When our last great hope is good music then we should look to bands like Yard Act for it. The Overload proves itself as something important by acknowledging its unimportance. Yard Act doesn’t take themselves too seriously, and it’s refreshing to hear an album that doesn’t think it’s the most important thing in the world.
Comprised of members of Cloud Nothings, Profligate, The Mind, and more Cleveland rock legends, Fashion Pimps & The Glamazons lunge forward with mutant post-punk, blending no-wave, noise, and more into an alarming yet danceable seven tracks that clock in under twenty total minutes. Each track is infectious, curious, and off-kilter.
Favoring that lo-fi Guide By Voices type approach of recording anywhere you can, from basements to practice spaces, Settle does remix the material professionally (this time around Justin Pizzoferrato, to give it a more polished sound while still retaining that buzz and rush his combination of power pop and punky garage creates.
The songs on Devil Kids— a live album constructed from the audio captured by the four camera mics of a December basement-livestream— are energetic, matured, dare-I-say improved (in the way songs are after sitting with a band for years) versions of studio recordings with the palpable energy of a group that loves playing together.
There’s beauty in the darkness. On Bloodmoon: I — a collaboration from Converge and Chelsea Wolfe, along with Stephen Brodsky of Cave In and Mutoid Man — there is more than enough of both. What started as a live collaboration has resurfaced with eleven tracks plunging you into the cauldron of Converge at their spaciest.
The songs on HOUSE OF CONFUSION benefit from Benton’s workmanlike approach. Each tune sounds so effortlessly poignant that one assumes the album was written in a single afternoon, sitting on a riverbank in golden sunshine, guitar in hand. But any good craftsperson knows, it takes a ton of effort to appear effortless.
Fifteen years after their seminal album release and subsequent break-up, Failure has recorded one of their strongest efforts yet. Wild Type Droid is shorter (clocking in at 40 minutes over ten tracks), more direct (gone are the ambient segues from previous albums), and heavier (lots of baritone guitar and Fender Bass VI).
Sloppy Jane has been evolving for years and is the brainchild of singer/composer Haley Dahl, who created the group when she was fifteen. This latest release along with the previous album seem like companion pieces, but where Willow took an Iggy Pop influenced proto-punk style, Madison is more grandiose.
Leaving None But Small Birds is representative of the past-present-future; a jewel in the circular crown of time. Big|Brave & The Body converge on their power expression, hunting the monumental grounds, rendezvousing at a location both comfortably familiar and wildly obscure: ancestral foundations known deep in one’s bones.
Throughout the album you get a reflective, melancholy feeling, ranging from warmth to sadness within moments. “Pouring Rain’ just might be the giveaway here, but that feeling permeates the album, making that song and tracks like “Never Play It Cool” or “There Must Be Some Problem Here” things of pure beauty.
The musician’s sixth solo album is deeply personal and has only further resonated since initial binge. The record is drawn from just below the tip of the iceberg, Nina Ryser’s unabated creativity breaching the surface with childlike curiosity and expression, a sign of an artist truly in touch with their craft.
Battle Ave are back and so is their obvious love for the music of the nineties, the good stuff that came up during that decade, that is. That good stuff usually came from independent alternative bands - intricate guitar arrangements, subtle arrangements and as much melody coming through the vocals as possible.
Solely, is the sophomore album from Natalie Jane Hill and its possessed of rolling folky guitar and an abundance of the most beautiful melodies and vocals one could imagine. Hill creates beauty of all different types on these ten tracks, each composition delivering something different in intensity and technique.
It’s easy to tell when one group’s effort ends and the other begins as both artists have distinct styles. Bad History Month has lyric laden tracks versus the more drawn out vocalizations of Nyxy Nyx. Yet a strong, cohesive project is delivered on this split album. This is likely due to mutual admiration both artists have for each another.
Jason Albertini of Helvetia used the early-pandemic energy of loneliness and dread to habitually create one song a day, when he wasn’t homeschooling his daughter. Albertini’s resulting collection of distorted experimental rock songs, Sudden Hex, quietly came out through a Joyful Noise project, the Gray Area Cassette Series.
On a bed of rollicking indie rock that straddles post-punk precision with bright, slacker-forward riffs, the quartet takes rhetorical aim and shoots. The bullets here are long, vivid vocal lines laid on beds of lush harmonies: clever burns, snapshots of outrage and absurdity, quips, and catalogues of social, political, economic contradictions.
