by: Benji Heywood, Calvin Staropoli, Chris Coplan, Dan Goldin, Dana Poland, Dominic Acito, Elizabeth Braaten, Emma Ingrisani, Eric Foreman, Jack Peterson, Anna Solomon, Jare C, John Glab, Justin Davis, Kris Handel, Layton Guyton, Liz Van Horn, Ljubinko Zivkovic, Mark Wadley, Matt Watton, Matty McPherson, Myles Tiessen, Sara Mae, Selina Yang, Shea Roney, Stan Standridge, Taylor Ruckle, Torrey Proto, and Zak Mercado
Here we are, the end of another year. It’s been a challenging year, to say the least, but when in need there was always new music. We love music, and there’s something inherently special in discovering new favorites. Our “Year In Review” takes a look back at the tunes that kept us going the last twelve months. While much year end coverage is seemingly steeped in cultural impact and popular opinion, we’ve never been too concerned with all that. We’re here to share what we love, and we hope that you’ll find something that you love too.
We’re going back to our roots, once again breaking down the year’s coverage in month by month segments. Despite what some would prefer you to believe, music isn’t a competition and it feels fairly arbitrary to rank our favorites. While we could have listed hundreds of albums without end that would be worth giving a listen (because everyone has their own cup of tea, so to speak), we know that we’re pushing it as is and decided to cap this particular feature at 150 releases. With writing both fresh and recycled from coverage throughout the year, the sentiment remains, Post-Trash will always be here for the dedicated music fans, the folks scratching beneath the surface. In the interest of spreading the coverage around, artists who released several gems over the year (looking at you Tha God Fahim, Cel Ray, Guided By Voices, Radiator Hospital, YUNGMORPHEUS, Helvetia, and Rome Streetz), we went ahead and picked one.
It’s been a good year for new music. It always is. Keep digging and support the artists you love. Buy albums, go to shows, pick up a shirt, or just spread the word. Thanks for being here with Post-Trash.
J A N U A R Y :
Sophomore Lounge Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Open your mind and zone out, way out, together with Atlanta’s great Arbor Labor Union. The past few years have found the band embracing their Southern roots, channeling their way through cosmic Americana while retaining their weirdo punk sense of adventure. They’ve locked in, exploring krautrock and spliced and frayed psych, while maintaining the fluid nature and rolling boogie of classic rock and twangy punk. Yonder, the band’s latest album is a spiritual successor to 2020’s New Petal Instants, picking up the natural essence and continuing to warp repetitive structures with knotted progressions and disjointed rhythms, landing with a complex choogle that feels as breezy as the front-porch air. Songs like the rattled title track and early single “Hovering Stone” recall the best work of the Meat Puppets, but the itchy tempos (“Undoom’d”) and elastic melodies (“Real Beasts”) of Arbor Labor Union feel unique, pulled from a southern fried core and filtered through a decade of DIY punk pedigree. Up the twang, up the punx… Arbor Labor Union prove it to be possible. - DG
Feel it Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
From its origins as Dylan McCartney’s solo outlet, The Drin has evolved into a rock-solid six-piece—and while they’re treading similar sonic ground as previous releases Engines Sing for the Pale Moon and Down River in the Distance, this new configuration represents a tremendous leap forward in urgency, power, and sound quality. Driven by proud bass riffs and trashy drums, each song feels like an exercise in mood and texture, the synths and guitars alternately stabbing and droning at the periphery of McCartney’s ominous, mostly spoken vocals. There’s a welcome variety of song structure and vibe represented here, from the pure punk of “Stonewallin’” and “Walk So Far” to the spacious, Morricone-tinged “Go Your Way Alone.” Don’t forget the dub track! The album’s best songs, though, find a balance between these various poles—take lead single “Venom,” with its all-timer of a bass line and relentless percussion blazing a trail directly through the detuned synths and wobbly guitars, or the sublime clatter of “Peaceful, Easy Feeling.” - Mark Wadley
Guided By Voices Inc
Bandcamp | Spotify
2023 marks the start of Guided By Voices’ fortieth year as a band since their humble beginnings being laughed off the stages of their local bars, and even if the band couldn’t tour upon its release, they couldn’t start that milestone year without yet another triumphant album. Tremblers and Goggles By Rank exposed the deep roots of Robert Pollard’s songwriting, his ability to build a tune and the orchestra he commands into epic crescendos surpassing five and six minutes, and proggian wonders that name-drop Big Star’s frontmen in a manner that could not be more on-the-nose. Anyway, Pollard says that La La Land represents a direct follow-up, or as he says, “somewhat of a companion piece… [La La Land] continues to explore a path of diversity in styles and in longer, more adventurous song structures”. It’s clear, too, that a six-minute track wouldn’t fit any better than a sixth finger on GBV’s mid-90s output, so in order to continue down the path of innovation, it feels refreshing and necessary here. - Jack Peterson
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
Providence’s Mulva played a handful of shows last year, setting up the framework for the songs that would eventually become their debut EP, a re-introduction to Christina Puerto’s (Kal Marks, Bethlehem Steel) songwriting. Pulling together a band of frequent collaborators and likeminded musicians, she’s joined by Carl Shane (Kal Marks), Adam Berkowitz (Ex-Breathers), and Patrick Ronayne (Bethlehem Steel, Baglady), creating an instant chemistry amid the band’s downward sludge. Seer EP marks a colossally heavy first listen. Mulva’s sound is undeniably dense, but beyond that, the band are able to skirt around most pre-determined sub-genres, creating music that feels intuitive more anything else. “Shouldn’t Fear The Seer” comes crashing out the gate with a legitimately evil riff, pouring down like black rain over the rhythmic force. The band all play into the dirge with aplomb, Puerto and Shane’s guitars trail like torrential clouds, Ronayne’s bass and Berkowitz’s drums feel like a true backbone, coloring the song at times, but holding together the destruction. - DG
Thrill Jockey Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
DIY’s favorite thrash band ain’t a thrash band no more. Chicago’s Oozing Wound have been pigeonholed for the better part of the past decade, and well… it didn’t always fit then, but it certainly doesn’t fit on their latest album, We Cater To Cowards. The tempos have curdled but the attack remains as blistering as ever. While the lead single, “The Good Times (I Don’t Miss ‘Em),” was built on buzzing riffs and lumbering rhythms, the trio set their sights between the harsh scrappy side of Nirvana and the scummier end of the AmRep catalog. Much like their timeless influences, Oozing Wound manage to find accessibility within the rotting tension, pulling out hooks that aren’t necessarily catchy, but still serve the purpose of something to latch onto while simultaneously swinging with reckless abandon. It’s probably the first Oozing Wound album that you could confidently describe as “noise rock,” and we’re fairly certain it’ll be among the genre’s best this year. Genre lines are shaky at best (consider it a broad frame of reference), but throughout We Cater To Cowards, the trio really work to resurrect the sound of In Utero’s corpse re-thought, re-spawned, and built into their own Frankenstein’s monster of unrelenting aggression, snide humor, and the undefinable weight of massive low-end. - DG
Next Door Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Poolblood’s first album Mole feels like the first sign of warmth after a harsh winter; while we begin to feel more comfortable outside in the increasing temperatures, we find the embattled emotions that come with hibernating for extended periods of time still linger. We are still adapting, processing, accepting that better days are to come, but we know that they will. Throughout the album, lyrics such as “Some days I remember more precisely / I can call you when I have a better story” beautifully outline the anxieties of feeling disconnected from a relationship coexist with more straightforward statements like “Sorry I was a bitch to you.” Maryam Said’s initial invitation inside of their head was purposeful; it permits us to experience both these internal anxieties and external apologies, providing us with a fuller, all-encompassing picture. - Liz Van Horn
Further Listening:
BRAINIAC “The Predator Nominate EP” | CROSSLEGGED “Another Blue” | DARI BAY “Longest Day of the Year” | EX PILOTS “Ex Pilots” | LABRADOR “Hold The Door For Strangers” | MEG BAIRD “Furling” | NYXY NYX “Anything” | R. RING “War Poems, We Rested” | S.H.I.T. “Demo 2023” | SPEED PLANS “Statues of God” | THA GOD FAHIM & NICOJP “Chess Moves” | WHELPWISHER “Cool Good”
F E B R U A R Y :
Carpark Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
When a band simply called @ appears on the scene, there’s enough mystery and intrigue alone to catch certain listeners. Fortunately, there’s plenty we already know about the offbeat psychedelic folk duo of Stone Filipczak and Victoria Rose. In Philadelphia, Rose has been releasing intimate bedroom folk as Brittle Brian since 2014. Filipczak cut his teeth in the local Baltimore scene, playing in the folky krautrock group Gut Fauna and engineering their album Magicicada. Each of these projects show a strong ear for idiosyncratic melodies and unconventional production choices that weave their way into @’s debut album, Mind Palace Music. What started as a collection of iMessage demos sent back and forth between the two in 2021 eventually became a full-blown collaborative effort. While easy to describe as “timeless,” there’s a subtle modernity poking through nearly every moment of the ‘70s inspired homespun folk songs on Mind Palace Music. Uniquely digital textures float around every acoustic strum and free-flowing flute flourish. You’re reminded of Vashti Bunyan and Animal Collective in equal measure, and in some ways the album feels like a brighter take on their collaboration Prospect Hummer. - Stan Standridge
Thrill Jockey Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
It has been nearly a decade since the Montreal based trio introduced us to their dissonant art sludge and yet we’re as floored as ever as they continue to progress and push boundaries, getting ever heavier, more textured, and sonically adventurous. Their latest wrestles between beauty and dread, with gargantuan distorted riffs ringing side by side with nuanced ambiance and unpredictable pacing. Nature Morte tempers its attack with a sea of colossal drone thick enough to drown in, and while the band lurch forever forward with a lumbering intensity, it’s often Robin Wattie’s vocals that really steal the show, providing the anxiety and human emotion that inflicts the heart of Big|Brave. Nature Morte feels like an eruption of a volcano long believed to be dormant, we witness the beauty and the destruction single handedly, the piercing abrasion and the graceful minimalism on equal footing. - DG
Wrong Speed Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
You can’t always judge a book by it’s cover, but Big Break’s album has a leather jacket clad frog with a switchblade facing off against a gang of punk rock rats… if that doesn’t set the tone for Angel’s Piss, nothing will. Hailing from Sheffield, UK, the band have made one of the most interesting punk records of the year, a vibrant and hostile record that has both brains, brawn, and a sharp sense of humor. While overtly antagonistic punk can often backfire, Big Break are able to push buttons with street punk filth, garbled and deranged, matched with reckless charm. Raised in the dirt and in the dirt it shall remain. Even with righteous anger fueling the flame, Big Break are undeniably having fun. The riffs are huge and hooky, there’s plenty of melodic lunacy, and shouting along is probably well encouraged when in a crowd. They skip between hardcore and artier “egg punk” territory, the tempos darting and contorting as the mayhem ramps up. Angel’s Piss is a wild ride, spitting and snarling with a shit eating grin, and we truly can’t get enough of this one. - DG
Rack Off Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Melbourne’s Blonde Revolver have released their highly anticipated full length debut, the perfectly titled, Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere . The sextet have made an essential punk record, full of charm and attitude, with songs both serious and undeniably fun, from tales of youthful hi-jinx to furious odes of female empowerment. The band blend together synth punk and hardcore in the process, resulting in a set that’s tough as nails, wonderfully askew, and impressively catchy. There are songs about shitty lovers, shittier expectations hoisted upon them, and at least two songs that deal with vampires. There’s a density to each song, layered with guitars and synths, built on resonant rhythms, and led by Zoe Mulcahy’s commanding vocals. At its core it’s an album about being who you are, becoming the person you want to be, and not the person someone else expects you to be. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
I was immediately hooked from the moment I heard Cel Ray’s debut single, “Surf’s Up (Garfield Park),” a springy art-punk song with boundless energy. With an impressively coiled rhythm section that reminds of The Uranium Club, the Chicago band’s propulsive riffs and Maddie Daviss’ animated vocal performance are given room to unfurl with exuberant freedom. The band’s debut album, Cellular Raymond, not only has one of the best titles we can imagine, it’s also boundlessly fun, explosive, and tightly punchy. The rhythms sprint with taut perfection, locked in at warp speed, layering a dense framework for the radiant cleanliness of the guitar’s attack and Daviss’ always captivating performance. There’s a vivid sense of humor balanced by a state of urgency that runs throughout. It would seem Cel Ray had a great time making this record, and it’s near impossible not to have a great time listening to it. Having recently played with Spread Joy and Stress Positions and upcoming shows together with Liquids, Choncy, and Abi Ooze, Cel Ray find themselves in great company, and we expect to hear a lot more from them in the years to come. - DG
Trouble In Mind
Bandcamp | Spotify
Parisian quintet En Attendant Ana returned with Principia, their third album and what feels like a major turning point for their music. While Juillet was loaded with fuzzy pop hooks and dazzling melodies, the band have pushed further this time around, still oozing pop charm at every turn, but expanding deeper into their left-field inclinations. With a pair of members that had joined just prior to and shortly after the release of Juillet, it would seem the quintet has become tightly glued together throughout Principia, working as a band with kinetic energy to bring Margaux Bouchaudon’s songs to life in vivid detail. Everyone plays their part, shinning in equal measure throughout a record that’s carefully constructed in favor of sonic clarity, pulling back elements to introduce others, careful to keep the ever-present swoon perpetually un-muddied. The sound is as much jazzy and intricate French pop as it is melancholic power-pop. A dynamic sense of melody is paired with a surging rhythm section that shifts between motorik and boss nova beats. - DG
Father/Daughter Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Throughout Rotten Bun For An Eggless Century , Mui Zyu aka Eva Liu combines intricate electronic soundscapes, chopped and diced up then amalgamated in seemingly no particular order, together with softly sung delicate vocals, the two musical parts serving as a counter point to each other. This concept is audible from the get-go and the first track, “Rotten Bun,” and becomes fully developed as the album progresses, creating some mesmerizing tracks like “Mother's Tongue” and “Dusty,” somewhere in the middle of the album. Liu doesn't let up the musical tension she creates at any point on the album, something she credits to exploring her Hong Kong roots and Chinese heritage more. She explains, “I'm Chinese and I'm owning it. Before I would resent it." This approach seems to have given her an additional insight, as she tries to explore the combination of a love for video games, film music scores, and traditional Chinese instruments, seamlessly and subtly integrated throughout. - Ljubinko Zivkovic
Exploding In Sound Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The production of All Fiction began in 2019, and the songs benefit from their long germination. It's a delicate balance to advance your sound and to still retain your distinct style. All Fiction is an ode to Pile's unique sound and ability to shift musically while still allowing their style to shine through. It's unmistakably a Pile album. It's got the unique time signatures, the unusual chord progressions, and even Rick Maguire’s remarkable "woo". The way this latest release stands apart is likely the result of rebalancing new instrumentation reminiscent more of their Radiohead/Beatles influences than Jesus Lizard/noise rock. All Fiction is not without its share of energetic punk songs. Songs like "Loops," "Poisons," and "Gardening Hours" serve as the loudest and fastest songs. Listening front to back, we are treated to an album of songs that tend to deviate from the typical rock band format. The energy of the album ebbs and flows, increasing the impact of the more energy-intense tracks. The guitar is not used as the centerpiece of songs, but its intensity is made all the more real when it does appear. Songs like "Link Arms" start with drums and synths and end with distorted guitars punctuating the track's heavier crescendo. With the guitar sidelined on many tracks, other instruments take center stage like the string quartet on the song "Forgetting" and Kris Kuss' outstanding percussion work on "Lowered Rainbow". The song "Blood" features guitar at its heart but the most memorable piece of it is the vocal harmonies reminiscent of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree. It's clear that All Fiction inspirations are varied and complex. - Dominic Acito
Shout Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify
Shout Recordings’ Beat Sessions never miss. The in-studio series has captured S.H.I.T., Marbled Eye, Institute, Uranium Club, Impalers, and more over the years, presenting some of this generation’s best punk in all its rawness with live recordings that are triumphantly captured in a studio setting. Following last year’s essential Gen Pop session, the series continued with the filthy onslaught on North Carolina’s finest, Public Acid. The set is primarily built on songs from the great Condemnation EP and their debut album, Easy Weapons, but the introductory single, “Placebo,” is new, capturing the primal insanity they’ve spewed forth since their first recordings. The songs are loud, unglued, and sonically violent, with distortion running rampant, encircling the stampeding brute force rhythms like a tornado of bad vibes and all encompassing dirt. Public Acid may just be one of the most exciting hardcore bands in the country, and it’s in their reckless speed, noise, and nods to caterwauling psych that bring their sound from the gutter to… well, a strangely more majestic gutter. - DG
Don Giovanni Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
On the trio’s latest record, Desire Pathway, Screaming Females pull absolutely no punches in their riffy, hard hitting approach to songwriting, with Marissa Paternoster's enigmatic, distinctly dense vocal performance taking center stage. From the very beginning of the record’s opening, the single “Brass Bell” holds onto their powerfully driven brand of rock writing, while breaching a level of accessibility that is a relatively new approach for the band. Their songwriting has always been catchy, but with this record, they’ve found a compromise between atmospheric and lyrically dense storytelling and head-nodding song structure. The production as well, has less emphasis than an album like 2018’s All at Once did, but this change, surprisingly, does not play to the record’s detriment, but rather to its advantage. Tracks like “Desert Train,” “Let You Go,” and “Mourning Dove” have instrumental setups that are powerful and compelling, allowing Paternoster to create a direct line between her vocals and the listener, while the drums, guitar, and bass support the mood incredibly well. - Jare C
Total Punk / Computer Human Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
As Tee Vee Repairmann, Sydney, Australia’s Ishka Edmeades is making grimy, giddy punk rock for the recoverably crestfallen. Following 2021’s excellent Patterns EP, debut full-length What’s On TV? is animated by anxiety, banal bad times, and waiting—for something in particular or anything at all. Beyond the photocopy-of-a-photocopy album artwork and jokey, obsolescence-evoking band name, there’s an essential (and winning) shambolic earnestness to these songs. Terse, plainspoken delivery becomes a formal constraint to trap big emotions. “I don’t wanna let go,” Edmeades bleats through the reverb on album opener “Out Of Order,” and it feels equal parts heartfelt and abrasive. As on “Time 2 Kill,” “Backwards,” and “People (Everywhere I Go),” lyrical bluntness is belied by the music's effervescent melodies, verse-chorus careens, and the occasional spiky guitar solo. - Emma Ingrisani
Nature Sounds
Bandcamp | Spotify
As of writing this, Tha God Fahim has released eight different records this year, any of them could have been included on this list, but we’ve chosen to focus on Iron Bull, partly due to its widespread availability. Tha God Fahim simply can’t be stopped. Iron Bull wastes no time in proving that, as he sets the tone on opener “Man Of Steel,” reminding us that “the show must go on, operations must continue / got me art dealing, we be selling out the menu.” It’s business as usual from one of this generation’s finest underground hip-hop veterans, kicking out rhymes that feel off the cuff, a blend of street corner cipher simplicity and kung-fu sage-like wisdom. Fahim often plays both sides of the coin, one moment glorifying violence (“I keep the steel like a statue, roll with two guns, that’s twice the bullets coming at you“) and the next acknowledging the impacts (“broken up homes from poverty and the drugs, families feeling generational pain from hot slugs”). There are affirmations and the wisdom that buds from struggle (“Makin Rounds”) and there’s also plenty of hard-headed shit talk (“Battleship”). Tha God always paints the picture in full, with a delivery that favors raw straightforwardness over anything fancy. Featuring production from SadhuGold, Camoflauge Monk, Nicholas Craven, and others, some of the best beats come (unsurprisingly) from Fahim himself. It’s always a treat to hear him lace his own laconic production (may we never forgot the “Mailman” beat), spitting stream of conscious rhymes over muted horns, sweeping strings, hypnotic keys, and dusty drums. - DG
Joyful Noise Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify
