Tom Petty - "Wildflowers & All The Rest" | Album Review
It’s fairly well known that Tom Petty wrote his critically acclaimed 1994 record Wildflowers as a double album, but Warner Bros. nixed that plan, saying it would be too long. If you ask a lot of die-hard fans, though, Wildflowers is his best work. Wildflowers & All the Rest finally puts the remaining songs where he wanted them: in the same place.
Tenci - "My Heart Is An Open Field" | Album Review
On her debut, Tenci crafts an album that’s at once wistful, solitary, warm, and tender. Shoman weaves together tracks that encapsulate how people and environments stick to us, creating a place of vulnerability and entanglement forever frozen in time. My Heart Is An Open Field builds a sound worth staying in.
Smarts - "Who Needs Smarts, Anyway?" | Album Review
Who Needs Smarts, Anyway? Is the first full length from Australia’s Smarts, loaded with short bursts of jittery garage punk that comes at you full force. The band let you know what they are about instantly, and steamroll the listeners eardrums with skronking keyboard and sax blurts interspersed with cutting guitar that yields little ground.
Uniform - "Shame" | Album Review
Released in September, New York noise band Uniform’s fourth album on Sacred Bones Records is a masterclass in guilt and self-exorcism. Though keeping their tradition of fuzzed out guitars and glitchy, sinister noise elements, the recording quality of Shame is a departure from that of their previous albums.
Pile - "Second Other Tape" | Album Review
Yalc123 - "Yalc Nitsua Mailliw" | Album Review
Anna McClellan - "I Saw First Light" | Album Review
Lisa/Liza - "Shelter of a Song" | Album Review
Shelter should be understood in the context within which it was conceived and captured: it was recorded entirely live in the kitchen of a studio apartment in Central Maine. Featuring only Liza Victoria’s vocals and accompanied guitar, it’s almost as instrumentally scarce as a record can be. In the best way possible.
Pylon - "Pylon Box" | Album Review
New West Records’ Pylon Box compiles a new de facto history of the Athens art punks, finally making accessible the sounds and filling in the narrative blanks of the oft underlooked group. In step with examining Pylon’s legacy among their musical peers, the retrospective box set’s insightful, 209-paged companion booklet.
Fred Cracklin - "Guff In The Garden" | Album Review
Guff in the Garden tells stories, totally subjective content-wise. Each track is more like a situation, with all the strange stuff Max Goldstein (drums) and Adam Bosse (guitar) toss together swirling around miasmatically for you to come wade through coughing and incorporate into your day’s dull manifold however you feel impelled to.
Lawn - "Johnny" | Album Review
Johnny, the second full length effort from the New Orleans group Lawn, is a sprawling album with continuous shifts in dynamics that surprise the listener as the two main songwriters trade turns showcasing their distinctive but harmonious styles of songwriting. It’s an album of contrasting styles, at once pop and post-punk influenced.
Soul Glo - "Songs To Yeet At The Sun" | Album Review
Songs To Yeet At The Sun is the opposite of a cerebral experience. It’s instantaneous and immediate. You either get it or you don’t. If you want to do a deeper interrogation, all the lyrics are there for you on the Bandcamp page. Soul Glo is at its peak when the vocals become an instrument against the hardcore cacophony.
Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - "Alfredo" } Album Review
Gibbs has been on an incredible run, releasing at least seven great albums in the last decade, if not more. Alfredo certainly stands with the best Gibbs has ever released, and the same goes for The Alchemist. Few rappers have kept pace with Gibbs in recent years and few producers have been as prolific and consistent as The Alchemist.
Super-X - "Super-X" | Album Review
If music is supposed to take one on a journey, this idea is something that Super-X takes literally. The Melbourne post-punk noise creators - composed of brothers Harrison and George Ottaway and drummer Kaelan Emond - take their listeners on a frenetic and buzzing journey around the world on their self-titled debut album
Telyscopes - "With a Y" | Album Review
Floating Room - "Tired and True" | Album Review
Lithics - "Tower of Age" | Album Review
With their compact arrangements, short run times, and impressive musicianship, the tracks on Tower Of Age offer a refreshing return to form for post-punk. While the record may harken bands like Gang Of Four and Wire, the music they make never feels like a rehash of the acts that came half a century before them.
Galore - "Galore" | Album Review
Joyer - "Sun Into Flies" | Album Review
Joyer are brothers Nick and Shane Sullivan who are quietly making some of the finest recent slowcore music. Their latest album, Sun Into Flies, is their third full-length and the first not to be self-released, instead being issued through Z Tapes, the Slovakian label run by Filip Zemcik which has become a byword for quality lo-fi releases.