Our Year-End coverage "fun" isn't over just yet. You've read our spectacular "Year In Review" feature (available to bookmark for your convenience) and checked out the "Staff Picks" count-down, but now it's time to hear from some friends of the site in a feature we're calling "Guest List," a chance for bands, labels, and music industry types to share what kept them going over the past year.
Small Pets And Kitchenettes' 10 tracks are not for the faint of heart. The album's abrasive demeanor and engagingly low fidelity recordings can range between spastic bursts of Devo indebted post-punk and unforgivingly dissonant noise to punk so filthy, you may just want to take a shower after listening.
Following the release of their latest EP, the band's original line-up set to work on finishing their debut, a record that's been about a year in the making. The band's lo-fi punk clamor and emotive vocals combine together to create something both immediate and ragged, with their brightest melodic moments peaking up just enough from the distorted sludge pop.
Brooklyn band Blush, which features the songwriting talents of ex-Darlings guitarist/vocalist Maura Lynch and members of Pill and Pop. 1280, created a sonic manifestation of that balmy reflex on their self-titled debut. It's a keenly textural record that, like its namesake, uses subtly to convey its emotions.
Coffee is a new collaboration between Julian Fader (Ava Luna) and Andy Molholt (Laser Background, Speedy Ortiz), a pairing that was probably inevitable between the long time friends. The band's double album debut, Big Hug/Ocean Fruit, is 26 tracks long, none of which breach the two minute mark. The ideas are quick and unfiltered, a rapid succession of fuzz pop creativity.
Their shape-shifting grooves continue to evolve and expand, forever pushing forward into their own unique landscape of psychedelic exploration and brain-stem dripped art pop. It's becoming increasingly hard to stand out when seemingly everyone is embracing their weirder side, but there's only one Wei Zhongle.
To celebrate Chips For Dinner's vinyl release, Palberta and No One And The Somebodies were kind enough to interview each other, asking the hard hitting questions you've always wanted to know about Palberta's royal origins, what kind of chip they would be, and the prospects of a NOATS family restaurant.
