There aren't many guitarists in this world that can play, harness, and manipulate chaos like Forsyth. It's impressive as hell to sound so improvised, lucid even, and to get guitars to moan the exact way you want them to.
Big Sky uses these themes of largeness to elucidate how Kinsler feels so small. The album brings about thoughts similar to paintings of the Romantic period with its thematic vastness of nature.
Though it can be a lot to digest, at over an hour long and is packed with a wealth of ambitious ideas, there is never a lack of engagement from SWIM; it is as infectious as it is harrowing and introspective.
Dive into Water expecting a very different listening experience than Pool, but don't expect to be underwhelmed. The production on Pool is masterful, but there is something to be said for the dirtier, lo-fi versions.
Bonus EP, serves as its physical and spiritual antithesis, choosing subtlety where the LP chose overindulgence, and leaving listeners wanting more where Joyous Celebration made their heads spin with its profusion.
Horse Lords Wants To Intervene. On their new album, we hear the band finding new methods in song craft that fit solidly into the identity they have created, taking off from a clearer starting point than ever before.
They’ve all but defied their teenage punk origins with Telling It Like It Is, an experiment that showcases a mangled array of sounds tethered in folk & punk roots, occasionally shaking hands with the baroque.
Whatever Forever refuses to go down in the third round and instead vies for a knockout as early as possible, making for a terrifyingly colorful piece of mayhem that's sure to please any purist still stuck in mourning from thrash's “death” in 1991.
A Corpse Wired For Sound is an incredibly satisfying return to form for a band that seemed to be losing touch. Merchandise pull from their past and push their sound further into different stylistic corners with renewed vigor.
The duo seems to have taken all of the parts that made their other bands great and added more synth, as well as some of their best pop hooks, resulting in the best songs of their career thus far.
Squirrel Flower is the project of Grinnell College musician Ellä Williams, and “Not Your Prey” is the gorgeous, meandering first single off of her upcoming debut Contact Sports on It Takes Time Records.
