Blacklisters strike the perfect level of sardonic humor and cultural disgust, so interwoven it’s hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Sludge and bludgeoning density are paired with acidic noise and a stumbling resolve that feels like a reprieve from polite society or a scourge on meatheads worldwide.
Blotted and vibrant are the bruises that we acquire in the midst of growing up. In the midst of those challenges is nineteen year old Perth singer/songwriter Mia June and her debut EP, Don’t Forget Your Bags. Out on Father/Daughter Records, we find her with a collection of songs that feel both fresh and exhilaratingly spirited.
There is a new softness in Rob Grote’s music as Super Infinity, with his seven song release Palace. The songs hover between playfulness and childlike awe: jangling reverb, words that tumble and river over themselves, and layered head voice. Grote said he wrote these songs “as a reprieve from recordings that were taking much more labor.”
Cartwheel is much more pop inclined than prior releases with its vivid, gleaming instrumentation and tones. This navigates away from the scuzzy punk energy that has defined Hotline TNT to date, but overall, the structure of the new songs hasn’t changed that profusely. They still follow a similar formula but it’s expressed differently.
Slow Pulp introduce deeply sentimental themes of personal reflection and a new sound on their most recent album, Yard. The album is a further evolution of their sound as it brings together synth sounds from prior releases while continuing to lean towards more acoustics, which suits the nostalgic energy of the album’s entirety.
With I Killed Your Dog, L’Rain are clearly seeking to further push the envelope, with an even broader theatrical scope, spine-chilling lyrics, and absolutely mesmerizing musicality and production. What makes it so special in the landscape of 2023 is that it implements hallmarks from the late 80’s and 90’s all the way up to our current moment.
Over its 41 minutes, Exit Simulation is an insistent listen, pervading and reverberating the walls of whatever space it can attain. The album is brilliantly paced to function as a transitory performance that assumes the song itself is only a part of a larger tapestry, requesting the full respect of its space to unfurl.
With her new EP, Celestial Mirror, Chicago’s own soothing heartbreaker, Mia Joy, makes her way back into our fragile hearts and our busted carousels of self-actualization. Recorded directly to tape and mostly in one take, Celestial Mirror is a homey flavor of dream pop and vocal sensations that portrays a welcoming pair of open arms.
The Giant’s Lawn is something spectacular, a record with a natural feeling of awe, like the sun shinning from deep within in the forest woods. Their third album is ambitious, but it never feels like they set out with ambitious intentions, the songs are following a path, treading space and time with a steady atmosphere of wondrous permanence.
Viji’s So Vanilla is anything but. The London-based singer’s LP summons neuroticism and turmoil over hypnotic dance tracks. After releasing her first album on Dirty Hit, she graduated to cult favorite Speedy Wunderground. Her partnership with producer Dan Carey illuminates her deeply introspective and often tongue-in-cheek lyrics.
The TFUL282 discography ranged from full-lengths released by Matador to rare singles on obscure labels shared around by hand. There was a litany of covers and b-sides that were only accessible to listeners through tape trading or Youtube. These Things Remain Unassigned digs deep into the archives to assemble these miscellaneous tracks.
bar italia operates in the wonderful space between art-rock pretension and slacker affability. Their music is too layered, rich, and dynamic to be considered carefree and, at the same time, features too many riffs, hooks, and melodies to be over-analyzed. The Twits feels like their definitive sonic statement.
Tomorrow’s Fire, the new album from Chicago artist Squirrel Flower is a potent record with self-effacing folk songwriting backed by a loud shoegaze-tinged band. This is their third album for Polyvinyl, and their most varied yet, equally full of loud, head-banging moments, and intricate, transcendent vocal arrangements.
If there’s an art form to deconstructing art-punk syllable by syllable, Leeds trio Beige Palace stand at the vanguard. There music seems to look at the bigger picture in scope, just before it’s shattered into drawn out shards, dangerously crafted with sharp edges and puzzle pieces that delight in never quite fitting the way they should.
So Long Before Now by The Woods is a charming artifact of 1980s underground culture and music. Only fully seeing the light of day just this year, the record feels remarkably contemporary. There’s something to be said about culture and styles repeating themselves, but there’s a special air to this record.
On Attachment Figure, the Florida based Sarah Morrison works all the angles of the ever changing moods in her music to near perfection. She drenches her songs in layers and layers of sound that bounces from jazzy classicism to ominous and somber synth driven laments, reaching into the furthest depths of desire and memory.