While it may be a stop-gap release, Submersive Behaviour still feels like an essential piece to Tropical Fuck Storm’s ever growing catalog. While the majority of it was released last year as part of the Moonburn EP, we’re treated to two new astounding songs, one of which is a near eighteen minute long cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be),” the acid fried cornerstone of Submersive Behaviour. While billed as a covers EP, this is one of only two covers, and it’s one done with reverence and heart, far from the usual covers-as-algorithmic-catnip. The band, best known for their immersive noise, fiery lyrics, and radiant harmonies, let the noise take a back seat to expansive drift on a cover that plays close homage to the original but certainly adds the band’s own sonic touches. They roar into the psychedelic space with a bluesy start, picking up the soul of the source material to perfection, colliding into a dense screed of noise bent guitars and a spiraling shuffle of drums. Just as Tropical Fuck Storm bring the song into their own habitat, it takes us right back out, into deeply kaleidoscopic territory, opting for hallucinatory ambiance in place of density. They allow the song to sprawl into the unknown, fusing together atonal shifts and gentle melodies, a meditation gone wonderfully awry. - DG
20 Buck Spin
Bandcamp | Spotify
Like a cataclysmic eruption somewhere deep in space, Oakland’s Ulthar returned with celestial brutality, a reign of chaos, and mountainous depravity that threatens to swallow existence whole. The band simultaneously released two new companion albums, Anthronomicon (comprised of songs at a standard length) and Helionomicon (a record with two single side-length tracks), each an onslaught of the band’s signature blend of death metal and black metal, delivered with mind numbing dexterity and utterly jaw dropping technicality that always feels warranted rather than forced. The riffs are in constant motion, forever evolving as the rhythms stampede, trample, and decimate all in their path. The records are both amazing. Ulthar have created a tornado of carnage, spiraling into the own sordid abyss, spewing forth with demonic fury, diving into a cavalcade of ever-shifting riffs, unglued progressions, and some of the most bloodthirsty drumming we’ve heard in years. - DG
Matador Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
With several records considered to be generational classics, it would appear that 38 years into Yo La Tengo’s existence, they just might have released another one with their latest, This Stupid World. There’s an adventurous sense of freedom to the record that comes hurtling out from the start on the dissonant and motorik glisten of “Sinatra Drive Breakdown,” a song that feels like a peek into the trio’s jam sessions. Building in no particular rush to actually get anywhere, Yo La Tengo are scrapping the paint from the walls in the process. They do have destinations in sight though, and as masters of their craft, even their expansive reaches waste no time. Repetition becomes key, setting the atmosphere only to bring us elsewhere is an important part of the journey, highlighted on songs like the harmonically rich “Fallout” and the hypnotic pulse of “Tonight’s Episode” (an effortless live classic in the making). There’s a whole world out there to explore though (a stupid world at that), and Yo La Tengo dip into beautiful folk (“Aselestine”), silky lounge charm (“Until It Happens”), sonic discordance (“Brain Capers,” “This Stupid World”), and well… they’ve never sounded better in the process. - DG
FURTHER LISTENING:
ABI OOZE “Julia's Apartment (Demos)” | BLACK BELT EAGLE SCOUT “The Land, The Water, The Sky” | CHONCY “Community Chest” | JORDAN HOLTZ “Not Close For Comfort” | KOLEŽANKA “Alone With The Sound The Mind Makes” | LECHE “Gas Powered Guillotine” | THE LUNCHTIME SARDINE CLUB “No Place” | M(H)AOL “Attachment Styles” | PHYSIQUE “Again” | PUNTER “Punter” | QUASI “Breaking The Balls of History” | ROME STREETZ & BIG GHOST LTD “Wasn’t Built In A Day” | SWEET WILLIAMS “Sweet Williams” | TV STAR “Hallucinate Me”
M A R C H :
Borzoi are a brilliant band. Magical. One of the best in the country. Their live shows are energetic, mesmerizing, and combustible. It’s not so much about the sonic clarity, but the fact that no one else does it quite like Borzoi, their songs encompassing a degree of intelligent grit that’s unique to them, an alien force landed in Austin, Texas. With delightfully strange progressions that seem simple enough at first glance, the power-trio structure is obliterated in density, everything clamoring together like an explosive highway pile-up. On another timeline, the band’s brand of sordid art punk would have been at home on SST or Homestead Records, their music a mutant ooze of inventive noise rock, elastic post-punk, gnarled “cow punk,” and a touch of brainy hardcore. Borzoi have mangled those genres into a singular entity; stomping and whaling, the bad times and the good times collapsed into an indistinguishable swarm of sci-fi mystique and socio-politcal disdain. Since the beginning they’ve shifted focus from song to song, keeping the discordant claustrophobia of their sound in place while skittering between tracks both tense and instantly eruptive, uncompromising but focused, harsh yet strewn with unlikely hooks and hard earned grooves. So, after five long years, the trio return with Neither The One Nor The Other, But A Mockery of Both, a new EP, surprise released without fanfare. The title, seemingly a reference to the fact that the record was re-recorded several times over the past few years, is a gift of their debased sense of humor, a sign that the years haven’t left them embittered. It’s all part of the reckless charm. A friend asked me about the production, wondering if it was the “refined” Borzoi of A Prayer For War or the saturated noise of the rest of the catalog. After much thought my answer was, and still is, that Neither The One… resides somewhere in-between. The EP is certainly raw, the type of raw that had TuneCore hassling the band prior to the DSP release, but it’s only blown out where it wants to be, only fractured when intentional, and somewhere within the impenetrable wall of sound, everything sits in place as intended. - DG
Lame-O Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
OTHERBODY, the latest from Richmond’s prolific power-pop stalwarts DAZY is essentially the scraps from the OUTOFBODY recording session, and yet it could be our favorite album they’ve shared to date. There’s a cohesion to these songs, they feel destined to be together, and perhaps that’s why they were left from last year’s LP, but whatever the reason, James Goodson’s latest finds his sweet spot in immaculate pop hooks with a balance in stinging fuzz. The songs are towering with hazy bliss, and even as DAZY explore life stuck on repeat, the overdriven roar and mechanical rhythms explode, recalling the glory days of The Jesus & Mary Chain. Every chorus is crafted with syrupy resolve, built to last, with vocals layered and layered, the gang treatment inviting you to sing along with melodies sweet enough for The Beach Boys but biting enough to rock alongside Guided By Voices. We’re thankful OTHERBODY found its way to live outside OUTOFBODY. - DG
Joyful Noise Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify
Deerhoof can’t be stopped, nor should they be. Nearly thirty years into their career and each successive release is still met with cheerful yelps of “wow, this could be their best album yet.” Their idiosyncratic approach to art rock, noise pop, or whatever-other-genre-tag-that-doesn’t-entirely-fit, shimmers in the face of stagnancy. They are sparked by the power of imagination, picturing a better world and doing their part to bring the rest of us along. This is what Miracle-Level, the band’s nineteenth album is about, focusing on the daily miracles of life, the small details, attempting to see the beauty of human life that operates in resistance to corporate control, war, and hatred. Evil is offset with love. Miracles of kindness abound. With the idea that comfort is complacency, Deerhoof wandered outside their personal comfort zone during the album’s creation, opting to record the album in a proper studio with an outside producer in its entirety for their first time to date. It’s not as though they’ve never been in a studio, it’s more so that the band have always had autonomous control on what they’ve created, working together over the years to shape and define their records, an endless ability to tinker and fine-tune as they see fit. With studio time booked and an engineer at the helm, it forced the recordings to a finite timeframe and put trust in producer Mike Bridavsky to capture their paean to all things miraculous. Together at No Fun Club in Winnipeg, they used the studio setting to capture the band with minimalist production aesthetics, creating a record that feels relatively sparse, peeling back the density. - DG
Iron Lung Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Electric Chair could be the pinnacle of modern hardcore, at least delightfully weird hardcore… ugly, brutal, blistering, and oddly psychedelic. Following three great EPs that introduced and re-introduced the band’s maniacal brand of abrasive punk, the Olympia based quartet have unleashed their first full length, the chaotic and curdling sociopolitical fury of Act of Aggression. Out now via Iron Lung Records (Eteraz, Physique, Rotary Club), the band are swinging for the fences, blending the skewed and surreal with the deviant and direct, exploding with righteous indignation for our corroded society. Channeling the buzzsaw noise of early 80’s hardcore, with relentless filth, stampeding drums, and riffs that shift a mile a minute, Electric Chair blast between mutant levels of corroded hardcore boogie and brain melting sonic exploration. They deliver a record impossibly heavy and immediate that feels intelligent as it hurls itself forever forward into the abyss. Make no mistake, this album rips from top to bottom. - DG
Goner Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The brain-child of Kel Mason, Gee Tee has been "blowing drooly-punk minds for the past few years with a rash of out-of-print records and ridiculous videos that have bounced around the proper channels of the internet underbelly." Sure, that’s Gee Tee’s words, but it doesn’t make it any less true -- and that’s especially true now that they’ve released a new album, Goodnight Neanderthal. All great Aussie punk either sounds like it was recorded in 2014 or 1981. This record’s no different -- the production quality plays with your sensibilities with a lethal efficiency. "Grease Rot Chemical," for instance, has that chunky bass and lo-fi synth that confuses the brain and alters one’s perceptions. Sure, it gets a little unnerving at times, and it’s not always consistent, but it grounds this record in something resembling a sense of history and context. That, and you always feel like you’re on the defensive trying to sort out your place on the timeline. - Chris Coplan
Convulse Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
“Hardcore for fucking freaks. That’s it” – New Jersey hardcore band GEL abides simply and earnestly by their signature mantra. The band, through their own previous experiences as musicians and fans of the mid-2000’s NJ emo/punk scene, center their art around hard work and community building. These values are essential to the punk ethos but have, in some cases, presented challenge in practice. On their debut album Only Constant, the band distills the piss and vinegar of a classic DIY hardcore outing into a bite-sized punch of a package. Only Constant foundationally resists pretentiousness. The music is physical and the band is earnest. GEL’s music, message and motive seem to be all in alignment– achieving an oft sought after goal for a band on the rise. On their debut release, GEL offers open arms to all that may fall in – no matter the form you might take. - Eric Foreman
Grind Select
Bandcamp | Spotify
Philadelphia trio Grocer have resisted the unconscious urge toward homogeneity that afflicts so many weird, unique bands. Quite the opposite – with each release they become even more themselves. On the Scatter Plot EP, coming on the heels of the 2022’s undersung but excellent album Numbers Game, the trio lets their freak flag fly, experimenting with song structures, curious chords, and sonic textures anchored in a foundation of melodicism and elevated by a raucous chorus of vocals. The opener and single “Downtown Side” spits in the face of conventionality, lulling you in with an inoffensive drum beat only to devolve into spastic spurts, yowling guitars, cosmic half-harmonies, and literal bells and whistles. Other tracks tarry equally with pop melodies, post-punk bass lines, and a cavalcade of percussion and effects (“Not By Chance,” “Open Wide”). On the whole, the six songs on the EP are sweet but not saccharine, cerebral but fun, noisy but not self-indulgent. - Matt Watton
Dark Descent / Me Saco Un Ojo Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The evil lurks deep within Hyperdontia’s music, a band committed to the essence of old school death metal but unafraid of pushing it forward. Despite being split between Denmark and Turkey with members involved in countless other projects, Hyperdontia remain prolific (especially in the world of death metal), ripping from one devastating release to the next, dismembering and rebuilding the brutality of the genre amid a cavalcade of grotesque riffs and a seismic low end. Deranged, the band’s latest EP is overloaded with carnage, scrambling a near twenty minutes into an oozing scourge of technically complex rhythms, guttural vocals, dynamic structures, and artistic shifts, heavy on filth, but nimble in a way that few death metal bands can achieve. There are shredding guitar solos, brief drum solos, and even more… the ever rare bass solo, and the whole thing just sort of freaks it with eternal devastation. Hyperdontia continue to be a gem, risen above the festering remains. - DG
Self-Released
Apple Music | Spotify
Notorious Dump Legends, released back in 2018, remains an early highlight of the pair’s work together, an album that merged Tha God Fahim’s sage simplicity with Mach-Hommy’s artistic poetry, at times abstract and artistic, at others hard yet humorous. They are a great duo, whose styles and voices fit together with aural perfection, melodic but focused, slick but raw, with their stream-of-conscious rhymes seeming to bring out a rare spark in each other. The legend of Mach-Hommy continues to grow, creating music regarded as timeless art, with LPs sold as investments (and at investment prices), but his lyrics seem to come from the opposite side of the spectrum. Mach-Hommy’s music isn’t solely about stacking paper and living fly, it’s about his community, growth, intelligence, power, and overcoming poverty’s deep roots. With Notorious Dump Legends: Volume 2, the duo come out swinging with an urgency and sharp words delivered throughout the ominous opening track, “Pissy Hästens,” a song that feels like a work already in progress. Mach-Hommy and Tha God Fahim rip their respective verses with braggadocios flair from the get-go, weaving together shadowy verses that detach as enunciations flip and waver over backwards drifts of shaky synths and minimalist bass. - DG
I want the ‘90s as a living organism and not some monolith. I want to see more stuff like Crispy Crunchy Nothing. That's the latest album from PACKS, the nom de guitare of Toronto DIY rocker Madeline Link. The fourteen song, thirty minute LP is clearly indebted to the larger ‘90s alt/indie rock movement, but it celebrates that lineage with a renewed sense of passion, efficiency, and inventiveness. There's certainly heaps of obvious inspirational fingerprints across the record, especially if you're consuming this on the surface level (which I'd totally advise — this record flows in a way that makes it perfect for parties, romantic entanglements, and eating a sandwich over the sink at 3 am). That includes the lyrics — "4th of July" has this lyric that screams "1994" for some reason. Or the proper sonics, be it the Liz Phair saunter of "Abalone," the Superchunk-channeling vibes of "Not the Same," and an understated Hole rendition in "Smallest One." It is a record obsessed with distinct bands and sounds but more so this larger idea of the '90s as this existential entity. - Chris Coplan
Shana Cleveland described her third solo record, Manzanita, as “a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” a succinct description that sets both scene and mystifying tonality. The natural essence of the woods, mountains, rolling hills, and open skies, are apparent not from setting but from sound. Manzanita takes a spiritual journey free from the city, free from commotion, free from congestion. Cleveland, best known as the lead songwriter for the perpetually great La Luz, gives her surroundings a pivotal part to play, but the song’s are more than their scenery, Manzanita is personal, an album created with overwhelming love, written from the perspective of an expecting mother and elated partner. Throughout the record we’re brought along as Shana Cleveland steps outside herself to witness growing love and undying support, and spoiler alert, the music is utterly beautiful. Cleveland’s prior solo effort, Night of the Worm Moon, was majestic and spiritual, like a vision trip to the desert as the sun sets over the boundless landscape, filled with scenic beauty and gorgeous arrangements. With Manzanita, we’ve left the desert for the front porch, a survey of the land as it lies, whispering into the twinkling night sky with lullabies and hushed twang. - DG
Tough Love Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Ulrika Spacek’s music, while easily digestible and friendly enough in the sonic sense, is never really reliant on pop. There are hooks, but they come with complexities. The songs are undeniably engaging, but require multiple listens to unpack. There’s an astute sense of purpose in their progressions and layering, but the band generally prefer fascinating expanse over the direct. While mainstream indie tends to favor the boring, the predictable, and the safe, Ulrika Spacek are making music for the rest of us, those who prefer dynamics, moments of intricate bliss, and a band that makes ambitious music by taking interesting routes to arrive from point a to point b. Best experienced in full, Compact Trauma is an evolution for the band, warping and weaving through loungy psych and fragmented art rock to create something glowing and evergreen. It’s an album detailed in inner struggle, fighting demons of self-doubt and addiction, wrestling with defeatist mentalist issues and finding its place in the world. Ulrika Spacek rarely take the straight forward route, everything is delivered into an esoteric shimmer, the pieces laid into place with a nervy complexity. The thread linking it all together is the album’s majestic charm and whirring warmth. There’s plenty to take in, and in time, the album opens itself up, each new layer finding its home, its essential place in the structure of the record as a singular vision. - DG
FURTHER LISTENING:
3D & THE HOLOGRAMS “3D & The Holograms” | BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD “Live at Bush Hall” | CHE NOIR & BIG GHOST LTD “Noir or Never” | CONNECTIONS “Cool Change” | DIVORCER “Espionage” | DOUBLE GRAVE “Till The Ground” | FUGITIVE BUBBLE “Delusion” | THE HIRS COLLECTIVE “We’re Still Here” | ILLITERATES “No Experts” | ITCHY & THE NITS “Itchy & The Nits” | KOMMAND “Death Age” | KOOL KEITH & REAL BAD MAN “Serpent” | PURLING HISS “Drag On Girard” | TELEHEALTH “Content Oscillator” | TETCHY “Smaller / Better” | THA GOD FAHIM & OH NO THE DISRUPT “Berserko” | WASTE MAN “Waste Man”
A P R I L :
Big Crown Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Black Thought simply isn’t capable of phoning it in. He’s never been one to chase a trend or a paycheck. Even as he approaches half a century, he still raps like he’s got something to prove. On last year’s excellent Danger Mouse collaboration Cheat Codes, the Philadelphia native cemented his place among the great MCs. Now with Glorious Game, a collaboration with Brooklyn soul artist and producer Leon Michel, he’s able to step back and take a look back at what got him there in the first place. Glorious Game started in 2020 with Michel, aka El Michels Affair and Black Thought collaborating electronically. As a prolific producer and co-owner of Big Crown Records, Michel was able to use his back catalog of unreleased music as a musical playground. Instead of sitting on a hard drive, they were chopped up into beats and given new life here. He'd send Thought a beat, and within a day or so he'd get back a fully formed track. Listening to this album, It’d be easy to think Michel is pulling from some obscure 70s soul records, but the majority of the samples are from bands working today. His throwback, chop-up-the-soul style slots in perfectly with Thought’s storytelling, with nostalgia and gratitude to those who came before you being two major lyrical themes of the record. The sample choices feel like music Thought himself would probably have listened to back in the day. Michel weaves slick electric guitar loops, angelic “oohs” and “ahhs”, groovy bass, and a nice touch of woodwinds and horns to create beats that don’t call too much attention to itself, but rather serves as a laid-back, moody sonic spaces for Thought to work his magic. - Calvin Staropoli
Topshelf Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Holy Red Wagon, the second full length from Albany’s Bruiser and Bicycle, has built a world all its own. Through a landscape of psychedelic folk, mind-bending twee, and prog, the band blur all lines, expanding upon limits with a sense of wonder and whimsy. They push to see where things may land, stretching beyond the breaking point in favor of twists and turns, texture and atmosphere. There’s always something in motion, the songs working toward progressive shifts, complex and nervy, but their energy feels buoyant and intrinsically youthful. While many bands work to trim songs to their skeletal best, Bruiser and Bicycle are going for a maximal approach, watching one thought unfold into the next, letting their songs stretch past the seven minute mark more often than not. It’s light and breezy in tonality, but the band’s heady prog and psych-pop inclinations are anything but flimsy, they’re wandering with purpose throughout the augmented reality of Holy Red Wagon, keeping themselves entertained as we’re left wondering what will happen next. - DG
Century Media Records
Apple Music | Spotify
Hold on to your butts. Richmond’s Enforced have released the thrash album of the year. War Remains, the band’s third album takes about five seconds to fully peel your wig back, stampeding with a vicious assault that endures relentlessly for the entirety of the record. The shredding guitars slam directly into the thudding rhythms and brash vocals, the entire thing decimating all in its path with a no-holds-barred approach to sensory overload. Enforced sound impenetrable as they tear against injustice, the war machine, and human cruelty, grinding when needed and dipping into hardcore and death metal at times to up the intensity (if that’s even possible). The amount of force in every blasted drum beat and blistering guitar solo is matched by sheer sonic brutality, feral and destructive, but not without its fair share of sludgy groove. War Remains feels like a bomb detonating inches from your face, an untamed beast of thrash metal domination. - DG
New West Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Esther Rose knows how to write a great song. It’s in the minute details, the personal touches, as she sets up her surroundings, painting the portrait with real emotion, cracks and all. After two great albums for Father/Daughter, Rose joined New West Records for her latest, the magnetic Safe To Run, as beautiful a country record as they come. Following a move from her New Orleans home to the open expanse of Santa Fe, Rose found herself amid a new journey, following a path into the unknown. With home-spun twang and lush songwriting, it’s easy to find yourself deep within her world, transported to seedy bars, sun-filled car rides, and searching for a place to make sense of it all. Her songs sound familiar, their natural reflections relatable, sweeping us into the record’s stately grace, embracing the warts of life and choosing to live, eager to see what lies ahead on the road less traveled. It’s all stellar but “Spider” is country swoon perfection. - DG
