Wendy Eisenberg - "Auto" | Album Review
Wendy Eisenberg’s reputation as a fixture within overarching New England DIY from the punk-adjacent Birthing Hips to hip compositions for the guitar and banjo have enshrined them with a singular maverick quality. Auto makes good on all those pieces, coalescing them into a dense sonic universe that you could fill a book about its pieces
Teenanger - "Good Time" | Album Review
Good Time is a record that shows all of what Teenanger have learned from the past decade and continues to explore a bit of a newer direction from the earlier days of the band. The urgency and wise cracking are still evident, but there is more time to stretch out and explore musical territories and influences on a greater scale.
Cordoba - "Specter" | Album Review
Cordoba is a group of politically and socially driven individuals committed to radical social change in resistance to the oppressive systems in place. The six-piece jazz fusion group formed at University of Chicago, but has since breached the bubble of higher education by connecting with like-minded musicians in DIY spaces.
Adrianne Lenker - "instrumentals" | Album Review
In almost every imaginable way, instrumentals is an unconventional record, especially when listened to in conjunction with songs, an effort laden with deliberateness and structural warmth. Still, instrumentals is a worthwhile amalgamation of ambient instrumentation that soothes and invigorates any willing ear.
Adrianne Lenker - "songs" | Album Review
Tashi Dorji - "Stateless" | Album Review
Before you even hear its music it’s clear that this record is an address, but whereas past missives were calls to arms this one postures more as a plea for contemplation: more than do, Stateless wants you to think — even to hope. It has stakes subtler than Dorji’s other political records, and this makes the guitarist seem more present.
Widowspeak - "Plum" | Album Review
Metz - "Atlas Vending" | Album Review
Thibault - "Or Not Thibault" | Album Review
Or Not Thibault is the first record from Nicole Thibault, formerly of Minimal Chips, with some help from other Aussie underground bands in the likes of Parsnip and The Ocean Party. Thibault relies on spacey and swirling melodies with a bit of a Sarah Records influence in its slightly askew outlook on the world and wide-eyed songwriting.
Swing Kids - "Anthology" (Reissue) | Album Review
This wasn’t music you could dance to. If you tried, it would just look like a person high on caffeine, shaking and convulsing with no discernible rhythm. It trafficked outside of the predictable 4/4 rhythm. This was hardcore’s version of jazz music— frenetic and frenzied, with no care to what came before.
Powerplant - "A Spine / Evidence" | Album Review
Beginning as a solo project of vocalist/instrumentalist Theo Zhykaryev, the project soon grew legs and became a quartet, combining all things unique of eggpunk and all things doom of post-punk. Across the EP, their off-kilter sound is hallmarked by the speed and force coming from the use of both the analog synths and ripping drums.
Order of the Toad - "Re-Order of the Toad" | Album Review
The trio - Gemma Fleet (The Wharves), Robert Sotelo, and Chris Taylor began making music in the unexpected landscape of a Glasgow flat and they have a combined sound entirely of their own concoction. A hazy mixture of medieval folk, baroque pop, and 60s psychedelia, it’s an utterly bamboozling palette but it works.
Alien Nosejob - "Once Again The Present Becomes The Past" | Album Review
The album was initially conceived as a concept record about Australia’s first and largest air raid, the 1942 Bombing of Darwin, until Robertson realized the repetitive nature of history would be better-suited to what he wanted to say. In this way, it’s his most focused release yet, both lyrically and sonically.
Miranda Winters - "All-Purpose" | Single Review
Miranda Winters, a veteran of Chicago DIY, best known for her work with Melkbelly, makes surprising, knotty music. All-Purpose’s twin tracks celebrate awe. Awe in daily life, awe in the act of writing. Awe in the strange pleasure of free-association. Winters wanders from one thought to the next, refusing clear-cut beginnings and ends.
Cartalk - "Pass Like Pollen" | Album Review
Cartalk, the project of Los Angeles songwriter and musician Chuck Moore, have been teasing out their debut album, the immaculate Pass Like Pollen, for the better part of a year. The nine tracks that form Pollen are each vulnerable, exuberant, and gripping in a way that makes their power known mere seconds after pressing play.
Exhalants - "Atonement" | Album Review
Sad13 - "Haunted Painting" | Album Review
Haunted Painting sees a return to accessible hooks and abundant instrumentation but with much more focus, and refinement. Written and recorded during 2019, the record finds Dupuis chewing on some bitter pills of that year, both political and personal, and it unknowingly resonates very strongly amidst 2020’s glum backdrop.
Cardinality - "Cardinality" | Album Review
Partners inside and outside of music, Sorrell and A.G.’s chemistry is apparent from the start of the album. Sonically, the album meanders from the ethereal to the severe all while synthesizing a wide range of influences derived from jazzy samples, electronic textures, soulful vocal melodies, and glitchy percussion.
