Alexander - "Wonderland" | Album Review
Shell Of A Shell - "Away Team" | Album Review
Nashville’s Shell of a Shell is releasing their demons on their latest offering, Away Team, out on Exploding In Sound Records. At just under 45 minutes, this album weaves its way through a repertoire of hard-hitting emotions, catchy and tumultuous riffs, and lyrics that get to the root of what it is to be a person, more specifically, to be on your own.
Lily Konigsberg - "It's Just Like All The Clouds" | Album Review
The EP lasts for only a few moments and those moments are revelations. Konigsberg’s waste-not arrangements pack brilliant melody and nuance behind her always potent lyrical introspection. Each song contains an intentional act of self awareness and forgiveness; four contemplative steps toward equilibrium.
Beauty Pill - "Sorry You're Here" | Album Review
In 2010, Taffety Punk Theater Company premiered the dance play suicide.chat.room. Ten years later, the previously unreleased score by Beauty Pill, Sorry You’re Here, was finally made public. The score, created by Chad Clark, feels cold and dystopic, yet is delicate, human, and holds its own as a powerful piece of music about a difficult topic.
Tetchy - "Hounds" | Album Review
Hounds is the debut EP from NYC band Tetchy, and it’s one full of roiled up emotional bloodletting and resolve over beds of muscular instrumentation. Maggie Denning’s vocals are a focal point as she lays out her bare emotions in an always powerful manner, be it in letting go of fears or detrimental relationships.
Silkworm - "In The West (Reissue)" | Album Review
The new year has brought a very welcome reissue of Chicago/Seattle stalwarts Silkworm’s second full length album In the West. The early days of Silkworm with Joel R.L Phelps joining Tim Midyett, Andy Cohen, and Michael Dahlquist were a fairly different beast, but one that still created music full of energy and infectious liveliness.
Impulsive Hearts - "Cry All The Time" | Album Review
Addy - "Eclipse" | Album Review
Ratboys - "Printer's Devil" | Album Review
Regardless of which direction each song takes, the band never loses its momentum with its thoughtful storytelling and melodies that are at once heart pounding and heart wrenching. In these ten songs, Ratboys are sifting through the past like one would open dusty, nearly forgotten boxes in an attic, but hey’re also embracing future adventures.
Guided By Voices - "Surrender Your Poppy Field" | Album Review
Surrender Your Poppy Field, Guided by Voices’ first release in the 2020s, marks an important point in the band’s history. As their 30th studio album, one might expect the band to rest on their laurels as unofficial royalty among the indie crowd and phone it in. Instead they remain true to themselves and put out music that sounds fun, all while finding ways to build upon it and stay fresh.
Tosser - "Total Restraint" | Album Review
Louder, thornier, and more unreservedly aggressive than their past EPs, Total Restraint offers a title that skews paradoxical at first blush. Dig deeper and the title holds some weight. Total Restraint and, by extension, Tosser, understand the value of additional room and have found a way to weaponize its effect.
Cindy Lee - "What's Tonight To Eternity" | Album Review
What’s Tonight To Eternity, the third full-length project under the name, maybe Cindy Lee’s most fulfilled and fulfilling record yet, with moments 1950s and ’60s-tinged pop fighting their way to the surface of feedback and abstracted noise, poignantly investigating the intertwining nature of love and hurt, beauty and horror.
Mush - "3D Routine" | Album Review
Mush’s 3D Routine reads as a living credo for the contemporary slacker-class malaise. The Leeds foursome deftly balances personal with political, at the same time toeing the line between id-driven punk and a little headiness for good measure. Their debut LP is music for millennial drifters, art-rock nerds, and disillusioned leftists all alike.
Beak> - "Life Goes On" | Album Review
Babehoven - "Demonstrating Visible Differences of Height" | Album Review
Demonstrating Visible Differences of Height is the latest release from indie project Babehoven— a Philadelphia-based duo of songwriter/vocalist Maya Bon and coproducer/multi-instrumentalist Ryan Albert. In context of their past pair of EP’s, the release establishes Babehoven as a prolific project with remarkable consistency for quality songwriting amidst lots of changes for the band.
Zula - "Stepping" | Album Review
Arbor Labor Union - "New Petal Instants" | Album Review
New Petal Instants is what the Traveling Wilburys might have sounded like if Wilco and the Meat Puppets were on board alongside Bob Dylan. It’s fitting for there to be an undercurrent of anxiety in an album released by an American band in 2020. Arbor Labor Union addresses that while expertly offering a solution simultaneously.
0 Stars - "Blowing on a Marshmallow in Perpetuity" | Album Review
0 Stars is the brainchild of Mikey Buishas, and the latest of many beloved musical projects the New York City-based songwriter has been a part of in recent years. The debut album Blowing on a Marshmallow in Perpetuity, released on Babe City Records, contains many facets of Buishas’ unique style that listeners can expect from his brainy brand of guitar-forward music
Richard Dawson - "2020" | Album Review
Richard Dawson is a folk troubadour for all times. His last album, Peasant, was a concept album about Medieval England. With his newest album, 2020, he blasts into the future with an exploration of contemporary England. The riffs are heavy, the tone is dark and Dawson proves himself to be an adept observer of our present condition.