Trouble In Mind Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
After FACS’ 2021 landmark album, Present Tense – which, with its close-mic’d drums and broken musicbox guitars, acted as a brief detour from FACS typically explosive palette – the band return with Still Life in Decay, their accessibly haunting and darkly beautiful new album. It’s the band’s crowning achievement. Anyone in the game as long as FACS will tell you, you can put the ingredients of an album together in similar ways and still yield wildly disparate results. Still Life in Decay sounds grander than any previous FACS album. This does not mean earlier albums lacked for auditory quality – far from it. However, something about these sessions at Chicago’s celebrated Electrical Audio with renowned engineer Sanford Parker has yielded the boldest, clearest, most compelling collection of songs of the band’s career. Chalk it up to one last hurrah for Alianna Kalaba – who, after recording, has been replaced by FACS co-founder and ex-Disappears bassist Jonathan van Herik – or just a really good set of days at the office for Parker. Whatever the reason, Still Life in Decay sounds IRL massive, as if we the listeners are sharing the live room with the band as it recorded. - Benji Heywood
Sorry State / Static Shock Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Returning with their third EP in as many years, Brazil’s Lasso explode like nuclear winter out the gate with Ordem Imaginada. Seriously, hit play on “Respice Finem” in a quiet room, it genuinely feels like sonic detonation. Out now via Static Shock and Sorry State, the band’s brand of hardcore keeps expanding while retaining the feral nature of their sound, with buzzsaw riffs that demolish and shift from one scourge to the next in rapid fire succession to drum fills that feel entirely unglued. This one rips way harder than whatever over-produced hardcore the rest of “the industry” is cramming down our throats. There are subtle changes in tempo, as Lasso dig between breakneck fury and mid-tempo carnage, but it’s all bleeding into the red with brute force and impenetrable density, pummeling forward like an oncoming stampede of blatant indignation. For all the anger and anxiety being exhumed, this record is a blast to listen to, an onslaught of hazy hardcore recklessness that shreds from start to finish. - DG
Orindal Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
When the days begin to run you ragged and stress feels unavoidable, you can always turn to the music of Liza Victoria aka Lisa/Liza for an escape parts gentle, understanding, and beautiful. Listening to Portland, Maine singer/songwriter’s music is an instant salve, alleviating all worries with minimalist folk and warmly psychedelic Americana songs. Her writing is personal, enamored with a sense of community, a scenic soundtrack that wisps like the wind, highlighted by Victoria’s always stunning vocal performances, caught in open spaces and resonating with an emotional grace. Her words can sit heavy at times but the performances are a comfort, a lullaby that cuts through the noise. Victoria’s new album Breaking And Mending feels one with nature, a record that shines like the sun cutting through the tallest of trees, soft and reflective, like the ripples of a stone skipping through a pond. Soft acoustic guitars are played with undeniable emotion, with strums alternating between gentle touches and more immediate finger picking. It’s beautiful in the way that all Lisa/Liza albums are. We all struggle, but we’re not alone. Victoria’s voice is your favorite blanket, her words a dissociation from troubles, deciding instead to focus on the beauty of her surroundings, to put her mind at ease. It’s a welcome respite. - DG
Soul Assassins
Apple Music | Spotify
We’ve said it before and we will most definitely say it again, Meyhem Lauren is the very essence of New York hip-hop. Lay out a beat for him and he effortlessly crushes it, bar after bar detailing accounts of exquisite living and devious behavior. He’s got an iron clad flow, absolutely bodying beats, shining like diamonds glistening from the shadows. While he will forever carry Queens on his back, the magic of his latest album, Champagne For Breakfast, comes as a historical West Coast moment, the first collaborative project between Madlib and DJ Muggs. A meeting of undeniable giants, the legendary producers, responsible for some of hip-hop’s all-time greatest efforts, work in unison together to design the wavy elegance and the minimalist psych-laced blueprint of Lauren’s latest. Their collaboration behind the boards offers trademarks from each of their respective catalogs, merged together to give glimpses of both. Lauren has always represented the lavish style and hard-nosed bravado of rap’s glory years, and who better to arrange the score than Muggs and Madlib. Matching his larger-than-life charisma, their beats set tone and character, pivoting between glorious funk-strewn boogie and menacing minimalism, each rattling out the speakers with dusty perfection. - DG
Scenic Route Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Everyone loves a good breakbeat, but when you take a look behind the hood you're staring directly at an electro skeleton. 2023 seemed to be suggesting the sound finding new footing. Nourished By Time aka Marcus Brown is truly the dot connector of a personal canon happening in his parents' basement in Baltimore on $50 AKG headphones that anyone could and should own (I do). Brown's the first artist I've read articulating a really curious kind of crate digging approach: a fascination over the 88-92 popular music window, where the late 80s sounded like the near future and the early 90s sounded like a window to a past 80s that couldn't be immediately achieved. He knows his Toni! Toni! Toni!, PM Dawn, and a whole other world of bargain bin wonders that needed a modern vessel to make sense of and argue in favor of. The result, Erotic Probiotic 2, is fucking built to last and easily in contention for finest debut of any artist in the 2020s so far. His sleek eight cuts and one interlude clock in at 34 minutes. All omnivorous R&B both looking back to rollicking electro UK Street Sounds comps and sultry, sophisticated pop. Crafted without vamping the artifice of the latter, capturing the sheer soul of being lost in the BPMs of the former, and sounding like a continuation of a conversation last spotted a decade ago on Gorilla vs. Bear or in albums like Cupid, Deluxe. That it picked up many stray Arthur Russell comparisons was also no fluke; he evokes the transient nature of love and heartbreak with a punchdrunk cadence calling out of context. Truly, Brown didn't just give electro-heads a reason to celebrate in 2023. He's truly leading a charge for a new independent kind of progressive bedroom pop. - Matty McPherson
Stones Throw
Bandcamp | Spotify
Coast 2 Coast, the band’s fourth album and first for Stones Throw, documents their journey from their former home in Florida to their current home in LA, building a surrealistic odyssey of video games, ocean front beaches, and fantastical bliss. Moving from one vast ocean to the next, across the highways and expanse of middle America, Pearl & The Oysters use their daydream psych to bring a sense of the majestic to the mundane. Whether coming to terms with boredom and the endless possibilities of all we could be doing (“Fireflies”), two-stepping into cascading psych at it’s most saccharine sweet on a road trip where nothing seems quite as advertised (“Pacific Ave”) or preparing for launch into orbit (“Space Coast”), the duo of Joachim Polack and Juliette Pearl Davis are crafting intricate pop, with layers that reveal themselves in time. Created with hints of Stereolab and Broadcast’s retro-futurism and touches of French yé-yé music, the band sound perpetually carefree but the actual structures prove otherwise as they weave and manipulate deceptively sinuous synths and electronic nuances into every imaginative turn. The textures have been left out in the sun, the imprint of beach chairs and sand made a permanent fixture. - DG
Relapse Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The sound of Härvest is bleak, it’s an anthem for those left to dwell in the mud and the shit. The rallying cry for the hoards of peasants. They’re not out for blood and dismemberment, they just want their piece of the pie. The recording itself could be said to follow suit. There’s nothing flashy here, the band aren’t using the studio to create the impossible. Instead Poison Ruïn retain the lo-fi hiss of their roots, their brand of decidedly glamor-less punk self-recorded, awash in the din of the room. It’s a choice that keeps things raw, keeps the band entrenched among the common people. Even with mastering from Arthur Rizk, the cloud of dungeon smoke and basement grime refuses removal. It’s an aesthetic choice, and it’s one that fits Poison Ruïn to perfection. The songs feel tortured and anguished even before you dig into the lyrics. It’s also a lot of goddamn fun. The music, while claustrophobic and primal, is generally up-beat, metaphorically chopping heads with rusty tonality and gargantuan forward momentum. The guitars are all tightly coiled around the rhythms, pounding out unlikely hooks and sustained dissonance, ringing and clawing their way toward subtle grooves. The constant onslaught of revolt is only broken by the occasional dungeon synth segue, haunting but meditative, it’s a call to arms. The calm before the storm. The Philadelphia quartet is rallying the people, swinging the axe and scythe in resistance to our money-hungry politicians and the grip of upper class control. With a sound that recalls elements of Hüsker Dü, Wipers, and Crass, Poison Ruïn let their riffs buzz and sustain, the feedback whipping into a swarm. Their tone is locked in, it’s a beacon that cuts through mud. - DG
Anti Fade Records / Upset The Rhythm
Bandcamp | Spotify
Melbourne’s Terry hardly need an introduction. Their members have been involved in Total Control, Lower Plenty, Sleeper & Snake, Constant Mongrel, Primo!, and UV Race among others, and yet Terry is very much its own thing, a collaborative effort where each member is simply part of the greater whole. Across the vast catalog they’ve built over the past eight years, it’s when Terry are in complete unison, as they often are, that the band is truly radiant. Bouncing between pummeling synth punk, jangly pop, and wobbly post-punk, the songs shift perspective (and vocalists), while retaining cohesion and charm. Their latest album, Call Me Terry, is their best yet, a record that weaves an emphasis on the spiky punk side of their psych pop nuggets with a serious political force. “Centuries,” is a perfect example, a song with crackling distortion and a motorik groove supporting the impeccable four person vocal approach. The song itself is about how the disgraced and dishonored in high society still manage to find ways to stay in power, that even when change seems inevitable, we’re still stuck with the same assholes in charge. The album follows suit in that sense, taking a pessimistic look at global and hyper local politics. Terry never let it feel like a drag though, they present their political despair with a sunny disposition, a sort of musical sleight of hand. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Are things that we’ve decided to give importance to actually important? For some of us, it’s best not to think about, but it’s an exploration that Washer takes on headfirst with their third album, Improved Means To Deteriorated Ends, a record that matches thoughts of decomposition with a slow burning rage-infused drive. The world can be toxic, thoughts can become corrosive, but there’s a way to push through, a chance toward those “improved means,” no matter how unlikely it can feel. If this all seems like a bit of a downer, you’d be surprised upon listening to the album. There’s a sense of peace and resolve that comes from expressing these thoughts, the outpouring like a lifting of the anchors that drag us down. Washer, the duo of Kieran McShane (drums) and Mike Quigley (guitar, bass, vocals), are commiserating with a sense of profound community, the songs feel as though designed to be sung by a room full of drunk friends with their hearts firmly on their sleeves. It’s the feeling of listening to a friend vent their frustrations and while the conversation has been one-sided, it’s the listening, the engagement of simply being there and understanding that feels so welcome. So we listen, we get it. In some cases, we probably get it on a deeper level than we should, but that’s okay, it’s a reminder that our struggles are not unique. It’s life, it’s getting older, but it’s also a kick in the teeth to complacency. - DG
With their Dead Oceans debut Rat Saw God, Wednesday present a refined status quo for what they represent. The one intro and nine tracks are an immense bunch racing between downright fried indie rock and introspective confessional scream-outs that keep pushing the honky tonk up. Without a doubt, this is the most refined the gang have ever sounded, spinning between these two lanes with immense ease. Neither side is a duality though; the ample amount of Xandy Chelmis' pedal steel that shines through, or the times Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman duo, even just the raw lockstep the five musicians find themselves in. Something larger than the sum of the parts collides into these brilliant explosions of everyday situations. "Countrygaze" is a label that has been thrown around Wednesday, an intermingling of American Country instrumentation and swagger by ways of fried indie. They are in conversation about what country aesthetics mean right now for a specific generation of listener - Matty McPherson
Across YUNGMORPHEUS’ projects, people learn to confront anti-Blackness and capitalist dispossession just from surviving everyday life. From Whence It Came is bursting with lyrics about covert moves for a quick buck and artistic growth; about fighting back against killer cops and racist white civilians; and finding moments for solace, calm, food, and good weed in between. His flow is slick and understated, often going from bone-chilling to bored to brazen in the same song. This versatility leaves a lot of room for his lyrics to flit between reflective vignettes, cold-blooded provocations, and playful commentary. He’s less likely to brag on his own rap skills than to point out what his peers are missing. The sound of From Whence It Came is consistently smooth, dreamy, and downbeat, finding inspiration in plush corners of 70s soul, 80s and 90s funk and R&B, and moody jazz. Al Dali’s production on “For the Evening” sounds like something J Dilla would have given Busta Rhymes in the early 2000s, while DMH’s album closer “Faded Memories” leans on flutes and dusty horns that would fit on a 60s psych rock record. Even though there are so many different touchstones here, all the beats seamlessly complement YUNGMORPHEUS’ style: intimate, secretive, tucked away. It’s like ducking out of a raucous house party and running into the lone group of smokers in the backyard, casually talking about things that might fluster the people inside. - Justin Davis
FURTHER LISTENING:
ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT “Darling The Dawn” | ANGEL OLSEN “Forever Means” | BUCK GOOTER “Ghost Brain” | COMMUNITY COLLEGE “Schmomco” | DISPLAY HOMES “What If You're Right And They're Wrong?” | DOMMENGANG “Wished Eye” | DURING “During” | ES “Fantasy” | FLY ANAKIN “Skinemaxxx (Side A)” | GLITTERING INSECTS “Glittering Insects” | GLOW IN THE DARK FLOWERS “Glow In The Dark Flowers” | JANA HORN “The Window Is The Dream” | KARA JACKSON “Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love?” | NICOLE YUN “Matter” | NIGHTOSPHERE “Katabasis” | PUBLIC INTEREST “Spiritual Pollution” | SCIENCE MAN “Mince’s Cane” | THA GOD FAHIM “Dump Gawd Reloaded” | TUNIC “Wrong Dream” | VOIDCEREMONY “Threads of Unknowing”
M A Y :
20 Buck Spin
Bandcamp | Spotify
One listen to Ascended Dead’s latest album and it becomes increasingly apparent that everything is crumbling and there’s not much time left before we’re all swallowed whole. Evenfall of the Apocalypse is the second album from the San Diego based death metal quartet, but despite their location, make no mistakes, there’s nothing sunny about this one. As claustrophobic as they come, these songs are erupting from the primordial ooze with the mud to show for it, the recording as harrowing and chaotic as it gets, the sludge and stampede created in putrid unison. With a sense of carnage and impending decimation permanently bolted in place, Ascended Dead (whose members also play in VoidCeremony, Incantation, Disimperium, etc) tear between riffs and skull crushing drum fills at a blistering pace, the results obliterating on the senses. The sound of the album feels as though the floodgates to hell have opened directly over head, swarming until all has been consumed. This record isn’t always about dynamics (though it’s not void of them either) as much as it is sheer annihilation, but it’s a brutal exploration of savage density. - DG
Backwoods Studioz
Bandcamp | Spotify
In these post-lockdown years, billy woods has been playing catch-up, bringing his live show as a solo artist (and together with ELUCID) to every corner of the globe, a seemingly endless tour in support of a plethora of increasingly important records. While it seems hard to believe he’s had time to reflect upon his life on the road, it’s clearly been on his mind, as visions of “home” fade and he’s left sleepless on planes, in hotels, and at soundchecks. The grind of it all brought woods back to Kenny Segal, the pair resuming their instant chemistry for Maps, and with it, yet another record that feels destined for hip-hop infamy. It’s a roadtrip set in cavernous venues, lengthy carshare rides, dispensaries, and airport terminals, and despite the weary nature of cyclical travel, billy woods sounds as though he’s having fun. It’s worth repeating, woods is having fun. He’s cracking jokes, he’s weaving complex punchlines, making references to metal bands and rappers, and tossing out barbs and jabs that come with showing up in a new town and being presented with immediate complications. Sometimes it’s all too much, and woods reflects on those he misses, while he disassociates and travels subconsciously, escaping to a place of perma-stoned isolated thought. woods is penning his diary amid the grind, from restless feelings and time elapsed, to delirious humor and the comfort of good weed. - DG
It had been five years since Chuck Strangers released a full length album and three years since the great Too Afraid To Dance EP offered a reinvention of his sound, but The Boys & Girls EP proves he hasn’t missed a beat. While his start came as an in-house producer and member of PRO ERA, Strangers quickly took to the mic and made a name for himself as one of the next generation’s premier MCs, a versatile rapper that moves lyrically between his surroundings and the surreal, offering a dose of warped street soul in the process. His latest takes a minimalist approach to beat selection, working off dusty loops that feel triumphantly reserved, it gives Chuck Strangers room to lace the tracks with clarity and focus, his lyrics coming out abstract and laid back. Soul samples and breezy keys lay the framework for stream-of-thought verses, smoked out, but rooted in reality, it’s a weed-friendly stroll through the neighborhood, shining through the clouds, keeping it raw. - DG
Drumwork Music Group / EMPIRE
Apple Music | Spotify
Over the last decade-plus, Conway The Machine has operated close enough to the rap capitol to add to its prestige and bolster its traditions. Yet he’s still far enough removed that his career has been his own, operating with absolute freedom to explore new ideas and approaches. A similar dynamic rests at the heart of his latest, Won’t He Do It. After 2022’s deeply personal God Don’t Make Mistakes, this massive moment of openness and vulnerability, Conway’s giving himself a victory lap of sorts with this fourteen track effort. It’s a celebration that shifts his overall trajectory and thus remains compelling in some vital ways. The arc of Conway's career has towed this line between fame and the underground, the boisterous kingpin and thoughtful underdog. The issue, then, is that this record strongly celebrates all that shimmers — but in a way that’s less about big hits and instead robust gestures. - Chris Coplan
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
An appreciation for genre variation has brought a myriad of new sounds to the scene, probably most notably the deeply felt fuzz of groove-driven rock and airy, sugary bedroom pop. On Chicago-based, Rochester transplant Cusp’s latest record, You Can Do It All, there is a firm embrace of both of these sonic ideas, coupled with a wide moodscape of early-to-mid-twenties anxiety, self discovery, and an early sense of loss. For a debut record, You Can Do It All demonstrates tremendous balance. For every dense and gritty riff, there is a bouncy pop vocal melody, with a focus on blending basement-jam sounds, catchy verses, and choruses. In lyrical content, the band spirals through all of the hallmarks of young adult life. The end and beginning of relationships, life changing in previously unexpected ways, the juggling of responsibilities. Through each swing and turning tide of life, there is an equally measured line of keys, guitar riffs, and thundering cymbal ridden drum passages. For Cusp, the key in balancing a song is finding the equilibrium between a thematic idea, and establishing a sonic through-line for that idea. - Jare C
Wharf Cat Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
After years of ripping through the country with the garage/punk band Fat Creeps, suffering a neck injury from her job as a nurse, and pandemic malaise, Gracie Jackson found herself in a dejected and morose position that many heart-worn country singers find themselves in. The memories and tales that bounced around her heart and mind for the past decade started forming into stories and songs with rich melodies and stunning instrumentations. Her journeyed voice reflects the years of entropy and moil but spins that into songs of self-determination, confidence, and humor. Whether eating fried chicken in a hazmat suit, breaking up fights, or dancing with a stranger in a white stetson, Jackson’s narrative lyrics are almost cinematic in their oddly specific detail. As she moves through fast food drive-thrus and meets various characters along the way, Jackson searches for authenticity in a city known for its intentionally crafted image. L.A. Shit is very sonically diverse, and Jackson effortlessly traverses all the country music sub-genres from honky-tonk to Bakersfield and Appalachian to psychedelia. L.A. Shit is an alt-country fever dream through a seemingly undefinable city. Jackson isn’t afraid to play with country music conventions but doesn’t stray too far from traditional country norms. Regardless of how cornered she feels or how weird her life has become, Jackson shows that she remains open to new experiences. - Myles Tiessen
