Like so much music created during the pandemic, it’s hard not to look at things through that lens of isolation. Whether or not it was Russell Edling who had spent that year in Shadowland – or even what Shadowland is – is up for interpretation. Was it the literal confines of his home or was it something more metaphorical?
“No genre is my new favorite genre,” reads his bio, along with some stuff about pendulum’s swinging and heat domes. You could call this “outsider music,” even though it’s definitely “insider” enough that the melodies know how to stay in your head. Stinkin Donuts expertly toes this line between here and there.
LYSOL’s full length debut, Soup For My Family, is due out this Friday, July 30th. The Seattle punk band give us that “fuck it all” release we so desperately need from time to time (…most of the time). The album is raw and unfiltered, ripping with paint peeling riffs and furious rhythms that pound with a primitive garage punk intensity.
Easy Bammer is the debut record from May Rio, the dreamy NYC indie pop project of May Rio Sembera. Although a bit of a necessary departure into hazy lo-fi bedroom pop due to the unfortunate nature of humanity and a pandemic, the record carries much of the same charm Rio’s band Poppies have in abundance.
PACKS’ debut Take The Cake has all the unassuming beauty of nature in suburbia; subtle and spare, the album follows Madeline Link as she drifts through post-adolescent malaise. The romantic gloss Link imparts on everyday life doesn’t hide the disconnect between Link and the world around her as she struggles to find her place within it.
We might all have a part to play in addressing the climate crisis, but I for one am more than happy to let Snapped Ankles provide the soundtrack to dance as weirdly as you want. Limbs flailing in anxious frustration, losing consciousness of the singularity of selfhood and melding with the sweaty weirdos around you, truly may help.
Baton Rouge duo Spllit had recorded Spllit Together in 2019 and released it at the beginning of 2020. That record has since been remastered by Sweeping Promises’ Caufield Schnug, and paired together with Darlene, a new A-Side length album, set for release together as Spllit Sides, due out July 30th via Feel it Records.
Sad Cactus’ next release is an exceptionally great split between NYC’s Gorgeous and Hadley, MA’s EIEIEIO (mems of Maxshh, Tundrastomper, Wishbone Zoe, etc), due out this Friday July 16th. The record is quick and experimental, pushing their art punk, post-hardcore, and freaked out indie rock toward something truly unhinged.
In a Vermont town that even Joe Biden wouldn’t be able to locate on a map, lives a hermit who has released over 35 albums in ten years, including an undecuple on Youtube. Chris Weisman is a great songwriter, jazz musician, conceptual artist and the only person in the world who has really taken seriously the lo-fi dogma.
The catchy songwriting of Gash was on full display with their 2018 album haha and while it comes into play in moments on Leftern, it feels like less a focus on individual songs and more on the album as a whole. The record rewards repeat listening, with different aspects of the band’s writing revealing itself with each subsequent listen.
Jason Albertini’s latest Helvetia album, Essential Aliens, is a masterclass on how lo-fi recording at home can be a vehicle to showcasing a vision of unavoidable, but captivating quirks and laconic storytelling. That story is one of a recurring dream Albertini had wherein his life is upended by ghosts.
