These songs are like dropping diamonds into heavy machinery—the onslaught of fizzing melodies add warmth and a sense of familiarity to a barrage of fuzzy guitar tones and unrelenting, impersonable drum machine thud. There is a great deal of finesse and genuine, honest-to-goodness work involved in this compilation, but it doesn’t feel that way.
Smoke Bellow, the Baltimore-via-Australia psych-pop band, revels in fitting together wildly disparate influences to create wholly new sounds. Open for Business is an excellent slab of jigsaw pop, collecting pieces they’ve cut out over the course of their discography and arranging them into something beautiful and unexpected.
Greg Ahee (Protomartyr), Mike Wallace (Preoccupations) and AJ Lambert (daughter of Nancy Sinatra), have teamed up to form Bloodslide, a trio that just released its first self-titled EP. All four songs straddle the border between unhinged noise and shatteringly beautiful moments in an otherwise stark and occasionally dismal EP.
Nastavi, Caliope, the latest from Maya Bon’s Babehoven, is a must listen. Written in the wake of twin upheavals – the death of her dog and the reunion with her estranged father, the EP captures the sadness, anger, isolation, and monotony of these moments, transforming them into a musically and emotionally compelling seven tracks.
HEY WHAT, Low’s stunning third album with BJ Burton, refines its predecessor’s approach, sculpting its slabs of noise into something more defined and accessible without losing any of the impact. It’s an album that grapples with the questioning of faith and the acknowledgement that the answers sought may never appear.
Life, and Another is a fourteen-track, 44-minute affair, transmitted with the descriptor, Sci-Fi Pop, and yes, with James Krivchenia of Big Thief producing the sound palette is ripe of the sort. If there is a novum for what Mega Bog is currently accomplishing, then it is found within that synthesis of Birgy’s lyricism and sonic arrangements.
Bachelor, the musical project of Palehound’s Ellen Kempner and Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, combine fuzzy guitars, pop hooks, and introspective words on their debut, Doomin’ Sun. Holed up for two weeks in Topanga, California in January 2020, Kempner and Duterte spent their days sleeping in, drinking iced tea, and writing songs.
What was most surprising about White Chalk on its original release was its sound. Harvey’s guitar and classic vocal style are almost completely absent from the album. A shift to piano, an instrument that was relatively new to her, as her main compositional tool seemed to reset her compositional style.
Deradoorian's work in Find The Sun is an exploration beyond this cognizance, planted firmly in the earth, and an organically divine consciousness. This is evergreen energy, coniferous and long-standing, albeit far beyond the relative pinball of deciduousness - live, die, live again - stands emitting from the celestial sphere
Sunday Music For An Overpass is subtly beautiful, possessed of a quiet power. These lo-fi dream pop tracks have the potential to bypass one’s senses yet they don’t: instead they remove you from your anxieties and worries in a wave of hazy comfort. The album unfolds at a languorous pace, unrushed by external forces.
Angus Andrews has essentially helmed the last few Liars records himself, from 2017’s TFCF to this month’s latest release, The Apple Drop. He does recruit the aid of drummer Laurence Pike and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell, though, and they do help enhance the expansive and cinematic sound of the album.
![PJ Harvey - "White Chalk" [Reissue] | Album Review](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56066cf9e4b0ffbc0fe62db1/1630635393704-LRWDT4MLZV6S4K26JK0D/AISL_725347__163526__06302021023420-6600.jpg)
