April Magazine - "If The Ceiling Were A Kite: Vol. 1" | Album Review
The music is rich, anciently fresh, maybe altogether timeless, at least in its ability to capture a certain presence - an aesthetic dripped in honesty and the fruits of happy moments. What memories might be hashed in with a time of more relative freedom, surface in the emotional reaction, none-the-less.
Shilpa Ray - "Portrait of a Lady" | Album Review
The twelve track record is described as the punk dynamo's "most searing and personal album to date," and was penned "in the wake of the #metoo movement and the weathering years of the Trump Administration" as a means for Ray to work out years of personal abuse. It'll shake you to your core with glamor and violence in equal measure.
Deliluh - "Fault Lines" | Album Review
Prior to relocating, Deliluh made brooding post-rock, with all the requisite guitar noise and deadpan spoken word lyrics it entails. The lineup change gives Deliluh the opportunity to diversify their pallet, embracing aspects of drone, industrial rock, and ambient, where Knapp’s poetry is able to shine more prominently.
Horse Jumper of Love - "Natural Part" | Album Review
Waste permeates the language of the album - trash covering room floors, skunks scavenging through garbage, half-eaten food, split ends of hair inside a plastic bag. This conflict between the lightness of letting go and the hard-won significance of sitting with disorder lingers at the corners of many of the songs’ impressionistic sketches.
Pet Fox - "A Face In Your Life" | Album Review
A Face in Your Life is their third full length and on this record the music continues to smolder with shockingly complex songwriting and a wonderfully flexible approach. There are tinges of early-mid 90's Dischord Records influences here but with a little more apparent vulnerability, interesting textures, and jazzy moments that spring up unexpectedly.
Angel Olsen - "Big Time" | Album Review
“Out With The Bangs. In With The Twangs” reads an ad for the latest Angel Olsen album, Big Time. Country music enthusiasts will be thrilled to hear one of Indie’s best songwriters bring her talents to the genre, while fans of her music will be pleased to know that this album is not simply an Angel Olsen album dressed in western trappings.
Haress - "Ghosts" | Album Review
Whatever Elizabeth Still and David Hand did musically before they moved from the bustling city streets of Liverpool to the hills of Shropshire was probably different (they say it was much louder) than what they came up with as Haress on Ghosts. The move also prompted a kind of musical collective, with Haress contracting and expanding.
Editrix - "Editrix II: Editrix Goes To Hell" | Album Review
Editrix Goes to Hell is such a compelling listen. There are always multiple things going on, sometimes the complete opposite of each other. Sometimes the album is sinister and other times it's sweet. It can be rough around the edges while still feeling completely polished. It never falters a single step, never wastes a single note.
Wednesday - "Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling 'em Up" | Album Review
Their third album on Ordinal Records, Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘em Up sees Wednesday tackle songs from Roger Miller, Drive-By Truckers, Hotline TNT, Vic Chesnutt and Smashing Pumpkins. There is an array of different genres and the fuzzy swelling distortion we’ve grown to love is ever-present, making for a fun listen.
Thou & Mizmor - "Myopia" | Album Review
Enjoying Thou is very easy—it sounds right, it feels right. Thou is an irrefutable blend of metal, noise, punk, blackness, rock, doom, and experimentation. The music can be violent, it can be meditative. It’s caustic, but it is somber. Myopia, the collaboration made in secret with Mizmor for Gilead Media, is all of the above.
Cult of Dom Keller - "They Carried The Dead In A U.F.O" | Album Review
Cult of Dom Keller’s latest album, released last year on Fuzz Club Records, grabs your attention with punchy, gritty, experimental sounds that escape this universe entirely. They Carried The Dead In A U.F.O is a psychedelic album that emits a feeling of uncanniness by incorporating crunchy vocals and extra-terrestrial sounds.
Horsegirl - "Versions of Modern Performance" | Album Review
Versions of Modern Performance, the new album by Chicago’s Horsegirl, is a noisy introduction to a band that, based on the strength of their debut, is bound to be a fixture in the future of guitar music. Any time spent with the album is likely to call to mind melodic noise pioneers like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, and that’s not entirely a coincidence.
700 Bliss - "Nothing To Declare" | Album Review
On their Hyperdub debut, Nothing to Declare, there's enough gusto and finesse for anyone to latch onto and jump forth from. Moor Mother releases are time-travel ready. Nothing to Declare is the rare moment that really sees her grounded to the present, in step with both her own and DJ Haram's sound of this moment.
Otoboke Beaver - "Super Champon" | Album Review
Otoboke Beaver make music that should, in theory, get stuck in your head. The incendiary Japanese punk quartet do not bide their time racing to a refrain, and when they get there they tend to sing it loud, over and over. As determined as they are to discover some infectious new chant or groove, they appear just as determined to move on to the next one.
Soul Glo - "Diaspora Problems" | Album Review
On Diaspora Problems, Soul Glo's first LP for Epitaph Records following a string of increasingly daring EPs over the last several years, the Philadelphia hardcore punk band is taking its largest swing to date. At once manic, deeply affecting and celebratory, this is Soul Glo at the height of their powers.
Evolfo - "Site Out of Mind" | Album Review
The music speaks for itself, and on Site Out Of Mind, the music says a lot. The band itself calls it “garage-soul,” and that's definitely a nice way of tying it together, but the palette of sounds on their new record reaches far beyond garage and far beyond soul, where 70s style psychedelia fuses with the guitar tones of 60s garage.
Dehd - "Blue Skies" | Album Review
On Blue Skies, with the increased recording budget offered by Fat Possum Records, the group builds upon their sonic foundation for the first time. Synthesizers, shimmering guitar overdubs, and more vocal layers than possibly live-performable combine to transform the songs into larger-than-life versions of themselves.
The Smile - "A Light For Attracting Attention" | Album Review
A Light for Attracting Attention lives an independent existence, and yet carries with it a baggage that comes from a sound that touches on OK Computer, The Bends, and even Amnesiac. The baggage is comprehensive, complex, but not weighty, because Yorke and Greenwood's cross-media paths offer an endless array of suggestions.
