The LA indie rocker’s debut Don’t Take My Dream Away is an album full of contradictions - everything is bittersweet, she’s both a Good Girl and a Bad Boy. Over thirteen guitar driven tracks, Early dissects crumbling relationships, all-consuming crushes, and dreams deferred with the wisdom only experience can bring.
TEKE::TEKE are just getting started, as their upcoming second album, Hagata, takes their already maximalist sound and continues to dig outward. Due out this Friday via Kill Rock Stars, the band sound delightfully unhinged throughout, getting weird and funky, merging disparate sounds at their whim with an orchestrated focus.
Feeble Little Horse’s tight friendship is palpable through the Zoom screen. Over the past few months, they’ve opened for Sidney Gish and Snail Mail, as well as toured with They Are Gutting A Body Of Water. It’s been a dizzying year for the Pittsburgh quartet, but they rely on each other to ease any nerves.
The gods blessed a crowd with a perfectly paired bill on June 1, 2023. 2nd Grade and The Bug Club played at Union Pool in Brooklyn to a receptive audience. Some danced. Some bobbed their heads. Some remained still, with smiling faces., but the audience, indubitably, thoroughly enjoyed their perfectly prepared pairing.
I Only See the Moon returns to the tried-and-true form of their first three albums but learns from the mistakes of their next two, even as it shifts the experience. It feels like a first-person account of what it’s like to be The Milk Carton Kids’ microphone – right in your ears, Kenneth Pattengale stage left, Joey Ryan stage right.
The band’s sixth full length album is drawn from life’s very real low points, both personal and general, namely the death of Joe Casey’s mother and the worldwide misfortune of the pandemic. In what could have been a collection of songs buried in doom and gloom, Protomartyr return with a new resolve.
At some point Ryan Weinstein’s band Coffin Pricks became the singular Coffin Prick, the project adapting from a band to a solo effort. Weinstein approached his solo debut with patience, building a world unto itself, where vast psychedelic synths are paired together with space-age guitars and a general alien atmosphere.
The minds that brought you Profligate, Pleasure Leftists, Cloud Nothings, and Nothing Phase fit each other brilliantly on Time Moves for Me, the debut EP from the supergroup of the Cleveland underground. Somewhere between synth rock and post-punk, Disintegration charts an alternative path forward that is, simply, cooler.
The lo-fi album oozes the same unrefined, saturated melodies of indie’s past while toying with idiosyncrasies that create a unique sound. Blistering guitar solos, mellow vocals, and harmonic distortion perfectly chart Radiator Hospital’s dedication to their home-made aesthetic while proving the range they’ve developed over the past decade.
Robidoux returns with Music For Aluminum Corn, a record composed around his very own corn synth, an instrument built with two touch-controlled aluminum corn cobs. Due out on June 23rd via Crash Symbols, he gives focus to his home-made synth while incorporating manipulated flutes, strings, saxophone, field recordings, and electronic rhythms.
Mike Quiqley's songwriting tends toward introspection and pathos that are alternately shouted and sullenly expressed with a strange combination of unease and passion that works astonishingly well. The songs are filled with acerbic observations about the mundanity of life, a healthy dose of self-deprecation, and awareness.
Stuck’s expertise lies in making deeply entertaining post-punk and art rock by means of leading the listener into unknown and unpredictable directions. Each song metaphorically tears into the listener with the canines and incisors and slowly but surely moves them into the morals in the back of the mouth, ruminating on its themes.
Angel Diaz’s more traditional shoegaze sound maps perfectly onto Madeline Johnston’s self-described “heaven metal.” The arrangements are more lush and layered than any previous Midwife project; the drum loops generally sound more organic, the guitars are richer, and more synth countermelodies pop in to keep interest.
Compared to Wiki’s last few releases, Papiseed Street is especially loose and playful. He has a real talent for building momentum across a song, stacking vivid images on top of vignettes, jokes, and emotional insights. Wiki’s newest offerings are vibrant and off-the-cuff, full of his trademark personality.