Run For Cover Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Heartbreak Rules came less than a year after the release of Horse Jumper of Love’s Natural Part, a companion album that isn’t quite an “odds and ends” collection, but isn’t quite a new full length either. The record peels back the layers of HJOL, giving a focus to Dimitri Giannopoulos’ vocals and songwriting, a reflection of the band’s earliest material. Written and record solo (together with longtime producer Bradford Krieger), there’s an intimacy to the songs that feels upfront, the surrealist heartbreak and folk charms as radiant as any Horse Jumper recordings. It’s an album that feels thoughtful, the dissonance only used to give color to the song’s natural world. Giannopoulos’ songs appear haunted but secure, reflections and distant memories spiral into a place of singular understanding, abstract and glowing. - DG
Duophonic Super 45s
Apple Music | Spotify
What Will You Grow Now? is six songs initiated as jams. They seamlessly grow organically in separate planes of existence, becoming somehow unified emotionally packed musical statements. The group, Modern Cosmology, the coming together of Recife, Brazil based Mombojó and totemic French Pop figure Laetitia Sadier, knows how to have a focused jam. What Will You Grow Now? beautifully synthesizes the DNA of this collective of artists. On one side of the coin, Mombojó creates music in the tradition of Tropicália. On the flip side, Sadier brings her unique vocal stylings, patterns, rhythms, and French pop. When coupled, the familiar Portuguese tongue is stripped away from the mystifying and groovy Tropicália into a pleasurable blend of palatable, funky, and ethereal tunes. Lead single, “A Time to Blossom,” best encapsulates the synthesis the group creates. The light tension created in the first part of the tune gives way to a transpicuous catharsis. It’s meditative and breezy. The delicate guitar parts and steady drum groove lock into a complimentary jam with the bright sighing of the wordless vocals. It makes one want to sit in it and throw it on repeat, to get to that end point again and again. - Zak Mercado
Salinas Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Can’t Make Any Promises marks both the 20th anniversary of their label, Salinas Records, and the end of the longest gap between LPs in the band’s history. Yet, even after a three-year break, the overblown guitar cadences under a lo-fi fuzz, gloomy lyrical sentiments, and ambient synth melodies prove Radiator Hospital’s intention to stay true to their bedroom indie rock roots. Can’t Make Any Promises’ terse lyricism is not necessarily a common feature of Radiator Hospital’s past discography, but what the new album lacks in narration is made up for in embittered, revelatory cadences that say more than words. Take for example, “Warming World,” the atmosphere is dark, gritty, and eerily wordless, with the first lyrics being uttered two minutes into the four-minute song. The back half’s few lyrics are swallowed by a brooding synth that slowly thickens throughout the track. As a result, the atmosphere drives the narration – a risky choice, no doubt, but executed flawlessly. The atmosphere Radiator Hospital creates time and time again leaves nothing to be desired. While there are clear glimpses of 90’s emo and indie influences present, Can’t Make Any Promises is hardly a pastiche of its predecessors. The lo-fi album oozes the same unrefined, saturated melodies of indie’s past while toying with idiosyncrasies that create a unique, ambient sound. Blistering guitar solos, mellow vocals, and harmonic distortion perfectly chart Radiator Hospital’s dedication to their homemade garage band aesthetic while proving the range they’ve developed over the past decade. - Dana Poland
Born Yesterday Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Freak Frequency, the second full length from Chicago’s Stuck, feels like a classic in the making, distilling the anxiety and paranoia of our digital age culture into vibrant post-punk. They trade between the aggression of noise rock and the finesse of art rock, pulling us in one direction and snapping back the next, but nothing is by happenstance. Stuck have worked hard to throw everyone off their axis, guitars oscillating between stabbing punk and tangled sludge, rhythms that expand and collapse without warning, the heavy sociopolitical dread, it all cements Stuck in a lane their own. Freak Frequency feels calculated, designed with furious sarcasm and indignation, but the band are also loosening their grip, opting to twitch and yelp with the occasional deranged sense of animation. It’s in these moments, the entire band convulsing in unison where we’re given deeper glimpses into the personalities at the core of Stuck’s sound. There’s a constant highlight of strengths both lyrically and musically, each song bouncing between an intelligent scorn and a brash resolve of tension. Stuck are one of the most exciting new bands on the planet, existing between genres while improving on all of them in the process. Freak Frequency is the proof in the pudding. - DG
Julia’s War / BLIGHT. Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
With each successive release, Philly behemoths Sun Organ find new and exciting shapes to meld their distorted pop vision into. Featuring increased collaboration on every new album, mastermind Tim Jordan has been able to breathe new life into an established sound. This time around on Candlelight Showertime, his co-conspirators make up likeminded heavyweights like Nyxy Nyx, Webb Chapel, Dark Mtns, Ruah, and Nine of Swords, among others. Sun Organ pull off the incredible feat of leaning into dark and ugly subject matter without wallowing in it, but instead choosing to emerge from the struggle despite the odds. Wielding their trademark fuzz like a weapon, they inject their songs with enough grit, dynamic shifts, and memorable vocal melodies to keep the abyss from swallowing them up. One needn't look further than Sun Organ's Bandcamp bio which reads "oh fuck I think the end of times has come" for a primer for the subject matter of this record. The band's heavy tunes feel downright apocalyptic - dealing with death, substance abuse, memory, and loss - while managing to somehow feel hopeful despite the burdens they carry. - Torrey Proto
The story of how Temps came to be is too long for this feature, but the group’s bio is definitely worth a read. Spearheaded by English comedian James Acaster, the project came together as another project fizzled out, and a once in progress mockumentary became a record, a multi-genre hybrid that’s nothing less than stunning. Produced by Acaster (who handled the album’s drums together with Seb Rochford), he poured through his rolodex to bring together some of modern music’s best minds and habitual genre-adverse artists including Quelle Chris, NNAMDÏ, Mal Devisa, Denmark Vessey, Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki and John Dieterich, Xenia Rubinos, Open Mike Eagle, Shamir, and that’s only scratching the surface. Rather than a one and done verse approach, the artists revolve throughout the record, making multiple appearances as the expansive songs call for it, leaving a blueprint that defies any logic in favor of artistic freedom. This is alternative hip-hop, jazz, and experimental indie design without a map, and the entire thing is legitimately intriguing. - DG
Matador Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Everyone’s Crushed, the latest from Water From Your Eyes is an addictively strange record. The duo are deep in the groove, further exploring their style of deconstructed music, and coming back with something as inscrutable as ever. It is their first for Matador, and their “major label debut” of sorts. Many albums are built around an extremely specific palette of sounds, each track drawing from an established collection of instruments and tones to build a sort of world. On Everyone’s Crushed, Water From Your Eyes completely flip this idea of continuity. The instrumentation of the record is straightforward, most songs contain electric guitar, bass, and drums. However, rather than sounding familiar, consistent and human, they are otherworldly, as if played by a computer, or sampled from a corrupted .wav file. It is hard to visualize people playing any of the music on Everyone’s Crushed, which is disarming for music coming from a quote unquote band. This is especially cool as Water From Your Eyes is a fantastic live group and translates their songs pretty faithfully into a live setting. - Layton Guyton
FURTHER LISTENING:
ANTI-MACHINE “Too Many Eyes” | DRAGNET “The Accession” | ELECTRIC CHAIR “Beat Session Vol. 11” | ELUVIUM “(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality” | FAIRYTALE “Shooting Star” | FLASHER “In My Myth” | GLAAS “Cruel Heart, Cold Summer” | JAY WORTHY & ROC MARCIANO “Nothing Bigger Than The Program” | LYSOL “Down The Street” | MANDY, INDIANA “I’ve Seen A Way” | MEGA BOG “End of Everything” | MEMORIALS “Music For Film: Women Against The Bomb” | PYREX “Pyrex” | RYAN WONG “The New Country Sounds of Ryan Wong”
J U N E :
Broadband Sound
Apple Music | Spotify
The rise of Buffalo’s 7xvethegenius has been slow but full of promise, each verse over the past four years has been building the legacy of a dynamic rapper. Her style moves between both traditional boom-bap glory and something less familiar, flirting with experimental R&B production and cool jazzy flourishes. Regardless of the beat she’s lacing, there’s always a focus on meticulous lyricism and craft, with verses that invariably strike as confident yet empathetic. While 7xve’s Drumwork Music Group debut remains in the works, she’s followed last year’s Self 7xve 2 EP with The Genius Tape, a collaboration that finds DJ Green Lantern handling production. The tape is the best showcase of her lyricism yet with beats that match the grimy intensity. Whether talking her shit, embracing the grind as an up-and-coming MC, tracing her roots, or focusing on the community around her, 7xve is painting pictures amid classic flows and unflinching honesty in her lyrics. - DG
Droppin Science Productions
Apple Music | Spotify
It took a near fatal car accident to slow down Boldy James, but after months of rehabilitating, the Detroit MC is back on the road and he’s released his second record of the year, the first recorded since the accident. We’ve long admired his commitment to working with a single producer per release (The Alchemist, Nicholas Craven, Real Bad Man, Futurewave, Cuns, etc) and Prisoner of Circumstance keeps his impeccable streak going, pairing him together with Canadian producer ChanHays. While Hays might not be as high-profile as some of Boldy’s past collaborators, the beats are exceptional, crisp loops and great samples, the perfect framework for the return we’ve all been waiting for. Boldy sounds razor sharp and focused, his laid back flow working in double time (see “Trust Issues”), still smoked out and deceptively chill, but matching the vibrancy of the production. It’s a celebration (of sorts) and it feels like it. Boldy is rapping without distraction, there’s no features and less ad-libs, instead we get twenty minutes of personal reflections, supreme conviction, and the highs and lows of street life (see “I Tried”). - DG
Feeding Tube Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
We completely missed the lead up to Bong Wish aka Mariam Saleh’s full length debut, Hazy Road, but it’s been in constant rotation in the months since. The Boston based musician, formerly of Fat Creeps, has is creating a stunning blend of psych, folk, and vibrant pop textures throughout her latest, a glistening collection of songs that feel dreamy but driven. There’s a moving pulse and a sense of urgency but even in climatic builds and twangy layering, Saleh’s voice maintains a gentle touch. Hazy Road is folk music with psychedelic heft, the atmosphere in a swirl with jangly guitars, organ (or perhaps synths that sound like organs), shuffling rhythms, and a general cloud of disorientation that puts a flavor to the recipe. Songs like the breezy title track show the project at full mesmerizing force while “Moon For You” sways with an acoustic ease and delicate touch. It’s a beautiful debut album, loaded with nuance and texture, Bong Wish are creating music both thoughtful and dazzling. - DG
Freeman Street Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
It’s been seven long years since Bueno released Illuminate Your Room, and they’ve been sorely missed. The once Staten Island based band feel like a vestige of old New York City punk. Their third full length, I Was A Thing Of Beauty, is built on jaunty post-punk and unflinching style, it’s an exploration of rock ‘n’ roll without the decadence. The band begin a new era, with long time members Luke Chiaruttini, Michael Gagliardi, and Joe Imburgio joined by Matt Elkin and Casey Weissbuch, a line-up that’s been playing together for many years at this point. They pick up where they left off, making us dance, pairing funky guitar licks with disco punk rhythms, and the world’s ever reliable narrator in Chiaruttini. There’s a grandiosity to the record, songs progress from moment to moment, driving and sauntering with their own sophistication, a cultivated dynamic that’s raw and lively. There’s an intricate construction to the way that the record unfolds, each song a different groove, dipping between strutting charm and joyous kiss-offs. - DG
Merge Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
There’s a special kind of impassioned fury conjured in Cable Ties’ music, it’s instantly recognizable, and no one else does it quite like the Melbourne trio. Their sound is as heavy as it is direct, driven by the explosive nature of Jenny McKechnie’s vocals at full throttle. With their new album, All Her Plans, the band tumble into an ongoing avalanche, their primal post-punk and wailing aggression crashing down at full speed. These songs are barn burners but they’re not without a serious sense of groove. There’s a swagger to the way the band construct their songs, with the low end doing much of the heavy lifting. Those vocals though, McKechnie’s voice really is special, howling with a commanding presence and lyrical outrage. Cable Ties just want to be treated with some damn respect, to see the world function with equality and regard for one another. Until then, they’re going to shred with a primal brilliance. Turn it up loud and let this one demolish the bullshit. - DG
Fire Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
There’s a campy brilliance to Decisive Pink that’s delivered with the utmost sincerity. The collaborative duo of Kate NV and Angel Deradoorian pairs together two exceptional outsider pop minds, their passion for exploration a constant in their respective careers. Together as Decisive Pink they are weaving their talents into engaging modular synth-pop. Built on electronic beats and a variety of warm synth tones, the songs feel pulled from a utopian 80’s jazzercise class, mixing together psych, new wave, and krautrock to create synth pop at it’s most retro and cinematic. Their vocals float above the bubbling synths, offering sweet harmonies as they both sing, pulling the melodies in different directions. Their twin synth compositions bubble and color the songs with character, expanding in time with alien shapes and blissful comfort that feels like a future once imagined. Exuberant and expansive, they between hypnotic motorik beats and layers upon layers of bloops, squiggles, and detached electronics. It’s really something else, pop splendor with a feel for wanderlust, lush harmonies, warped synths, choral beauty, and a cosmic sense to transport us to other dimensions. - DG
Saddle Creek
Bandcamp | Spotify
Genuineness is the prime moral characteristic that defines Feeble Little Horse. The noisy Pittsburgh quartet have stuck to an ethos of controlling every part of the creative process themselves and using it as time they can continue to bond over. This DIY mantra plays through on their new album Girl With Fish with its crushing shoegaze backbone interlaced with elements of sentimentality, it gleams with personality and charisma. Each track whirls by with only one song clocking in over the three-minute mark. A purposeful decision by the band to keep them concise without defacing them with long, unneeded jam breaks. No single idea is stretched too thin before the band introduces another. On top of this they even cut out the transition tracks that dotted their previous release, Hayday. However, there is still near perfect sequencing between the beginning and end of each piece, so they all flow together in one effortless wave. The album is over before you are ready to let it go and compels you to go through the rapid ride once again after the final track plays. - John Glab
Relapse Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Ain’t shit pretty about Currency // Castration and that’s the beauty of it. The band’s third album, and first for Relapse Records, is ensnared in filth and dissonance, at home amid the depravity, for better or worse, this is where we’re at and Geld aren’t delusional. Far from it, but rather than collapse under the weight of it all, they chose to decimate, creating something that feels relevant and timeless. The band continue to push their sound with each record, determined to build upon where they’ve been without looking back. If Beyond The Floor felt like the abject terror at the dawn of the apocalypse, Currency // Castration has settled into the end times and it’s an observant portrait of indulgence and horror. The sense of disgust is palpable, oozing from the garbled howls and piercing riffs, this is anti-social music for the less than well-adjusted. The songs are full of forward thinking structures, pummeling one moment with stampeding drums and locked into a mesmerizing (yet sludgy) motorik groove the next. Geld push the envelope to obliteration, shredding with a sonic assault that often feels like an alien invasion, scattering and rearranging limbs, spinning so far outside the axis that disorientation feels natural. The band stomp and spit, the songs blasting through clamorous tempos only to arrive in a place of sonic waste, digging the pits ever deeper. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
When we first encountered the mystique of Squid Ink Sky back in February, we had mentioned that Goo’s “slow dripped brand of psychedelic folk and wide open expanses is void of the hustle and bustle of city life, the songs taking their time to draw upon moonlight ambiance amid whispered croons, gentle acoustics, sweeping melodies, and subtle twang.” It’s the immediate feeling you get upon digging into the New York City band’s second album, but it’s not so much void of the city’s grind as it is adrift from its surroundings, lost in its own thought. For every feeling of transportive escapism to environments vast and arid, rooted in both realism and fantasy, there’s a sense that Beck Zegans is pushing forward one day at a time, waking up each morning to see what life has to offer, each strange day anew. It’s a Western tale removed from the West, reflections carried from cramped apartments and crowded streets. Squid Ink Sky feels like a voyage through daydreams and personal reflections, love remembered in dim light that refuses to be forgotten, balanced with the resolve to continue forward. Written in isolation during the pandemic lock-downs, the album envisions real life in slow motion, entwined with realms outside our reality, mind in tact but everything else temporarily suspended in surreality. - DG
Sad Cactus Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Brooklyn duo Gorgeous released Sapsucker, their second album, via Sad Cactus Records (Powerwasher, Mothpuppy, EIEIEIO), expanding upon the jerky compositions of their debut and their minimalist complexities. Dana Lipperman (guitar/vocals) and Judd Anderman (drums) have played countless shows in the years since they shared Egg and it shows throughout their latest, with carefully crafted dynamic peaks and dips that feel fine tuned from live performances. It’s a record of combustible art punk, skittering headfirst into traffic one moment and sweet and syrupy the next, the band play jagged art-punk song without boundaries. Gorgeous tangle themselves into impossibly knots, darting between rhythms while layering melodies on top in unique time, treating the progressions like silly putty as they stretch and warp without losing their sense of weirdo pop sheen. The result is a dizzying attack and surrealist disorientation that comes juxtaposed from occasional calm. Sometimes the only way to deal with stress is dive deeper into the anxiety amid unglued abandon. - DG
Mello Music Group
Bandcamp | Spotify
It’s hard to imagine hip-hop’s avant-garde without Kool Keith, a pioneer of outsider rap, stream-of-conscious bars, and thematic alter-egos. Since the early days with Ultramagnetic MC’s back in the 80’s, Keith has always done things his own way, keeping it brash yet imaginative, a force that’s as goofy as it is hard, with no line separating the two. His latest album, Black Elvis 2, is the sequel to the classic Black Elvis/Lost In Space record released way back in 1999. With sci-fi elements at the forefront, our inter-planetary traveler is rhyming his way between the cosmos, still interested in sex, glamour, and letting lesser rappers know they ain’t shit. Primarily produced by Kool Keith himself (with additional production from Marc Live, L’Orange, and J Stylez), it feels like a spiritual successor to the original, not just in name but in sound. The framework is robotic, like a freaky trip into deep space led by the most colorful of narrators. Nearly forty years after his debut, Kool Keith remains in a league of his own. - DG
Richmond’s McKinley Dixon operates on a different level than most. His brand of hip-hop is based on soul searching reflection as much as it is fantastical escape. There’s a very deliberate realness to his words and structures but there’s also that feeling of moving beyond the trials and tribulations, of rising up to new heights. Through jazzy rap tunes and countless homages to writer Toni Morrison, Dixon carves his own lane among live instrumentation and a pen game that’s as slick as it is poignant. He really doesn’t miss on Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, a record that often feels as though Dixon is in search for his place in the world. His music is incredibly focused and developed with impeccable grace, each song a different side of his conquest, the pitfalls and distances traversed to the love found in artistic freedom and the strive to match sweeping orchestral arrangements with equally profound lyricism. As Dixon deals with personal loss, the trials that come with pure talent, and life’s biggest questions, his flow shifts, taking shape around lyrics that are always honest, the narrative a glimpse into his upbringing and the way he’s learned from the all sides of the world around him. - DG
Bar/None Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Pardoner have hit their stride. The SF four-piece is known for guitar-driven tunes that straddle the line between the pop-rock anthem and the sludgy punk screed. Peace Loving People, their fourth LP, fully captures their singular sound built around the infectious interplay of the guitars and vocals of the two main songwriters Max Freedland and Trey Flanigan. If third albums are where a band “matures,” then it’s the fourth record is where the band settles in: Pardoner has nothing to prove to anyone; it sounds like they’re making music for themselves and their buddies, and we’re lucky to be a part of it. This is a rock album for guitar fans. Between tracks and within songs, you are confronted with an amalgamation of the best elements from rock’s finest decades: chimey 60s tunes about drugs and love, 70s classic rock riffs, 80s hardcore breakdowns, 90s fuzzy slacker rock solos (“Are You Free Tonight” somehow combines all of these in just over two minutes!). - Matt Watton
Domino Recording Co.
