It’s fairly well known that Tom Petty wrote his critically acclaimed 1994 record Wildflowers as a double album, but Warner Bros. nixed that plan, saying it would be too long. If you ask a lot of die-hard fans, though, Wildflowers is his best work. Wildflowers & All the Rest finally puts the remaining songs where he wanted them: in the same place.
On her debut, Tenci crafts an album that’s at once wistful, solitary, warm, and tender. Shoman weaves together tracks that encapsulate how people and environments stick to us, creating a place of vulnerability and entanglement forever frozen in time. My Heart Is An Open Field builds a sound worth staying in.
The quintet (Lucie Murphy, Sam Skinner, Mike Dvorscak, Stella Kortchmar, and Theo Munger) have recorded their full length debut but before that is unleashed into the world the band have been sharing the intimate Woods Sessions, recorded live together in a Vermont cabin this past August by Tonje Thilesen.
Who Needs Smarts, Anyway? Is the first full length from Australia’s Smarts, loaded with short bursts of jittery garage punk that comes at you full force. The band let you know what they are about instantly, and steamroll the listeners eardrums with skronking keyboard and sax blurts interspersed with cutting guitar that yields little ground.
Released in September, New York noise band Uniform’s fourth album on Sacred Bones Records is a masterclass in guilt and self-exorcism. Though keeping their tradition of fuzzed out guitars and glitchy, sinister noise elements, the recording quality of Shame is a departure from that of their previous albums.
The Boston based garage punk collective, which features members of Blue Ray, Squitch, Brittle Brian, and many others, have released their self-titled today debut via Super Wimpy Punch. The record capitalizes on the promise of lead singles “The Chives Buy Guns” and “I’m Always Afraid,” setting the monitors constantly into the red.
Shelter should be understood in the context within which it was conceived and captured: it was recorded entirely live in the kitchen of a studio apartment in Central Maine. Featuring only Liza Victoria’s vocals and accompanied guitar, it’s almost as instrumentally scarce as a record can be. In the best way possible.
“Dozer” is the perfect weird-yet-accessible peak into the world of multi-faceted LA artist Kaz Mirblouk. On Careless by Contrast, Mirblouk takes the opportunity to find his own voice by picking apart elements of a multitude of genres as he sees fit and weaving them into a kaleidoscopic vision all his own.
Three years since their last EP, Toronto’s Peeling are set to release their full length debut, Worshipper, on November 27th via Labyrinth Records. Once billed as a Canadian super-group with members of Odonis Odonis and Dilly Dally, the project has morphed into a solo effort, led by Anna Timoshenko, and they have never sounded better.
New West Records’ Pylon Box compiles a new de facto history of the Athens art punks, finally making accessible the sounds and filling in the narrative blanks of the oft underlooked group. In step with examining Pylon’s legacy among their musical peers, the retrospective box set’s insightful, 209-paged companion booklet.
Guff in the Garden tells stories, totally subjective content-wise. Each track is more like a situation, with all the strange stuff Max Goldstein (drums) and Adam Bosse (guitar) toss together swirling around miasmatically for you to come wade through coughing and incorporate into your day’s dull manifold however you feel impelled to.
Johnny, the second full length effort from the New Orleans group Lawn, is a sprawling album with continuous shifts in dynamics that surprise the listener as the two main songwriters trade turns showcasing their distinctive but harmonious styles of songwriting. It’s an album of contrasting styles, at once pop and post-punk influenced.
Set to release their latest full length album, Alpha Hex Index, on November 20th via Hex Records, it’s another crushing addition to the band’s stellar catalog of noise punk records that simultaneously disgust and delight. It’s loud, aggressive, and willingly irritating, and it just melts our hearts with joy in the process.
