by Dan Goldin (@paintingwithdan)
Hello dear readers. I’ve fallen so incredibly behind on “Fuzzy Meadows,” our “weekly” recap column. The issue with a weekly column that falls this far behind is that it becomes somewhat impossible to catch up and (in some eyes) increasingly irrelevant. The music keeps coming and there’s so much I’d love to share with everyone, but there’s also a part of me that feels as though I’m being buried alive. In order to attempt to dig myself out and get back to weekly posts, here’s a brief selection of tracks and albums from July that I felt I should share. There’s obviously much more that is worth your attention, but some of it we’ll get to in August and beyond. There’s new music everywhere… find what you love and support those artists in every way you can. Thanks for reading Post-Trash.
DOG DATE
“Perfectly” EP
After a decade as a solo project and live band, Dog Date decided to call it quits last summer. This summer, they return! Perfectly once again finds Dylan Kennedy taking the solo approach, though you’d never know it listen to the blown out glory of the record, an album that’s rippling into the red with tornado force. The NYC via New Jersey based project has long presented as one of the area’s fuzziest garage punk wrecking crews, and Perfectly continues to blaze that path forward in berserker mode. While Kennedy might have scaled down from the band’s five piece line-up (which including duel drummers), the sheer rattled intensity is still swirling at fever pitch, bugged out and explosive with spine tingled distortion and ballistic Oh Sees-indebted tempo shifts. Dog Date are playing freak punk with slacker rock charisma, sputtering at the core but nailing the headfirst dive without a splash.
ERASER
“Crindy”
As last year’s Hideout captured the hearts and minds of forward thinking (and devolved) punks across the globe, Eraser were learning more about themselves, their collective experiences touring and playing shows together informing a growth in the band while locking into their minimalist tendencies and sordid sense of humor into place. Set to release their second album Operator! on September 18th via Siltbreeze Records (Non Plus Temps, Cuticles, Puppet Wipes), the band - Sonam Parikh, Kat Bean, Pier Harrison, and Juliette Rando - double down on deranged melodies, hypnotic rhythmic pulses, and serrated lyrics that are both politically minded and absurdist. Recorded together with Mac Kennedy (Poison Ruin), the record is a dizzying trip of synth punk abandon, warped and bubbling one moment and razor sharp the next. The band’s resolve rests in their rhythmic core, bending with melodic interjection, but always snapping back into place. “Crindy,” the record’s lead single comes swirling into being with an immediate bite, bouncing from the bass and drums to the hypnotic synth fuzz with a sense of joy and a sinister smirk. While the song threatens to come unglued seemingly from the onset, Eraser keep it all together, a ramshackle surge of dizzying chaos.
FERRIES
“Eye Wander” LP
We don’t know much of anything about Ferries (perhaps from Rotterdam… perhaps not) beyond what we can hear and that’s exactly how they want it. Eye Wander, the group’s second album in as many years, released last month via World of Echo, is a triumphant blend of immersive krautrock, dub, and kosmische bliss. Ferries bounce and drift in equal measure, creating a surreal landscape that immediately transports us from this existence to another. Like a psychedelic trip with an unknown destination, the group surge through swirling synths and guitars, locked in drums that pulse with alien life. There’s nothing clinical about Eye Wander, this is a strange voyage, soaring in celestial grooves one moment and erupting in sustained fuzz the next. Dreamy and drawn-out, there’s hints of art pop and post-punk in Ferries’ DNA, but Eye Wander maintains a head-in-the-clouds charm, it’s unique turns and avant-garde experimentation demanding attentive listening.
MESH
“No Fun At All” LP
Way back in 2021, Philadelphia’s Mesh released their self-titled EP, a record that felt like the start of something truly special. Blending together art punk with motorik boogie, lo-fi sensibilities, and fuzzy indie pop jangle, the band developed their own kinetic sound. Five years later Mesh return and their full length debut, No Fun At All, stands among the year’s finest releases. Out via Feel It Records (Why Bother, Team Work, Spread Joy), the layer of basement fog has settled and the band are operating with a new found intelligibility. This is still very much a punk album, but there’s a sonic clarity that really highlights the tangled web they’re weaving. With knotted guitars from Sims Hardin and Allison Durham (who plays a 12-string) that can recall Uranium Club at times and The Clean at others, Mesh are able to skip between mutant pop charm and rattled tension while seemingly subsiding with aggression. Sure the band are frustrated with the world around them but they let it unfurl in a way that feels evenly keeled, ripping with a sense of splendor above all else.
