Michael Falcone writes deceiving melodies reminiscent of numerous 90's era callbacks and emotional slack but with an extra bite from blurring guitar squeals or frenetic drum fills. The trio has a wit about them that is quite appealing and a sense of levity keeps everything from getting too deep into the encroaching gloom.
Alex G is full of questions on God Save The Animals but intentionally avoids easy answers. It’s a record filled with anxiety but finds solace in the fractured nature of change. It’s a record with a whole lot of references to God but finds sanctification in the chaos rather than the structure of religion.
It feels like Glenn Donaldson plucks his songs out of mid-air. The hyper-prolific San Franciscan’s latest project, The Reds, Pinks and Purples, continues the tradition of catchy Bay Area pop. The second single from the upcoming Slumberland mini-LP, They Only Wanted Your Soul allows Donaldson’s bitter assertion to cut through clearly.
Set to release a new record in 2023, Tedward are sharing their latest single, “Ablona,” a song about a pilgrimage to see a rare performance from a favorite band in a fictional Ohio town. From the warped pull of the overdrive to the sweetened vocal melody, Terence Lee sets an immediate tone, capturing the lo-fi fuzz and melodic heft.
In anticipation for their upcoming hometown show and the Pavement dates, Weak Signal are sharing a video for WAR&WAR’s “Consolation,” one of the record’s more ominous tracks. The track itself, while subdued and shadowy, takes influence in the opposite, derived from a Simone Weil quote, “Love is not consolation. It is light.”
They Are Gutting a Body of Water and fellow Philly band A Country Western throw a barrage of different sounds at the listener and all of them stick. This five song split is ambitious in its transitions between styles and continues in the same vein as TAGABOW’s 2021 split EPCOT, which oscillated between shoegaze and breakcore.
Having played their final show on September 18th, Yucky Duster should be remembered as one of the most happy-go-lucky, ambitiously melodic, and vocally harmonic bands today. They created a brand of twee-pop with genuine fun – like conversational rants in between verses fun – along with utterly standalone and versatile melodies.
Earth Visions Of Water Spaces is grounded in an elemental ethos while retaining the band’s likeness for entertaining celestial questions. As on their previous showing, they again display a knack for transforming simple phrases into hypnotic mantras and restrained instrumental passages into tempered progressions of mystifying proportion.
With the band’s sophomore album, Circuitous, out October 28th via Flemish Eye (Preoccupations, The Besnard Lakes), they’ve once again made another stride forward, embracing hooks that snap into place, fitting unlikely pieces together in a way that’s easily digestible. The album’s second single “Redefine” is a perfect example.
Judy and the Jerks have survived long-distance communication and being in numerous other bands to release their second LP. Despite half of the band moving to Atlanta mere months before COVID hit, they’ve stayed the course with a few tape releases between now and their previous LP release, Friendships Formed in the Pit.
