The Flaming Lips - "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)" | Album Review
There are 100 tracks on this reissue, including demos, covers, remixes, alternative mixes, live tracks, story telling, helium voices, and even Sponge Bob. Without going into the weeds of every track, the most interesting ones are the demos. These demos are obviously real and raw, but they also show us how the Yoshimi sausage was made.
Soft Blue Shimmer - "Love Lives In The Body" | Album Review
The latest tracks show audible signs of softer edges than before, flattered by classic shoegaze structures. Love Lives in the Body is a very honest and relatable album as it portrays the spinning feelings of emotional-awareness, the struggle of self-love, and the concept of bordering on the thin line between optimism and delusion.
Red Scarves - "Ghost Hunter" | Album Review
Chicago’s Red Scarves take an imaginative and subversive take on clean cut guitar rock. The immensely talented four piece always seem to reach their destination, but they are intent on taking the scenic route to get there. A winding passage, a turn of phrase; the band chases down beauty taking the long way home.
Rider/Horse - "Feed 'Em Salt" | Album Review
One of the few silver linings of the lockdown was the formation of Rider/Horse, a pairing of Kingston, NY musicians Cory Plump (Spray Paint) and Chris Turco (Trans Am), whose chugging, electro-noise debut was one of the finest albums of 2021. The band returns with a more dense, varied and fully-formed LP, Feed ‘Em Salt.
Weyes Blood - "And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow" | Album Review
Mering once again achieves the magic of Titanic Rising on her fifth album And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. Addressing it as the second in a trilogy, it feels like the earthly successor to its watery predecessor. We’re no longer swimming in an ocean with our fears above sea level: we’ve risen to the shore and have to live alongside them.
Horse Lords - "Comradely Objects" | Album Review
Comradely Objects is arguably the most platonic release of the quartet's quintessential style they have concocted to date; everything falling in its right place doing exactly what music is supposed to. The sound on these seven cuts accomplishes a task the band has been inching towards and actively ace.
Full Of Hell - "Aurora Leaking From An Open Wound" | Album Review
Full of Hell is back if only for a brief moment, six minutes and 44 seconds to be exact, with what was a tour-exclusive EP, Aurora Leaking from an Open Wound. For what this release lacks in length, it more than makes up for it with intensity, noise, and riffs, an excellent addition to Full of Hell’s catalog of death metal-influenced grindcore.
Nightshift - "Made Of The Earth" | Album Review
With the Glasgow, Scotland collective Nightshift, it seems we can actually talk about both intellectual lyrics and music. The band only started in 2019, comprising four musicians already playing elsewhere - Eothen Stearn, Chris White, Andrew Doig, and Georgia Harris. We encounter that intellectual tag right from the start.
Blessed - "Circuitous" | Album Review
Smirk - "Material" | Album Review
Ten tracks of tangled, anxious but melodic punk, Material is the latest from Smirk, the solo project of Los Angeles guitarist Nick Vicario (Public Eye, Crisis Man). The followup to two 2021 releases, the album typifies the punchy, lo-fi aesthetic of the Feel It roster, while embracing both ‘70s-flavored rock guitar jams and jittery new wave of the ‘80s.
Delivery - "Forever Giving Handshakes" | Album Review
Melbourne’s Delivery evolve their sound and vibe with debut album Forever Giving Handshakes. Channeling wiry post-punk as much as psyched-out garage and hooky power-pop, Handshakes rides a wavering line between tightly-wound momentum and raucous partying, the result a collection of nervy, shout-along earworms.
Heather Trost - "Desert Flowers" | Album Review
Tony Molina - "In The Fade" | Album Review
Hearing new Tony Molina albums, such as his latest, In the Fade, brings me back to being a teenager, fully immersed in Weezer's Blue Album, the Beatles, and pumped to hear and learn more, setting off exploratory paths to underground bands. His music is a modern day starting point of “the good shit”.
They Are Gutting A Body of Water - "Lucky Styles" | Album Review
On their fourth record, they continue to do things nobody else's way but their own, continuing to refine their unique style of oddball shoegaze with an uncompromising vision of noisiness and weirdness. Through its all too brief runtime, Lucky Styles ranges from the crushingly loud to the stunningly serene, never settling on the easy choice.
The Black Angels - "Wilderness of Mirrors" | Album Review
Music should be impactful, wide and universally relatable. For almost twenty years, The Black Angels have done this through six long players and four extended plays. Five years since the profound Death Song, the Austin legends blast back onto Mother Earth with fierce textures driven by drummer Stephanie Bailey, who has never sounded larger.
Snooper - "Town Topic" | Album Review
Nashville’s Snooper gives us everything we could ever want from an egg punk EP: ripping-hot riffs, shrieking guitar, pummelling drums, half-sung vocals about modern malaise. Their latest five track EP, Town Topic, clocking in at less than eight minutes, sounds like a Devo record mistakenly played at 45 RPM, but this is no trite rehash.
NNAMDÏ - "Please Have A Seat" | Album Review
Eliza Edens - "We'll Become The Flowers" | Album Review
We'll Become the Flowers is New York based Eliza Edens’ second album of indie folk songs. The record is full of aching sadness contrasted with a whimsical hopefulness and acknowledgement of beauty all around, if we're open to seeing it. Eden's vocals have a way of cutting to your deepest feelings with their husky intonation and warmth.
Meat Wave - "Malign Hex" | Album Review
The anger that persists on Malign Hex is never so cliched to be grounded by the confines of its creators; it's tapping into the ether to explode unseen parts of reality and give listeners the spark to indulge these nameless feelings of fear, disgust, outrage, etc. To support this larger effort, the band emphasize their cohesion as a unit.