joyful Noise Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify
“Supergroups” are clumsy, often built on washed up musicians coming together looking to cash in. Springtime ain’t no damn “supergroup,” at least not in that sense. The trio of musicians - Jim White (Dirty Three, Nina Nastasia), Gareth Liddiard (Tropical Fuck Storm, The Drones), and Chris Abrahams (The Necks) - have played in countless projects between them, each earning a legendary status that ranges from avant-garde to folk, free jazz to noise rock. As they demonstrated on last year’s self-titled debut, they are able to explore with ease, playing to each other’s strengths as musicians who instinctively hear and expand on ideas. They return with the sprawling Night Raver EP, a set of three songs, two of which stretch past the fifteen minute mark. This may be treated as an interstitial release, but it’s among the best music we’ve heard all year. The entire record is radiant with depth, as each member adds their own sonic touchstones, free in composition but glued together with a clear sense of purpose and resolve. It’s astounding and worth every last second as they dive deep into societal concerns over an ever evolving landscape of twisted and beautiful accompaniment. - DG
Open Palm Tapes
Bandcamp
For everyone that misses modern Chicago hardcore/punk legends C.H.E.W., it’s time to rejoice, Stress Positions have arrived. Jonathan Giralt, Benyamin Rudolph, and Russell Harrison are back at it with vocalist Stephanie Brooks leading the charge, and their new band has a veteran feel, swinging between blistering hardcore and the ever dynamic dip into the artier side of metal and psychedelic punk. Walang Hiya, their debut EP, is as surefooted as a debut gets, full of cathartic chaos and furious disdain. The music is brutal and relentless, with everyone swarming, circling their prey as they dive in and pick it up apart. Songs like “Lust For Pleasure” with its torrential drums and the album’s title track come out swinging, but there’s so much detail and nuance immediately found in the songwriting, creating tension and resolve, only to bludgeon it all into obscurity. This is not caveman hardcore, Stress Positions play with a sense of brilliance and a earthquaking dexterity. C.H.E.W. may be no more, but long live Stress Positions, perhaps your new favorite hardcore band. - DG
Keeled Scales
Bandcamp | Spotify
Tenci’s aptly titled second record finds the band in a stage of triumphant growth. Led by guitarist/vocalist Jess Shoman, Tenci embraces collaboration and joy in playful, charming fashion on A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing. The record is the work of an evolving group, a band turned bug soup mutating in beautiful recalibration from solo project to creative unison. While Shoman remains the primary songwriter, A Swollen River is adorned by contributions from multi-instrumentalist Curtis Oren, bassist Isabel Reidy, and drummer Joseph Farago. Oren’s atmospheric sax stitches the melodic arc on “Sharp Wheel” and takes center stage in woozy, swooning fashion on the latter half of “Be,” though the record’s best moments are when the four players come together. The instrumental rush on “Sour Cherries” is invigorating while the group vocal parts on the back end of “Two Cups” are the perfect penultimate sendoff. If the words on “Shapeshifter” are any indication, Tenci’s latest is a record about movement and growth, an excellent snapshot of one of Chicago’s best bands blooming in real time. - Patrick Pilch
Nature Sounds
Bandcamp | Spotify
We’ve been singing the praises of Tha God Fahim since we were first introduced to the Dump Gawd, a title he’s truly earned with his prolific output, forever “dumping,” and seemingly living in the studio. The “100 tape legend” floods the streets with records, and yet, there’s never a drop off in quality. If anything, he’s only getting better over the past seven years or so. His latest album (at least when this was written), Six Ring Champ, feels like a masterpiece in the making, a concise 31 minutes, with Fahim ultra focused, his effortless rhyme scheme suggesting he could do this all day. There’s a simplicity to his lyrics, but bar after bar Tha God Fahim drops sly wisdom, encouragement, introspection, and stream of conscious glory (“I'm so Lebron, but never switch teams, I'm pristine / It's the hoarder of supreme wealth, my face in magazines / The man that do for self, don't try to doubt my self-esteem”). I recently compared his lyrical style to that of a sage, with legendary wisdom offered almost subconsciously, and he’s at his best throughout Six Ring Champ, an album that feels hungry, kicking that enlightened rap over laid back, tripped out, soul beats from Nicholas Craven, Camoflauge Monk, Thrasherwulf, and Tha God Fahim himself. I can’t stop listening to this record and to be honest, I don’t really want to stop listening. - DG
Box Records / EIS
Bandcamp | Spotify
