The Chicago quartet play hardcore at the speed of light, their fury only matched by their willingness to distort their assault with subtle psychedelic shifts. Harsh Reality, released via Three One G Records is aware of police brutality, corporate greed, and ever present inequality, and Stress Positions are none too happy about any of it.
Sundae Painters, the last recordings of Hamish Kilgour (The Clean), brings four pivotal artists together. Kilgour, Alec Bathgate (Tall Dwarfs), Paul Kean (Toy Love, The Bats) and Kaye Woodward (The Bats) have a long history with each other and these recordings come from informal jam sessions that give space for psychedelic and folk exploration.
Wishy is a force of Midwestern exceptionalism; a blanket of whirling guitar music and a breeze of soothing pop melodies all brought to life by leaders Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites. With their new label home, Winspear, and help from friend and producer, Ben Lumsdaine (Durand Jones), Wishy has released their debut EP, Paradise.
Cruel throws another hat into the busy, increasingly-young Chicago ring, with a mosh-able, riff-heavy debut EP on Fire Talk’s new tape imprint Angel Tapes. To-the-point at only four songs over eleven minutes, Common Rituals flexes a driving rhythm section, loud two-guitar attack, and blown-out yelled vocals.
While a lot of bands are delivering truly unique and innovative releases, few of them have managed to deliver anything with quite the same energy as Pons. On their latest album, The Liquid Self, the three piece has constructed a shipwrecked concept album that is as lyrically dense as it is full of brooding atmosphere and chaotic ups and downs.
Czarface lives on. Hip-hop’s mightiest heroes are back with their ninth LP Czartificial Intelligence. Made up of Inspectah Deck and Boston’s 7L & Esoteric, the group is known for their intricate lyricism and plush old school production. Their latest, a major label debut released a decade after their inaugural album, is no exception.
The Guided By Voices archive resembles a murmuration by now with thousands of melodies and ideas flocking together to create a singular movement, in which individual elements matter less than the beauty created by the entire whole. Nowhere To Go But Up is a minor, but essential, part of this greater entity.
Roseland Live NYC – which paired a gripping performance by Gibbons and co. with a full band and orchestral strings, horns, and woodwinds – would be the last music Portishead would release for over a decade. Now, 25 years later, the band has reissued the album as Roseland NYC Live 25, newly remastered, and for the first time in its complete form.
It is a sign of mutual respect and adoration to make something together as one package to grace listeners with. Queensburgh by Baked and The Zells is the latest addition to the DIY canon of splits. Two of independent rock's heaviest hitters have delivered a special split that anyone will be able to appreciate.
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.
