During our 33-minute conversation, Matt Korvette, the 42-year-old vocalist of Pissed Jeans, says “fun” eleven times and “fan” six times. The Sub Pop mainstays out of Philadelphia dropped their sixth album, Half Divorced, and Korvette has it on repeat. Approaching two decades as a band, Pissed Jeans are writing great songs that they enjoy jamming out to.
5am is the latest EP from Caution's Nora Button under the guise of Despondent, delivering another heavy blow in her clouded and confessional songwriting. More stripped down, these recordings consist of herself and infrequent drums and percussion by Jaxon Vesely, heightening the intimacy of Button's tales of disconnect and longing.
Harm’s Way picks up where they left off and has improved their formula tremendously. In just 27 quick minutes, they create earworm after earworm, the kind of songs you can listen to over and over with a big smile on your face. The record is the perfect accompaniment for a bright spring day when the sun is shining and all is right in the world.
On each of their EP’s, Brazil’s Lasso have operated with the kind of focus that shows a mastery over the genre, but more than that, a fondness for the tools they’ve chosen to express their discontent. Ordem Imaginada tightens up the d-beat indebted hardcore that they’ve been refining over their last couple of releases, avoiding all flash..
Tomato Flower squish together on a couch, where they fill in each other’s sentences and pass the proverbial mic to the next member with ease, only pausing to burst into laughter. Each answer unfurls into a tangent that pulls back the curtain on their ambitious songwriting process and desire to see their best friends succeed individually and together.
The Foreign Department is Rhys Edwards’ (of Ulrika Spacek) follow up to 2022’s impressive Flickering I, released under the name Astrel K. Under this moniker, Edwards’ pop sensibility is more transparently laid bare. There’s equal parts hooks, sweet melancholy, and beautiful song arrangements throughout the album.
Nottingham’s whistling whirlwind of chaos, Bloody Head, make themselves heard loud and (mostly) clear with their seventh release, Perpetual Eden. The album extends to the listener a deep dive into the contemporary human condition in a way unique to the band – through cleansing noise, harsh epiphanies, and beautifully messy lyricism.
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.
