Means to Me is a meditation on the notions of place and time. It was written after a series of upheavals in Bear’s life: uprooting to tour the country with Japanese Breakfast, then moving back to her hometown of New Brunswick, New Jersey to complete her degree, only to find all of her friends and past loves long gone.
As is maybe to be expected, love and loss are at the very heart of Lost Wisdom pt. 2—while Phil Elverum’s late wife Geneviève is never mentioned by name, her presence lingers across every note. The album leans into its own contradictory nature, pairing spacious silences with hurried guitar drones and measured poetry with unbridled grief.
Week of Charm is the sophomore release from Fern Mayo, the nom de plume of Katie Capri, following 2015’s Happy Forever EP and one that delivers a fuller more developed sound. Capri’s debut was a mix of agitated guitar pop along with sparse semi-ballads, whereas this new release is filled with lush and wave-like atmospherics.
Their last album saw the band embracing a slightly funkier sound, and this latest EP, What Would The Odd Do?, is probably the band’s most accessible music to date. They’ve rounded out some of the more aggressive, dissonant edges, but remain as engaging as ever, constantly finding new ways to surprise you and pull you in.
It took the duo two years to write and record, and in that time they changed lineups and landscapes, moving from Santiago, Chile to New York, where Appel had lived previously. Now we look back on their record and its b-sides, released this past July, which together create a thorough fuzz dreamscape.
A Jump From The High Dive signals a change in Henry’s approach to songwriting. The melodies are as strong as ever, but his pop-forward approach is now married with a more patient ear for detail. Where Fink felt like it sprang out of Henry’s fingertips, A Jump From The High Dive feels more considered and carefully crafted.
Your Name is Curse Word’s debut record, full of slightly angular and aggressive guitar work and a rhythm section that bobs and weaves around each other with aplomb. There are moments of bright pop that appear intermittently, but also a tension that ebbs and flows and keeps itself lurking wherever the melodies go.
Horror Movie Marathon is the project of Will Rutledge, a Connecticut-turned-New York musician, and Good Scare is his debut album. It wouldn’t be fair or accurate to call Horror Movie Marathon a solo project, however, as Good Scare features Alex Molini (Philary, Stove, Pile) and Will Ponturo on piano/keys and drums/percussion respectively.
Secret Salts drips with isolation, but of a different sort. Through cresting synths and bare drum sequences singer Candelaria Saenz Valiente embodies sadness as though falling apart, no yearning or desperation. Loneliness doesn’t even do it justice. Emptiness. Fragility. Stepping up to the plate regardless. Unwinding.
“Dig deep and destroy yourself” Max Klebanoff growls on album opener “Beg for Life”. Over the next 40 minutes you can do just that. Planetary Clairvoyance is the band’s most interesting, layered, and tightest album to date. It’s a bright light in a slew of killer death metal records in 2019. One you’ll find yourself returning to again and again.
The madness that is Lightning Bolt have returned with another LP titled Sonic Citadel. The noise-rock duo from Providence, Rhode Island have a signature sound that accompanies their performance style. On Sonic Citadel, they continue to do their thing with a little bit of a higher production quality.
Sun Organ has managed to churn out yet another magnetically creepy, satisfyingly chunky stew of tracks with their latest self-titled release. What sets this release apart from the rest of their catalog is its ability to juxtapose heavy darkness and ethereal beauty, a contradiction that nullifies either extreme discomfort or overt ease.
The duo’s volatile punk uneasily clamors like Shimmer and Brainiac, but aesthetically revels in the wake of Pill’s malaise and the radiant aura of No Age. ESSi mimic the latter-most group’s ability to sound much more than a two-person group, as Jessica Ackerley’s bottom heavy guitars flesh out ESSi’s strikingly atmospheric low end.
Deserted stakes up easily against its predecessor in the band’s discography, 2016’s Sonoran Depravation in both mastery of form and devastating impact of execution. The most distinguishing factor between the two is the slightly clearer production on Deserted, which is not surprising given who was involved in the post-production.
On her fourth album and fourth great evolution, Angel Olsen accompanies an instantly classic outpouring of artistic expression with gothic-synthesizers, some horns, and a colossal assembly of strings. An immense, dramatic, and shattering retrospective on feeling, All Mirrors is massive in both its presentation and statement.
