Nashville’s Shell of a Shell is releasing their demons on their latest offering, Away Team, out on Exploding In Sound Records. At just under 45 minutes, this album weaves its way through a repertoire of hard-hitting emotions, catchy and tumultuous riffs, and lyrics that get to the root of what it is to be a person, more specifically, to be on your own.
Following a move from the LA sprawl to a shack in the Mojave Desert, “Goo-Goo’s Melody” is our first sample of the band’s relocation and revisioning. This time around, Banny Grove sets out to simultaneously streamline elements of pop and electronic music into beautifully engaging compositional developments.
The EP lasts for only a few moments and those moments are revelations. Konigsberg’s waste-not arrangements pack brilliant melody and nuance behind her always potent lyrical introspection. Each song contains an intentional act of self awareness and forgiveness; four contemplative steps toward equilibrium.
Lead single “Cerulean 20%” is joyously warped and whimsical, stumbling between sweetened and distorted pop, stuttered rhythms, and the occasional texturally crushing riff. Molholt manages to create something so adept and alien that it simultaneously feels psychedelic, heavy, and well… funky in composition.
In 2010, Taffety Punk Theater Company premiered the dance play suicide.chat.room. Ten years later, the previously unreleased score by Beauty Pill, Sorry You’re Here, was finally made public. The score, created by Chad Clark, feels cold and dystopic, yet is delicate, human, and holds its own as a powerful piece of music about a difficult topic.
“Super Speedy Zippy Whipper” is the band's first single from their 7" EP Remember The Future? Vol 1 - out via Marthouse Records on April 10th. There's no shortage of angular guitar riffs, a tight rhythm section, supplementary synth lines - all allowing Shaw's knack for vocal melodies to shine through.
Lead single “Pure And Radiant Joy” is one of the biggest songs you’re going to hear, with an exuberance that explodes in every tonality explored. Opening with a haunting harmonium refrain that could be the start to the next Halloween movie, the rhythm section quickly devours the proceedings, pounding with enough tension to bend all your silverware.
Hounds is the debut EP from NYC band Tetchy, and it’s one full of roiled up emotional bloodletting and resolve over beds of muscular instrumentation. Maggie Denning’s vocals are a focal point as she lays out her bare emotions in an always powerful manner, be it in letting go of fears or detrimental relationships.
Grocer blends quirky pop with dissonant punk, jazzy art rock, and a musical complexity that feels exceptionally refreshing and well constructed. On Little Splash, the Philadelphia based quartet have created an album full of dynamics and catharsis, with songs that range from exuberant pop to raw punk and everything in-between.
The new year has brought a very welcome reissue of Chicago/Seattle stalwarts Silkworm’s second full length album In the West. The early days of Silkworm with Joel R.L Phelps joining Tim Midyett, Andy Cohen, and Michael Dahlquist were a fairly different beast, but one that still created music full of energy and infectious liveliness.
Their full length debut finds the trio equally freaked out and aggravated, as they grapple with identity, acceptance, and primal emotion that comes from grappling for your place in the world. Mixed and mastered by Todd Rittmann (Dead Rider, US Maple), every moment of their record feels appropriately unhinged and decisively unwound.
Motorists are a new band from Toronto but the members grew up together in Calgary, lifelong friends who have played in various bands for well over a decade. Set to release their debut EP, From The Wreckage, later this month via Planet of the Tapes, the album is a combination of well-worn power-pop, slacker punk, and the gentle side of krautrock.
Regardless of which direction each song takes, the band never loses its momentum with its thoughtful storytelling and melodies that are at once heart pounding and heart wrenching. In these ten songs, Ratboys are sifting through the past like one would open dusty, nearly forgotten boxes in an attic, but hey’re also embracing future adventures.
Surrender Your Poppy Field, Guided by Voices’ first release in the 2020s, marks an important point in the band’s history. As their 30th studio album, one might expect the band to rest on their laurels as unofficial royalty among the indie crowd and phone it in. Instead they remain true to themselves and put out music that sounds fun, all while finding ways to build upon it and stay fresh.
Chicago’s Sorespot are very good at what they do. If you aren’t familiar with the band, here’s your introduction: there’s heaps of feedback and sweetly subtle harmonies, and they go together perfectly on the band’s upcoming album, Gifts of Consciousness. Due out next month, its bursting with shoegaze bliss that’s steadily heavy.
