Marisa Dabice said I Got Heaven is about unleashing the animal inside of her, about a kind of freedom we aren't allowed. It is that feral eeriness that defines this album and what gives it a distinct sound from previous Mannequin Pussy records. The ten songs feel like crawling through mud, sprinting through tall grass, seeing your hot breath.
Vibrations Now is the new EP from Fantastic Purple Spots, the duo of Barrett Jones and Dave Junker out of Austin, Texas, four songs full of folk-ish dreamy psychedelia that lingers in the eardrums well after its done. They lean into the spacier aspects of their influences and recall the fuzzier elements of a band like Brian Jonestown Massacre.
The elusive Fugitive Bubble bursts through the Olympia, WA music scene to wreak havoc on conscientious, hard-core thrill seekers with their glorious re-issue of Delusion through Sorry State Records. Blazing through ten tracks in less than twenty minutes, Delusion flashes teeth to freedom, and casts off the cuffs of bondage.
Timony epitomizes the rock-and-roll lifer, a journey-person musician who has integrated different genres through a steady output. This new solo album feels different, however. Though she has never been absent, Untame the Tiger sounds like both a culmination of these prolific decades and a re-introduction.
Friko is the latest band from Chicago’s expansive indie scene to turn heads with the release of their debut full length. In an impressive and complex blossom of chamber-pop, post-punk, and poetic spite, the duo have loomed together a blistering quilt of melodies, moving compositions, and notable spine-shivering anthems.
Souvenir is Omni’s second LP on Sub Pop and fourth overall. It has that same disciplined, musical excellence we've come to expect from them, and the ideas on here remain as exquisite as ever. It's been over four years since their last (and strongest) album Networker, and some subtle adjustments have been made.
The passing of the lyric writing and, often, vocal duties, to his partner Denée Segall and collaborator, emphasizes the general musical direction Ty Segall seems to be taking his project. Both this record and his prior album, “Hi, Hello,” share what feels like less of an urgency to arrive at a specific destination.
Throughout their career, Spiritualized has transformed psychedelic rock. They’ve taken seemingly small steps in re-shaping the standard formulas and they’ve taken big leaps into the unknown. At that, their best albums usually include both. That’s exactly what was happening on their fifth album Amazing Grace, newly reissues last month.
All in My Head, the latest EP from the Maggie Denning led NYC quartet Tetchy, continues to cement them as one of the more creative and fun punk bands around. As a songwriter Denning continues to examine and attack life with equal amounts of passion and fury, unleashing strengths and a new level of depth.
Art-rockers Godcaster, based in Brooklyn, have blessed the ears of underground music fans with their self-titled sophomore album. The sextet comprised of Bruce Ebersol, Judson Kolk, Jan Fontana, Von Kolk, David McFaul, and Ryan West have captured their theatrical and chaotic energy on this record, transcending any of their other work.
The Austin-based trio make bilingual no-wave that is unsettlingly anxious but also life-affirming and necessary. Their debut album, Smell of Money, is pervaded by pounding riffs, staticky, screeching guitars, and entrancing vocals. The music is challenging and rewarding and extremely singular in the current landscape.
Over the span of a decade there’s been some refinement and what was once masked in acid-fried tape hiss and awash in caterwauling guitars has become distilled into something cleaner, yet every bit as strong. David Nance & Mowed Sound is the next chapter of an already essential story, an evolution of his penchant for country subversion.
This is not an album of hope because these are rarely hopeful times, rather Buice’s aim seems to be catharsis by way of some of the most inventive noise rock this year. Their sound is a hurricane of angular guitars, crushing bass, and rapid-fire drums, with bass player/lead singer Hayden Locke's voice echoing out across the storm.
Mary Jane Dunphe’s debut has been a long time coming, the musician and poet has been making waves within the underground for the better part of a decade. Dunphe’s voice has appeared across a swathe of cult acts, always sounding as impressive as it is unique. Yet on her debut, Dunphe sounds her most fully formed and brilliant yet.
Aunt Katrina’s Hot, out via Pittsburgh label Crafted Sounds, feels like letting loose after hours, blasting music over the office intercom and sneaking your friends in to dance. It’s all the marshmallows in the bowl of Lucky Charms that stick in your teeth, with its Y2K computer game nostalgia and sweaty danciness.
Hailing from Champaign, IL, Hum always provided more substance to their recordings than any hit single might suggest. For this reason, the re-release of their catalog on vinyl – Electra 2000, You’d Prefer an Astronaut, Downward is Heavenward, and Inlet – is deserved and will hopefully give them renewed attention.
Historically, Vastum’s signature flavor of lyrical blasphemy centered around sins of the flesh taken to disgustingly perverse extremes and communicated via gratuitous and cavernous death metal. Inward to Gethsemane shifts the focus of its subject matter from the visceral profanity of sex to the suffocating, metaphysical anguish of religion.