NINA WINDER-LIND
“Headfirst”
There’s something about the way the guitar line in “Headfirst” skips and hops around that feels like an awakening, a literal awakening, one of those mornings when you stumble out of bed and don’t feel instantly crushed by the weight of the world. The latest single from Nina Winder-Lind’s (of The New Eves) upcoming solo album might not have had that in mind, but the song does seem to grapple with the idea of feeling in general, whether positive or not, but simply having the ability to feel, wandering out to experience life as it comes. There’s an energy that evolves from wanderlust to tension to joy, rippling between emotions as the song’s structure follows suit. The results are spiky, a brash indie rock song with burnt folk and ripping pop-inclinations flipped and rearranged, wrapped in a mathy progression that soars with a limitless air. It’s one of many stand-outs from Wild Love, an absolutely essential album (there’s a song that sounds like your speakers are unraveling in time with the vocal vibrations… you’ll see), due out August 14th via Transgressive.
PORCELAIN
“Apocalypse”
The past three years have seen Porcelain progress from one strength to the next, deepening their post-hardcore sound by experimenting with amorphous feedback, nuanced melodies, and harmonious noise rock. The Austin based quartet have been honing their sound across various projects for a long time, and Porcelain feels like the culmination of all they’ve lived and learned, a band with blistering density and seismic heft. Today’s Minor Victories, the band’s upcoming second full length, was recorded together with Scott Evans (Neurosis, Sumac, Exhumed), capturing the band’s off-kilter dynamics with a heavy push-and-pull thud. There’s a depth of detail to be heard in lead single “Apocalypse,” one of the band’s most immediate songs to date, swarming and gratifying with sludgy hooks and bright tension. The duel guitars peel against the steel platted rhythms, grinding out splintered melodies that manage to glow against the chaos of it all. Porcelain have reached the next level of their sound, digging into the earth’s crust and rearranging the landscape.
PROTOMARTYR
“Sounds We Cannot Hear”
When Protomartyr emerged with No Passion, All Technique fourteen years ago, it felt like the tides had turned. Over a decade later, the Detroit based quartet have proven themselves capable of non-stop reinvention, maintaining their identity while pushing forward, adapting and evolving their sound with intellectually informed leaps to become one of post-punk’s most dependable bands. “Sounds We Cannot Hear” is our introduction to their upcoming seventh album, Hotel Usona, due out September 25th via Domino (Hen Ogledd, Melody’s Echo Chamber, Upchuck), a triumphant song marked by an avalanche of drums, riffs that bleed with a sense of terror, and a knotted sense of impending dread. As they pull back from the abyss to put focus on Joe Casey’s lyrics, the song explores themes of trudging through the mundane, one foot in front of the next. It’s a song that explodes and contracts without warning, and the music video, directed by Danny Scharar and Harris Mayersohn, brilliantly captures that erratic sensibility. A simple birthday trip to the hibachi steakhouse gone awry, you’re not exactly rooting for the guy by the time he’s coked up and assaulting people, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t happy when he caught the shrimp.
SPREAD JOY
“Pygmalion”
While the releases of I and II came within a year of each other, it’s been four years since we last heard from Spread Joy. Thankfully, the Chicago based quartet are set to return this fall with the release of their next album, aptly named III, out on September 4th via Feel It Records (Choncy, No Peeling, The Cowboys). The band’s art punk sounds as discombobulated as ever, skittering between rubbery rhythms with detached abandon. There’s so much personality to be found in the way they bounce around within their ragged grooves and elastic framework, gleaming in short splendorous bursts. Itchy and untamed at times while dub-influenced and locked in at others, “Pygmalion” jitters with manic energy at dizzying tempos, pulling back to a crawl momentarily only to double down. Under a minute in a length, the song avoids hooks for sharp edges and an absurdist spirit. Briana Hernandez goes from sarcastic laughter to rapid fire chirps and while the lyrics are not the easiest to decipher, the spring-loaded delivery is a pleasure to witness.
