With six years separating Faunas’ debut and Paint The Birds, it would seem nearly everything about the project has changed. While the duo remains the same - Genevieve Ludwig and Erin McCarley - their sound has taken a major shift, pulling away from the sludgy punk of their debut and moving toward a sound more in tune with folk music.
The Silicone Prairie debut set a strange benchmark, an album that felt like brilliantly scattered thoughts brought to life, and things are only getting (delightfully) weirder on Vol. II. Due out July 28th via Feel It Records (It Thing, Sweeping Promises, Private Lives), it’s the type of album where anything feels possible.
Genuineness is the prime moral characteristic that defines Feeble Little Horse. The Pittsburgh quartet have stuck to an ethos of controlling every part of the creative process themselves. This DIY mantra plays through on Girl With Fish with its crushing shoegaze backbone interlaced with elements of sentimentality, gleaming with personality.
Ain’t shit pretty about Currency // Castration and that’s the beauty of it. The band’s third album is ensnared in filth and dissonance, at home amid the depravity, for better or worse, this is where we’re at and Geld aren’t delusional. Rather than collapse under the weight of it all, they chose to decimate, creating something that feels relevant and timeless.
On last year’s excellent Danger Mouse collaboration Cheat Codes, the Philadelphia native cemented his place among the great MCs. Now with Glorious Game, a collaboration with Brooklyn soul artist and producer Leon Michel (aka El Michels Affair), he’s able to step back and take a look back at what got him there in the first place.
Their elastic debut LP Stay Safe! packs a whole lot of dynamic musical range into just ten killer tracks. Band members put themselves in new roles, play new instruments and make themselves vulnerable to all the anxieties and tribulations of fresh ventures. They do it with effortless tranquility and gilded dexterity.
Sapsucker represents a leap forward for Gorgeous, both artistically and musically, from the duo’s debut. While both feature acrobatic drumming accompanying whimsical vocals and idiosyncratic guitar playing, there’s a sense of intentionality to Sapsucker’s bold embrace of melody. We sat down with Gorgeous to discuss the experience of making their ambitious new album, what’s changed, and what’s still inspiring them in a post-pandemic world.
For a debut record, You Can Do It All demonstrates tremendous balance. For every dense and gritty riff, there is a bouncy pop vocal melody, with a focus on blending basement-jam sounds, catchy verses, and choruses. In lyrical content, the band spirals through all of the hallmarks of young adult life.
Like many of their contemporaries, Squid have drifted into a sound that’s less direct and angry with more prog rock influence. While Black Midi and Black Country, New Road have veered hard into theatricality, whether it be through absurd virtuosity or intense emotionality, Squid make the move in a way that retains more indie-rock dejection.
Drowse, Agriculture, and Sprain played LA’s Permanent Records Roadhouse on June 8th. The nine folks across two four pieces and the lone one-man project are venturing east on a trek towards Austin, Texas’ Oblivion Access festival for a Flenser Showcase. The kind that seems to be a particular moment of triumph for the label.
The world of Squid Ink Sky lives in the moon’s glow, it fills the space at the end of the day reserved for late night sentiment. It’s the feeling of being alone with your thoughts, watching as your mind wanders from what could be to what is, and how it could have gone a million different ways between. It’s also astonishingly beautiful.
The quartet of Ryan Fitzgibbon (US Weekly), Eli Deitz (Dregs, Votive), Steve Pike (Exhalants, CSSS), and Jordan Emmert (Super Thief, Pleasure Venom) bring a great deal of experience together from different pockets of the city’s noise rock and punk scene, the pieces coming together to create something better than the sum of it’s parts.
“Beyond The Darkened Library” is one of the album’s more subdued moments, yet the unnerving energy that Landowner posses is in full force, bleeping and blooping in a way we’d swear was computer driven, yet all praise is due to Dan Shaw, Josh Owsley (bass), Elliot Hughes (guitar), Jeff Gilmartin (guitar), and Josh Daniel (drums).
Protomartyr have returned with their strongest and most optimistic album yet. At least, optimistic for Protomartyr. Formal Growth in the Desert is their way of expressing art finding its way in a world increasingly infertile for creativity. It’s a testament to art’s ability to spring forth in spite of the ever-tightening economic restraints.
It’s pretty important to drink a lot of water. It would seem to be a core principle for Glasgow’s Water Machine, one reinforced with art-punk immediacy. Following the band’s self-released demo, the quartet are set to make their “studio” debut with the Raw Liquid Power EP, due out August 4th via Upset The Rhythm
