When a shift in Tetchy’s line-up led to an uncertain future, Maggie Denning decided to write and record home demos on her phone, a simple exercise to keep the creativity flowing. Those demos took on a life of their own, taking shape as the latest Tetchy record, the minimalist and psychedelic Smaller / Better EP.
After about 45 minutes of sensory overload, Chicago’s FACS fissles down.. The three fierce yet jubilant players are grateful, but also stoic. They’re punk rockers playing psychedelic post-punk that overwhelms the brain, making bodies move in ways it usually wouldn’t and probably shouldn’t among strangers.
How do you sort the recording of an album when everything seems to be shutting and places feel alienated? Ulrika Spacek’s latest album, Compact Trauma, arrives as a sharp, psych-blowing, krautrock-flavored manifest of a band coming back to surface after a self-imposed banish and overcoming the strangeness of its own ethos.
Spiritual Pollution, due out April 7th via Erste Theke Tontraeger (Pinch Points, Crisis Man), takes everything that made the project’s debut an underground favorite and expands on the ideas with added muscle, live drums (courtesy of Andrew Oswald) and a refined sonic focus that adds clarity without stripping the raw tension.
What started as a collection of iMessage demos sent back and forth between the two in 2021 eventually became a full-blown collaborative effort. While easy to describe as “timeless,” there’s a subtle modernity poking through nearly every moment of the ‘70s inspired homespun folk songs on Mind Palace Music.
Shana Cleveland described her third solo record, Manzanita, as “a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” a succinct description that sets both scene and mystifying tonality. The natural essence of the woods, mountains, rolling hills, and open skies, are apparent not from setting but from sound.
Good Girls Go to Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere is the full length debut from Melbourne punk sextet Blonde Revolver, an album rife with venomous jabs and unabashed innuendo and ribald. The record has a ferocious bite and a relentless energy through ten songs that weave through touch points with passion on all fronts.
Comprised of members of Kal Marks, Bethlehem Steel, Baglady, and Ex-Breathers, the Providence quartet is a unique configuration of hard-hitting super-indie rockers. What Mulva have done — expertly split the difference between ambient and sludge diffused through an indie rock filter — is wildly compelling.
Tha God Fahim, for the authentic rap fanatic, is an established name: the Atlanta emcee and producer has claimed his spot in the underground and, in many ways, has had a heavy influence in its direction over the years. His latest solo effort, Iron Bull, is about having the first word on that legacy: one that is still wet yet cementing by the day.
For Kosmetika, true craftsmanship lies in the details. “House,” the second single from the Melbourne art-punks’ new album, Illustration (due April 21 on Spoilsport Records), feels instantly familiar and comfortable. It’s full of new wave signifiers, settling nicely in the middle of a Venn diagram that includes Charlie, Le Tigre’s, and ESG.
The solo project of John Toohill, Science Man is mutant experimentation gone awry, a transmission of disgust from the gutter, as enthusiastically weird as it is forever menacing. It’s a hardcore band, to be sure, but Science Man has become as much an art project, with a cinematic component that’s become increasingly engrained in Toohill’s work.
When the days begin to run you ragged, you can always turn to the music of Lisa/Liza for an escape parts gentle, understanding, and beautiful. Set to release her new album Breaking And Mending via Orindal Records on April 28th, it’s an album that feels one with nature, a record that shines like the sun cutting through the tallest of trees.
Last year offered a window into the ever shifting patchwork psych of Webb Chapel, triumphantly lo-fi but undeniably focused, a wash of experimentation both bleak and warped. Zack Claxton (Beth Israel) returns to Strange Mono for SPEEDING, due out March 21st, a new album of originals and a batch of Mary Goes Round and Acid Freek covers.
Indie-gazers Bleary Eyed have released their latest four track EP after signing with Born Loser Records, a Philly music staple. Bleary Eyed can be seen as an “evolved” sound as it contains familiar shoegaze undertones from the band’s prior release Guise, combining with the new EP’s indie-pop choruses and dreamy synths.
Best experienced in full, Compact Trauma is an evolution for the band, warping and weaving through loungy psych and fragmented art rock to create something glowing and evergreen. It’s detailed in inner struggle, fighting demons of self-doubt and addiction, wrestling with defeatist mental issues and finding its place in the world.