STREET TOMBS
“Systematic Suffering”
New Mexico’s Street Tombs bridge the sweet spot between thrash and death metal, their music a bludgeoning web of brutal riffs and stampeding rhythms. Existence Is Corruption, the band’s second full length, due out August 21st via Carbonized Records (Goetia, Hedonist, Warp Chamber), tilts toward all out rampage, but there’s plenty of nuance and attention to dynamics to be found, a patience in their chaos. “Systematic Suffering,” the album’s lead single ignites with colossal force, ripping into a venomous tremolo picked scourge capable of decapitation. The dizzying assault plows ahead without remorse, beating down the detached framework into a blaze of rotten glory. Howling and depraved, this one feels built for live shows, the entire crowd banging their heads in frenzied unison. Street Tombs’ latest is a force of blinding savagery, twisting and churning but never overly complex. This is skull crushing, crypt shaking, cave rattling, eardrum blistering death thrash as putrid as it is radiant.
VANISHING TWIN
“Bring Me The Axe”
Three years after the release of Afternoon X, the impeccable and unpredictable Vanishing Twin have returned! Set to release Archives (a new record and not an archival release) on October 2nd via Fire Records (Tropical Fuck Storm, Jane Weaver, Memorials), the band continue to prove their ever shifting space-age art-pop knows no bounds. Valentina Magaletti, one of modern music’s most inventive and illuminating drummers, gives structure to patchwork, creating new fractal shapes as the trio experiment with notions of time and space, layers and manipulated vision. “Bring Me The Axe,” one of two new singles, is gorgeous, haunting, intimate, and expansive. With ample room to breathe, the song opens like a folktale, a hard focus presented on Cathy Lucas’ words and the song’s analog melodies before a subtle but cosmic change swarms and slides into a fog of moonlit lounge smoke and a triumphantly off-kilter drumbeat. The precision of it all is stunning in a way that only Vanishing Twin’s blissful sonic expeditions into uncharted waters can really provide.
THE WOMACK SISTERS
“If I Let You”
I don’t really believe in the idea of “the song of the summer” (just one song… seems too few), but if you want to make an argument for it, The Womack Sisters have seemingly released two of them. Released back in May, “Chauffeur,” a song about hustling to make ends meet, felt timeless. “If I Let You,” the group’s latest single from their upcoming self-titled album (out via Daptone Records on August 14th), is just as mesmerizing, an organ led soul anthem with a Latin rhythm and a truly majestic arrangement. The sisters - Kucha, Zeimani, and BG Womack - explore the immediate nature of blindly rushing into love with giant vocal harmonies, passionate refrains, an exuberant bridge (those drums), and classic feel to the song that that pays tribute to soul music’s foundational roots. It’s retro-soul that manages to feel modern, the heart of it all glowing amid shuffling rhythms, the wail of the organ, the muted funk or the horns, and the way their voices interact to lift each verse to new heights.
but wait, there’s more:
ALIENATOR
“Brutal Occupation” EP
Portland’s Alienator (who share members with the great Reek Minds) return with the blistering fury of Brutal Occupation, a hardcore record capable of splitting skulls and wilting our brains all in one agitated swoop. The aggression is boiling overtime here, but the band color between the annihilation with barn-burner gang vocals, rapid fire solos, and mid-tempo belters. Reckless but not without hooks, Alienator continue to tap into the magic of pure decimation.
CHAD HUGO
“Jumpupw!nya” (feat. Tierra Whack & Leikeli47)
It’s important to remember that The Neptunes were a duo, not a one man show. While Pharrell Williams has remained forever in the limelight since the production duo called it a day, we’ve often wondered what happened to Chad Hugo. Wonder no more, as his first solo effort is on the way. “Jumpupw!nya” is a triumphant reintroduction, a drum heavy odyssey of bass rattling beats that feel like a playground for Tierra Whack & Leikeli47’s acidic boom-bap bars.
HOLY WAVE
“i’m DADA”
Austin’s most majestic psych rockers Holy Wave have come a long way. They were always a good band and these days they are a great band, adapting their sound with a fluidity that often feels phantasmagoric. The band’s new album, i’m DADA, is a beautifully constructed headtrip of swelling structures, dream like weirdness, and gorgeous mutant pop dissonance. Listen to the title track, a song that moves from kinetic krautrock inspired boogie to unhinged scrawl without blinking an eye.
