by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

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

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

BOLDY JAMES & NICHOLAS CRAVEN | “No Pun Intended”

If last year was relatively quiet for Boldy James following his car accident, we fully expect him to flood 2024 with new music. He’s already announced a vinyl only EP together with producer Your Boy Posca and his highly anticipated new album, Penalty of Leadership, his second full length collaboration with Montreal’s Nicholas Craven. Due out next Friday (January 12th), “No Pun Intended” is the record’s second single, a shimmering example of Craven’s dusty soul loop heavy production and Boldy’s unshakable flow, down and dirty but delivered with a casual precision. It’s a boastful tale of street life maneuvers, with celebrations and family uttered in the same breath as loss, guns, and drugs, painting the underground as he sees it.

BORZOI | “Austin City Limits 2” Session

If you live anywhere outside Austin, you probably don’t get to see Borzoi enough. It’s never enough. They’re a national treasure and one of the most exciting bands of the past decade, a trio capable of creating arty noise rock and twangy post-hardcore that sounds rooted in Southern alienation and threatening to collapse at any moment. Last year the band released a heavily anticipated EP and they closed out the year with an appearance on the great and hilariously named ATX live session series, Austin City Limits 2. Borzoi work through three songs, one from the EP and two new tracks, each knotted in tension in their own unique ways, from the demented bounce of “Juke” and the dissonant carnage of “Guerrilla Spring” to syrupy but abrasive sludge of “Bolivar (Frac Daddy)”. Sheer brilliance from start to finish.

DAVID NANCE & MOWED SOUND | “Mock The Hours”

In the four years since David Nance released his last “official” full length, Staunch Honey, the Omaha based musician has kept busy. He’s toured as a member of Rosali’s band, released the great Astute Palate LP and the blown out and reimagined Pulverized and Slightly Peaced, and has kept his full album cover series moving along. Together with his new band Mowed Sound (which contain several long time “David Nance Band” members), comes a new full length studio effort, out in February via Third Man Records. “Mock The Hours” is prime David Nance, a song with a rough and raw country tinged core that’s been bruised and dusted with his spectacularly worn vocals and gravelly Americana heft.

DRIPPING DECAY | “Wormridden Piety”

Last year Portland’s Dripping Decay released Festering Grotesqueries, their full length debut, cementing themselves as one of the Pacific Northwest’s more promising new death metal bands (in a scene with no short supply). The quartet are wasting no time with its follow up, set to release the exceptional Ripping Remains EP just five months later on January 23rd via Satanik Royalty. Recorded while the band were awaiting the release of the full length, it would appear they hadn’t exercised the well of ideas, as “Wormridden Piety” is a putrid blast of grinding rhythms and lacerating riffs, winding through the crypt at rapid speed with enough dynamics to make every colossal lurch felt like rigor mortis.

PILE | “Hot Air Balloon EP”

It’s almost hard to believe that Pile’s Hot Air Balloon EP wasn’t conceived as a singular vision from the start. While the tracks are pulled from the same sessions that brought forth last year’s immaculate All Fiction, the EP feels like an exercise in stunning conceptual clarity, songs that together form yet another masterpiece, a fusion of experimental ideas and sonic weight that finds surrealist and spirited results. With a sense of high art in the construction of each of the EP’s five songs, there’s as much emphasis on structure as there is careful intention to the sound design, pulling in profound yet unpredictable directions, with space and subversion fused to warm complexity and triumphant melodies. Pile in fractal transcendence.

PJ HARVEY | “Olympia, Paris” (ARTE Concert)

The queen supreme herself PJ Harvey graced us all with a new album last year and provided a chance for many across the UK and Europe to witness the majestic world of the record live. For the rest of us, we can be thankful that ARTE Concert captured her Paris set in full, professionally shot with gorgeous clarity and intimate beauty. The set is culled into two sections, the first a dazzling run through I Inside The Old Year Dying, as her and the band (which includes none other than long time collaborator John Parrish among others) bring the bring the album to life transporting in and out of the shadowy environs of the songs. The second half of the set delivers a career spanning set of classics, performed under a similar atmospheric nature as the new material.

RICK RUDE | “Winded Whale”

Rick Rude, New Hampshire’s DIY legends, have stolen the hearts of anyone in their orbit. After five long years, the band return with Laverne, out February 2nd via Midnight Werewolf / Best Brother Records. “Winded Whale,” the album’s first single is about as good as it gets. It’s the kind of song built for the repeat button. With Rick Rude’s music alternating between two and three vocalists over the years, there’s a distinction in each voice, different pieces of the same brilliant whole. “Winded Whale” is led by Ben Troy, his powerful but calming presence a favorite around these parts. The band rip into it with sinewy leads and a pulsating shuffle that’s equal parts Crazy Horse and the community that they’ve become a fixture of.

SKELETAL REMAINS | “Relentless Appetite”

There are a lot of great death metal albums on the horizon in 2024, with new records on the way (Spectral Voice, Witch Vomit, 200 Stab Wounds, Gatecreeper, Sovereign), but Skeletal Remains’ Fragments of the Ageless may just be our most anticipated. While the band may not have the crossover media hype that many of their peers enjoy, the Los Angeles based quartet are making some of most brutal and explosive death metal of the past decade, and their new album might just be their crowning achievement. “Relentless Appetite,” the record’s second single comes bludgeoning out the gate with blistering riffs, Chris Monroy’s cavernous growl, and punishing rhythms, a stampede as dense and chaotic as it is clear and dynamic. Skeletal Remains never shy away from the combustible energy of a well placed guitar solo, erupting out of the low end decimation in a shredded fury.

Further Listening:

DECEMBER 04 - DECEMBER 10:

december 11 - december 17:

DECEMBER 18 - DECEMBER 24:

BUN B & STATIK SELEKTAH “Trillstatik 3” LP | KNOWSO “Do The Work” | SCARFACE “Tiny Desk Concert” | SOVEREIGN “Counter Tech” | TWICE EYES “The Thing Is…”

DECEMBER 25 - DECEMBER 31:

BOLDY JAMES & YOUR BOY POSCA “They Vouching” | FLOWER “Heel of the Next” | MR. MUTHAFUCKIN’ EXQUIRE “Keyz 2 Y.O.U #1” | SNOOPER “For Yr Love” (The Yardbirds cover) | TEKE::TEKE “Live On KEXP” | WESTSIDE GUNN, CONWAY THE MACHINE, & THE ALCHEMIST “Hall & Nash 2” LP

JANUARY 01 - JANUARY 07:

Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (December 4th - January 7th)