Sonny Falls is back with the first single from their just announced full length Stoned, Beethoven Blasting. “Wringing Out My Brain” is the first preview from the Chicago-based project led by Ryan “Hoagie Wesley” Ensley. Written after nine months of no-gigs-a-go-go, “Wringing” is an impulsive celebration of collaborative creativity.
After having all of their loose material gathered on Thankology, we finally get Leeds’ best noise rock band Thank’s debut album, Thoughtless Cruelty. This is a record that is meant to be played as loud as possible, an album that is filled with clever lyrics, a clear nihilistic view of the world, and pounding instrumentals.
Hex Sign, the debut album from Ann Arbor via Nashville’s Brianna Bartelt aka Bri Barte has been a long time coming, but the album has a sense of nuance and grace far beyond your typical debut. WIth influences that include legends PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple, Björk, and Cat Power, the collective strengths are channelled throughout.
Big Thief are some of the only artists right now whose mission runs entirely counter to the world we live in. Their music leaves behind cities, machines, and rigid rhythms, where most of even our best music these days seems intent on replacing the sounds of human beings with a false mechanical magnificence.
Set to release Paint By Numbers, Vol. 1 on February 25th, Goon have shifted away from the fuzzed out grunge-pop they are best known for in favor of something a bit more abstract and softly psychedelic. Together with a new line-up, it’s a welcome change that finds them shedding away generic edges and coming into their own.
Psychic Graveyard are one of the best bands making noise rock in the US and they’re teaming up with USA Nails, one of the best in the UK, for a new split 12”. The bands are in fine form with eleven new songs between them, bringing different but complementary styles together for something viscerally aggressive and disarmingly disorienting.
The garage punk outfit brought their blistering live sound to the studio on their debut Syrup, released through Marthouse Records last year, their first release after a pair of singles in 2019. The nine-track EP is superbly delivered through fuzz-dripped power pop and cleverly tight post-punk that seep with the band's personality.
Even from a cursory listen, it’s quite obvious that Ants From Up There is a different record than its predecessor. Much of the album was written in the studio, with each of the band’s seven members contributing ideas and democratically building the finished product. That difference in process is evident.
Last year’s Do You Like Salt? takes a magnifying glass to consumerism, careerism, food systems, entertainment, and animals, blending it all up and radiating mystifying turns of phrase over frantic, angular collages of noise and melody. Throughout our conversation we discussed BRNDA’s history as a group, their relationship with D.C., and the albums they treasure most.
Rae’s songwriting covers practically the full spectrum of sophisticated pop genres. There’s the jazzed-up introduction of “Candy & Curry” and the soulful R&B oriented “True Love Face” to the seventies singer/songwriter west coast stylings of “Gonna Be Strange” and “Drift Away” to full on baroque pop of “Cosmic High”.
Science Man returns once again with Nines Mecca, due out March 18th via Swimming Faith and Feral Kid Records. The album is faster, nastier, and a bit more direct, offering a pummeling that sits somewhere between hardcore and blistering punk, and with it comes ten new videos, one per song that piece together the Nines Mecca story.
