It’s been nearly five months since their last album, so naturally the Mason City based quartet are getting ready to release a new album, Serenading Unwanted Ballads, due out March 22nd via Feel It Records. Their latest is primarily split between balls-to-wall grooves and reverberating romanticism, but the record acts as a sonic grab bag of ideas.
The sophomore album of this New York art punk is a sensory amalgamation of haunting memories and chromatic films, gift wrapped in angelic gauze. With allusions to Deerhoof’s eclectic instrumentation, the groove is grafted onto Jeff Buckley’s sweeping romanticism, then filtered through ambient progressive rock.
While it’s been a couple years since their last record, Wallplant, now a full band, are out there doing their thing, creating bent lo-fi post-punk and power-pop that feels animated, alien, and incessant. The recently filmed Live at Jamdek session captures the band in the studio, working through songs old and new.
“Bare Minimum” is a loud, somber track with introspective lyrics highlighting the moment you knew you could and should be better. Self-awareness is the central thread that lingers throughout the song with lines like, “I look for loops of applause for doing the bare minimum” and “giving myself the space to pity the person I helped myself become.”
Verity Den, like most of the current artists working in the indie rock mode have their inspirations that range from the best of shoegaze and dream-pop, spiced with a good dose of Yo La Tengo. Yet, what is not so often the case, the trio have re-modeled and re-shaped their inspirations into a defined, individual sound.
Last year's 馬 (Uma) may seem smaller-scale with its runtime just under half an hour compared to its predecessor's near-hour, but it's in this smaller scale that Betcover!! has managed to build its tightest work yet. They’re a band that feels slightly out of time, the mix of modern techniques with old school blues at once new yet classic.
Australia's own Split System have presented their latest album, Vol. 2, as a kind of musical counteragent. By first questioning if our "demands of punk are a little too high... [or] a little too exacting," not to mention talk of primal itches that need scratching, they’ve positioned themselves as a hard-hitting salve for needless wanderlust.
The Wisconsin based trio - comprised of Bobby Hussy, Tyler Spatz, and Hart Alan Miller - are no strangers to the world of DIY punk, but with their latest project they’re blurring the lines and creating their own boundaries, taking equal parts sinewy post-punk and corrosive artistic grunge, and then flipping it all on its head.
If the world feels especially cruel, Mary Timony is the last to know. Speaking to Post-Trash from her home on the eve of Untame the Tiger’s release, the singer and guitar virtuoso sounds carefree and positive. This juxtaposition between heavy circumstance and her unsinkable attitude reflects what Untame the Tiger does so well.
Marisa Dabice said I Got Heaven is about unleashing the animal inside of her, about a kind of freedom we aren't allowed. It is that feral eeriness that defines this album and what gives it a distinct sound from previous Mannequin Pussy records. The ten songs feel like crawling through mud, sprinting through tall grass, seeing your hot breath.
DRILL return with Permanent, their first (and unfortunately last) full length, but they’re not going quietly into the good night. Animated and agitated, the trio - Sonam Parikh (vocals, keys), Gavin Perez-Canto (drums), and Nina Ryser (bass, vocals), continue to craft songs with a charming sort of irreverence, creating post-punk as minimal as it is vibrant.
Vibrations Now is the new EP from Fantastic Purple Spots, the duo of Barrett Jones and Dave Junker out of Austin, Texas, four songs full of folk-ish dreamy psychedelia that lingers in the eardrums well after its done. They lean into the spacier aspects of their influences and recall the fuzzier elements of a band like Brian Jonestown Massacre.
The elusive Fugitive Bubble bursts through the Olympia, WA music scene to wreak havoc on conscientious, hard-core thrill seekers with their glorious re-issue of Delusion through Sorry State Records. Blazing through ten tracks in less than twenty minutes, Delusion flashes teeth to freedom, and casts off the cuffs of bondage.
BALACLAVA originally started as a solo of Dylan Joyce aka BALA, but has now become a five-piece live band based in Ridgewood, Queens. The looming question that they seek to answer is, “What does animated trash sound like?” Their EP, THE 1/4 INCH ALMANAC, is out March 1st with tapes via Orlando based label Godless America.
Timony epitomizes the rock-and-roll lifer, a journey-person musician who has integrated different genres through a steady output. This new solo album feels different, however. Though she has never been absent, Untame the Tiger sounds like both a culmination of these prolific decades and a re-introduction.
