by Dan Goldin
Welcome to “Essentials,” a column for new music recommendations from one lifelong chucklehead with questionable taste. It’s similar to “Fuzzy Meadows” except the title makes more sense and we’ve removed the words “best” and “weekly”. This column will be sporadic, but hopefully worth the wait. Presented as always in glorious alphabetical order.
Author’s Note: After a decade as the founder and editor of Post-Trash, I’ve been attempting to take a step back from the site, but have so far found myself constantly drawn back in. The compulsion to write about new music (with a primitive vocabulary and an utter lack of literary refinement) is deeply embedded in my ever aging soul. There’s an elegant saying “opinions are like assholes… everyone has one” and it rings true to this column. “Essentials” is but one person’s personal opinion. You might agree, you might not, and well, that’s the internet for you, but I sincerely hope you might find some new music you connect with. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music when you can.
This edition of “Essentials” includes a trio of great raw hardcore releases from Electric Chair, Pyrex, and Science Man, new music from the ever amorphous Wombo, Ossuary’s tremendously sour death metal, a radiant new Tropical Fuck Storm single, a revisit to Dana Gavanski’s earliest recordings, the hypnotic charm of Lucrecia Dalt’s latest, the first new Clipse single in sixteen years, and a new collaborative single from the always fruitful pairing of Weyes Blood and Drugdealer.
CLIPSE
“Ace Trumpets”
I am well aware that Clipse do not need Post-Trash’s assistance spreading the word about their upcoming album, Let God Sort Em Out, due out July 11th via Roc Nation, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m unbelievably excited for the duo’s first new album in sixteen years. As far as I’m concerned, the first two Clipse records - Lord Willin and Hell Hath No Fury stand among the all time greats, two flawless albums that cemented both Pusha T and Malice’s place among the best to ever do it. Together with production from Pharrell Williams, Clipse make their glorious return on “Ace Trumpets,” a song that wraps bars into lines that tend to unfold with repeat listens. There’s some extravagant pronunciations, but the brothers still talk moving drugs with an unmatched grace.
DANA GAVANSKI
“The Wind (Blew You Away)”
Dana Gavanski released Spring Demos back in 2017, one of the earliest glimpses of her songwriting, and now she’s releasing it again. In most cases, a simple shrug would suffice, but it’s safe to say that many people haven’t heard these songs (I know I hadn’t) and it’s also safe to say that they are well worth a proper revisit. While the record is available in its original form on Bandcamp, the wide world of DSPs has been gifted lead single “The Wind (Blew You Away),” a beautiful song that finds Dana Gavanski deeply engrained in the folk influences of Carole King, and well… it’s stunning. From the song’s somber progression to the comforting vocals that set the tone while the lyrics set the atmosphere, it’s a visual song that holds the listener close, lost in a gorgeous haze of its own creation.
DRUGDEALER (feat. WEYES BLOOD)
“Real Thing”
Drugdealer and Weyes Blood are a perfect pair, the two musicians consistently bringing out the best in one another. In a perfect world they’d team up for a full length, but this is far from a perfect world we’re living in, so let’s just rejoice that they’ve teamed up once more for “Real Thing,” a new single that’s strewn with reverence for 60’s folk, soft psych, and soul. It’s an immaculate reproduction of pop’s golden age, part Motown, part Lauren Canyon, but entirely present in our modern era that’s in such dire need of ease and warmth. Natalie Mering’s vocal performance is genuinely incredible, the vocals “came in hot” and make a lasting impression, boosted by her lush vocal harmonies and Michael Collins’ sweeping blissful arrangement.
