Czarface lives on. Hip-hop’s mightiest heroes are back with their ninth LP Czartificial Intelligence. Made up of Inspectah Deck and Boston’s 7L & Esoteric, the group is known for their intricate lyricism and plush old school production. Their latest, a major label debut released a decade after their inaugural album, is no exception.
Following “Middling,” our introduction to the new line-up back in May, Candace Clement’s All Feels return with a new two song single, Shoreline / Absent, out today via Flower Sounds (See Jazz, The Lentils, Bobbie), a gorgeous pair of thoughtful alternative rock songs that could and should be FM gold.
The Guided By Voices archive resembles a murmuration by now with thousands of melodies and ideas flocking together to create a singular movement, in which individual elements matter less than the beauty created by the entire whole. Nowhere To Go But Up is a minor, but essential, part of this greater entity.
Roseland Live NYC – which paired a gripping performance by Gibbons and co. with a full band and orchestral strings, horns, and woodwinds – would be the last music Portishead would release for over a decade. Now, 25 years later, the band has reissued the album as Roseland NYC Live 25, newly remastered, and for the first time in its complete form.
It is a sign of mutual respect and adoration to make something together as one package to grace listeners with. Queensburgh by Baked and The Zells is the latest addition to the DIY canon of splits. Two of independent rock's heaviest hitters have delivered a special split that anyone will be able to appreciate.
Blacklisters strike the perfect level of sardonic humor and cultural disgust, so interwoven it’s hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Sludge and bludgeoning density are paired with acidic noise and a stumbling resolve that feels like a reprieve from polite society or a scourge on meatheads worldwide.
Brunswick, Australia’s Hooper Crescent are relying on a formula with their second album, Essential Tremors. While the quintet could have returned to the guitar heavy tangled post-punk of their debut, they’ve opted to push into new territories, exploring a different set of sounds while keeping their established framework in tact.
Soul To Burn, is a wild ride of high voltage rock ‘n’ roll grooves and swaggering hooks, but it’s also inherently complex, the sound in a constant state of contortion. These songs are accessible from first glance (“Rhodia” is a smash hit), with dissonant vibrations and riotous rhythmic shifts bending to create something casually digestible.
Blotted and vibrant are the bruises that we acquire in the midst of growing up. In the midst of those challenges is nineteen year old Perth singer/songwriter Mia June and her debut EP, Don’t Forget Your Bags. Out on Father/Daughter Records, we find her with a collection of songs that feel both fresh and exhilaratingly spirited.
Wurld Series filter influences including Guided by Voices, Jim O’Rourke, and Robert Wyatt through a DIY lens that’s uniquely their own, balancing Luke Towart’s sturdy songcraft with pensive, pastoral experimentation. Post-Trash caught up with Towart recently to discuss these and other influences on their sound, and to talk The Giants Lawn.
There is a new softness in Rob Grote’s music as Super Infinity, with his seven song release Palace. The songs hover between playfulness and childlike awe: jangling reverb, words that tumble and river over themselves, and layered head voice. Grote said he wrote these songs “as a reprieve from recordings that were taking much more labor.”
In Hindsight, the full length debut from St. Louis’ Algae Dust is out this Friday, December 1st, just in time to bring some warmth to the oncoming chill. Following a split with Hennen back in 2021 that mostly featured Alison Setili playing solo, their Sad Cactus Records debut moves away from the gentle sound of bedroom pop.
Cartwheel is much more pop inclined than prior releases with its vivid, gleaming instrumentation and tones. This navigates away from the scuzzy punk energy that has defined Hotline TNT to date, but overall, the structure of the new songs hasn’t changed that profusely. They still follow a similar formula but it’s expressed differently.
Big Mess come roaring back to life on Heroic Captains of Industry, a new full length album due out on January 1st. The album, initially recorded in 2018 saw some delays as life and pandemics took the focus away from the band, is pure Big Mess, colossally heavy with nuanced writing that see-saws and tugs in opposing directions at will.