We finally get Leeds’ best noise rock band Thank’s debut album, Thoughtless Cruelty. This is a record that is meant to be played as loud as possible, an album that is filled with clever lyrics, a clear nihilistic view of the world, and pounding instrumentals. Thoughtless Cruelty is described as “a stark observation of human cruelty filtered through the band’s grim fascinations including long term nuclear warnings” something that becomes obvious when listening to vocalist Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe. It’s 32 minutes of an interesting take on noise rock with a sense of humor. Thank has proven themselves, despite what they say, to be a good band from Leeds, even a great one. Thoughtless Cruelty is a great example of how a genre like noise rock still has a long way to go. It’s a clever exploration of feelings that we all feel, regardless of if we're aware of them or not. The nihilism, while a central theme of the record, doesn’t make this all that depressing. It’s an album that demands your attention, demands that you listen to it loudly, but most importantly demands that you listen to it thoughtfully. - Scott Yohe
Moon Physics
Bandcamp | Spotify
Philadelphia legend Heather Jones released their debut full length as Ther back in February. The songs on Trembling were written since the inception of Jones' project and reworked in pandemic isolation. As a whole, the record comes together like a diary, filled with honest self-reflections on anxiety and trauma pulled from some of Jones’ most personal entries. Trembling recounts the songwriter’s anguish on both intimate and massive scales, a vulnerable combination of the utter exhaustion and helplessness so exacerbated by pandemic desperation. Despite its heavy subject matters, Trembling is filled with triumphant moments that stare down adversity with thoughtfulness and tenderness. “$200” is a subtle take on police corruption while “Resurrection Sundae” stitches together dream vignettes with topics of guilt, gender dysphoria, family matters, and oxford commas. Besides being a total hit, “Swimming” plays like a self check-in for Jones. A verse of questions followed by a couplet of affirmations is a celebration of existence and an ode to sticking around. Processing the past couple years, no less the 21st century, is a harrowing experience, especially considering the digital age gives us little to no comparative reference points in history. The only thing we have is each other, and it’s people like Heather Jones who help make sense of it all. - Patrick Pilch
Smoking Room
Bandcamp | Spotify
One of Philadelphia's biggest rising acts in influence and sound scope, They Are Gutting a Body of Water has had an illustrious 2022. After releasing a split with slowcore peers A Country Western, An Insult to the Sport, the band dropped Lucky Styles, an even wonkier elaboration on their mutant shoegaze + jangle + drum-and-bass sound. It's shoegaze for the internet age, fusing the noisy possibilities of guitar pedals with the otherworldly sounds of today's electronic. Bandleader Doug Dulgarian's vocals are hardly recognizable as human when they show up. The resultant record exfoliates; its abrasiveness is matched by a cleanliness and catchiness that makes They Are Gutting a Body of Water such an attractive band. After Gestures Been and Destiny XL, it's exciting to see a band embrace and push their unique sound forward, proving their limitless creativity. - Devon Chodzin
Gilead Media
Bandcamp | Spotify
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. In Thou’s case, it is their black punk guitars, which they mastered eons ago. Teaming up with Mizmor just accentuates their meditative violence to an absurd level. Myopia is a marathon. If you’re laying sprawled on the floor, the ceiling might start leaking dirty water. It might drip in your eye, but these gargantuan riffs are too distracting to care. Bryan Funck, the God of rapture, and Mizmor are fleeting characters; everything is coming from the gut. There’s no compromise for doomed runts of sanity, but that’s pretty much where we are at these days. - Jordan Michael
Post-industrial cities create disorienting realities. Old buildings scrape against upcoming gentrification and natural landscapes. There’s a question in the air in these places: are renewal and harmony possible? It makes sense that Baltimore band Tomato Flower explore new blossoming worlds in Gold Arc, their debut six-song EP. The record blends accessible poppier songs alongside weirder ones. Tomato Flower’s sound combines a lot of what contemporary experimental rock bands have been doing over the past decade – a cluster of psychedelia, math rock, and a jazz-inspired smoothness. Gold Arc is a fun first impression for a new band; keys, guitar, or crooning surprise us like discoveries growing in a glass dome. Tomato Flower’s imagining of people living together in gardens and cities seems enticing: an escapist jaunt from our current broken earth of climate change, viral disease chaos, and individualistic capitalism. - Delia Rainey
Joyful Noise Recordings
Bandcamp
Gareth Liddiard has a very recognizable voice. The former Drones frontman and his three favorite players (Erica Dunn, Fiona Kitschin, and Lauren Hammel) have been pummeling harmonious scuzz jams ever since opening for Band of Horses and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard in 2017. They haven’t taken much of a break, making sure to steadily release music while touring the globe (Tropical Fuck Storm has three 2022 releases, including this one). Goody Goody Gumdrops, which is not on any of the DSPs, is a three-way live performance, documentary, and inane comedy. It was recorded in a barn, near a river, and in a cocktail lounge at Liddiard and Kitschin’s Australian ranch. You can tell, “Maria 63” is complete with night sounds in the din. This band has been blowing amps for five years and this is further evidence. Time is nagging us all like a dog, but we can find relief in Tropical Fuck Storm’s twinkling elasticity, sexy vocals, strained acoustics and distorted bubbles. Get your brain scooped out. - Jordan Michael