Bandcamp | Spotify
Protomartyr have always seemed destined to navigate through dark times and the hopeless recesses of their minds, it’s a natural part of their oeuvre. This time around though, there’s an unlikely brightness, an open ended feeling of hope fighting to shimmer that leads them to Formal Growth In The Desert. The band’s sixth full length album is drawn from life’s very real low points, both personal and general, namely the death of Joe Casey’s mother and the worldwide misfortune of the pandemic. In what could have been a collection of songs buried in doom and gloom, Protomartyr return with a new resolve, the idea that grief can lead to new beginnings, celebrating those lost by understanding their hopes for your happiness. The tilt toward positivity remains subtle though, this is still the world through the lens of Protomartyr and these aren’t sunny times. It’s enough to believe that things can get better, to believe love abounds, to give a new ground to Casey’s lyrics, he doesn’t have to seize them with full on urgency. That change is reflected beyond the lyrics as well, as Casey wasn’t the only one fighting to continue. Greg Ahee (guitar), considered “the architect” of the band’s sound has spoken in interviews about a hesitatation to keep the band afloat “post” pandemic. Eventually he began to work on music for short films, finding inspiration in film scores, most notably the music of Ennio Morricone and the composer’s contributions to Spaghetti Westerns. Through these shared experiences and sentiments, Protomartyr pushed forward with a new focus on expanding their post-punk music in a cinematic way, providing an arc for Formal Growth In The Desert. While captured with a widescreen array of instrumentation, Ahee, Scott Davidson (bass), and Alex Leonard (drums), add emphasis via synths and lap steel. It’s another layer of texture, a layer of additional nuance to support the varying moods, an adventure of sonic expanse for a band that’s always been impeccably dialed in. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
St. Louis DIY heroes Shady Bug have returned with What’s The Use?, a new EP that captures growth through change. Their first new release in four years, the band have gone through adjustments in their line-up but they’ve locked in on what’s important, with Hannah Rainey taking a leadership role in the shape of their sound, developing songs with a new explorative sense of freedom. Recorded together with Alex Molini (Pile, Stove, Philary) at his former Nashville studio, Shady Bug are still juxtaposing sweet pop charms and syrupy hooks with blistering noise, lulling you into their sugary innocence before blowing it all away. The difference is they are doing it with an added confidence, following instincts that swerve between walls of shoegaze guitars and laconic rhythms, augmented with a focus on Rainey’s reflective lyrics. It’s a record about shedding “lizard skin” and coming out anew, where anything is possible when you trust in yourself and your support systems of friends and family. What’s The Use? explores pop music at it’s most bent, pulling away from simple melodies in favor of getting gloriously weird, and it all comes together like superglue. - DG
Disposable America
Bandcamp | Spotify
The past seven years have been good for Boston’s Squitch. Growing ever more confident with each successive release, they have continuously raised the bar, a great band getting ever better. Without giving consideration to the future or lack-there-of, it’s safe to say that Squitch have made their best record to date with Tumbledown Mountain, a collection of songs both personal and inherently complex. It’s an album that deals with the finality of things but as the band know, “it’s not the end.” Things change. Life changes. Being in a band in your twenties isn’t always built to last. People relocate, priorities shift, but recorded music is forever, capturing a place and time, despite whatever comes next. Sometime shortly after the release of Learn To Be Alone, Squitch found their long-term trio line-up paired down to the duo of Emery Spooner (guitar, vocals) and Denzil Leach (drums), but before long the band had expanded their ranks to include both Grace Ward (guitar) and Kit Malmberg (bass). From what once posed as a sizable loss to the project became a deeply fleshed out sound, their textures given a new sense of nuance and structural heft. Everything on Tumbledown Mountain feels perfectly in its place, sentiment matched with both tangled fuzz, gorgeous harmonies, and sincere twang. Recorded together with Bradford Krieger at Big Nice, it’s an album that feels both sprightly in spirit but dense in construction. These songs come pouring out, blanketing hurt in all it shapes with a steadfast resolve, occasionally dejected but persevering the twists and turns. - DG
Feel It / Sub Pop Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
When an album finds the kind of instant acclaim and widespread love that Sweeping Promises’ Hunger For A Way Out did, there’s a lot of expectations for the follow up. Add to that the fact that they’ve brought together Feel It Records and Sub Pop for the release of Good Living Is Coming For You and the anticipation begins to boil at a rapid rate. The great news is that the duo of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug are fully up for the task, their sophomore offering an expansion of the magic of their debut. While they moved from their Boston origins to a home base in Kansas, the band’s very specific recording touches remain at the forefront. They’re using more than one mic this go round, but there’s still wide open space and natural reverb setting the tone, allowing the band’s hypnotic art-punk songs endless atmosphere and lo-fi din. The songs themselves are energetic, acidic, and acerbic, jerking around with a dampened groove like The B-52s without the existence of sunlight. They bounce and rattle with Lira’s hypnotic vocals calling out, finding the inherent boogie in the minimalism and offering melodies within shadowy repetition. - DG
Teen Metal Soundboard
Bandcamp | Spotify
Since 2018, Atlanta based collective Sword II have been dwelling in their local DIY underground. Coming together as titans of their scene and community, they’ve spent the last five years playing shows around the Atlanta area, aiding in protests like the ones against “cop city,” and experimenting in their basement practice space. Their new album Spirit World Tour is a product of these sentiments. The four band members, bassist Mari González, drummer José “Frio” Izaquirre, guitarists Corey Zuko and Travis Arnold, all come together without setting boundaries for their creativity. The eight dreamy, highly textured tracks reflect that uncontrolled burn. Spirit World Tour has an overarching darkness to its vibe. The gritty gothic tones give many of the songs a ghostly essence to them. It has a haunting nature that looms over you while trying to guide through the disorientating, imperceptible smog while listening. - John Glab
20 Buck Spin
Bandcamp | Spotify
Torture Rack’s latest album is disgusting. The Portland based quartet (whose members also play in Skeletal Remains, Witch Vomit, Aenigmatum, etc) have conjured something festering and undeniably grotesque in image and sound alike, and it’s all by demonic design. Primeval Onslaught is a manifestation of death metal depravity and brute caveman riffs. The record is as crushing as it is filthy, the dingy sound appropriately deteriorated for their gore soaked destruction. You know exactly what you’re getting into with songs like “Fucked By Death” and “Ceremonial Flesh Feast,” and yet the results still grind with an unpredictable force. There’s nothing pleasant about Torture Rack’s latest album, the songs are concise and blunt, a stampede that takes few if any detours, the fog of destruction nearly blinding. There’s nothing overtly technical here, Primeval Onslaught opts to pummel and pulverize, their brand of death metal sludge prefers relentless bludgeoning to textural nuance or dynamic shifts. - DG
There’s a lot to love about Adelaide’s Wireheads, a band that can dart between post-punk with a roaring ferocity and a jangly minimalism, sauntering from pop splendor to punk sheen in a blink. Led by the charismatic Dom Trimboli, the lyrics are always laser focused, capturing the mundane and the extraordinary together, intertwining the absurd with the drastically immediate. The sextet manage to balance brains and muscle, with subtly tangled structures pairing together with perfectly imperfect harmonies, heaps of well oiled guitar fuzz, and an innate sense for when to unwind and when to recoil. Wireheads separate themselves from the pack with that dynamic notion, their songs evolve, the elastic nature of it continuously pushing toward the snapping point. They’ve reshaped a common sound and thrive when shifting the direction. As Trimboli found himself sitting on a batch of songs that could only be Wireheads, the members found themselves pulled back in, coming together to create their exceptional new record, Potentially Venus. The band sound unnervingly alive, the time away resulting in a deeper bond. - DG
FURTHER LISTENING:
ANNA ST. LOUIS “In The Air” | BIG BLOOD “First Aid Kit“ | BIG CLOWN “Beatdown” | BORIS & UNIFORM “Bright New Disease“ | BUSTED HEAD RACKET “Junk Food” | CS CLEANERS “Drolomon” | GREG ELECTRIC “It’s Been…” | IMPLODERS “Imploders” | KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD “PetroDragonic Apocalypse“ | LA SÉCURITÉ “Stay Safe!“ | MATT ROBIDOUX “Music For Aluminum Corn” | QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE “In Times New Roman…” | SOCIETY “Social Flies” | THE STOOLS “R U Saved?” | SQUID “O Monolith” | TEKE::TEKE “Hagata” | THE TOADS “In The Wilderness” | WOMBO “Slab EP”
J U L Y :
Nuclear Blast
Bandcamp | Spotify
Most people don’t like the idea of updating classic albums for modern times. We get that, but sometimes strange circumstances deem it necessary. Fresh off a lengthy tour (or two) playing Sepultura’s Arise and Beneath The Remains in full, Cavalera, the band headed by Max and Iggor Cavalera (aka the real Sepultura) decided to re-record Sepultura’s first two releases, 1985’s Bestial Devastation and 1986’s Morbid Visions, records that are undoubtably blueprint’s of early death metal and thrash, but also never sounded quite the way the band wanted. While in most cases this would result in a simple remaster, the complicated situation of Sepultura (and the fact that the founding members haven’t been involved for decades) makes it trickier. So lemons become lemonade… brutal death metal lemonade. The Cavalera brothers are happy to bring their earliest work into the modern era, and while some will call it in poor taste, others will simply embrace how great these songs still are. These re-recorded albums fucking rip. They’re not so much given a facelift as a full on bionic upgrade. It’s a testament to the originals that it works, the clarity of the production really bringing every blunt force drum fill and colossal riff into new light. - DG
Backwoodz Studioz
Bandcamp | Spotify
Throughout Fatboi Sharif’s underground career, in hallucinatory beats and verses littered with viscera, the New Jersey rapper has made his home in life’s uneasy, hard-to-categorize spaces. Decay, his first record for billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz is no exception; it breaks down everything in its path, from euphoria to personal and social trauma, and especially the walls of any container you try to keep it in. As Sharif himself puts it to me: "My music is a vehicle to both sides of what we go through as people, from the good and the bad, but also that in-between where we may get confused on which one is going on at the moment." Enter the discordant keys and distorted religious imagery of “Ash Wednesday,” or the light-headed synths and shouts of “The Farewell Outfit.” Decay grows in the hairline cracks that separate the gorgeous from the grotesque–the beats, as produced by Steel Tipped Dove, spread like patchworks of colorful fungus, perfectly natural, beautiful, and alien, while Sharif drops references to literature and film by the thousands, like so many airborne spores. - Taylor Ruckle
Sorry State Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The debut LP from Nashville’s G.U.N. is pure brutality and speed, a record of brash hardcore and grunting punk. Released via Sorry State Records, there’s a no-frills attack that seems stuck in pulverize mode. The band blaze with reckless abandon, their tempos veering off the rails, but it’s not speed without substance, there’s a complexity to the riffs, a brainy element beneath the visceral carnage, and an unlikely focus on (deranged) hooks. The sentiment of G.U.N. - whose members include Nico Arambatzis, Stephen Sutton, Connor Cummins (Snooper, Spodee Boy, Body Cam), and Colin Lewis (Life Trap) - can be traced to the album’s furious finale, “Sick Sad World,” a track that seems to present itself as a core theme of the record - society is in the shitter, and all that’s left is frustration, confusion, and the rot of civilization. The band aren’t simply here to watch the world burn though, they’re providing a soundtrack with blistering solos, galloping drums fills, and the force of an asteroid hurtling its way directly into the dirt. - DG
Born Yesterday Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
No one does jittery post-punk quite as tightly as Holyoke, MA’s Landowner. Their songs feel like contents under pressure… always ready to explode yet in their case, it never does. With their third album, Escape The Compound, released via Born Yesterday Records, it feels as though the expanse of their structures has been compressed yet again, so tightly coiled it feels alien in its manic groove. The band are running in circles at full speed, and the results are brilliant. Dan Shaw’s (vocals) lyrics always give you that “smartest guy in the room” feeling once decoded, as he pokes and prods at “civilized society’s” lesser qualities. There’s always a political and community aspect to his writing, taking aim both locally and globally, shouting in devious couplets over computer tight punk that whips with mechanical precision. The narratives shift perspective (much like the micro-nuanced shifts in the progressions), and the stench of evil seems to envelope all of the glad-handed “honors” of the community. - DG
Relapse Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Five years after their first full length, Douglassville, PA’s Outer Heaven return to the maelstrom and devastation with Infinite Psychic Depths, a record as unnervingly brutal as it is subtly psychedelic. The five-piece death metal band plow forward with stampeding rhythms and sludgy force, the riffs contorting time itself as the album unwinds into the pits of destructive abandon. Outer Heaven’s second album, released via Relapse Records, shows growth and experimentation, moving beyond the traditional confines of the genre to incorporate a wider array of aesthetic choices and hallucinogenic tendencies, digging ever deeper into the remains of the unknown. The band twist and sputter, their violent upheaval brought on by technical riffs via twin guitars and a sheer assault on the drum kit. When the band break for ominous melodic breaks or scenic terror, it highlights Outer Heaven’s ability to shape-shift without alienating death metal purists. Their attempts to reshape and expand their sound in new directions does so while paying tribute to the visceral rampage of those that came before them. - DG
Polyvinyl Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
On their fourth full length, Eye on the Bat, El Kempner and bandmates continue to delve into the complications of relationships and the personal (or lack thereof) growth with a knack of hitting as close to the heart of the matter as imaginably possible. Their music can be peacefully rolling and folksy on one track while rollicking punk-inflected blasts of harmony-laden grungy alt-rock the next. The songs bounce around the listeners brain for hours at a time. Kempner has always found a way to mix the poetic bent of her lyrics with genuine emotion, rarely failing to make you feel as though you are listening to a close friend bare their soul, a connection strongly tapped into on this record. As they continue to grow, Kempner and Palehound continue to strengthen their already heavy grip of pop craft, both classic and yet wholly their own, which leads to some truly stunning songs. They manage to consistently find a balance between inquisitively pursuing new avenues and keeping themself on firm ground when everything else around seems to be tenuous at best. - Kris Handel
Partisan Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Set in the woods of PJ Harvey’s hometown of Dorset, I Inside The Old Year Dying constructs a folk-horror universe with the assistance of her longtime collaborators, Flood and John Parish. Old Dorset dialect, musique concrète materials from field recordings, audio libraries, and standard instruments reshaped ingeniously by Flood create surreal sounds that transport listeners into the world of Underwhelem, of Dorset, of Harvey’s solace. The sound is not as driving as her early work and the lyrics aren’t nearly as tortured. Instead, I Inside The Old Year Dying is delicate and controlled, concerned with world-building and narrative construction. It’s reminiscent of timeless folk music, transcending temporal and spatial boundaries; a “sonic netherworld” adaptable to the setting she imagines. Much of the album feels between worlds – an atmosphere on the cusp of real life and fiction, life and death, youth and adulthood, masculinity and femininity. While embracing its otherworldliness, I Inside The Old Year Dying is profoundly human. Written and recorded using a studio set up for live play in just three weeks, just about everything on it is rooted in improvisation and spontaneity. Even Harvey’s vocal style was at the mercy of improvisation - if Flood thought she sounded too much like PJ Harvey, the recording was scrapped. - Dana Poland
Lulu’s Sonic Disc Club
Bandcamp | Spotify
There are some records that seem destined to be “hidden gems,” records that remind you how great music can be, without endless long-winded press campaigns and media hype. rocky, the duo of Xanthe Waite (Terry, Primo) and Raven Mahon (Grass Widow, Green Child) have made one of those records with their self-titled debut album. The pairing sounds amazing on paper and it sounds even better in actuality, very much the sum of its parts, in the best of ways. rocky is shimmering with minimalist post-punk grooves and rich harmonies, but there’s an unpredictable nature to it, the pair splintering songs to drift away from the path most commonly travelled. They opt for wonky guitar lines and ultra resonant synths, setting the framework for their sweet and comforting duel vocal approach. The songs are an instant salve but they’re not without their own complexities, it’s the subtle and profound moments of their arrangements that truly stun, from sputtering percussion to bent melodies. rocky feels like a new cult classic. - DG
Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
We’re not about to start calling Ian Teeple “The Freewheelin’ Silicone Prairie,” but the name probably fits a lot more than you might imagine it ever would. He’s not making Dylan-esque folk music, but the artistic sense of freedom that reigns supreme on his latest album, Vol. II, is immediately apparent. It’s that sense of exploration (along with Teeple’s songwriting) that make up the heart of the record. Each song reformats the script, but the overall writing ties it together. He’s content to choogle along in a warped and weird world of progressive bedroom pop, distorted post-punk, glam-tinged power-pop, alien dream-pop, and lo-fi psych. While Teeple has become a fixture of the DIY punk world over the last decade, the Kansas City musician can’t be tied down to one aesthetic, and Vol. II is something that feels brilliantly different, intricate by design, but raw in performance and fidelity. It’s an art rock record with a punk spirit and if nothing else, an adventurous rabbit hole for anyone gracious enough to follow him down into the void. - DG
Third Man Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The band’s new full-length Super Snōōper neatly bottles the contradictory energy of being openly goofy, quite cheerful—and yet somehow essentially enigmatic, reworking songs from the band’s scattered earlier releases and giving them studio polish and a grander, heavier feel. Since Blair Tramel and Connor Cummins formed Snōōper in 2020, they’ve put out a half-dozen or so singles and EPs, all with delightfully scuzzy recording values. On these early releases, Tramel’s engagingly chirpy, talking-on-pitch vocals can sound distorted and tinny, almost Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks-esque; found-audio clips are patched in and accompanied by static-y whooshes and blips. These lo-fi effects are clearly an aesthetic choice as well as a DIY byproduct. Super Snōōper cleans up much of these audio effects, and instead toughens up the band’s sound. The recording lends depth and metallic sharpness for maximum wallop; Tramel’s voice is brought more to the front of the mix, and gains range and power. With this more straightforward sonic palette, an array of Snōōper’s best material holds up: taut, funny, and ribboned through with moody, dramatic instrumentation. - Emma Ingrisani
FURTHER LISTENING:
BAD HISTORY MONTH “True Delusion” | BEING DEAD “When Horses Would Run” | GUIDED BY VOICES “Welshpool Frillies” | JEANINES “Each Day” | THE LENTILS “Hello Jane Goodall, Are You Listening?” | LIFEGUARD “Dressed In Trenches” | LOCATE S,1 “Wicked Jaw” | MEAT HOUSE “Meat House” | MUTOID MAN “Mutants” | OXBOW “Love’s Holiday” | POWERPLANT “Grass” | RANSOM & NICHOLAS CRAVEN “Director’s Cut 4” | RANSOM & NICHOLAS CRAVEN “Deleted Scenes 2” | UPPER WILDS “Jupiter” | ZOOMDWEEBY “War of the Ants”
A U G U S T :
Soul Assassins Records
Apple Music | Spotify
300 miles north of Los Angeles, California’s Death Valley has earned a reputation as a land of extremes: home to both the lowest point in North America and the highest temperature recorded anywhere on earth. In some ways, the hottest, driest place on the American mainland is a fitting reference point for prolific Los Angeles beatmaker DJ Muggs — whose trademark production style is frequently dust-filled and eerie, with little room for frills. That approach is on full display throughout Muggs’ latest project, Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley, a new installment in his decades-long series of region-hopping rap showcases. Muggs is a prolific (and often underrated) producer, a member of legendary West Coast group Cypress Hill who’s cultivated a strong catalog beside them. Just within the past five years, he’s helmed standout collab albums with Roc Marciano, Mach-Hommy, and this year’s Champagne for Breakfast with Madlib and Meyhem Lauren. Even at their most lush, contemporary Muggs beats are often deceptively intricate, pairing familiar set pieces of left-field 90s hip-hop with discordant harmonies or oddball instrumental flourishes. Like his contemporaries Alchemist and Madlib, Muggs also grounds much of his work in collaboration, adapting his typical set pieces to bring out a rapper’s unique inner world. In that spirit, Soul Assassins 3 calls on a wide range of familiar and unexpected guests: from grizzled veterans like Slick Rick, Scarface, and Devin the Dude, to some of the underground’s current best and brightest (Rome Streetz, Boldy James, Jay Worthy). - Justin Davis
Tan Cressida / ALC / Warner Records
Apple Music | Spotify
Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist pleasantly surprised listeners when they dropped new album VOIR DIRE. Fans have been clamoring to listen to the tape for years, ever since Alchemist famously teased the existence of a secret joint album with Earl hidden on YouTube back in 2019. The duo’s first joint venture is a no-skips project packed with lustrous beats, plush samples, velvety flows, and Earl’s signature meditative lyricism. While VOIR DIRE is the first full-length collaboration from Earl and Alchemist, the pair have had a working creative relationship for years. The chemistry they’ve built over the course of the last decade is the heart and soul of the project — they complement each other’s skillsets perfectly, proving they're a match made in rap heaven. Through it all, Earl seems determined to progress, move forward, and heal. He sounds content with stepping into his own on “Mac Deuce'' and emerges victorious from the fire on the heavenly, transcendent “All The Small Things'' [a track later removed when the album moved from NFT to DSPs]. Alchemist’s production skills combined with Earl’s complex rhymes make for a project that is both an ultra-smooth listen and packed to the rafters with emotional depth. Earl Sweatshirt has come a long way since the salad days of OFWGKTA, but one thing is certain: he’s always been an artist willing to embrace the concept of voir dire — old French for “to speak the truth.” - Elizabeth Braaten
