Holy Western Parallels' debut album is the brainchild of Chicago's Steve Marek (Monobody), recorded with contributions from his Monobody bandmates and some fantastic vocal talent from Joshua Virtue, Davis Blackwell, NIIKA, and V.V. Lightbody. If you’ve spent any time listening to Monobody, Holy Western Parallels will feel familiar.
You may be familiar with the idealized femininity from the prom queen aesthetics of Pom Pom Squad. It works as a visual extension of the sequined surf rock guitars and girl group harmonies of Cinema Hearts’ new Bartees Strange-produced EP, Your Ideal, but for Weinroth it stems from her experience as the winner of Miss Mountain Laurel.
High Flying Man is the third feature-length album released by Matt Berry as The Berries, his pseudo-eponymous project. The psychedelic, almost Brit-pop inspired music of the previous release is still subtly present but High Flying Man is more prominently steeped in American Rock ’n’ Roll, blistering guitar solos, and pop melodies.
Four years have passed since More Klementines’ eponymous debut album came out—or have they? “Hot Peace” is making me pleasantly dizzy. Then again, what else could one have expected from More Klementines? Michael Kiefer, Jon Schlesinger, and Steubs are back at it with Who Remembers Light, sounding like they’ve never not been at it.
Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner, the LA duo better known as Kamikaze Palm Tree, are definitely not afraid to dabble with art-rock/pop or to take musical risks. Mint Chip, their second album (and first for Drag City) shows that taking musical risks can pay off if you know what you are doing and have the imagination and capabilities to do so.
Scanning the spectrum of love lost and found, Hiding In Place, the new EP from Philadelphia’s Queen of Jeans, revels in thoughtful exploration. Their first original release since 2018 briefly touches on the stretches of loneliness, excitement, insecurity and resentment inherent to relationships beginning and end.
Pennsylvania’s Collapsed Skull is a new three-piece powerviolence band featuring members of Full of Hell. Their sound on the jaw-dropping debut EP Eternity Maze is a sort of genre-salad that mashes together powerviolence, hardcore, grindcore, death metal, and harsh noise all broken up by hip-hop, spoken word, and acoustic samples.
In August of 2021, Pile released an LP perfect for laying under the stars; Songs Known Together, Alone consisting of newly recorded tracks pulled from Pile's massive collection accompanied by a clever change in production. The tracks are all reimagined versions of Pile songs recorded solo by frontman Rick Maguire.
The record’s easygoing and nostalgic pop/R&B vibes call up the feeling of leaning back in an air-conditioned booth on a humid summer night. If you stop and listen, you can overhear Ty Sorrell at the next table over, reminiscing and exchanging secret handshakes with the other Richmonders who sit down to catch up.
All of Action Bronson’s best work treats music like Calvinball—meticulous and detailed worlds seemingly unspooling in a stream of consciousness. Cocodrillo Turbo is no different, as it loosely ties together a beasts-of-the-wilderness theme through nature show samples and a production palette of fuzzed-out, hungover psychedelia.
Recorded at Electric Wall in Seattle and mastered by These Arms Are Snakes’ drummer Chris Common, The Worst Has Finally Happened is a tangible document to be added to the Three One G family of relevant punk. Haunted Horses have frequency shaking all around. The punches keep coming, but it is somehow soothing.
Anxiety was getting in the way of Maryam Qudus’ creative work as Spacemoth until she realized she could channel her concerns through her synthesizers. The end result is an impressive debut album for the sought-after analog producer – the 13-track record, No Past No Future, is some of the most potent retro-futurism out there.
In its own manner, compiling Pavement’s “tortured context” comprised of the self-released Slay Tracks 1933-1969, early singles, and flexi-disc cuts made Westing (by Musket and Sextant) a 7" gold mine of exciting dipshit noise whose collage cover and phrases and song titles alluded to its own canon subversion.
After the more experimental endeavors of recent years, A Foul Form both carves out new ground for Dwyer and company to dig into while also calling back to the raucousness and comparative simplicity of Coachwhips and the Thee Oh Sees era. A Foul Form is taut and crackling. It burns white hot; the path it blazes is direct.
