Irreversible Entanglements are grounded in jazz, or if you want a more precise categorization, spiritual jazz, but this quintet has something that can also be labeled as an experimental post-punk mentality and approach to spiritual jazz. What they have brought to Protect Your Light is the musical experience they gained.
With ear issues seemingly on the men, it would seem mclusky are ready to reconvene their second coming, a handful of great songs leading the way. The band released as “double A-side” single, with subsequent “double B-sides” to boot, delivered via Bandcamp in order to raise money for international touring and hefty visa costs.
Patio’s Collection offers a fresh and exciting expansion of their brittle post-punk by loosening the grooves and imparting a bit of disco inspiration into the formula. They still retain their tight connection and anxious tension, but there is a bit more freedom to explore new directions and challenge themselves to their benefit.
Released via Iron Lung Records, the West Coast purveyors of some of the finest anarcho punk this side of hell on Earth, Buyer’s Remorse wastes no time in uninviting you into its harsh soundscape, filled with diatribes against modern contradictions, life debts, paranoid anxiety, addictive decay, and traces of assorted human wastes.
The band’s document of near-impending implosion, Live in Brooklyn 2011, is perhaps the most giving and gracious accidental greatest-hits and entry point to Sonic Youth they could have asked for. It was given a digital release in 2020, but now is the first of any of those digitals to receive a proper physical treatment in this decade.
Tomb Mold have pushed boundaries since their formation. With The Enduring Spirit, they’ve decimated form in favor of exploration, from caustic prog to jazzy psych expanses, and dare we say they’ve done it without alienating metal purists. Their latest album favors an open mind, a collision of primal force and deranged technicality.
The constant tinkering of their songs gives the impression of a restless band always reaching for something better than the last time, and in reworking an older batch of songs on The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry, they concede that the best that you’re capable of at any given moment is a shifting target.
On their new EP, I’m So Lucky, blood-curdling screams over abrasive textures stir up dissonance and paranoia. As uneasy as it is to listen to, they make it worth every second through rich layers and dazzling samples. As the “Philly shoegaze” landscape and subculture begin to crystallize, Spirit of the Beehive continues to hold their own.
Drolomon is CS Cleaners’ debut EP, concocting a hypnotic combination of classic punk, a la Black Flag, the art rock looseness of Tropical Fuck Storm, and the optimism of Sports Team. After their debut single “Income Pain,” a gritted teeth love letter to hardcore, the group planted their feet in warehouse floors sticky with beer and sweat.
Be Your Own Pet has reunited and released their third record, Mommy. Teasing another unapologetically piercing garage rock experience, the album opens with searing guitar solos and thunderous drum patterns. However, it’s in the second half of the album that the band’s experimentation takes center stage.
PALS is a great example of what a debut record should do. It provides an introduction to a band that is clearly hungry to break out and show what they can do, while still being incredibly well produced, funny, catchy, and succinctly and tightly played. The musicianship and creativity here holds a lot of promise.
When the band go from making music to trying to make a grander statement -- as the two halves fully represent -- everything clicks into place. The record as this living entity shifts from mostly good to having depth and personality. The layers in that second half find them building on their influences with courageous abandon.
Sadie Dupuis and her crew are BIG on sonics; they played about fifty different guitars, through over a hundred effects pedals and thirty amps at Rancho de la Luna and Sonic Ranch for Rabbit Rabbit. The band has always had a guitar focus, and the riffs have continuously been hot, but engineer Sarah Tudzin, brought added heat.
GBMystical was releasing bedroom pop, garage rock, folk rock, and indie throwbacks. Genre, it seems, is as fluid as water, for Munawet. However, by no means would one expect him to set his sights on tried and true sludgy, thrashy, groovy metal for his next project. Yet, that is exactly what The Mantis is - crunchy, pummeling and speeding.
Given that it has taken a number of years for this new album to appear, one could read I Was a Thing of Beauty as a make-or-break moment for the band. Clearly, they possess enough patience to wait for songs to come together. Like their esteemed influences, they seem content for the time being to revise their sound as it suits them.
Nate Dionne turns musical conventions into personal diary entries, referencing characters and moments only intimately known by the narrator. The past is oppressed with naivety. A bleak economic landscape looms over the narrative, of personal worth now being dictated by futile lottery tickets and faceless hierarchy, rather than family.