Dear Life Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Philadelphia’s Florry began this year with Sweet Guitar Solos, an EP that reintroduced the project in various stages, capturing the various iterations of Francie Medosch’s band. The current line-up was built in pieces, coming together naturally, and Florry was recording all the while, resulting in a collection of songs that caught the expansion in progress. Every additional piece added to the homegrown charm and sun-soaked country sound of Florry’s music, the songwriting genuinely earnest and hopeful. If the EP was sketches in the making, the band arrive fully formed on The Holey Bible, their new full length album. They are refining their outlaw country tunes in a way that feels classic yet modern, songs that feel as old as time, but with a positive resolve sorely needed for these modern days. Medosch and company are trying to focus on the bright side, and their twangy reflections of positivity hit with comfort along the dusty trail. The cowgirl ain’t in the ditch no more. Florry are making the scrappiest alt-country we’ve come across, led by Medosch’s brilliant songwriting. The Holey Bible is fully immersive, overflowing with detail from start to finish. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
There’s a unique energy present from the start of The Beach At The Edge Of The World, almost as though the weight of saying farewell has provided a sense of comfort to Jason Albertini’s songs. The usual drip of languid composition is replaced on “Forget Me Now,” a song that gallops with a sense of twang. The main guitar pattern and insistent rhythm feels like a lost Meat Puppets song, one whose magnetic tape has warped over the years. The rhythm is sharp and steady, Albertini is bouncing along with an ease of repetition, but his guitars and the soft vocal melody keep things tangled as he awaits to be forgotten. From there, Helvetia spiral out into branches of their signature sound, slinking with sultry, crackling, soulful indie experimentations (“Beaches on the Moon”), dizzying stop/start charm and dejected mantras (“Without You”), and brilliant works of cosmic sputtering psych and noise-pop (“Lady Silence”). The nuance and instrumentation, from shakers and analog synths to detuned guitars, disjointed drums, and electronic interference, all build the Helvetia blueprint, matching subtly and complexity in a way that has always rewarded repeat listens. That sense of the “light at the end of the tunnel” seems to carry through many of the songs, from the title track’s conversations with “the ghost of time” to the way that “Sticks and Hair” hangs on the line, “the end of all things,” giving the words space before and after, as if it’s meant to resonate the finality, there’s nothing left to say. It’s not all weight and gloom though, Helvetia invite you to dream, to let your mind wander toward the surreal. “Bullots” is warped and wonderful, eschewing immediacy to unravel in its own time, and unravel it does. The feel of the record remains in flux from song to song, united in tone and production, the album undeniably cohesive from start to finish. - DG
Suicide Squeeze Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The sound of Austin’s Holy Wave has been getting progressively dreamier with each successive release, their music lush and immaculately arranged. Blending together psych-pop, amorphous art-rock, and gentle dream-pop, they’re taking a gentle approach to celestial exploration. Five of Cups, the band’s sixth album, and first for Suicide Squeeze Records (Night Beats, Death Valley Girls, Abraxas), finds the band sinking into a state of surrealist bliss, a place where everything feels warm and comforting, easy and lulling, but also vivid and textured. Five of Cups transports us to a gorgeous place of suspended wonder, the band seemingly floating from track to track on a cloud of acid-tinged elation. There’s motorik grooves and swirling synths throughout the voyage, the sonic landscape moving like quicksand. Five of Cups is majestically crafted, disorienting but beautiful, dreamy yet intricate. - DG
In The Red Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Osees have no quit, and John Dwyer’s ability to reinvigorate their sound with each new record is unmatched. On their latest record, Intercepted Message, we’re still confronted with the motorik driving rock we’ve come to expect, but in contrast to the assault of sound from the previous couple of releases, here the Osees take us on a psychedelic journey. ‘Psychedelic’ isn’t just shorthand for ‘free form jams’ – quite the opposite, as the jams are tight and locked in, spacy and textured but also uncanny and unnerving. Dwyer has surrounded himself with the rippingest rhythm section in the game: the synchronized double-drummers is like a beautiful wrestling match, while the bass serves as both rhythmic glue and melodic show-stealer. At the sonic forefront is the marriage of Dwyer’s signature skronk and the unmissable, borderline-cheesy synth sounds. Synths have always been a key part of the Osees’ arsenal, but never have they so strongly shaped the songs. This makes for one of the Osees’ proggy-est, spacy-est and most danceable records yet. - Matt Watton
Exploding In Sound Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Through the Window is the debut LP by Prewn, a Western Mass band led by frontperson Izzy Hagerup, who on this collection of dark post-punk inflected folk goes it alone. Hagerup touches on mortality and angst with a nuance that is cutting and poetic while the backing cascades from cautious, haunted strumming to keyboard inflected gothic creepiness showing vast diversity. Her vocals waver and wobble, toeing the line between vulnerable and declaratively menacing, with both tacts carrying equal power, adding another layer of theatre and intrigue to the performances. There’s an intensity within the recording that only hints at the power of the full band in concert and future recordings, but it’s also heartwarming, benefiting from its sparser approach to these songs. The past few years have been trying in many ways for many people, and with Through the Window, Prewn have made a record of heightened isolation that works through some issues and demons while maintaining a deep sense of self and thought. Hagerup cloaks her songs in mystery and delves far into a moodiness that envelops her songs and brings a weightiness to her words as well as the ability to create deft atmospheres. - Kris Handel
Topshelf Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Since the band’s inception over a decade ago, Ratboys have been hard to define. With a tried and true, power-pop, indie-punk backbone at the center of their songwriting, the band has explored a lot of adjacent ideas, aesthetics, and sounds in their twelve-year run. While their paths have ventured into many different territories within that time, this year’s The Window, feels not only like a culmination of their efforts up until this point, but also a mission statement for the project as a whole. To speak on The Window is to speak of nostalgia. This is a record that is absolutely drenched in early-to-mid-2000’s indie rock revivalism. You can’t really get melodies catchier than this: no vocals can be any sugarier, no lyrics more ruminative, no guitar lines more celebratory. The atmosphere of the record simply screams spring semester, senior year of high school, with adventure in every corner of every song. Ratboys have almost certainly created their own movie soundtrack of sorts, one that fully embraces the aesthetics and mechanics of the cultural moment from fifteen to twenty years ago, all while staying undoubtedly fresh, original, and poignant. Each song is unique, making the overall buildup of the album diverse, while still telling a variety of stories with a lot of connective tissue. - Jare C
Chunklet Industries
Bandcamp | Spotify
Atlanta’s Vangas are a band that everyone should be paying attention to. Last August saw the release of their second album, a self-titled effort, out via Chunklet Records, one of the most exhilarating noise rock records we’ve heard in a long time. The rhythms sit way up front in the mix, threatening to stampede your local town to rubble, while the guitars do their best to peel sensibility into oblivion. It’s ruthless but brilliant, visceral but catchy. The carnage that the young band make seems to draw a line between bands like Sonic Youth, Drive Like Jehu, and early Unwound, but Vangas aren’t playing “guess the influence,” they’ve developed their own brash sound, their lyrics confrontational but with a sense of humor, the outrage delivered with a smirk. Each song offers new devolved glory, from the minimalist yet unhinged “Dog Walker” to the slurred and swarming “Waltz in E Minor,” one of the album’s stand-out moments. Leave hype behind, Vangas have made one of the year’s best new records. - DG
FURTHER LISTENING:
BEEF “BEEF” | DRIPPING DECAY “Festering Grotesqueries” | EDSEL AXLE “Variable Happiness” | EMIL AMOS “Zone Black” | GAADGE “Somewhere Down Below” | GARETH LIDDIARD “The Bootlick Series Volume 1 (Live 2006-2016)” | MARY JANE DUNPHE “Stage of Love” | SONIC YOUTH “Live in Brooklyn 2011” | SPIRAL DUB “Spiral Dub” | THIS IS LORELEI “EP #33” | TV STAR “TV3” | WATER MACHINE “Raw Liquid Power” | WHO IS SHE? “Goddess Energy” | ZELMA STONE “A Dance”
S E P T E M B E R :
Fat Possum Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The steady rise of Armand Hammer over the past decade has been one of the defining moments of modern hip-hop, as ELUCID and billy woods have reshaped the sound of MCing, both as a duo and on their respective solo records. They started upon a hot streak with 2017’s Rome and they just keep getting better with each successive album, reaching new heights of avant-garde with their latest album, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips. It’s their first record away from Backwoodz Studioz, released via Fat Possum, and if anyone was concerned about the change, rest assured, Armand Hammer have never pushed the envelope quite like this. While the duo are no strangers to cinematic beats that stray pretty far from boom-bap blueprints, this record takes forward thinking production to the next level, with a tide of experimental soundscapes that would have most MCs stumbling. ELUCID and woods aren’t most MCs though, and they keep their pens focused as cosmic production swirls and warps around then, their verses hitting with a near constant array of lyrical gems. There’s some seriously memorable lines throughout, but for all the alien shapeshifting of the music, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips often feels uncharacteristically personal, there’s heart and family residing at it’s core. - DG
EIS / Julia’s War Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Bad History Month, the solo moniker of Philly-via-Boston songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sean Sprecher, has already released some confounding and rightly celebrated recordings in the past but nothing with the gravitas of God Is Luck. It’s a bit ironic then that this album, according to Sprecher, came to him quickly. It’s an album as much about the tension between free will and fate as it is about navigating a musical equation to its theoretical conclusion. Sprecher never tells you how to feel, instead allowing his haunted double-tracked vocals and the music’s surreal out-of-body-ness to guide you wherever your thoughts may lead. To call God Is Luck a trip belies how expertly crafted it is but is essentially the right comp – where this album takes you will be completely different than where it takes me. The denser moments are what lend the album its Homeric vibe. God Is Luck is a wanderer’s album. Whether it be in the noisy haze of “Am I Better,” the terror and twilight of the gorgeous “Shadow Work” or the quiet sparsity of “Let It Ride,” God Is Luck portends to be an unmappable expanse. - Benji Heywood
I’m Into Life Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
While the legacy of Happy Jawbone Family Band lives on in the vibrant core of The Lentils and Luke Csehak’s music, he isn’t the only member keeping that spirit alive. Having made the move from Brattleboro to Los Angeles, former Happy Jawbone member Alex Edgeworth is making radiant art-pop with minimalist psych design and touches of avant-folk rock as Bed Bits. The project sounds both majestic and magnetic, whimsical but utterly engaging. There’s a real shimmer to her songs, sweet and charming, with attention to tonality and the detail in her warped and weaving recordings. Having released a new self-titled album via I’m Into Life Records (Open Head, The Lentils, Jolee Gordon), the album is great from start to finish, it’s shape in fluid motion, never settling into a singular pocket, but retaining the animated world of Edgeworth’s surrealist charms. - DG
Patience is a virtue and we’re glad that thirty years removed from their inception, Blonde Redhead are still making records. Sit Down For Dinner is the band’s first new full length in nine years, and it’s a return we’ve been patiently awaiting. The record’s lead single came in the form of “Snowman,” a song that pulls from some of the band’s trademarks while incorporating its fair share of fresh nuances at the same time. The vocal melodies, which feel more polished than previous efforts, wrap themselves between the slinking simplicity of the chord progression, while the rhythms, which often channel a Brazilian feel, opt to glide and dazzle. Its quintessential Blonde Redhead at its core, a band who have built their career on increasingly rewarding music, so listen to repeat. Throughout the album, the trio challenge us as listeners, weaving through intricate arrangements and dissociative dream pop, often forgoing easy refrains for something askew, art pop with an emphasis on the artistic tendencies. - DG
Never Nervous Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
After a couple years of playing shows and sharing a few singles on the sly, Louisville art punk band Deady released their official self-titled debut EP, and it’s a corker of Midwest post-punk at it’s most energetic. They band make combustible art punk that at times feels reminiscent of the Melbourne punk scene (think Gut Health and Delivery), but shares plenty of DNA with upbeat US peers like Spread Joy, Cel Ray, and Fugitive Bubble. Deady’s swarming sound is crackling with static electricity but the band separate themselves for the pack with a deep socio political message, using their debut EP to take aim at issues of racism and brutality that plague our society. Early single “Eat Sleep” was a thinly veiled scourge on the unchecked power of the police, bogus incarcerations, and our failed “justice” system while “Knock” addressed the murder of Breonna Taylor and the bogusly perceived value of human life that came as a result. While the message at hand is a serious one, the songs themselves feel jittery and explosive, with the quintet (which features members of The Archaeas, Mister Goblin, and Parlour) combining jagged riffs and whopping patterns into caterwauling eruptions. The tempos shift and progressions wind around one another throughout the EP’s six songs (“Sad Sack” even presents a turn toward psychedelic slowcore), but the melodic force of Mandy Keathley’s vocal performances tie everything together, Her words can generally be found bouncing atop the dizzying and taut spirals of dense punk dexterity, commanding our attention and stretching the chaos with a catchy kick in the teeth. - DG
Temporary Residence Ltd
Bandcamp | Spotify
Grails, the veteran instrumental psych band, released their first new album in six years, Anches En Maat via Temporary Residence (June McDoom, Party Dozen, Explosions In The Sky). The record shows that after twenty years together, the band are still pushing their sound in new directions, lurching through open soundscapes that feel removed from space and time, but there’s an inherent focus on minute detail. Slow drawn atmospheric guitars sound reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s earliest days, floating together with dazzling drum fills, orchestral movements, and a pianos that subtly erupt the foundation. There’s something so captivating about the entire surrealist landscape it builds, the construction both cinematic and grooving, and the loose shuffling drums from Emil Amos are a major highlight. Throughout the record the band move between pools of futuristic electronic ambient sound and jazzier reflections of cold space, bridging the natural and mechanical with both programmed rhythms and acoustic strings. Anches En Maat is more than just an album to get lost in, it’s a soundtrack to interplanetary exploration. - DG
Self Released
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Just over a year removed from the release of Circles, Ithaca’s Grass Jaw, the solo project of Brendan Kuntz, returned with new album Oh No, the first of two upcoming records. The project shows a knack for both heart-on-the-sleeve folk honesty and tangled dissonance, with an evolution that really brings the focus to the tension and the struggles of everyday existence. No one has it all figured out and Kuntz is keenly aware, launching himself into the world while trying to keep one foot moving in front of the next. Oh No often gets heavy, there’s a density to it, even Kuntz’s laid back vocals are pushed toward a point of aggression on several occasions, doubled for impact, yet always melodic. It’s often bleak, reflecting on death, life lived, and how we spend our days, but Grass Jaw allows the songs to really swell into a place of grandeur, steadily building upon monotonous twang and breezy sludge to open like a blossom of weighted reflection. Kuntz’s vocals and low pummeling drums lead the way into adventurous compositions that never cease to grow and expand until it’s reached Spiritualized level orchestration. - DG
Daptone Records
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London via DC musician Jalen Ngonda takes us back to the glory days of soul music, channeling the sound and feel of Motown, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green on his stellar debut album, Come Around and Love Me. Out via Daptone Records and featuring production from Mike Buckley and Vincent Chiarito (both members of Charles Bradley's Extraordinaires), this one feels like a long lost gem of the early 70’s. Ngonda’s vocal performance really highlights the strength and emotion in his voice, his falsetto croon and scratchy sincerity resting side by side over timeless instrumentals. While the album deals primarily in love songs, there are plenty of moods explored from the silky funk of “If You Don’t Want My Love” to the slow candlelit saunter of “It Takes A Fool,” a song that feels pulled from Curtis Mayfield’s discography. Ngonda isn’t simply retreading on the past though, he’s offering his own modern reshaping of soul, paying dues to the legends while shining a light on his talent. - DG
I first heard about Lewsberg from a Bandcamp piece where Detroit stalwarts Protomartyr recommended their favorite recent listens. Frontman Joe Casey described them as “minimalism done correctly.” One album later and I’ve also been hooked by Lewsberg’s charm and knack for writing perfectly stripped down songs. Nothing on Out and About has more than 4-5 instrumental parts, all simple, but fit snugly together to form full and layered tracks. The interplay among the band is excellent and finely tuned; the vocals audiobook-adjacent but full of bright imagery. The influence of minimalist gods, the Velvet Underground is clear, with the straightforward guitars, tom heavy drum parts and use of violin, but there’s a childlike lightness, pop sensibility, and clear-eyed high fidelity that is refreshing and sets Lewsberg completely apart. Out and About is a record that will make you smile and play it again. - Layton Guyton
Self Released
Bandcamp
With ear issues seemingly on the mend (and a spiffy set of headphones for live shows), it would seem Andrew “Falco” Falkous and mclusky are ready to reconvene their second coming, with dates in Australia and the US tour to come. Which brings us to a few recently recorded new songs, great songs at that, released as a “double A-side” single, with subsequent “double B-sides” to boot, delivered via Bandcamp in order to raise money for international touring and hefty visa costs. To poo-poo just how much the band can make on a four song digital EP would be to gravely underestimate the significance of new mclusky music, the first in nineteen years. While their latest EP probably wasn’t intended for deep scrutiny, hence the “double A-side” designation vs ever actually calling it an EP, the songs serve as a reminder that mclusky’s brand of magic resides somewhere between noise rock and art punk, their songs insistent and abrasive, usually with needling riffs and dense but dexterous low end. Everything buzzes, scrapes, and peels away at our better sense of judgement, leaving songs that are immersed in ugliness that sounds delightfully catchy. Falco’s writing is always embedded with hooks, in both his all too clever and comical lyrics and in the pounding chaos of his riffs. Everything sticks like super glue in your mind, the tracks often whipping into a frenzied density, the rawness matched with shrewd lyrics that are rarely forth right, their intelligence wrapped together with Falco’s unique sense of punchy humor. - DG
Trouble In Mind Records
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After an exceptionally light 2022 outside of an increase in tape exploration (vinyl delays be damned), Trouble in Mind once again reclaimed their crown as America's Finest Indie Rock Label. The label's curation on a particular realm of wavy indie guitar and synthesizer rock populism made 2023 a consistent delight from the label, a real cornucopia of global talent looking for the perfect beat, whether its pop, punk, jazz, or some middle ground between. Melenas emerged in 2020 as a new bright addition to the label's orbit. Jangly melodies! Girl group harmonics! Space! Enough to fly around galaxies in their songs! A tried and tested formula to savor for the jangleheads. But we're talking 2023, and Ahora happens to be exactly the goods that you want for round 2 at Trouble in Mind. The quartet haven't betrayed the pop bite and punk sensibility so intrinsic to their core. They just realized you really could forgo the big guitar rocking and pivot straight to Korg Delta and Yamaha PSR-36 full stop, writing songs for electronics. And voila! Melenas are writing Switched On: Vol. 1.75, fashioning themselves into a cybernetic set of polyglots investigating the terminal present. Melenas cuts now radiate pops n' fizzles, with an ever consistent motorik pulse abound. Within that rollicking sense of thumping sound design and crystalline synth jabs are a shocking amount of similarities to long tail tape explorers like SiP or Burning Plastic Blues Band. Of all the Trouble in Mind mainline releases, Ahora sounds the most like their Explorers Series. And that's a terrific thing to my ears. - Matty McPherson
One of the more high-profile artists within the burgeoning landscape of the indie underground has been Mitski, who in just a few years span went from relatively unknown darling to contemporary star. Much has been written about her desire for privacy and space to write music and be her own person. That will certainly continue, surrounding the release of her seventh studio album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, a record that finds Mitski at both her most personal, and her most daring. The album, which simultaneously leans into current alt-country trends and her signature penmanship, is an innovative and creative take on blending an artist's style and personal experience with what's popular, all while staying true to authentic intent. It’s also, at the core, an album about love. Of the former, that is to say, songs like “Buffalo Replaced” and “Heaven” have plenty of burgeoning alt country staples - steel guitar, patterning and meandering drums, lonesome, striking vocals - but these undoubtedly fit within Mitski’s already ever present musical prowess. She feels right at home here, even more so than she did on efforts with more pop appeal. With The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, we find a Mitski who is vocally driven, creating voraciously unique melodies and soundscapes that still sit within powerfully accessible compositions. - Jare C
Born Yesterday Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Following the release of early single “Sort Of,” Austin’s Neckbolt announced their second album, Dream Dump, via Born Yesterday Records (Landowner, Stuck). There seems to be little precedence for the sound that the sextet make, drawing their own vibrant brand of noise rock that eschews much of the genre’s singularities, instead focusing on a wide array of colorful psych rock and insistent kraut-punk that is uniquely artistic above anything else. They’re making music that’s heavy and deranged and they’re having fun doing so, a fact that separates themselves from many of their would-be peers. Dream Dump feels beamed in from another dimension, a dirge of other-planetary discordance, the steadily hypnotic rhythms providing a backbone for guitars that seem to clang with abrasive patchwork, closer to a throng than anything resembling a typical “riff”. It’s weird music for weird people, just the way we love it. - DG
