Winter - "Endless Space (Between You & I)" | Album Review
Endless Space (Between You & I) is entirely a record of its own, suffused with a purity that only true dream pop can provide. Everything is ethereal (unsurprising from the person who released an EP titled Ethereality in 2018) and the songs never cease to sparkle, awash as they are in technicolor reverie.
V.V. Lightbody - "Make A Shrine Or Burn It" | Album Review
V.V. Lightbody is the type of artist that will take your breath away. She writes expertly crafted songs that are steeped in emotional nuance and humble wisdom. On Make A Shrine Or Burn It her self described “Nap Rock” sound is built up into an endlessly entertaining album of complex arrangements and tightly performed musical moments.
Squirrel Flower - "I Was Born Swimming" | Album Review
In some ways, I Was Born Swimming is a perfect record for this period of isolation. Recounting intimate moments from her life (literally starting from her own birth on the titular track), Williams navigates through feelings of loneliness, anxiousness, and heartbreak with the goal of constantly moving forward.
Deerhoof & Wadada Leo Smith - "To Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is Enough" | Album Review
The aptly titled To Be Surrounded…, which takes its title from a Walt Whitman poem, feels like a gift to everyone currently missing the energy of live performance. The album’s eleven tracks not only capture the excitement of a top-notch band bringing some of their most beloved songs to life, but also that of organic collaboration.
Gulch - "Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress" | Album Review
Double Grave - "Goodbye, Nowhere!" | Album Review
On Goodbye, Nowhere!, the sophomore record from Minneapolis’ Double Grave, emptiness faces a reckoning. The trio has been working towards this album for nearly half a decade, starting as Ego Death and evolving into Double Grave. Each subsequent release has brought them closer to perfecting their form of existential shoegaze.
Young Jesus - "Welcome To Conceptual Beach" | Album Review
Over four full-lengths, Young Jesus have built up a modus operandi of terse tracklists, extended instrumental workouts and satisfying buildups. It’s a formula that served their previous releases well, and Beach doesn’t deviate far from it. Post- and math-rock influences also remain but this record floats and soars with a newfound lightness.
Vintage Crop - "Serve To Serve Again" | Album Review
Dehd - "Flower of Devotion" | Album Review
As is often the case with a third album, the production levels have been raised. The sounds of Flower Of Devotion are glossier and crisper, the raw qualities of their indie-rock both softened and rounded. The new lushness will be more inviting to the casual listener but the basic premise of Dehd’s music is kept to satiate long-time followers.
Mal Devisa - "Vicious Nonbeliever" | Album Review
Vicious Nonbeliever, the newest release from Mal Devisa, is a natural extension of her previous efforts from a few years ago. By pairing up with DJ LUCAS, Devisa fully hones in her vocals, creating some of her best work to date. It’s really the turn of phrases that make Vicious Nonbeliever hard to escape or ignore.
Mike Polizze - "Long Lost Solace Find" | Album Review
Long Lost Solace Find falls within the domain of exceptionality. By being the work of a singer-songwriter connected to the world of folk, its incredibly detached from the very schemes of genre. The first work of courage is in telling, in a folk key, not the stereotype of the forest or inner peace, but rather the urban fabric of a city.
Disco Doom / Oruã - "Esmeralda Destiny Analysis" | Single Review
This split EP is a brief, yet precise combination of two complementary worlds, despite being continents and languages apart. You must have heard that music is a “universal language” and you’re probably aware that long distance collabs between bands are not that rare in this time. Esmeralda fuses both notions and the result sounds awesome.
Silverbacks - "Fad" | Album Review
Fad may remind you of a whole host of post-punk/indie rock bands, but it won’t be easy to pinpoint exactly who and when. It’s how Silverbacks take these influences, cut them to pieces, and put them back together again that makes Fad such an impressive collage and an especially exciting debut record.
Gum Country - "Somewhere" | Album Review
Joy Division - "Closer" (40th Anniversary Reissue) | Album Review
There’s a repeated line in W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘Easter 1916’: A terrible beauty is born. This devastating line could describe the feeling of listening to Joy Division’s Closer for the first time. It’s a colossal work of art; a post-punk pillar; an ingenious sonic landscape; a blinding existential vision of songwriting.
Dirty Projectors - "Flight Tower" | Album Review
Ganser - "Just Look At That Sky" | Album Review
Just Look At That Sky, the sophomore full-length from Chicago’s Ganser, is the sound of summer. Maybe not in the traditional sense of friendly fun in the sun, but as it builds on their penchant for dark, pulsing atmospherics and razor-sharp attitude, it captures the feel of a summer under lockdown and a post-punk band at their most dialed-in.
Dark Tones - "Pulling Nails Out Of Walls" | Album Review
Speckled with slacker anthems and folk charmers, Dark Tones’ Pulling Nails Out of Walls catalogues the loneliness, the pointlessness, and the weight of being an island. The record aims to make sense of one’s own solitude, or at least to sharpie “I WAS HERE” on the inside of a bathroom stall, just to prove one’s own existence.
Kestrels - "Dream Or Don't Dream" | Album Review
Nova Scotia rockers Kestrels want to remind you of another era and their latest album Dream Or Don’t Dream is their love letter to ‘90s rock, mixing the hushed aesthetics of shoegaze with the fuzz and energy of power-pop. In its meshing of big-name rock backing talent and its commitment, Kestrels will find an interested audience.