They Are Gutting a Body of Water and fellow Philly band A Country Western throw a barrage of different sounds at the listener and all of them stick. This five song split is ambitious in its transitions between styles and continues in the same vein as TAGABOW’s 2021 split EPCOT, which oscillated between shoegaze and breakcore.
Having played their final show on September 18th, Yucky Duster should be remembered as one of the most happy-go-lucky, ambitiously melodic, and vocally harmonic bands today. They created a brand of twee-pop with genuine fun – like conversational rants in between verses fun – along with utterly standalone and versatile melodies.
Earth Visions Of Water Spaces is grounded in an elemental ethos while retaining the band’s likeness for entertaining celestial questions. As on their previous showing, they again display a knack for transforming simple phrases into hypnotic mantras and restrained instrumental passages into tempered progressions of mystifying proportion.
Judy and the Jerks have survived long-distance communication and being in numerous other bands to release their second LP. Despite half of the band moving to Atlanta mere months before COVID hit, they’ve stayed the course with a few tape releases between now and their previous LP release, Friendships Formed in the Pit.
The near-28 minute album is the latest in a more maverick, singular-songwriter emphasis. This is not exactly a self-conscious decision or predetermined outcome. It’s just that the 4-piece that refined each other and the improvisational methodology reached a limit, perhaps a temporary one. It’s still one that finds Rossiter solo.
With the generic iPhone alarm at the top of the first track setting the tone, Ismatic Guru’s II is the embodiment of waking up too early and your whole breakfast sticking to the pan. Six minutes of spastic but locked-in grooves with lyrics— when you can process them— that sound a lot like vignettes of drug use but when you look closer, aren’t.
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.
