Sophie Weil’s solo project is rooted in stark minimalism, but where her previous album embraced an almost ambient/drone approach, she’s pulled away on upcoming album The Code. Due out 8/19 via Post Present Medium, Syko Friend’s latest favors skeletal string performances, focusing on both acoustic and electric compositions.
Philly/NYC five piece The Human Fly are gearing up to release their third studio album Thrill of Living on August 5 via the always reliable Dead Definition. While it feels like Robert Mathis is the primary songwriter, The Human Fly is very much a band and Thrill of Living is their tightest and most ambitious project yet.
Me You Us Them are starting anew, set to follow 2010’s Post-Data with new album, Sound Confirms. The band have been working on and off over the past decade, which included a break-up after the initial sessions. They couldn’t stay away though, and persisted in building on their shoegaze, post-hardcore, and 90’s “space rock” influences.
This year marks the return of Eerie Wanda, but like much of her career to date, Marina Tadic is once again taking a shift in her sound. Internal Radio, due out 9/23 via Joyful Noise Recordings, pulls away some of the buoyancy and breeziness of her past work, instead opting for something shadowier, with heavy keys and smoky atmospherics.
Having shared a slew of great singles, MISZCZYK is unleashing “Lunar Days,” a collaboration with Motorists’ Craig Fahner. The song has an effortless chemistry, as MISZCZYK taps into a kinetic motorik pulse, pulling from the krautrock and jangle pop textures of Motorists, while offering something decidedly different.
By the time Swimming Feeling, the new album from Seth Engel’s Options, reaches the point of it’s slinking finale, we’re fully engrained in his world, with slow drawn guitar buzz, rhythms that are always locked into service of the songs themselves, and a forlorn sense of melancholy feeling almost second nature.
The time has come for Spirits Having Fun to bring Two on the road, and their tour, together with the amazing Floatie, begins this Friday, June 17th (complete dates in post). A dream pairing of two bands we’re beyond eager to see live, Spirits Having Fun are celebrating the momentous tour with a new video for Two album opener, “Silhouette”.
Dendrons are a Chicago five-piece who make spindly, propulsive post-punk that doesn't shy away from a bit of brawny catharsis. "Wait in Line," the second single from the band's upcoming sophomore album 5-3-8 - their first for Los Angeles label Innovative Leisure - mines the rich vein of krautrock to catchy and dynamic effect.
The Salt Lake City by UK songwriter holds her own, and “These Days” is a sunny, 70s pop doozy. All the melodies hit easy - they take the turns they lean into. Fonteyn’s songwriting sensibility is on full display and her patience and nuance is palpable; the key change in the last twenty seconds is tasteful and the opposite of gimmicky.
Following last year’s Death Takes A Holiday split with Nyxy Nyx, Bad History Month returns with Recycling Myself, a collection of two EPs, due out June 25th via Julia’s War Recordings. Side A, aka Recycling Myself, is six brand new songs with lyrics pulled from the BHM/FHM back catalog, reimagined in different moods and context.
The Umbrellas latest single continues the band’s instantly catchy songwriting while adding in a bit of fuzz, beefing up their sun soaked jangle ever so slightly with added grit. Make no mistake, this is still indie pop at its most welcoming, there’s just a triumphant layer of feedback added for some shoegazy textures.
Each track exemplifies Alex Reindl’s knack of working songs into both solo and full band arrangements. “Feelin’ Far” plays like an all-timer party, “Everybody” like the sobering comedown. The first track is an expanding, upbeat piano tune with a full band breakdown. The acoustic B-side is raw and grounding, an honest and melancholic counterpoint.
Fuck Money (Future Death, BLXPLTN) embrace noise in all its shapes and forms, weaving together punk, industrial, no wave, and elements of hardcore. Having just wrapped up a string of dates with Deaf Club, the band are sharing their latest single, “Heart Throb,” a song that obliterates your senses with a wall of manipulated sound.
It’s been less than five months since Green/Blue released their excellent sophomore album, Offering, but the Minneapolis based band are back with a new record, their second of the year. Paper Thin, the latest from the quartet led by Jim Blaha (The Blind Shake) and Annie Sparrows, is due out June 10th via Feel It Records.
Abronia make psych rock with influences from around the world, a comprehensive mix of mind expanding music that pulls inspiration from the Saharan desert, Canterbury folk, and spaghetti Westerns. A sound without regionality, they add elements of drone, jazz, and pastoral doom to create something thats lost in time and space
To listen to any one Kamikaze Nurse song would leave a vastly incomplete picture of their sound, one that is as fluid as it is accessible. Having shared the dreamy gaze of “Boom Josie” and the pop bombast of “Come From Wood,” Kamikaze Nurse’s third single gives a touch of the band’s weirder side, and it’s one of the record’s stand-outs.
Cave People’s Dave Tomaine remains helplessly captivated by the wind. On the band’s forthcoming album entitled Wind Burn, out May 20th via Disposable America, Tomaine and his band (mems Golden Apples, Marge, etc) reflect on the potential for wind to teach, guide, but also to simply not to care since it’s blowing wherever it’s going to, anyway.
Rip Room make post-hardcore music with an air of art pop exuberance. Their upcoming album, Alight and Resound, is tightly wound and serrated at the edges. While there’s nothing remotely “top 40” about their “pop” inclinations, there is an understated lightness, the kind you might associate with bands like Dismemberment Plan.