KINETIC ORBITAL STRIKE
“The Terrifying Power Of Bombardment” LP
Following two great EPs, Philadelphia’s Kinetic Orbital Strike released their first full length album, The Terrifying Power Of Bombardment, a crushing d-beat record with the kind of lo-fi production that adds a layer of hiss to the chaos. It’s utterly pummeling in the best of ways, crusted over with intensity and harrowing disgust for society’s destructive tendencies. There’s little subtlety to be found as KOS jackhammer through the rubble, which is to say this is d-beat as the sewer dwelling sect always intended.
P.P. REBEL
“Sanctuary”
P.P. Rebel began as Paris Rebel Richens’ (Parsnip) solo project but has evolved into a collective effort over the past five years. Rooted in meditation and Richens’ spiritual experience becoming a yogi, her new album Devotee is built around her harmonium melodies, the drawn out sustain informing the calm and clarity of the record’s sound, both structured and improvised. “Sanctuary” sounds like an out of body experience, a new chance for peace and focus, an immersive song that unfolds with a soft glow over the seven plus minute course.
One reason I struggle to get this column done is due to the mental desire and immediate push back I have to include releases from my record label, Exploding In Sound Records. Should I include them? In terms of “journalistic integrity,” probably not, but I’ve never really considered myself a “journalist” and more someone who just wants to yap about (what I consider to be) great music, and obviously I think that EIS is releasing great music… or why the heck would I keep doing it? Consider this the official “you might consider this biased, but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t include it warning.” If that bugs you, don’t read the blurbs, just listen for yourself. EIS has been busy this summer, very busy, and July was a doozy.
BIMBO
“Chewing Glass”
Hailing from the wilds (and yurts) of Michigan’s upper peninsula, Bimbo are set to release their first full length album The Bimbonacci Sequence on September 18th. The duo of siblings Gretchen and Dawson McKenzie play art punk with wonky time signatures, gluey melodies, and riffs the kind of riffs that make it all groove together with a natural feel. “Chewing Glass” opens with an amazingly contorted drum pattern and sweet yet dystopian verses and then everything comes unmoored, winding and writhing against over consumption. I could go on and on… it’s really something to behold.
CEL RAY
“Teen (Cult) Song”
Cel Rayzer, the first full length from Chicago’s Cel Ray has arrived taking a brilliantly slapstick approach to punk, eschewing toughness in favor of delightfully spastic songs comedically delivered from inside and outside perspectives. Maddie Daviss’ sense of humor resides at the core but there’s a very real urgency to fix a broken system (mostly revolving around insufficient wages and rising costs). The music itself rips and sputters without clinging too hard to genre ideals. Splitting the difference between post-punk, hardcore, and sludge with a sunshine pop edge, Cel Ray stand in a lane all their own, splattering a smile across it all.
KRILL
“Commemorative Plaque”
Extra! Extra! Krill are back, thee one and only Krill. After ten years (and one incredible album as Knot… that has retroactively become a Krill album), the band have reformed in Chicago with new guitarist Andrew Clinkman (Moontype, Spirits Having Fun) joining the fold. “Commemorative Plaque,” the band’s new single feels both like a warm reunion with an old friend and the start of something new. With Krill’s magically tangled rhythmic slink in place, the song wraps itself around gorgeous strings (courtesy of Macie Stewart) and bleeding sax (courtesy of Will Greene), the entire composition weaving along with Jonah Furman’s personal narrative, a profound reflection that sits somewhere between misplaced dread and aged optimism in half remembered sentiment.
SAD13
“1331”
Don’t let the brevity of 1331 and the minute long songs fool you, this might be Sad13’s most ambitious project to date. Layered with poetic majesty, Sadie Dupuis’ lyrics feel like the glue that hold everything together, her words relatable and deeply human in magnificent opposition of the amorphous nature of the record’s experimental pop sound. As much of the record seems to explore mental self-care, refining your priorities, and operating with intention in the world, the music finds Dupuis discovering what is possible, a cavalcade of fully fleshed out ideas that bloom in bursts of inspiration before fading cohesively into the next. 1331 is an album for deep listening that happens to lend itself to the enjoyment of pop detachment.
