by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

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

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

ALVVAYS | “Pharmacist”

A five year gap without any new music for a band with as much buzz as Alvvays feels like an eternity, even with a pandemic in the middle of it. Thankfully their first two albums are infinitely repeatable, the wait for new music is over, and the Toronto based band sound as great as ever on “Pharmacist”. The first single from the band’s upcoming album, Blue Rev, due out October 7th via Polyvinyl, is everything we’ve come to expect from Alvvays, but never feels like a mere retread of their past. There’s still plenty of well worn fuzz that feels more engrained in the song than it does an added texture, as though it’s been there all along, dipping into the occasional noise pop distortion. Vocalist/guitarist Molly Rankin’s soft but catchy melodies are wrapped in earworm hooks, with an effortless ease to their dreamy sustain.

FUTURE SUCK | “Hell For Leather”

Okay, this one technically came out the week prior, but… who cares! With that out of the way… Melbourne’s Future Suck are set to release their full length debut Simulation, following the band’s corrosive 2019 demo EP. Due out August 5th via Rack Off Records (Blonde Revolver, Shove), the album’s lead single “Hell For Leather” is built on furious riffs that peel between old-school hardcore and sleazy rock ‘n’ roll, the perfect tonality for the band’s razor sharp punk. Grace Gibson’s (also of Blonde Revolver) unhinged vocals are the perfect fit for the rusty guitars and pummeling rhythms, yelping with a wild sense of energy and anger. The song itself thrashes in opposition to people who might think they’re a bit too great, and it’s time someone did so.

LIFEGUARD | “I Know I Know”

Lifeguard play with an adventurous sense of volume, tonality, and the kind of raw musical insight that drove the catalogs of legends like Fugazi and Unwound. The band chase their own tangents, digging between post-hardcore dexterity, violent shoegaze, and the refined sense of post-punk precision. The trio push the possibilities of the three piece on their upcoming EP, Crowd Can Talk, due out August 5th via Born Yesterday Records. From abrasive noise to acerbic structures, the band contort and snap back in place, coloring outside the lines only to wind up willfully centered. “I Know I Know,” the EP’s lead single is both muscular and grooving, carrying a density that’s quick on its toes. The blunt stabs of guitar are met with rolling rhythms, darting between and against one another for sheer knotted tension, but Lifeguard never let it muddy. There’s a detached cool in Kai Slater’s vocals as he offers vaguely cautious lyrics, the lines repeating in time without so much as creating the affect of a hook, but more an incessant warning.

MEYHEM LAUREN & DARINGER | “Broken Rubberbands”

Black Vladimir, the long awaited album pairing together Meyhem Lauren and Daringer is finally coming. We don’t know exactly when the record will arrive, but the first single, “Broken Rubberbands” is out, and it’s everything we hoped it would be, Meyhem Lauren positively going in over some grimy Daringer keys. The veteran Griselda producer offers a typically dark and haunting loop of twinkling keys and hard beats as “Laurenovicci” laces the track with his own brand of fly shit elegance. Meyhem offers us just another day in the life on lines like “criminal minded, change the climate, live life and then I rhyme it,” in turn talking fancy food, money, clothes, cars, and of course the hustle (“drug dealers most of my network, fuck around and lose most of your net worth”). Meyhem Lauren isn’t out here to change the world, he’s not gunning for a Pulitzer, but we’ll be damned if he doesn’t attack a beat with the very best of them. We cannot wait for this record.

PARTY DOZEN “The Real Work” LP

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 Word, 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.

Further Listening:

Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (July 4th - July 10th)