After taking some time off from touring, White met Anderson at the coastal town of Point Lonsdale, Victoria, on the southeast shores of Australia. This laid-back scenery pours into Swallowtail, a new set of improvised compositions where the musical possibilities between them merge with the infinite ebb and flow of the Pacific Ocean coast.
Beak> have played together long enough to develop a synchronicity in their performances, providing each other the space to adapt and the patience to explore. That earned sense of trust feels apparent in the progressions found throughout >>>>, a record in constant motion yet never seemingly in a rush to get anywhere.
Beth Gibbons seems to have that slow-evolving, meticulous songwriting and arranging process, scrutinizing every note, every word placed in the lyrics. For some artists, such a process makes no difference in the final result, but with Gibbons, as evidenced here, the results are no less than mesmerizing.
Winged Wheel have expanded to a six piece ensemble involving Cory Plump, Fred Thomas, Whitney Johnson, Matthew J Rolin. and in addition to the first album’s lineup, Big Hotel enlists Lonnie Slack and Steve Shelley. In an orchestra where each person is a conductor, these experimental imaginations melt into one conversation.
There's beauty found in the thoughtful details and careful choices made throughout Amy O's latest offering, Mirror, Reflect. Arriving almost five years after her 2019 album Shell, here lies a meticulously crafted album that arguably embodies a stronger creative ethos than anything of her previous work.
There’s a thread of tension between domestic life and the life of an artist running through the record, with much of Deep Sage dealing with the specifics of motivation: why continue being in a band when it does so much to stunt the rest of your life around it? Why live life when you can take the band on the road and escape?
A recent press release describes #RICHAXXHAITIAN as the last of a “tetralogy” of Haiti-focused albums, starting with 2016’s HBO (Haitian Body Odor), Pray for Haiti, and Balens Cho (Hot Candles). Haiti’s struggle for self-determination has always been central to Mach’s mythos, but these four records explicitly use it as a framing device — and compared to its predecessors, #RICHAXXHAITIAN feels especially clear and distilled.
On the Spell Blanket demos, which were recorded after the release of Tender Buttons, it’s clear that the synthesis or contrast of different traditions of music was an overarching interest of this musical project. Unfortunately, with the untimely death of Trish Keenan, this aspect of Broadcast could not be fully appreciated until now.
On A Country Western’s new album Life on the Lawn they once again tweak their sound into something new and dial up the energy ever so much more. They keep the general vibe reflective of their namesake, but instead of using the stylings of slowcore, they opt for a more straight forward alternative country rock approach.
Objections has generated buzz around their debut, Optimistic Sizing. Part of that, if we're to believe the press release, is how the band engage genre. Specifically, that they free themselves from the "constraints" of their "Minutemen music-as-socialism blueprint" by each member overseeing "their own chunk of sonic landscape".
The Cool Cloud of Okayness was written and recorded during a period when Tara Jane O’Neil suffered the devastation of her home being destroyed by a wildfire in California and the long process of subsequently building a new one. She also describes the LP as being defined by her recording ensemble’s shared queer identity.
The Buffalo rapper layers her past lessons, each brick building a vision of a sustainable future. Like her counterparts, Noir sands rough friction from her upbringing into a smoothed-over confidence. However, instead of attempting to fortify a defensive armor, Noir’s learned past allows for a more honest, vulnerable swagger.
Divine Sweater are a terminally amiable Boston act taking the concept album to a more chilled out place. This is the end of the world on soft rock. We’re not necessarily dealing in the twisting emotional drama of Fleetwood Mac or the sleazy pop-soul cheese of Hall and Oates. More Modelo-on-the-boardwalk than spritzes-on-the-yacht.
Magic Fig’s self-titled album is an ever shifting kaleidoscope, the shapes all recognizable yet refracted in mirrored splendor. It’s a decidedly pop odyssey that wanders deep into the woods of late 60’s prog, Moog altered psych, and dream pop at its most visionary, a lysergic trip into an unknown cosmic past.
Maya Bon has shown herself to be adept at heart-wrenching emotions and expressing the hidden beauty in daily life in a manner thats wholesomely gripping. With Water's Here in You, Babehoven have managed to push beyond guitar based folk songs, incorporating a denser atmosphere that moves through pain into contemplative peace.
Bite is a sweeping sci-fi concept album about a virtual reality that promises blissful perfection that it can’t deliver on. The record uses those trappings to grapple with big topics – the perils of choosing your own reality, the inherent value of messy humanity in an artificially intelligent world, gender dysphoria – using equally big sounds.
