Alvvays - "Blue Rev" | Album Review
Considering the band delivered their new album, Blue Rev, after multiple all-night sessions, just barely hitting their vinyl production deadline, and that it’s been five years since their last album, one might expect Alvvays’ third album to feel overthought. On the contrary, Alvvays have created their most surprising and rewarding album yet.
Winded - "Schwartz Provides" | Album Review
Schwartz Provides is the third in the series of Schwartz releases from NY via FL artist Winded. The record is powered by a stark and often solemn beauty provided by Thrin Vianale's higher registered vocals and entertaining songwriting. Vianale manages to balance full throated emotion with a concealed intensity that pushes to be unleashed.
Jobber - "Hell In A Cell" | Album Review
Brooklyn band Jobber’s love for wrestling coming through in their name, artwork, song titles, and lyrics. On their debut EP Hell in a Cell, Jobber adopt wrestling’s insider language to explore workplace discontent and the struggle to be a good person in a shitty world. It’s a gimmick, sure, but it works.
Fake Palms - "Lemons" | Album Review
On Lemons, the third full length from Fake Palms, the band strips away a little of the density of their previous albums and sprinkle in a bit more cheer and brightness. Their songs still carry a bit of anger and anxiety within their clattering guitars and slower tempos, but the melodies just hit with more force and clarity than previously displayed.
The Casual Dots - "Sanguine Truth" + "The Casual Dots" | Album Review
DIY/riot grrrl veterans Christina Billotte, Kathi Wilcox, and Steve Dore—released The Casual Dots in 2004, apparently with little press or self-promotion, but still establishing a fan base through blog-era word-of-mouth. After an 18-year hiatus, last month the band re-released their debut at the same time as their surprise second full-length, Sanguine Truth.
Disco Doom - "Mt. Surreal" | Album Review
Mt. Surreal acts as an amalgamation of their previous work while journeying into something completely new. It’s an album of ambitious instrumentals and even more ambitious ideas. An album that wastes no space and never falters in its attempts to be what it’s trying to be, the best Disco Doom album yet.
Palm - "Nicks and Grazes" | Album Review
On their third full length, Nicks and Grazes, Palm fully lean into expanding their electronic and dance urges while the conversational guitar skronkings and creative rhythm section embellishments bubble underneath. The flexibility that they continue to expand upon and the language they all speak between each other is astonishing.
Michael Beach - "2022 EP" | Album Review
Eliza Niemi - "Staying Mellow Blows" | Album Review
“I want it to,” Eliza Niemi begins, little rattle, chucking her limbs to stay underwater–except the water is the present around her, its depth the curt end of her fingertips. Staying Mellow Blows is her third album; it is inside of her. She is a child the way Fiona Apple is a child: She is right. What she says is true.
Preoccupations - "Arrangements" | Album Review
Musically and lyrically Preoccupations has always been a band which focuses on the impending doom that will befall earth and humanity and Arrangements continues that dark manner of thinking and perhaps takes it even further. The bleak lens that Preoccupations view the world with has an even darker tint to it.
Julia Jacklin - "PRE PLEASURE" | Album Review
Julia Jacklin’s songwriting can be so intimate and direct that it can be, at times, discomforting for the listener. She gives voice to many of our own unspoken thoughts. We mistakenly assume we’re alone in our feelings, but when Jacklin hits an emotional nerve, we’re reminded that many of our suppressed thoughts are universal.
Sick Day - "Love Is A State Of Mind" | Album Review
Sick Day is a hard working band and they also happen to be fronted by a thoughtful and introspective songwriter who isn’t afraid of being brutally honest with herself, or with you. Olivia Wallace is a visual artist and songwriter who has been active in Chicago for long enough to know how it feels to work.
Melody's Echo Chamber - "Unfold" | Album Review
Unfold is a lost album, recorded right after her debut with Tame Impala's Kevin Parker, who co-produced and played along with Prochet on the seven songs. Whatever the reasons were to delay the release of this album are irrelevant now, as all the seven tracks here show that she has her ear on the essence what psychedelic pop should sound like.
Marina Allen - "Centrifics" | Album Review
As an object in itself, the album feels utterly unstuck from time. It’s evocative of the Laurel Canyonites of the late sixties, sure, but it refuses to paint within those lines. What sets it apart are Marina Allen’s voice and the landscape which surrounds it, and it’s in the interplay of these that a third, intangible thing emerges.
Tropical Fuck Storm - "Moonburn" | Album Review
While “Moonburn” and “Aspirin - Slight Return” would make for a stellar 7-inch, two additional cover songs really make this cassette an essential listen. Clocking in around fifteen minutes, Moonburn still captures the expansive vibes of earlier TFS albums like Braindrops and Deep States—records for a long drive down a lysergic highway.
Thanya Iyer - "Rest" | Album Review
Hellrazor - "Heaven's Gate" | Album Review
Michael Falcone writes deceiving melodies reminiscent of numerous 90's era callbacks and emotional slack but with an extra bite from blurring guitar squeals or frenetic drum fills. The trio has a wit about them that is quite appealing and a sense of levity keeps everything from getting too deep into the encroaching gloom.
Alex G - "God Save The Animals" | Album Review
Alex G is full of questions on God Save The Animals but intentionally avoids easy answers. It’s a record filled with anxiety but finds solace in the fractured nature of change. It’s a record with a whole lot of references to God but finds sanctification in the chaos rather than the structure of religion.
