Led by one of the greatest lead singers of the past few years, they’ve built up a ferocious reputation for their live shows, ensuring this EP should become a defining companion piece to their recordings. Live at The Croxton flashes by in under ten minutes but not before the dynamism and raucousness of their energy is translated to the listener.
Melenas hail from Pamplona, Spain, a city known more for the running of the bulls than its music scene. After multiple releases on local labels, they have signed with US based label Trouble in Mind to release Dias Raros. If there is any justice, the band has created an album that should put their local scene on the map.
L.A.’s Mo Dotti are a genuine shoegaze band, their sound reflective of the genre’s glory days. They have studied the classics, from songwriting to production. They’ve spent the past three years refining their approach, constructing and layering guitars with dreamy perfection, and everything falls right into place on their first EP, Blurring.
If last year’s debut LP delivered an anthology of twee-punk fairy tales, Parsnip’s new EP represents a burgeoning adolescence for the band as they test out new tones and take on larger themes. On Adding Up, the quartet buoys a scrappiness and more robust sound while still glimpsing the joy of their previous work.
In an unprecedented move, Chicago’s Options are sharing a remix of their song “Faster” before we’ve heard “Faster” in its original form. Its full of intrigue and mystery. While the source material is set to arrive on the latest Options album, Wind’s Gonna Blow, due out May 22nd, the remix is here and ready.
If change is bad, Stuck makes the best of it. The record, front to back, is solid. It’s as dense as it is brief - the band wastes zero time plunging to exceptional depths in both arrangement and lyricism. Stuck’s debut contains the kind of post-punk precision and detail begging for repeated listens. Nothing’s overthought, but it’s all thought out.
New York’s Pleaser is the duo of Carrie Furniss (ex-Birthing Hips) and Travis Hagan (halfsour), but knowing their previous work doesn’t really paint the picture that is their latest band. The pair go for a decidedly more electronic sound with Pleaser, a band that seemingly finds the pair influenced primarily by dating based reality shows.
This is esoteric and cerebral rock. The use of Agitprop (political propaganda, especially in art or literature) in the album’s title defines this as highbrow music, clearly, but Peel Dream Magazine’s quality ensures its never pretentious or fawning. It’s clear that Stevens thinks consciously and acutely about the meaning of his music.
Isobel Campbell emerges solo after a quiet fourteen years. Her latest album, There Is No Other… presents a bit of contemporary seriousness without overshadowing her familiar, dreamy sound. There Is No Other is different from anything we’ve already heard from Campbell. On this album emerges her new persona: a soft-spoken activist.
Philary is the solo project of Alex Molini (Pile, Jackal Onasis, Stove), who has cultivated an artful combination of heaviness and harmony on I Complain. Molini melds sludgy, bass-driven riffs with catchy and melodic vocal lines; it’s a winning combination, and yet it is performed here in a way we haven’t quite heard before.
Live records are often boring, but this King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard collection finds new ground, and finds an interesting cue. The songs of the record are stylistic landscapes, aesthetic insights that touch a style that embraces from psychedelic rock albums like Gumboot Soup to the stoner metal of Infest the Rats’ Nest.
