Lee Fields is nothing short of a living legend. Dubbed “Little JB” for his likeness to James Brown, the singer continues to carry the torch of soul and funk on his invigorating 19th studio album Sentimental Fool. Fields’ latest regroups The Dap-Kings, lead by Gabriel Roth aka Bosco Mann, for a pointedly classic occasion.
Some Lentils albums feel stuffed and a bit frantic. Budget Alchemy was packed with brash horns and violins. Comparatively, Ixnay on the Entilslay is sparse and gentle. The majority of its nine songs lull the listener into a peaceful haze with simple and repetitive acoustic guitar ideas with often as little as a shaker to back it up.
Like most years that join the rear-view mirror, 2022 develops its hazy complexion. As it does, brilliant highlights cut through the fog. One of those lights is Squirrel Flower's latest record Planet EP. The self-produced effort, released last January, earmarks a chapter in the artistic career of Ella Williams that is worth exploring for its clarity of emotion.
San Francisco's Galore certainly fall into the category of artists who have picked up on the “New Zealand” sound. Their initial album and particularly their latest five song EP, Blush, are brim-full of both catchy melodies and uncluttered, seemingly simple, guitar-driven arrangements, airy and full of bright melodies that stick to your ears.
Sporting just seven tracks, Is It You? is fashioned after the incessant way that the human life is led. Much like how consecutive days unconsciously turn into weeks, each song exists distinctly separate from one another and still somehow, the tracklist can also be blended together into one mind-melting thirty minute trip.
Debuting in 1972, a year after the infamous 1971 year in music, Harvest was this country’s number one selling album of that year, and has remained Neil Young’s signature and most referenced album. It came off the heels of the first hiatus of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, with the success of Harvest coming as a surprise to Neil himself
Over the past few years, and a couple of EPs, Western Mass based trio EIEIEIO have been wielding their warped and wild noise punk mayhem, careening around gang vocals aided by jazzy freak outs, aided by math-rock flourishes. They continue to gel and deliver tastes of their world in a progressively intriguing manner with "Gentlemen Stop!"
Fievel is Glauque is led by Ma Clément and Zach Phillips, backed by an expert crew of musicians. Flaming Swords transports you back in time to a bizarro Parisian nightclub, where jazzy guitar chords mix with prog-rock licks, smooth saxophones squeal with angular bursts, shuffling drums flirt with breakbeat rhythms, and sultry vocals hypnotize.
All you can learn about Vivi Milne online is that she’s from Sacramento and that she’s released six albums so far, of which Solstice is the latest. That can be a double-edged sword if the music isn’t up to a scratch. Luckily for Milne and her listeners, her concept works, and it shrouds her persona, as well as her art, in a bit of a veiled mystery.
What is most exciting about this endeavor is what it might say about the band’s future, through the foreshadowed new directions. There are nods to industrial and ambient music on “Bleeding Out,” shades of emotive post-rock on “Kids,” straight up death metal on “Punishment Box” and even subtle hyper-pop influence on “TAH”.
The mingling of June McDoom’s distinct voices, as they blend with and overtake each other, is enjoyably discombobulating. It sets the tone for a daring and lovely debut EP that doesn’t just bounce between polarities, but actually unfixes them. This isn’t an acoustic, stripped-down-and-turtlenecked kind of debut.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