Collection is the sophomore full length from Patio, offering a fresh and exciting expansion of their brittle post-punk by loosening the grooves and imparting a bit of dance and disco inspiration into the formula. They still retain their tight connection and anxious tension, but there is a bit more freedom and space to explore new directions and challenge themselves with a wider scope to their benefit. The new elements have truly allowed for more depth and exploration in song form, highlighting the creativity and playfulness of different time signatures and rhythms to play with. Lindsey Paige-McCloy and Loren Diblasi's vocals contrast and play off each other and the elasticity of the Diblasi and Alice Suh rhythm section creates a delightful foundation for Paige-McCloy's scratching and knifing guitar leads. - Kris Handel
Anything Bagel
Bandcamp | Spotify
Five years after the release of Sunday Feeling, a record that stands as one of our favorite bedroom pop records of all time, Puppy Problems return with their second album. Winter In Fruitland, released via Anything Bagel (Panther Car, Corey Gulkin, Generifus), feels immediately resonant, the fragility and personal nature of Sami Martasian’s songs hit in a rare way. There’s a simplicity to the songs but the further you dig, the magic of the lyrics becomes apparent. Martasian’s songwriting moves in tangents, memories sparked by everyday objects, struggles that can be felt in items around the room as they serve as placeholders for feelings remembered in lurid detail. She’s able to flip between thoughts sad and warm, but her clever reminiscence never feels overwrought with emotion. The time has passed, she’s still alive, and reflections are just that, reflections. Songs like “No News” juxtapose despondence with comfort, sounding radiant as Martasian sings “it’s all or nothing, so I’ve got nothing.” Recorded at Big Nice Studio with Bradford Krieger, this is Puppy Problems in high fidelity, yet it feels as though Sami Martasian is broadcasting from within the room. - DG
The Influenyce Enterprise
Apple Music | Spotify
New York City’s Rome Streetz is one of the underground’s best, a rapper that keeps his head down and his pen blazing. He’s a lyricist that can play to the streets and write bars that’ll have you scratching your head. He’s released over a dozen albums in the past five years, a scorched earth trail of hard rhymes over cold boom-bap beats. He doesn’t need to be flashy, his delivery and lyrics do all the stunting necessary. After great collaborative albums with DJ Muggs, Futurewave, Ransom, Big Ghost LTD, and his Griselda debut, Rome Streetz returned to his Noise Kandy series with Noise Kandy 5, a lyrical treasure from start to finish, a perfect example of why he sits among the best. It’s a chance for him to go hard without frills, his flow relentlessly weaving around stuttered drums, changing up his cadence as he waxes on envy, longevity, and the struggles of daily life. With a flow best compared to Big L or maybe Havoc at times, Rome Streetz let’s his lyrics pour out in breathless verses, revealing the dark side of dope rap and the silent codes of the street. Noise Kandy 5 moves from one grimy tale to the next, an unflinching portrait of both the criminal element and the life it affords. It all boils down to closer “Procall,” a song that finds Rome Streetz supercharged, delivering an endless verse over disorienting and detached beats. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
To say that underground hip-hop production duo Roper Williams had a busy 2023 would be an understatement. Since January, the Jersey-based producers have released a whopping four full-length projects jam-packed with fresh, avant-garde beats, including Recap, Back To Blocked, and OneShotOnce collaboration tape Hatched Caviar. But it was September’s Infinite Victory Loop, widely-viewed as the duo’s first official album, that truly solidified them as one of the year’s must-listen acts. Billed as a collaborative project with everyone featured on the tape, the album boasts prominent contributions from some of East Coast rap underground’s best and brightest, including fellow Garden State natives Fatboi Sharif and Pootie, Chelsea’s YL, and Brooklyn-grown AKAI SOLO. The result is a mesmerizing, tightly-packaged album characterized by hypnotic soul samples, steady beats, and thoughtful, meditative lyricism. Infinite Victory Loop is Roper Williams’ most cohesive project to date, serving as a showcase of the duo’s acute ability to pull artists together from different backgrounds in a way that allows each of their respective visions to shine through. Here’s to another year of paradisiacal instrumentals and sublime beats from one of the most promising new creative forces in hip-hop. - Elizabeth Braaten
Anti- Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Slow Pulp’s upward trajectory since forming in Madison, Wisconsin has been something of awe to watch, considering the humble and cherished roots they still hold on to. With their latest LP, Yard, Slow Pulp continues to reign in this homegrown and nostalgic persona that they so often have perfected before, but with a more raw and introspective quality this time around. As their first release on ANTI-Records, Yard is as reflective as it is blunt, offering something mature for the band to ring out, as well as something personal for leader Emily Massey to discover in the writing process. Having written most of the album in a cabin fully isolated, themes such as self reflection and insecurity come a long way when blended with summery guitar wash and breathy pop hooks; becoming a triumphant period of growth and self-forgiveness. Yard feels both effortless and strategically precise, warmhearted and sincere as well as meticulously poignant, further solidifying Slow Pulp as a consistently exciting band currently in play. - Shea Roney
Wax Nine Records
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It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since Speedy Ortiz released their last full length record. Even in their absence, Sadie Dupuis was more active than most people are at their busiest. There’s been a handful of stand-alone singles, a reissue of the project’s earliest material, and Dupuis’ other ventures: writing poetry books, Sad13 albums, and running Wax Nine. The creative energy never rests, but we’re excited to see the return of Speedy Ortiz and their new album, Rabbit Rabbit, the first to feature the band’s new (but not so new) rhythm section. Recorded together with Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties), it’s heavy with guitar wizardry, twisted and mangled, processed and fuzzy, Dupuis and Andy Moholt’s guitars winding themselves into knots, coloring the songs with textures both immediately poppy and delightfully abrasive. The band are offering something different, seemingly bursting with impatient ideas, ready to run free in whatever shape they might. That freedom and sense of unbound exploration is ever apparent in Dupuis and Molholt’s guitar playing throughout each of the tracks, they’re still mining a greater pop sensibility, but they’re doing it with weirdness on their side. - DG
The first thing to notice about The Lamb as Effigy is its runtime of 97 minutes, more than twice their debut album. Alex Kent says that it wasn’t necessarily the band’s intention to make the album this long, but rather that they didn’t want to limit themselves in any step of the process and this is what came about. Regarding their debut, Kent says that it “felt like there were more time restrictions. I was always cutting myself down a little bit, like ‘oh, we shouldn't do like this too long, we shouldn't do it.’” This mindset fortunately applies not only to the length of The Lamb as Effigy, but the variety of sounds and approaches on it. For one, Kent is credited on seventeen different instruments, ranging from more common ones like guitar, piano, and organ, but also hammer dulcimer, harmonium, and singing saw. To make sure the record was colorful and diverse, the band recorded eight songs, ranging from four to 24 minutes. “Reiterations” continues with the Unwound-esque lurch heard on As Lost Through Collision, hence its somewhat self-deprecating name, whereas “Margin for Error” swells and sprawls and swells like a Godspeed You! Black Emperor piece. “Privilege of Being” and “The Commercial Nude” are sound collages as much as they are songs, both incorporating some of the album’s most tranquil acoustic guitar textures along with its harshest wails of noise and feedback. - Anna Solomon
Topshelf Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Singaporean indie rockers Subsonic Eye returned with new album All Around You. The project is the band’s fourth full-length release, serving as a follow-up to their 2021 effort Nature of Things. While that album delved into the negative environmental consequences of human greed, All Around You finds its roots in the exploration of how to find light in a world that can feel, at times, dark, senseless, and devoid of meaning. From the ashes emerges a hopeful record that encourages listeners to tune in to the beauty that is all around us - if we can only find the courage to look. All Around You is a brave record - as much for its ability to give a voice to feelings of spiritual emptiness and dejection as for its willingness to turn its face towards the sun and find hope on the horizon despite it. “I think I am brought back to where I belong, alive, can’t wait to see what I have missed,” Nur Wahidah croons on the gently optimistic “Tender.” “Could this be my very own rebirth?” We like to think so. Here’s to new beginnings. - Elizabeth Braaten
20 Buck Spin
Bandcamp | Spotify
Figuratively, life around us has been rotting for some time, and while decay of our natural world looms on the minds of many, Toronto’s Tomb Mold have been looking toward other galaxies, their world of wretched death metal unconfined to this realm. Their sound honors the timeless traditions of the genre’s past, rooted in old school death metal, but not defined by it. Tomb Mold have pushed their boundaries since their formation, and with The Enduring Spirit, they’ve decimated form in favor of exploration, from caustic prog to jazzy psych expanses, and dare we say they’ve done it without alienating metal purists. Their latest album favors an open mind, a collision of primal force and deranged technicality, moments of sheer carnage and (relative) tranquil calm. Tomb Mold favor dynamics to caveman density, remaining cosmically brutal and unpredictably ravenous. They’ve opened the portal for a weird world of forward thinking music fans, a community that wants something raw and pulverizing, but also something more than just raw and pulverizing. Tomb Mold rely on oozing sonic assault and celestial filth, but their amorphous structures move without the steadfast genre guidelines, opting to complicate structures rather than appease the masses... and it works wonders. - DG
Dark Descent / Me Saco Un Ojo Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Undergang’s latest album might be the grossest sounding death metal album we heard this year, and we mean that as a compliment. De Syv Stadier Af Fordærv (which translates to The Seven Stages of Depravity) gurgles from the pits of hell, retching and writhing beyond the deepest depths like the aural equivalent of evil incarnate. With an unmatched primal thud and riffs so monstrous, Undergang do little to lighten the load, but the Danish stalwarts are offering their own bile soaked nuances to give texture to their deteriorated lining, with the occasional dip into thrash or a blistering solo when you least expect it. Every blunted swing from the dirge cuts like a dagger, the impact felt bubbling above the putrid gloom and monolithic brutality. - DG
FURTHER LISTENING:
THE ALCHEMIST, MIKE, & WIKI “Faith Is A Rock” | ALEXALONE “Alexalone Technical Research“ | BILLIAM “Corner Tactics” | CANNIBAL CORPSE “Chaos Horrific” | C.O.F.F.I.N “Australia Stops” | CONSENSUS MADNESS “Consensus Madness” | CORKER “Falser Truths” | EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY “End” | FLAT WORMS “Witness Marks” | INSANE URGE “My America” | JUNGLE BREED “Wynona, Paloma, Pappiloma” | LUGGAGE “Hand Is Bad” | MUMS “Legs” | MUTANT STRAIN “Murder of Crows” | THEEE RETAIL SIMPS “Live On Cool Street” | RUIN LUST “Dissimulant” | STEPMOTHER “Planet Brutalicon” | THANKS FOR COMING “What Is My Capacity To Love?”
O C T O B E R :
Anti Fade / Goner Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
With six albums in the past five years and nearly as many EPs to match, Alien Nosejob hardly need an introduction. Jake Robertson’s solo project turned band is a worldwide treasure, due in part to the ever shifting scope of their sound. From hardcore to lo-fi disco and blown out rock ‘n’ roll to synth punk, nothing is off limits and everything seems genuine. Alien Nosejob aren’t a band searching for the next trend, they’re blazing through influences as they spark, proving capable of anything. Following their well praised US tour (the NY show was easily one of the best I’ve seen this year), Robertson is back with The Derivative Sounds Of… Or… A Dog Always Returns To Its Vomit, an album built on 60’s garage pop infatuation. The jangly punk record is spring loaded with Robertson’s signature melodic insistence, but there’s a psychedelic breeze to the effort that pulls between paisley accented power-pop, Kinks indebted hooks, and subtle post-punk ease. Its not an aggressive record by any means, but the more you listen, the better it gets. - DG
Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Over a series of excellent EPs, the band perfected a nostalgia-laden, perpetually jittery blend of garage rock made for drinking at tiny clubs. Now, the quartet have unveiled their second full-length, If You’ve Got Nothing, which feels like a big step. While it’s very much connected to the EPs, its presence and identity further exemplify something about the place in which it was born and what that means for the band’s continued evolution. CLASS already occupy a rather intriguing place amid the dual universes of garage and punk rock. "Burning Cash" (which also appeared on this year's equally great But Who's Reading Me EP) exemplifies that — it’s a frills-free, retro-tinged jam that's as heavy on the big-time hooks as it is this wholly edgy, slightly sneering tendency. As a baseline, it's pretty damn effective — it shows how much CLASS are synched with the sounds and trends of the last twenty years (especially amid many West Coast-adjacent outfits) and yet are remixing these ideas without the structure and echo chamber of bigger cities. It's Arizona to its heart because it speaks a certain language but it likely learned that tongue by communing with the saguaros (or other stereotypical desert imagery). This twelve track record feels like a subtle but effective step up from that process. "Behind the Ball" exudes a more overtly poppy undertone, which is nothing new for bands of their ilk but CLASS keep that edge and sneer intact no matter the catchy choruses, and the track rides aesthetical and sentimental lines with ease. Or "Two-Way Track," that flirtation feels grander than ever, and there's moments where the song practically tumbles into some sort of buffer zone between folk rock and The Band. That indirect but still seemingly confident swing captures some undercurrent of heft and vitality across this LP. - Chris Coplan
Foreign Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
You could make the argument that EXEK’s music lies closer to the retro space-age lounge side of the post-punk spectrum, occupying a dreamy state of jazzy exploration as opposed to anything sharp and jittery. There aren’t many “riffs” so to speak. While so much “dreamy” music is a comfort or at least meditative in a sense, EXEK seem to find their solace in the more unsettling moments of subconscious existence. The Map and The Territory, the band’s latest album, never subsists on dread or tension, the sound is rarely claustrophobic, but the sense of mystery is palpable, we’re wandering the unknown. That seems to be by design, as the band worked to create an emphasis on pop structure, but the atmosphere remains vast and disorienting, a haze that never settles, spreading outward to encompass touches of R&B and art rock in subtle brushstrokes. EXEK have become known for adapting surrealist impressions in their sound via krautrock and dub influences, but It’s hard to pull apart the layers upon listening - the synths, trumpets, heavily effected guitars, samples, and dazzling rhythms all feel mutated together, oozing like some amorphous creature from The Thing. Where that comparison would imply terror though, the band eschew dread for a feeling of false tranquility and wonder, the atmosphere is ominous but ultimately inviting. EXEK never really sound destitute, there’s a psychedelic beauty to The Map and The Territory. Tending to steer clear of dynamic spikes without sacrificing texture, there are moments where synths and guitars peel away but it’s all mixed into the fog, each rising moment a microcosm of the whole. Everything the sextet do seems careful not to seep away from the psychedelic vision, each piece pivotal to the next. The framework feels reliant on Chris Stephenson’s drums, recorded live, sampled, overdubbed, and manipulated in a way that pulls you deeper into the black hole. It’s in the fluid nature of the rhythms, snapping in and out of place, that the fever dream is guided, our world expanding into infinite possibilities. - DG
Mint Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The sound of Faith Healer’s music is smooth as eggs. The duo of Edmonton’s Jessica Jalbert and Rene Wilson make AM gold with a pop splendor, their sound more complex that it would seem but the result is gorgeous and easy listening. The deeper you dig, the more rewarding it is, but The Hand That Fits The Glove works both on immediate levels and repeat listens, mixing synthetic boogie and haunting folk that ultimately sounds like a constant comfort. While some songs have an insistent shuffle and hypnotic grip (“I’m A Dog”), others are content to drift in the dreamy haze with a Laurel Canyon grace (“Green Velvet”), but no matter the mood, Jalbert’s voice is the brilliant focus. Her words fall with such a delicate warmth that even as sings of regret and heartbreak, there’s a warmth, the surreal feeling that things might turn out okay. Vocal melodies, hushed but glistening in their own dreary enchantment, glue together the framework of jazzy folk (“The Hand That Fits The Glove”) and fuzzy psych (“Stranger”). - DG
On A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night, New York based multi-instrumentalist Katie Von Schleicher hammers home her already sparkling classic singer/songwriter credentials, harkening back to late 60s/early 70s folk chanteuses. Her last record, Consummation, was full of songs that carried a darkness and anger that had an air of being quite personal, littered with synths, electronic flourishes, and a sense of decay. With this new record, Von Schleicher's songs take a softer approach, full of luscious keyboards and a renewed comfort in the stripped down arrangements, punctuated with thoughtful strings by a familiar collaborator in Gabriel Birnbaum (Wilder Maker). As time has past from Consummation, released in the middle of a hectic and volatile 2020, Von Schleicher is in a more reflective mood, touching on personal growth and strength on these new tracks. - Kris Handel
Mexican Summer
Bandcamp | Spotify
Until recently, L'Rain has been a strictly "live only" sort of artist for me. I caught her 2022 Big Ears gig performing Fatigue material in the quintet formation. Under a fog machine and ample reverberating laughter, a real mystical sense colored the noise and velocity the quintet found themselves operating on. Once more last month, at her long-delayed but mesmerizing San Diego show in support of I Killed Your Dog, the L'Rain Quintet Formation were supersonic in groove control and pace swaps, unleashing a sound between TVOTR '06 era noise, that middle section of In Rainbows that really grooves, and featherweight Brainfeeder style jazz jams. These weren't exactly songs, more like tall tales fighting and lashing, and L'Rain still was at center, clad in tattered garment, wielding a guitar like a friggin heavy metal wizard. I Killed Your Dog might be the premiere rock record of this year when it wants to rock. To say L'Rain is challenging listeners to sit with a vinyl edition of this wouldn't be wrong. The enigmatic clairvoyant truly implants a corporeal sense to this release more than an mp3 stream suggests with this sound that tracks the album's lofty mission to identify a cognitive dissonance of why we hurt what we love. Yes, the interludes of Fatigue returned but now they were sharper and transitory to keeping a footing in the sheer transient world of L'Rain here, laser-focused on that question. The songs had taken some intrinsic character of old school indie rock noise, and left-field R&B plunderphonic production of this present. What results is L'Rain documenting personal cognitive dissonance at its most deft, defying easy answers. It's the kind where only when you realize you've been looping cuts like “Pet Rock,” “5 to 8 hours a Day (WWwaG),” “Uncertainty Principle,” “Knead Bee,” or “New Year's Unresolution” that you want to live in it. Really try to exorcise those demons and ask yourself what is it about this emotional resonance that really can elicit a subconscious change. It's sturdy stuff, that 36 transitory minutes crafts the space to wonder and ponder over with L'Rain. - Matty McPherson
Bedroom Suck Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Lower Plenty holds a special place in our heart. While the band’s members are best known for their contributions to Terry, Sleeper & Snake, Total Control, UV Race, Deaf Wish, and Hot Tubs Time Machine, there’s a spiritual beauty to their work in Lower Plenty, a place where folk and avant-garde meet with relative simplicity. The acoustic nature of the project and poetic lyrics creates a gentle invitation to all, but the multi-headed songwriting approach wields a great touch of dynamics. Al Montfort, Daniel Twomey, Jensen Tjhung, and Sarah Heyward work in a haunting unison and stark contrast, bringing each others songs to life with bare bones harmonies, delicate rhythms, and minimalist guitars. Every moment counts, each chord, every trilling croon, every moment of open space strikes with maximum impact. The intent is felt miles away even as perspective shifts between songs. It’s a wondrous new record, creeping and creaking with supreme beauty and rattling atmosphere. - DG
“With no hope for the future, and no idea of how to get there…” The first words of rapper MIKE’s new album Burning Desire drop us into ambiguity — as so much of his work does. MIKE is one of the best rapper-producers to come out of the underground in recent years, a generational talent who’s broadened the horizon for experimental hip-hop since the days of his [sLUms] collective in the mid-2010s. Deeply introspective and empathetic, eccentric and soulful, sonically and tonally rich: MIKE’s music lets you comfortably swim at its surface while rewarding close listeners with moments of heart-wrenching poetry and texture. MIKE’s lyricism has always been full of complex emotions, but on Burning Desire, we’re faced with emotional, spiritual, and social collisions. Although these songs are playful, wistful, reflective, and tender, we also hear MIKE at some of his most brazen and confident. “Ho-Rizin” is a reflection on newfound financial windfalls over squelching synth lines that could fit on a vaporwave record. MIKE explores the blessings and pitfalls of steady income, while recounting the hard work it took to find that stability. In much of his past work, MIKE’s been unafraid to keep his voice low in the mix, letting his instrumentals completely overtake him. Here, however, he feels solidly front and center, even in the album's most abrasive moments — like “African Sex Freak Fantasy,” where he jostles with the track’s ambient synths, piercing growls, and fuzzy, warped percussion. Throughout Burning Desire we see his playbook of intricate, nimble flows expand: like Danny Brown or Freddie Gibbs, he can comfortably navigate beats that would make most rappers sound clunky. - Justin Davis
