2nd Grade - "Wish You Were Here Tour Revisited" | Album Review
Originally released in 2018, the record was apparently slept on until Double Double Whammy re-released it with new studio recordings by the band, but also included the demos that comprised the first record. Songwriter and bandleader Peter Gill originally recorded all the instruments on it, but the re-release features full band arrangements.
Pusha T - "It's Almost Dry" | Album Review
The Virginia veteran has pushed his coke laced raps and menacing flows through decades, staying solid through a quickly changing commercial rap landscape. Four years after the release of the Daytona he returns with his excellent fourth record It’s Almost Dry, a celebration of form and technique as consistent in tone as it is in quality.
Momma - "Household Name" | Album Review
Obsessions with bending the mainstream into 90s culture and reaching Cobain-levels of fame have dominated Momma’s new direction, with not only the overarching album message, but also with their music videos. Momma seems to be wearing that kind of influence and curiosity on their sleeves, in terms of championing the 1990s.
PACKS - "WOAH" | Album Review
Black Midi - "Hellfire" | Album Review
Black Midi continually evolve to the theatricality of the spectacle. They will stop at nothing to conjure and bring us for the spectacle. At long last, Hellfire is their studio album level spectacle; available for home surround sound systems, car CD players, tape decks, or the transient online comatose system of the internet.
Primitive Man - "Insurmountable" | Album Review
Primitive Man’s latest release, the EP Insurmountable, builds on their brutal foundation over four tracks spread out over forty minutes. At no point does the EP prove to be an easy listen, but inflections of groove and harmony offer a little bait-and-switch that leads listeners right back into the pit of chaos that the band curates so well.
La Bonte - "Grist For The Mill" | Album Review
Rose Mercie - "¿KIERES AGUA?" | Album Review
Kieres Agua is straightforward enough to speak volumes about its intent. These songs feel like individual statements, a series of "installations" that you can spin through while grappling with how the record at-large will land within your life. Not every path is as interesting, but it helps you explore your biases and favorites in a way that all great art should.
Naima Bock - "Giant Palm" | Album Review
Dimples' - " Soul Chateau" | Album Review
On Soul Chateau, Dimples’ often defines the experience of looking at natural phenomenons. The songs dip listeners into a blue pool of vibration, guitar twangs and a creeping beat. Where “the night is young and the road bends,” Dimples’ psychedelic obscure-rock compositions give dusty and warbling landscapes.
Grass Jaw - "Circles" | Album Review
Flasher - "Love Is Yours" | Album Review
Love is Yours’ is a much less angular sound than we have come to expect from Flasher. Priding themselves on collaborative songwriting, losing a member was always going to affect the musical direction but what’s resulted from that tectonic shift is some infectiously catchy music with signature vocal unison and harmonies.
Astrel K - "Flickering i" | Album Review
Flickering i is a strange and addicting album. Listening feels like watching as someone makes a thing piecemeal in front of you. Listening is like the feeling of being tailed by your own ghost. These metaphors for Flickering i may sound esoteric, but they’re reasonable descriptions after a few listens.
Despondent - "Other Girls Too" | Album Review
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.