Lorelle Meets The Obsolete - "01052019 en vivo con Martín Delgado" | Album Review
Recorded on May 1st, 2019 as a radio session for Aire Libre 105.3 FM in Mexico City, all but one of the tracks are from their fifth album, 2019’s De Facto. 01052019 is unceasingly intense. A description that already fit the duo well, it does even more in this performance, with the band joined by Fernando Nuti, Andrea Davì and José Orozco.
The Weather Station - "Ignorance" | Album Review
The era of climate change is upon us, and this is what makes The Weather Station’s new record Ignorance so important. Tamara Lindeman has created a record unique to our time of impending climate disaster. She shares her experience with personal grief, loss, love, and joy through the lens of her climate anxieties.
Population II - "À la Ô Terre" | Album Review
One of the most wild and beautifully exploratory albums released in 2020 came from Population II, a psych-rock trio based out of Montreal. À la Ô Terre, comes to you from powerhouse psych label Castle Face Records, and is the soundtrack for a journey in and out of the chaotic edges as galaxies collide.
Editrix - "Tell Me I'm Bad" | Album Review
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 - "On and On" | Album Review
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 - "Visiting" | Album Review
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.
Lorelle Meets The Obsolete - "Re-Facto" | Album Review
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.
Growing Stone - "I Had Everybody Snowed" | Album Review
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.
Goat Girl - "On All Fours" | Album Review
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.
Calyx - "Stay Gone" | Album Review
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.
Sun June - "Somewhere" | Album Review
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.
The Notwist - "Vertigo Days" | Album Review
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.
Landowner - "Consultant" | Album Review
Black Country, New Road - "For The First Time" | Album Review
Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - "The Helm of Sorrow" | Album Review
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.
Palberta - "Palberta5000" | Album Review
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.
Spiral Wave Nomads - "First Encounters" | Album Review
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 - "Drunk Tank Pink" | Album Review
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.
Viagra Boys - "Welfare Jazz" | Album Review
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.