Year0001
Apple Music | Spotify
Whether Viagra Boys are your cup of tea or not, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the Swedish band are having a great time. Since their earliest EPs when the band leaned closer to noise punk through to their latest album, Cave World, it’s been clear that the band don’t take themselves, or much of anything, all too seriously. As soon as you learn that, the magic of Viagra Boys becomes immediately encapsulating. They make funny songs without the music being a joke, as in, they’re a good band, who happen to have a vibrant sense of humor. Throughout Cave World the band take aim at the ultra-right wingers and incels of the world, but they also poke fun at drug-addled punks and pretty much anyone a part of the self-serious punk rock culture. The albums works in dance floor grooves and their normal cocaine fueled auditory grease, while Sebastian Murphy tells sardonic tales of debauchery and finds the humor amongst the desperation. - DG
Toxic State / Static Shock Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Celebrating ten years together, it would seem that New York City’s favorite hardcore band Warthog may never release a full length album, but with the impeccably high quality of each EP released, it doesn’t really matter. Their sixth EP (the third in a row to be self-titled) is another recklessly brilliant ripper, bleeding together hardcore with a bit of thrash metal in their own violent way. It’s everything that makes Warthog so essential: relentless riffs, brutal rhythms, shredding solos, and the harsh vocals of Christopher Hansell. With enough disgust to please fans of crust punk and death metal alike, this one goes full-blast, a disgusted rager that digs through dirt and sludge at top speed, annihilating our senses in the best of ways, one propulsive riff at a time. Warthog always leave us wanting more. - DG
Griselda Records / Empire
Apple Music | Spotify
Are the listeners here for the art? Are we really unique to greatness? Westside Gunn, aka “FlyGod,” is here as your enlightenment guide, maybe improving your quality of life with his creative culture raps. Westside is the co-founder of Buffalo’s Griselda Records, brother of Conway The Machine, and cousin of Benny The Butcher; the 40-year-old has a deep, distinctive crew around him. 10 is the 10th and final installment of Gunn’s Hitler Wears Hermes mixtape series, and the seemingly endless features are on tip. A$AP Rocky (“lean on my kidneys / dress socks with Crocs”) is on the ominous “Shootouts In Soho;” Black Star grooves over industry vultures on “Peppas;” Busta Rhymes, Raekwon, and Ghostface Killah are friendly on “Science Class;” Run The Jewels and Grisdela associate Stove God Cooks go bing bing during “Switches On Everything;” and ten minute closer features the entirety of Griselda, Benny, Rome Streetz, Armani Caesar, Conway, Stove God, as well as Jay Worthy and baritone guitar from Goo Goo Dolls’ founding bassist, Robby Takac (a fellow Buffalo native). This isn’t the final destination for Westside Gunn, but it inspires and represents all shit that is fly. - Jordan Michael
Sub Pop Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The latest Weyes Blood album is astoundingly beautiful and yet it takes its narrative arc from the opposite end of the spectrum… doom, despair, general dread found in the here and now. As suggested in the title however, And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow, while it may derive from the epicenter of bad times, Natalie Mering reminds us that we’ll pull through, that the time for being afraid has passed, and we’re in a world where we must shape our own future, with lightness and heart among the core principles. The orchestration of the album picks up where the phenomenal Titanic Rising left off, built on sweeping strings, gentle pianos, acoustic guitars, soft woodwinds, and layered arrangements that pull every embittered and beautiful emotion together, progressing simple folk songs into grandiose movements. As always, it’s Mering’s voice that steals the show, its power and beauty giving sentiment to her words, lilting and wavering, often layered and harmonized with Laurel Canyon era perfection. Even as her songs mostly stretch toward and beyond the six minute mark, there’s an immediacy to her reflections, captured in her vocal delivery, as we’re invited into her thoughts, both intimate and with concern for humankind. - DG
Captured Tracks
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Widowspeak have never released an album less than “pretty damn good,” but 2020’s Plum stood among their best work yet, and their latest effort, The Jacket, proves to be another high-water mark for the duo. With acoustic guitars that echo and fade like passing clouds, the whole record feels adrift in the fog, colors being painted in patchwork. Widowspeak’s signature twang is there, but rather than leading the compositions, it’s an accent upon the layers of sustained warble, the perfect accompaniment to Molly Hamilton’s always perfectly dreamy vocals. Songs like “Everything Is Simple” are heavy on noir twang and dreamy brilliance, from the grit of the guitars and piano to the density of the bass, it feels both blissful and knotted, an aural reflection of the refrain, “everything is simple until it’s not” - DG
