Has anyone been asking for an album that can unite fans of Van Halen and Suicide? Doesn’t matter, we have it now. Jean Mignon is a solo project from NYC-via-Boston noise impresario Johnny Steines. He borrows the name of a 16th century French engraver to plunge into a breakneck, blistering river of feedback.
“Post-punk’s latest poster boys” ask Where’s My Utopia? on their newest album, a tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic, and groovy record. They create a very dynamic and lighthearted kind of sound, which shows how much they’ve grown since The Overlord. Listening to this album is immersive and feels transcendent, like entering a vivid dreamscape.
The Pilgrim, Their God, and The King of My Decrepit Mountain is a fantastically listenable record whose somewhat cryptic narrative never distracts from the truly great songs and detailed arrangements, and instead only increases the intriguing nature of it all. It's both digestible and obtuse, and in that contradiction the album finds its magic.
No one song on the record sounds much like the others, and as her role in the ensemble shifts from song to song, Rosali's voice and vantage point shifts, too. Rather than being an inconsistency, this is a unique, characteristic strength of Rosali's artistry. With Bite Down, she becomes multitudinous.
Returning with her sophomore album, One Million Love Songs, Viscius is now boldly taking on another one of the most complicated components of being human; love. Recorded in Asheville with production help from Alex Farrar, the album finds Bnny in confident forward motion as she learns to embrace everything that love throws at her.
Wrapped in Cellophane is the debut from Atlanta quartet Vessel who traffic in post-punk with some unexpectedly exotic flourishes and sparse bobbing hooks punctuated by Alex Tuisku's lyrics. The band’s sound is full of space, led by remarkably flexible rhythms and an unstoppable ability to find the ever shifting groove.
After a five-year gap, the American rock band from Walla Walla arrives with a new studio album, Live Laugh Love. Recorded in three different sessions over a couple of years, the album marks the first time all four members sing, and they enjoy every second of it despite the ambivalent emotions they sing about.
While her previous releases showcased her arresting voice and undeniable spirit, they feel reserved in comparison to the new record. LATE SLAP is teeming with life, in all its joy, heaviness, and whimsy. It’s teeming with music: beautiful, uncanny layers of voice, a menagerie of synth tones, guitar jangles, tasteful strings and enthralling melodies.
Adrianne Lenker is one of contemporary American folk music’s poets in residence. Between her song writing in Big Thief and her solo project, she manages to create worlds that feel so familiar, but then intertwine them with transcendentalist romanticism, rendering these views slightly more esoteric and impalpable.
Mulva have released their debut album, Bitter Form, in which they seem both newly-transformed and yet more familiar than ever. It's just as startling and compelling of a new experience as you’d ultimately desire. It's about accessibility to themselves and to one another, being free to find a way to pull back or push forward.
Sweeping Promises’ powerful piercing vocals, grungy guitar, and oddly hypnotizing synth lines combine with the post-punk atmosphere to make this band unforgettable, leaving the listener with a lasting impression. The album deals with depressing themes, different forms of distress, yet the duo’s sound remains bright .
Naked Era, the sophomore album of Chicago indie rock artist Chaepter, is a shadowy and pulsing collection of songs. His debut for the Boston-based Candlepin Records is fraught with emotion and prairie-sized dread. Songs loom over you, closing in around you as you listen like a dense fog or hundred-pound weighted blanket of sound.
Characteristically, The Collective is full of distortion albeit in a manner different from Gordon’s solo debut. The album is fully alive to our present moment. The hip-hop elements – the trap percussion, the heavy bass lines, the thick production quality – establish this fixation, proving once more that Gordon remains as forward thinking as ever.
Total Sham dropped their self-titled label debut on Under the Gun Records. It's antagonistic in the extreme; with the kind of hostility you'd expect from an exasperated python, darting around violently with no care for its surroundings. In much the same vein as their hardcore predecessors, they run on maximum amplitude.