ELECTRIC CHAIR
“Weed Out The Rat”
Hailing from the always fertile music scene of Olympia, Electric Chair and Physique both stand among modern hardcore’s best. The two bands are teaming up for a new ten song split, due out June 27th via Iron Lung Records. The record is a swarming hornets nest of paint peeling riffs and stomping drums, blistering with noise and rampant disdain. Electric Chair’s side is unhinged and ruthless while Physique’s side is blown-out and scathing, brutal hardcore captured with a lo-fi basement production hiss. It’s an intense listen, each song a propellent of skull cracking punk in its rawest form. Electric Chair’s “Weed Out The Rat” is a primal bruiser, ripping with a haymaker of a bass line and animosity that seeps from the band’s core. It’s an earth quake of agitation and skidding riffs as artistic as they are profoundly heavy. Brilliantly dangerous hardcore, as it was always intended to be.
LUCRECIA DALT
“Divina”
Following the release of the incredible “Cosa Rara” single back in February, Lucrecia Dalt has announced her next album, A Danger to Ourselves, due out in September via RVNG Intl. Following a productive 2022 that saw her release both a new record and the official score to HBO’s horror/comedy series The Baby, the Columbian born and Berlin based Dalt comes out dazzling on new single “Divina,” a mix of haunting electronics and natural layers, a song that feels both intricately composed but also on the verge of collapse. At the center resides Dalt’s magnetic voice and the song’s warbling sense of backlit glow. There’s an art pop quality to it but trying to pin any particular genre onto “Divina” seems unfair, it’s a song best experienced with an open mind and a love for the majestic unknown.
OSSUARY
“Abhorrent Worship” LP
Death metal at its most putrid and septic, the long awaited full length from Wisconsin’s Ossuary has crawled out from the primordial ooze. Abhorrent Worship brings a wretched fusion of doom and death metal that feels as violently cinematic as it does disgusting, the songs have a tendency to lurch in gloriously dismal movements, holding on to ideas until they’ve succumb to rot, thriving in an atmosphere of grotesque carnage. Festering up from the bowels of despair and depravity, Ossuary grind in slow motion, the band laying waste with riffs that feel pulled through hell’s most rotten swamps. Abhorrent Worship is an impressive listen, a new death doom staple with a dynamic scope and articulate depth (there are moments that you could even call catchy). Evil abounds as Ossuary explore elements of cosmic expanse, yet the album feels firmly possessed by Earthly terrors and inescapable horror.
PYREX
“Slugman”
The dust has yet to settle around Body, Pyrex’s latest brash and brilliant album, released back in March, but the NYC based trio are back for more. Set to release the four song Slugman EP in June via La Vida Es Un Mus Discos, the band continue to blur the lines between hardcore, noise rock, and post-punk into something that lands like a sledgehammer to the teeth. Pyrex specialize in punk that pairs supreme brutality with dense hooks and unwound melodies, harsh yet accessible. “Slugman,” the EP’s title track is a perfect example, a song that barks and convulses its way into a claustrophobic groove, a d-beat rhythm, yet the glue that holds it all together are the exceptionally catchy vocals that toe the line between careening agitation and snotty disdain.
SCIENCE MAN
“Monarch Joy“ LP
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes Science Man’s brand of hardcore sound more sinister and deviant than most (could it be the gloves?), but the sentiment is undeniable - John Toohill and his freshly rounded out band sound entirely unhinged. Monarch Joy, the band’s latest album, is a new high water mark for the Buffalo based project, a seething and chaotic record that wears it’s unique sense of the deranged like a badge of honor. Science Man make hardcore with an artistic temperament, but the edges aren’t sanded for smoothness, they’re instead nicked and gnawed, left serrated and ready to disembowel with punishing rhythms and a sense of psychedelic terror. There’s an impenetrable fog that permeates the record, a sordid din, a caustic sense that you have no idea what’s lurking around the corner, but the excitement is rooted in finding out.
