On their debut full-length Tell Me I’m Bad, Editrix shifts through permutations of metal and punk faster than you can throw subgenre descriptors at them. For a solid thirty minutes, the lean and loud Massachusetts trio twists and turns through mathy riffs and pummeling breakdowns, phasing in and out of pocket grooves.
The Fragiles are the brainchild of songwriter David Settle, a busy man who holds down multiple bands and releases albums worth of material every year. On and On is a wonderfully chewed up and fuzzed out record, whose lo-fi palette can almost keep the excellent pop songwriting at arm’s length, almost.
Lina Tullgren has reunited with their first instrument, the violin. While featured in fleeting moments on Free Cell, Tullgren instead recasts their fate with the instrument in the form of veracious improvisations. It imparts a new language of sound, moving through the few crystalline zones with a tenderness and curiosity.
With half of its four tracks being remixes from 2019’s De Facto — and the other two sounding like they actually were on it — Lorelle Meets The Obsolete’s Re-Facto, released in 2020, was intended as a companion piece EP to the former. The previously unreleased songs drive home the point that they are independent sisters who are even better together.
I Had Everybody Snowed is a celebration for Skylar Sarkis, the songwriter behind the project Growing Stone. Its release date, November 30th of 2020, marked three years of sobriety for the musician. The seven year journey of conception to completion shows ten separate scenes, letting the listener come to their own conclusion.
On All Fours, from London based Goat Girl, dials up the danceable grooves under the floating psychedelic flourishes that were ever present on the previous recordings. There is a more pronounced musicality on display here with flowing rhythm and elastic bass providing a more fluid base for a new form of musical exploration.
Stay Gone, a record the band describes as five years in the making, sees the band leveling up, finally giving their songs the treatment they deserve. Everything is at the exact right levels. The guitars are huge and the vocals sound clear, but it doesn’t come at the expense of the drums, the instrument that is the driving force for the band.
Titled Somewhere, the album’s lyrics form the “somewhere,” produced by the emotional gravity marked by important places in a person’s life. The album gives off the distinct feeling of being on a journey, not simply changing of locations but being in transit due to the ever-quickening passage of time.
After six years without an album, German 'indietronica' band The Notwist return with Vertigo Days, their best effort since Neon Golden. Allowing their influences of krautrock bands such as Can or indie pop groups such as Stereolab to shine through, the band is able to make something very special here.
The album that this EP accompanies was one of 2020’s most unexpected successes, a collaboration between differing shades of alternative metal that dovetailed excellently. The unique match-up between Rundle and Thou was so strong that the best compliment that could be paid to The Helm of Sorrow is that it’s able to stand on its own.
Zany and true to form, Palberta5000 connotes a souped up version of what makes Palberta, Palberta and that’s what they deliver, no loss for stripes. Plucking elements from girl groups, 80s twee, no wave, basement DIY, and beyond, the band take their keyed up, frenetic style and elasticize it into buoyant, taut, fully fledged pop songs.
First Encounters is a journey from the very first second. The first track, “Evidence of New Gravitation,” starts off already walking, as if you had been following the sound through large corridors until finally reaching the right one and opening the right door to catch the exact right second of the Spiral Wave Nomads jamming.
Shame’s new album is a tale of two contradictions: it’s named for an allegedly soothing shade of paint color but the music on the album is anything but nullifying; it’s another sophomore album focused on the exhaustion and disillusionment of extensive post-debut touring that manages to avoid the cliched pitfalls of that album type.
With the wild live performers now castrated, their album does enough to capture the energetic essence of a Viagra Boys gig. The Stockholm band’s music must always be taken with a pinch of salt and, luckily, the chaotic, ecstatic, and lurid Welfare Jazz manages to be sleazy and provocative without descending into full caricature.
Lande Hekt has a lot of questions. On her debut solo album, Going to Hell, the Muncie Girls’ leader fills the space by speaking uncertainties. The album’s lead single, “Whiskey,” is made entirely of questions and finds Hekt asking them over distorted strumming. While none of them get answered, that’s more the point.
The germination of An Unexpected Reality dates back to 2019, when the band was fresh off the release of their second record Deserted. At the time, writing a followup record felt like a daunting task, due to internal and external pressures. Instead, they decided to try a new creative exercise—make their version of Black Flag’s My War.
Groupie has zoomed in on its vulnerabilities to examine what they’re made of while zooming out to apply those examinations to a larger social critique. Ephemeral says so much without condescending, a testament to lyricists Ashley Kossakowski and Johanna Healy for handling complicated subject matter with introspection and empathy.