Freeman Street Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Auratone, the debut LP from NY based quartet Raisalka - a band which consists of members of Baked, Anna Altman, Haybaby, and Rats Mouth - is a release full of swirling guitars, as well as haunting and sweet moments. Isabella Ronayne's vocals trill and often soar above the haze, crunching in astonishing fashion. She shows the clear ability to play off any available emotion with tremendous payoffs. Raisalka run a gamut of styles, most notably mix twisty post-punk and Cocteau Twins-esque sheen with a sharp no-nonsense punk ferocity full of cutting insight and muscle. The band do a marvelous job mixing a bit of early-mid 90's alt-rock/grunge melodicism into their melange, creating a brightness and spirit that jumps out of the speakers to counter some of the woozy atmospheres. - Kris Handel
Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Infinite Hatch opens up a new realm in SPLLIT’s expanding galactic journey. The Baton Rouge duo dive into the deep end on their second full length, and they’ve created a masterpiece in the process. From songs that sound like bugged out pinball games to laser driven art punk odysseys, the layered eccentricities of Marance and Urq play it tight and discombobulated, their songs impeccably crafted with bubbling sci-fi croaks and discordant pops all part of the overall vision. Infinite Hatch feels as though they’ve arrived at their next celestial destination fully formed, the wonky kaleidoscope of their sound the only navigation. Home recorded over the span of a year and half, the duo captured the essence of their design to perfection, the actual sound of the project giving room for their complex synapses to snap at will, each frantic outburst of layered melody clearly defined from the next. It’s not so much that it sounds glossy, there isn’t a single moment of over-engineering to be found, but for a band with as much chaotic nuance flickering on and off screen, it’s an astounding achievement that everything finds its place, with a seemingly impossible sense of cohesion chiseled out of silly putty. From progressive rhythms that bend time and space amid MIDI keys and percussive xylophones to samples that clang, warp, and dissolve between darting guitars and phasing harmonies, SPLLIT are playing with magic, pulling songs from the imaginative either. - DG
Double Double Whammy
Bandcamp | Spotify
Running from the Chase is the sophomore record from North Carolina based band Truth Club, expanding their garage punk sound into territories of knotty and emotional textures that open up the soundscapes innumerably. Their debut album featured high octane pop-punk/garage tunes full of full throated shouting and an invigorating energy that put the listening public on notice, whereas this release shows an increased seasoning and a bit more patience and restraint. Truth Club indulge themselves in knottier song structure with shifting tempos and tunings akin to bands like Polvo and Sonic Youth to expand their musical range and increase the impact of their songs. Travis Harrington and company have continued to explore new avenues to express their heavy and at times obtuse emotional song construction pushing themselves with clever twists and turns that provide all sorts of promise and intrigue. - Kris Handel
Sad Cactus Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Sometimes it would seem a band hits their creative peak when least expected. Sometimes it happens when everything else is beginning to fall apart, like a brilliant spark emerging as the sun has set. We can’t portend to know what sort of future lies ahead for Hadley, MA’s Tundrastomper, but in the here and now, they’ve returned with an unexpected new record, their best to date. After five years of relative silence, we’re presented with Less More, their first full length since 2017. While the record was recorded shortly after that (in 2018 and 2019), much has changed during that time for the band, such is life, but the record’s sinewy prog sprawl, meandering lo-fi clamor, and it’s radiant art-pop exploration remain in tact. The quartet are working among impulses, taking unexpected turns whenever they might appear. For all the dazzling complexity in their sound, there’s the feeling that Less More is a celebration of sorts, a connection between four dear friends pushing their musical limits. They seem to be having a good time decimating and reshaping pop structures, pausing for in-jokes when necessary. - DG
Fire Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Vanishing Twin continues to condense, refine, and progress. None of this sounds akin to praise, but the group is now a trio making their shortest work yet. They've refined a set of touchpoints that were exemplified by Sterolab and Broadcast (library music, groovy, and DAW), and with that, there's finally a progression to a realm of vague, elliptical almost-pop. They finally realize their role not as an ambassador to this realm of music, or as retro-revivalists, but as defining how this songwriting can be collaged and pieced together to sonically roadmap a space. Afternoon X's tight 37 minutes see the trio realizing the ways their songs can jolt and jettison in time. Within its supposed eight tracks are really hiding over a dozen compositions that happen to appear like sudden fragments or left turns; just give “The Down Below” the eight minutes it deserves and behold the slinking between three modes of song. It's a style of songwriting that seems to be appearing all over the place in many different sonic works, but for Vanishing Twin, playing in the realm of [sigh] "hauntological music," its far more fleet-footed than its immediate peers. It shakes off record collector mentality or outright references for refined grooves, loopy synthesizers, drum machine skirts, and glitchy blips from a realm beyond that would make Nigel Godrich blush. A treasure trove of sound spaces ripe for the taking. - Matty McPherson
FURTHER LISTENING:
AXIS: SOVA “Blinded By Oblivion” | BLUE SMILEY “Fishhh” | BLUE SMILEY “Happyyy” | CHAIN WHIP “Call of the Knife” | CHECKPOINT “Drift” | CHERRY CHEEKS “CCLPII” | DUSK “Glass Pastures” | GOLDEN APPLES “Bananasugarfire” | GOLPE “Assuefazione Quotidiana” | GRAVESEND “Gowanus Death Stomp” | HALF STACK “Sitting Pretty” | INSTITUTE “Ragdoll Dance” | KOOL KEITH “Mr. Controller” | LÊ ALMEIDA “I Feel In The Sky” | MIKE DONOVAN “Meets The Mighty Flashlight” | MOPE CITY “Population: 4” | PATTER “Patter Theme 2” | QUARANTINE “Exile” | QUEEN SERENE “Queen Serene” | RADIATOR HOSPITAL “Watching A Fire” | SENTENCED 2 DIE “Parasitic Infection” | THE SERFS “Half Eaten By Dogs” | SPARKLE DIVISION “FOXY” | THA GOD FAHIM “Tha Supreme Hoarder Of All Pristine Wealth” | WIMPS “City Lights”
N O V E M B E R + D E C E M B E R :
Matador Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
bar italia operates in the wonderful space between art-rock pretension and slacker affability. Their music is too layered, rich, and dynamic to be considered carefree and, at the same time, features too many riffs, hooks, and melodies to be over-analyzed. Beyond being critically bullet-proof, that concoction is all part of what makes bar italia such a wicked band to listen to, and The Twits feels like their definitive sonic statement. While Tracey Denim, their first with Matador Records, introduced the band to a broader North American audience, the short, punchy tracks were all but too fleeting in their lasting impact. Beyond a few songs like “Punkt” or “Nurse!,” most songs’ brevity ultimately felt like their downfall. However, The Twits pushes the boundaries of bar italia’s little musical box. Diversification within the confines of their raucous, grunge-inspired pub rock makes The Twits an incredibly inspired and measured offering from the UK trio. Somewhere between the distortion and whirling of destructive sound are ghostly alternative country tunes, brit-pop melodies, and shoegaze brutalism. Beyond that, the allurement of bar italia has been in the vocal interplay between the three band members but The Twits takes that consolidation of voices and stretches them to their most dynamic and lively yet. - Myles Tiessen
Human Worth / Flooding Fortress Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
If there’s an art form to deconstructing punk (or post-hardcore) syllable by syllable, Leeds trio Beige Palace stand at the vanguard. Their music seems to look toward the bigger picture in scope, just before it’s shattered into drawn out shards, fractions dangerously crafted with sharp edges. It’s a special brand of racket, one that feels akin to a puzzle where the pieces have been crammed in as opposed to being put in their intended places. Leg, their debut album, introduced a sound that was built on a deranged sense of melody. It was undeniably catchy with a mounting sense of dread that seemed to grow within their minimalist tension. Four years later and Beige Palace would appear to be writing with more immediacy but that seasick sensibility still hits like a tidal wave. Hooks abound on their second album Making Sounds For Andy, but they’re designed for instability, the ground beneath the songs a looming concern of erosion. The band appear to find joy in the unpleasant, offering a disarming quality to their needling focus, but they remain locked in and engaged. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify
There is no better gift than a new surprise Blacklisters EP. With their first show in two years this past month, the Leeds based quartet used the rare occasion to release Auf Dem Tisch, an exact year to the day of last year’s Leisure Centre. The band’s latest contains everything we’ve come to love about their sordid brand of noise rock with cavernous low end, slurred and deranged vocal performances, and scrapping guitars, but there’s a real loose quality this time around. Auf Dem Tisch never feels fussed over, there’s an almost lo-fi sense to it. They’re still peeling the paint from the walls, but the entire mix feels like a swarming collision of abrasive ideas, with a wall of sound execution. Their sense of humor and rampant sarcasm is fine form throughout with an ode to powered milk, banal employment, fitness, and a general prodding at other people’s expectations. The lyrics however are often deliberately enveloped in the carnage, the whole thing an impeccably dissonant showing of unruly brilliance. - DG
Silver Age Records
Apple Music | Spotify
This year marks a decade of Czarface, the trio comprised of MCs Inspectah Deck and Esoteric and producer 7L. In that time, the group’s indulgent comic book indebted hip-hop has been running at turbo speed, with an endless cavalcade of albums and collaborations. Czartificial Intelligence, their ninth full length is business as usual. Czarface aren’t rewriting the script so much as they are offering the next chapter, and ain’t a damn thing changed. Deck and Esoteric are still trading verses with a love for hip-hop and the culture at its core, bars bruising amid quick jabs and 7L’s sample and scratch heavy production. Inspectah Deck’s flow never falters, his effortless delivery marked with punchlines and the braggadocios stunting of an elder statesman (he does mention back pain on back-to-back songs) while Esoteric drops dizzying references to pop culture, his sense of humor and love for family always in high spirits. It’s old school rap music free of pretension, the pure sound of MCing bumping out the speakers without a care in the world. - DG
FatCat / Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
After a few relatively quiet years, the wait for Erik Nervous’ next full length is over. Following a great record with The Beta Blockers and the subsequent Bugs! LP (a true highlight in a catalog of highlights), the time has come for Immaturity, out via Feel It Records and FatCat Records. A fixture of Indiana’s punk scene and beyond, Nervous aka Erik Hart has stayed busy over the past few years, performing with The Spits and producing records for Snōōper and beyond. It’s good to have him back doing his thing though, and Immaturity definitely feels like a new level of achievement for his animated post-punk and power-pop squalor. As a known Devo-tee, the imprint of the Akron legends is ever apparent in the Erik Nervous framework, but he’s moved beyond to incorporate more psychedelic elements, motorik rhythms that push toward cosmic, and just about all the brilliant scrapyard tonality one can hope from a pristine basement recording with instruments just a step beyond toys. - DG
Perennial Death / K Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Montreal’s Feeling Figures make a kind of catchy, arty, punky garage rock that just sticks in your ear. Their latest record, Migration Magic, makes good on the promises of their tantalizing three song debut with ten new, self-recorded songs of skronky guitars and off-kilter vocal harmonies. Each track has an outline of simple pop colored in with ever-more interesting harmonies and subtle melodies. The core of the band is lead songwriters, vocalists, and guitarists Zakary Slax and Kay Moon. The Slax-Moon connection is at the heart of this record. Their guitar lines intertwine and play off each other, eschewing the simple lead-rhythm dynamic for a more interesting interplay. Tunes like “Remains” and “Across the Line” (which opens with the most tantalizing chord heard all year) are built on a understated weaving of chimey one-string guitar lines and fuzzy strumming, while the song “Don’t Ever Let Me Know” ends with a wicked lo-fi guitarmony that would give Thin Lizzy a run for their money. Vocally, the record is carried by Slax-Moon vocal harmonies that flirt equally with dissonance and euphony. Alone, each voice is interesting and fit for purpose – Slax’s punky intonation on “Movement,” Moon’s bittersweet lilting on “Seek and Hide,” but the doubled vocals throughout the record are more than the sum of their parts, stamping each song with an enigmatic beauty. Credit due, too, to the valiant rhythm section (Thomas Molander and Joe Chamandy) who know how to put the pedal to the floor (“Sink”) or tastefully reign it in as the song calls for (“I Should Tell You”). - Matt Watton
Temporary Residence Ltd.
Bandcamp | Spotify
Whimsy normally connotes airiness– think of how people write off those who have their “head in the clouds,” but June McDoom finds a more grounded, in-depth ethereality in With Strings. At times channeling a ghostly Angel Olsen voice (but more emphasis on harmonies), at times bursting forth in a layering of strings and crooning like a geyser – see “On My Way (With Strings)” June McDoom’s EP is surprising and still resonant, haunting and still healing. June revamps two of her songs from previous EP’s, follows Nina Simone in covering “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” and takes on 70s songwriter Judee Sill’s “Emerald River Dance.” It’s an opportunity to see the artist’s work in relationship to musicians that have informed her, while elevating, or at least, reworking some of her own songs to fit into this repertoire of work she admires. June McDoom manages to reach towards Buffy Saint Marie, Vashti Bunyan, and with this cover, Nina Simone, the styling of so many of June McDoom’s songs reminiscent of “Wild is the Wind.” A perfect winter EP, how cold air reminds you of your body. - Sara Mae
Profound Lore Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
While they’ve stayed relatively busy, Left Cross’ last full length was released six years ago and well, there’s been no shortage of devastation in the time since. The Richmond death metal / war metal band are here to annihilate once more, with an uncompromisingly heavy new album, Upon Desecrated Altars, a juggernaut of evil metal excess with bile to spare. Released via Profound Lore Records (Fabricant, Kruelty, Innumerable Forms), Left Cross aren’t holding any punches on an album that’s dense to point of pending structural collapse. The band’s stampeding drums and cavalcade of sordid riffs is often done at a sprint, the song’s demonically charged and set to decimate until rubble is all that remains. There’s enough grit and filth to turn your stomach, but Left Cross are forever plowing forward, a scourge of brutal music for brutal times. - DG
Joyful Noise Recordings
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The Comeback Kid is a rejuvenating rock savior. Marnie Stern's trilling fingers create glittering star trails, using a tapping guitar technique characterized by being an instrumental veteran. Blushing guitars form a dreamcatcher mesh with Jeremy Gara’s (Arcade Fire) melodic drumming. Though brimming with excitement, Stern’s energy is never antsy. Rather, she’s filled with nonchalant confidence, casually shredding as if it's second nature. Her talent will never leave her. During her 10 year hiatus, Stern was far from stagnant, as she mustered up the relentless discipline required to raise children while grinding a 9 to 5. The Comeback Kid is a stylistic continuation of her previous discography, in itself making a statement about prioritizing oneself’s artistic needs over external pressures. On her previous records, produced by Zach Hill (Death Grips), her heart lay in jittery art rock. In The Comeback Kid, the subtle evolution is located in her new sturdiness. Some believe that as life progresses, one discovers more of themselves. To Stern, life is not characterized by its completion, as if it's a game to win, but by riding the ebb and flow of rediscovery. The Comeback Kid’s bright pop sensibility greets listeners with open arms, encouraging them to apply Stern’s lesson of owning her passions, to their own lives. - Selina Yang
Anti Fade / Urge Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Buz Clatworthy gives us hope for the future. Following a string of great EPs, singles, and splits, his Sydney based solo project R.M.F.C. (Rock Music Fan Club, Football Club, Finesse Class… take your pick) released their highly anticipated full length debut, appropriately titled Club Hits (depending on how you choose to read that). Out via Anti Fade Records (Alien Nosejob, Vintage Crop, The Prize) and Urge Records (Tube Alloys, Optic Nerve, Carnations), Clatworthy lives up to a reputation known for making post-punk with infectious hooks, songs that rattle in your mind for weeks on end. The record bends between wiry punk and austere minimalism, ripping hard into jangly territory one moment and sort of zoning into the low-end the next. The riffs are exceptionally catchy and Clatworthy’s tight drumming keeps everything spinning on its axis. There’s plenty of jittery jangle pop, hypnotic synth punk, and garage rock that stays coiled to a point of power-pop exhaustion. The whole thing clangs and clinks like thunder hitting steel, but R.M.F.C. never lose their scrappy focus. - DG
Three One G Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
Following the dissolution of the much beloved C.H.E.W., Jonathan Giralt (drums), Benyamin Rudolph (guitars), and Russell Harrison (bass) were joined by Stephanie Brooks (vocals), forming Stress Positions at a time when everything was seemingly collapsing. Following the dismal pandemic lockdowns, the Chicago quartet emerged fully formed and ready to destroy, their nuanced brand of hardcore taking no prisoners as they’ve become one of the city’s most exciting bands. Stress Positions play with unabashed tenacity and a furious contempt for inequality of all forms, but there’s a sense of dynamics to their playing, the band taking an artistic approach to hardcore’s brutalism. There’s nothing macho about Stress Positions. Over stampeding rhythms and megalithic riffs, Brooks is able to shout ruthless truths with a raw disdain… equal parts unhinged and brilliant. Following last year’s incredible Walang Hiya EP, Stress Positions offer Harsh Reality, their full length debut. Recorded once again with Seth Engel, there’s a primal sense of tension and carnage that lurks throughout the record, with songs that are unnervingly direct but not without their sense of psychedelic textures. Stress Positions contort in all directions, the structures generally pummeling but rarely molded into a singular shape, vividly sprawling into tightly wound knots. - DG
Trouble In Mind Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
The three years beyond the 2019-2020 creative burst for Sunwatchers, indie cult-favorite DIY abolitionist, psychedelic jazz fusionists, that forever "STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE DISPOSSESSED, IMPOVERISHED, AND EMBATTLED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD", could best be described as unexpected and jammy. I'll single out Jeff Tobias, only because he's everywhere between Modern Nature, delicious solo wry mumblecore, and a many crackerjack free jazz outings. Although I know the rest of the group are out in New York booking shows or taking to the streets to protest, in that time, NYC's jam potential has been as critical as ever in the time beyond Beyond Beyond is Beyond's closing. Works from Husky Pants (Tobias + Walker's session tape) and Island House (Emergency Group) were a particular joy this year. Then came the big enchilada. Music Is Victory Over Time is Sunwatchers jammiest rocker, easing itself into a complete ooze. That doesn't mean the horns have left or the band isn't "TOO GARY" in their full rush ahead approach; “T.A.S.C.” reveals a universe of Sunwatchers punk blasts; “World People” is full on classic Sunwatchers macho with a sultry sax line amongst the whirlies of their guitar prowess. There's only one conclusion here: they've just been moving and adapting with the city's ongoing jam network. Enough now to record with a level of new and bucket list analog tools and sonic heaviness to their fusion that anoints the quartet as veterans of the era. As my good pal Bob Esponja once belted, "Sweet victory, oh yeah!" because that's what the quartet achieves. - Matty McPherson
Ginkgo Records
Bandcamp | Spotify
It’s been seven long years since Detroit punk rockers Tyvek released their last LP, Origin of What, back in 2016. While a lot may have changed since then, we’re happy to report that this group’s distinct, rowdy sound is still as blissfully uninhibited as ever. Amidst a rotating lineup that’s featured over twenty people in the decade and a half since the band’s formation, Kevin Boyer remains Tyvek’s kinetic force of a mouthpiece, packing energy and life into artfully shouted existential musings driven home by an all-star Michigan DIY scene lineup that features Alex Glendening (bass), Fred Thomas (drums), Shelley Salant (guitar), and Emily Roll (saxophone). Over the course of Overground’s brief 27-minute runtime, Tyvek once again captures the refreshingly loud, garage-grown, lightning in a bottle magic they’ve become known for. “I’d like to know, we’d like to know, they’d like to know what it’s for,” Boyer belts on the album’s aptly-titled fifth track, “What It’s For.” It’s a question we all find ourselves shouting into the void at some point, one usually met with disappointing, anticlimactic radio silence. Where there’s no answers, one may still find a silver lining — even amidst the suffocating hush, there’s a certain poetry in making noise. - Elizabeth Braaten
Meritorio Records / Melted Ice Cream
Bandcamp | Spotify
There’s always something special about an album that defies expectations. While Wurld Series’ last album, 2021’s What’s Growing, presented a uniquely muscular version of jangle pop that was thick with fuzz and ever thicker with hooks, the Christchurch, New Zealand quartet’s latest is something else entirely. They haven’t abandoned the sound that led them to this point, but it’s morphed into something new, their classic Kiwi jangle mutated with psychedelic folk, Canterbury prog, and field recordings to paint something cosmic but grounded. The Giant’s Lawn is something spectacular, a record with a natural feeling of awe, like the sun shinning from deep within in the forest woods. Their third album is ambitious, but it never feels like they set out with ambitious intentions, the songs are following a path, treading space and time with a steady atmosphere of wondrous permanence. With a masterful brushstroke of folk charm, light dissociation, and gluey power-pop crunch, Wurld Series are covering all the bases, dipping down the rabbit hole one moment before peeling into superb indie fuzz the next. They’ve made an album that’s often complex in structure, with layers of mellotron, organs, saxophone, and synths weaving between guitars, bass, and drums, but the feel remains intrinsically accessible. For as strange as the detours may be, this is ultimately a psych pop album, with bright melodies, and buoyant hooks at its core. There’s a sense of familiarity that’s paired with progressive experimentation, a near constant back and forth that serves to create a landslide effect. - DG
FURTHER LISTENING:
ALGAE DUST “In Hindsight” | ALL STRUCTURES ALIGN “Cut The Engines” | BAKED & THE ZELLS “Queensburgh: A Baked & Zells Split” | BLOCKHEAD “The Aux” | CARCINOID “Encomium to Extinction” | CEL RAY “Piss Park” | CROSS “No Beginning, No End” | GUIDED BY VOICES “Nowhere To Go But Up” | GUT HEALTH “Singles ‘23” | ISMATIC GURU “III” | JOLIE LAIDE “Jolie Laide” | LEXICON “Poison Head” | REBECCA RYSKALCZYK “Say It Back” | RECIPROCATE “Soul To Burn” | RID OF ME “Access To The Lonely” | VASTUM “Inward To Gethsemane” | WET DIP “Smell of Money” | YUNGMORPHEUS & REAL BAD MAN “The Chalice & The Blade”