extended listening:
1-800-MIKEY “Me And My Only”
ALIENATOR “Brutal Occupation” EP
ANNABELLE CHAIRLEGS “I Feel So Mad”
ARMAND HAMMER “Tiny Desk Concert”
ARSE “Arse World”
BABEHOVEN “Lasagna”
BIG CIRCLE “Big Circle EP”
BIITA HOUDEI "The Ground Here"
BILLBOARD STYLE “Billboard Style”
BILLY GARDNER & FRIENDS “The Learning Curve”
BLONDE REDHEAD “Blood Spilled”
BRUISE BATH “Blood On My Tongue”
C.O.F.F.I.N “Think Bad”
CHAD HUGO “Jumpupw!nya” (feat. Tierra Whack & Leikeli47)
CLAMM “Rats”
COR DE LUX “The Deli”
CRAZY CLUE “Social Pressure”
DAVE EAST & HARRY FRAUD “Alley Oop” (feat. Styles P)
DRY CLEANING “I Have The Key”
E-40 “Sumn Ain’t Right” (feat. Juvenile)
THE EASY EIGHT “Fear As A Gift”
FACE OFF “Face Off” EP
FILTH “Mental Butchery”
FRANCES CHANG “Auratones of Desire”
GANGRENE “Better Than McDonald’s” LP
GASH “Good and Bad”
GHOST FUNK ORCHESTRA “Ocotillo”
GILLA BAND “Placeholder”
THE GREBES “The Grebes” LP
GREG FREEMAN “Indu”
HEATHER THE JERK “Write A Letter”
HISS “Buried In Current”
HOLY WAVE “I’m Dada”
INDEX “Fractured”
INSPECTAH DECK “Day In The Life” (feat. Baegod)
THE INTELLIGENCE “La La Land 2”
INVERTEBRATES “Accosted”
JULIA JACKLIN “I Wish” (feat. The Maes)
KINETIC ORBITAL STRIKE “The Terrifying Power of Bombardment” LP
KING’S EVIL “King’s Evil”
KOLEZANKA “Levers and Pulleys”
L’RAIN “Borderline”
LANE “Love Is In The Rain”
LILY SEABIRD “Portal To The Past”
THE LOSERS “Reaper”
MAUL “A Miserable Perspective Sentencing”
MIA JUNE “Careful”
MICROBES, MOSTLY “Microbes, Mostly” EP
MIU ZYU “時の流れに身をまかせ (Give Yourself to the Flow of Time)”
NEKRA “All We Got Is Us”
NEPTUNE’S CORE “Arc”
THE ODYSSEY CULT “Back To The Cave”
OPEN MIKE EAGLE & KENNY SEGAL “Watching A Movie Called Freedom By Myself”
ORANSSI PAZUZU “Live on KEXP”
OUTER WORLD “Present Perfect Future Past”
P.P. REBEL “Sanctuary”
PAPER JAM “Lovely Girl”
PLEB “You And Me Baby Ain’t Nothing But Cannibals”
PUBLIC ACID “Tragic Relief”
RADIATOR HOSPITAL “A Fine Vintage”
RAKIM “A Different Kind”
RAPSODY “Apple Juice”
RAT CAGE “Steady on Now”
SHANNON LAY “The Calling”
SHARP PINS “Saturday Sun”
SHINER “Only Shallow” (My Bloody Valentine cover)
SNĚŤ “Kladivo ve tmě”
SNOOPER “Recess”
SOUR WIDOWS “Blood In The Grass”
SQUANDERERS “Theme For The Casino At 5 A.M.”
STARCLEANER REUNION “Never Even Or Odd”
STEF CHURA “Danny”
STICK MEN “Swimming In Tea”
SWEEPING PROMISES “Accent”
T.F. & MIKE SUMMERS “Hollywood Slang’n”
TEAM WORK “Piper Has A Flashlight”
THANKS FOR COMING “Historical Fiction”
TROPICAL FUCK STORM “Aneurysm” (Nirvana cover)
TWERP “Rot”
TWISTED TEENS “Florida Water Blues” LP
TY SEGALL “Running To Nowhere”
UPPER WILDS “Fever”
V.V. LIGHTBODY “Practice Smiling”
VITAL STRESS “Vital Stress” EP
WHY BOTHER? “The Final Ride”
WISHBONE ZOE “Psyche's Romp”