The Silicone Prairie debut set a strange benchmark, an album that felt like brilliantly scattered thoughts brought to life, and things are only getting (delightfully) weirder on Vol. II. Due out July 28th via Feel It Records (It Thing, Sweeping Promises, Private Lives), it’s the type of album where anything feels possible.
The quartet of Ryan Fitzgibbon (US Weekly), Eli Deitz (Dregs, Votive), Steve Pike (Exhalants, CSSS), and Jordan Emmert (Super Thief, Pleasure Venom) bring a great deal of experience together from different pockets of the city’s noise rock and punk scene, the pieces coming together to create something better than the sum of it’s parts.
“Beyond The Darkened Library” is one of the album’s more subdued moments, yet the unnerving energy that Landowner posses is in full force, bleeping and blooping in a way we’d swear was computer driven, yet all praise is due to Dan Shaw, Josh Owsley (bass), Elliot Hughes (guitar), Jeff Gilmartin (guitar), and Josh Daniel (drums).
It’s pretty important to drink a lot of water. It would seem to be a core principle for Glasgow’s Water Machine, one reinforced with art-punk immediacy. Following the band’s self-released demo, the quartet are set to make their “studio” debut with the Raw Liquid Power EP, due out August 4th via Upset The Rhythm
TEKE::TEKE are just getting started, as their upcoming second album, Hagata, takes their already maximalist sound and continues to dig outward. Due out this Friday via Kill Rock Stars, the band sound delightfully unhinged throughout, getting weird and funky, merging disparate sounds at their whim with an orchestrated focus.
At some point Ryan Weinstein’s band Coffin Pricks became the singular Coffin Prick, the project adapting from a band to a solo effort. Weinstein approached his solo debut with patience, building a world unto itself, where vast psychedelic synths are paired together with space-age guitars and a general alien atmosphere.
Robidoux returns with Music For Aluminum Corn, a record composed around his very own corn synth, an instrument built with two touch-controlled aluminum corn cobs. Due out on June 23rd via Crash Symbols, he gives focus to his home-made synth while incorporating manipulated flutes, strings, saxophone, field recordings, and electronic rhythms.
Mo Dotti’s first release since last year’s Guided Imagery comes as part of Stories, a compilation of all-new music from Los Angeles-based queer and PoC artists. As the name implies, Stories aims to compile the “stories we tell and the story we tell when we tell them together” and highlight marginalized voices.
On their forthcoming Crafted Sounds / Michi Tapes LP, Shattered Shine, the maturing quartet grapples with climate doom, political apathy, and the growing pains every late twenty-something must endure. Silver Car Crash dances about, no answers to their grand questions in sight, but enjoying the journey as much as anyone can.
NYC grunge punk power-trio Debbie Dopamine released Pets, a strong EP in the summer of last year, full of noisy and distorted guitars blanketing songs of anxiety. Now they are releasing a video of one of the standout songs "Swimming Pool," reveling in bittersweet and sun-soaked moments of reflection.
The Toads play a unique brand of jangly post-punk, matching politicized lyrics and social commentary with songs that scrape and groove, twisting themselves in knots amid breezy structures. In The Wilderness is due out June 9th via Anti Fade / Upset The Rhythm Records, a collection of thought provoking and intellectually driven punk.
Hold the phone! In celebration of Rotary Club’s upcoming California trip, the band are sharing a music video for “American Tower,” a raw live clip that features plenty of landline action. The band, adorned in matching jumpsuits, tear into the song accompanied by telephone towers, pay phones, handsets, and delightfully curly phone cords.
“The Recipe” expands upon their brand of dance-floor chaos with funky bass and psychedelic-tinged punk guitar lines, darting between a no wave attack and post-punk disco. Gut Health remain in astounding form, as they open the song with a relative simplicity and end it tangled in abrasive knots, the entire structure threatening to collapse.
While Wristwatch expanded into a quartet live, the band remains a duo in the studio, with programmed drums that sound damn near human. After sharing album opener “Rules” last month, the band offer another glimpse into the record with “Fix,” a psychedelic punk ripper, full of corrosive leads and harsh frayed melodies.
Jen Bender's songwriting touches on personal anxieties and questions of over-extending oneself, handled with lovely sentiment and a deft hand. Cusp are unafraid to bring disjointed noise and anger into play, but also show off a softer edge through moments of beautiful keyboard melodies and Bender's vocals that can creep towards higher ranges