Winged Wheel is a new band with some familiar faces - Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Rider/Horse), Whitney Johnson (Matchess), Fred Thomas (Idle Ray, Tyvek), and Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo) - bringing a diverse musical sensibility to their latest project, creating something unique in the process. The result is No Island, the band’s debut album, a propulsive blend of krautrock, kosmische, and punk that feels both free and focused. They may have recorded it apart from one another but they’ve pulled everything together seamlessly. Thomas’ drums are hard and fast at the core of it all. The looping rhythms are kinetic, piecing together an unwavering energy while the guitars and bass are set free to explore, and they do. Rolin and Plump shred in the dreamiest sense of the word, with long drawn out washes of reverberating notes juxtaposing the tempo, and darting grooves to balance it all together. It’s perfectly hypnotic and intricately captivating. Johnson’s subdued vocals sit nestled into the mix like a spectre in the fog, adding a beauty and air of mystery to the ever evolving album. - DG
Fire Talk Records
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Everything I thought about Wombo based on 2020’s Blossomlooksdownuponus has been thrown out the door on the band’s sophomore album, Fairy Rust. Out via Fire Talk (Mamalarky, PACKS, Cola), their new record is mesmerizing, impressively fluid, and despite its tonal dexterity, it’s smooth as eggs. The band’s sound is an amalgamation of post-punk, psych rock, dream-pop, art rock, and a touch of prog, creating songs that are off-kilter without ever feeling truly off-kilter. The Louisville trio lure you in to the calm and serene, only to bend, shake, and tear holes in the fabric of the songs. It’s all in the service of the record as a whole, a ride that really demands to be heard from start to finish, as the pacing works to develop and derail your senses. Wombo are making challenging music that feels at ease, a magic trick of sonic diversity and artistic cohesion. They’re throwing us all for a loop and making it feel so natural. - DG
Sorry State Records
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Super Gremlin, the propulsive follow-up to Woodstock ‘99’s debut EP, is twenty minutes of pure incendiary fun. The Cleveland hardcore band play it loose, swinging between crusty brutality and basement punk dirge, with an impeccable sense of dynamics uncommon to the genre. They don’t seem to take themselves too seriously, and there’s a definite sense that this album was made with blackout nights in mind, a headtrip of heaviness as open to sludge as it is stampeding tempos. With an embrace of psychedelics (and hits of the gong… not a typo), Woodstock ‘99 rage from start to finish, bursting out like contents under pressure. From the hardcore Western punk of “Pickled Drunk Driver” to the tongue-in-cheek nu-metal introductory groove of “Beatboxing In Viet…Nam,” the band prove that hardcore doesn’t have to be so righteous. Sometimes all we need is a bit of chaotic buoyancy. - DG
Nature Sounds
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It could be said that Brooklyn’s Your Old Droog releases too much music, and it’s not entirely off the mark. While the quality remains fairly consistent from project to project, it forces us to move on, leaving the records that came before in the back catalog all too soon. For example, Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition was released in December of 2020, a stone cold modern day hip-hop classic, examining Droog’s life as a rapper of Eastern European decent. It’s a personal album with flawless production and exception features, an album that should be essential. In the year and a half since, Droog’s released four more albums, in addition to the three records together with Tha God Fahim, burying an album less than two years old beneath seven releases. Some folks just stay on the grind I suppose, and YOD Wave, his first solo album of 2022 (he’s since released Yod Stewart), produced entirely by Nicholas Craven, could make the argument for the never ending flood of Droog’s music. Opening with the lines “I’ve been away too long” (maybe two months after his previous release), he quickly starts to weave his punch line raps over Craven’s soul samples and it becomes hard to argue with the guy. There are gems constantly scattered across his lyrics, ranging from personal motivation to braggadocios stunting. - DG
YUNGMORPHEUS, the Los Angeles based MC, is a professional. Professional in the sense that he comes in, keeps a laid back demeanor, keeps things discrete, and always gets the job done. He’s focused and his albums follow suit with a clear vision, though the weed smoke that permeates his sound might cloud it up a bit. Over the past six years he’s released records together with Pink Siifu, Eyedress, and Ewonee (among others), offering his own shamanistic flow and lyrical elegance over beats that tend to favor the Madlib and Dilla school of sound. With several releases a year, his 2022 highlight comes in the form of Up Against The Wall; A Degree of Lunacy, an album collaboration with producer THERAVADA. YUNGMORPHEUS sounds laser focused, as he rhymes about longevity and the slow come up, the everyday hustle, and a pursuit of better days against all odds. The pair keep a feeling of ease even as animosity bubbles, matching the jazzy loops and samples with precision flows chilled to an iceberg. - DG