TROPICAL FUCK STORM
“Teeth Marché”
There’s a fluorescent glow to Tropical Fuck Storm’s new single, “Teeth Marché,” the fourth single from the band’s upcoming album, Fairyland Codex. It’s a stand out track on a record that’s full of enigmatic charm, a “love” song that’s pretty firmly written in the abstract. With lead vocals from Erica Dunn, a bouncing rhythmic groove, and a psychedelic guitar part that feels plucked apart and reshaped upon arrival, it’s another dose of the kaleidoscopic art pop magic that usually comes with Dunn’s songs (see “Who’s My Eugene” and “New Romeo Agent”). The song feels like gluey alien funk, the discordant and detached guitars only working to accentuate the dazzling bass and the song’s inescapable melodies. As Dunn sings about bad luck, gold fillings, and “pearl incisor blades chewing up the chain,” we’re transported to a place both strange and wonderful.
WOMBO
“Danger In Fives”
There’s a lot to love about Wombo’s upcoming album, Danger In Fives, due out in August via Fire Talk Records (Kassie Krut, Hannah Frances, Why Bonnie). There’s a lot to love about Wombo’s new single, “Danger In Fives,” the extraordinary title track, a song that sharpens the focus that the Louisville based band have been perfecting since their first full length. In the five years since, the band’s amorphous delivery has continued to astound and expand, their particular blend of art rock, post-punk, dream pop, and dare we say math rock, sounds like a beautifully immersive hallucination. “Danger In Fives” hints on all those touchstones and gives it a jazzy rhythmic sprawl, the drums setting the “anything in possible” tone as the trio weave between knotted bliss and a complex swoon that sounds delightfully natural.
The great Alien Nosejob continue to roll out singles from Forced Communal Existence, a compilation of the band’s early EPs, singles, and b-sides. “Caffeine OD,” originally released on 2018's Death of the Vinyl Boom EP, is an appropriately jittery ripper, an ode to way too much coffee… shits, shakes, and absence of sleep included.
After a seven year pause, Forth Wanderers returned this week. The New Jersey based band make that good indie rock, and they are back at it with The Longer This Goes On, a new record due out in July via Sub Pop. The first two singles - “7 Months” and “To Know Me/To Love Me” - are catchy yet nuanced, sweet yet muscular, reflective but delightfully vague. It’s that good stuff.
I already wrote about the new Rome Streetz and Conductor Williams album, Trainspotting, in the latest “Out This Week” column, but it deserves another mention, a true contender for one of the year’s best hip-hop records so far. While Rome Streetz focuses his bars on a variety of topics from the record industry to selling drugs to matters of the heart and soul, Conductor Williams is truly crafting something amazing with the beats. The production from start to finish is musical and career defining, a set of hard beats that take many shapes. Overloaded with exceptional rapping and exceptional beats, Rome Streetz and Conductor Williams feel like one of the great MC/producer duos.
Bay Area dream-pop quartet Ryli release their full length debut Come and Get Me next month, a record of bright pop with dark shadows. Their new single "Break" is a lovely blend of retro psych pop and entrenched jangle, complete with expansive harmonies and a subtlely soaring guitar lead.
Shilpa Ray continues to explore “Americana and aging” with her new single "I'm A Ghost" (a companion to January’s “Portrait Of A Cat Lady”), a song that spares any fond memories for a relationship that has since decayed. Ray is a national treasure, a brilliant songwriter who puts equal importance on the strength of her voice and the strength of her lyrics. The bite and emotional depth is ruthless and entirely justified.
Proving that magic is indeed real, Stereolab made their triumphant return with Instant Holograms on Metal Film, the groop’s first new album in fifteen years, a record that sits comfortably among the influential band’s best work. The return in fine form, weaving the retro futuristic space age lounge music they helped to pioneer into directions new and old, a freeform blast of undeserved joy and abstraction.
There are many people in the world (the vast majority) who don’t understand the concept of “buying” music. Then there are those people who buy digital albums on Bandcamp for no other reason than to support the artists. Those are lovely people.
I saw Undergang live back in March. It was one of the best sets of live music I’ve ever seen. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Utter perfection. I can’t wait to see them again.