Out This Week | Post-Trash Highlights

As we all head into the weekend, we’re happy to share a few of our favorite new releases, out this week (in splendid alphabetical order). The write-ups are all kept brief and bite sized, snippets to catch your interest. There’s a lot of great music out every week and these are just some of the many we think you should check out.

Featured

ALIEN NOSEJOB | "Forced Communal Existence"

Anti Fade Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Alien Nosejob, one of the finest punk bands of the past decade, plays with genre like silly putty, reshaping and stretching familiar sounds into something new and often deranged. Forced Communal Existence collects all of the project's EPs and singles, highlighting the amorphous shape and manic energy of the corrosive rippers found throughout Jake Robertson's catalog, dive-bombing from one rattled idea to the next, a dissociative freeform look at a legendary discography still in progress.

BIG BREAK | "Exile On Exchange St"

Wrong Speed Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Two years ago Big Break released Angel's Piss, a brash and charismatic punk record that quickly become a favorite around these parts. This week they return with Exile on Exchange St, a new EP that finds the UK based band continuing to rip and thrash through combustible punk songs with both reckless disdain and dynamic restraint. The lyrics are equally hilarious, biting, and obnoxious, delivered with snotty fury amid enormous hooks. Big Break forever.

FRUIT LOOOPS | "Everything Is Clear To Me Now"

Orange Milk Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Cincinnati’s Fruit LoOops are a sensory overload. The band’s deranged art punk is equal parts no wave, experimental pop, and electronic carnage all at once. For all the sonic mayhem though, the band still understand song structure, hooks, and movement, even at its most mutated. On Everything Is Clear To Me, Fruit LoOops work maniacal magic, the songs ripping with an excited energy and radiant weirdness, certifiably bonkers in the best of ways.

GRUESOME | "Silent Echoes"

Relapse Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Gruesome have more than a passing reverence for death metal pioneers Death, they've basically shaped their entire output as a living tribute to them. If the earliest Gruesome records tackled influence from the earliest Death albums, Silent Echoes moves into the progressive era of Death (namely Human) and it does a fantastic job of it. Matt Harvey (Exhumed) and co. tear through complex progressive death metal with oozing riffs, blistering leads, and genuinely astounding drums, melting brains and cracking skulls in the process.

LIFEGUARD | "Ripped and Torn"

Matador Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Lifeguard continue to expand and explore on their latest full length, Ripped and Torn. Recorded with No Age's Randy Randall, the Chicago based trio take a large step away from caustic post-hardcore into something harder to define, pulling bits and pieces of frazzled garage pop, moody post-punk, and expansive art rock into a swirling clamor of gleaming harmonies, discordant jangle, and wonky hypnotics.

MCKINLEY DIXON | "Magic, Alive!"

City Slang
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Virginia’s McKinley Dixon is carving himself a place among the greats, and he’s doing it entirely on his own terms with his own wave length. His latest album Magic, Alive! is immaculately conceptual, musical, and deeply personal. It's rare to hear hip-hop with such rich detail in terms of lyrical focus and compositional grace, the live performances of the beats are lush and sweeping, the drums locked in and dazzling, and most importantly, Dixon's rhymes feel chiseled out of stone as he reminisces on life past and present, navigating it all as both rapper and human being living in a strange world. He raps circles around the competition, his elastic flow as dynamic as his razor sharp lyrics.

OPTIONS | "Beast Mode"

Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Options, the solo project of Chicago's Seth Engel, returns with Beast Mode, a collection of home recorded power-pop and gently off-kilter indie rock tunes, developed as part of Engel's "computer music" live shows. As a musical polymath and a terrific producer, Engel's song are intricately composed with big hooks and sunspot inducing radiance. It's a record of smart songs and sharp performances.

Further Listening:

Aisle Knot - Aisle Knot
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Trash Classic
Harry The Nightgown - Ugh
Helvetia - Welcome To Summer Heartbreak
Lake Ruth - Hawking Radiation
Perennial - “A” Is For Abstract: The Complete Art History

Further Listening:

by: dan goldin