Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (August 8th - August 14th)

by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_) and Hayden Sitomer

Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, our weekly recap of this week's new music. We're sharing our top ten favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "further listening" section of new and notable releases from around the web. It's generally poorly written and totally unedited... but full love of heart. The number rankings are fairly arbitrary and we sincerely recommend checking out all the music included in this feature. There's a lot of great music being released. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music. *Disclaimer: We are making a conscious effort not to include any artist in the top ten on back-to-back weeks in order to diversify the feature, so be sure to check the "further listening" as well because it's often "top ten" quality too.

1. BUENO | "Illuminate Your Room" LP

Bueno's new album, Illuminate Your Room, is the type of record that embodies an entire city, an era, a definitive moment in uneasy times. Nothing is off limit for Staten Island's greatest punk band, from haunting jazz ballads and slick post-punk to sly slacker pop and jammed out no-wave punk. Bueno can do it all, and they do it all really well. It jams, it’s weird, it's soft and heavy, it's thought provoking yet fun, and it’s utterly infectious. Yes, Bueno have created a masterpiece with something for everyone and everything for someone (we fall in the latter). Big sprawling rock n' roll ("Oh Lord I'm Confused") blends perfectly with slow burning indie vibes ("Wasted Anyway"), explosive post-punk ("I Feel So Raw") and splattered funk ("Hizznherz"). The album eases out earworms at every turn... warped hooks crawl through the riffs, the grooves, the melodies, the attitude, and Luke Chiaruttini's vocals. It's loose and catchy, concerned with capturing a world of excess and overstimulation, a day in the life. Illuminate Your Room is a true NY masterpiece. - Dan Goldin

2. PEAER | "Pink Spit"

Complete with intensely honest vocals, perfectly fuzzy guitars, and a persistent bass line that permeates the calm, Peaer's newest venture has us all kinds of excited for the band's upcoming self-titled release, out on Tiny Engines next month. "Pink Spit" presents itself as a more rock-centric follow up to the bands formerly more serene sound, while upholding Peter Katz, the band's leader's, commitment to putting out songs that abstractly, yet authentically, express life's trials and tribulations. Ascending and descending vocals are mirrored and complicated by the song's guitar lines, both of which toy with our emotions for the slightly-over-three-minute entirety of the song. - Hayden Sitomer

3. DARK MTNS | "DARK MTNS" LP

I'll be damned if Josh Mackie isn't one of my favorite songwriters in recent years. After two exceptionally awesome albums with his band Gunk, Mackie has teamed up with Zack Robbins (of Superheaven) to form Dark Mtns, and their self-titled debut is undeniably great. Self released to Bandcamp without warning, Dark Mtns is sure to be a "best kept secret" release but for all those paying attention, it could be one of the year's best. There's an airy nature to the band's loose slacker pop and indie rock songs, with Mackie and Robbins complemeting each other at everyt turn. Robbins' expressive rhythms provide the perfect energy for Mackie's haziest songs, drifting with fuzzy melodies over toppling drums. Much like Gunk, Dark Mtns create dreamy music with layers upon layers of blissful tones and hooks. It's the kind of record you want to tell your friends about... and you should. - DG

4. THEE OH SEES | "A Weird Exits" LP

If the past decade has proven anything, Thee Oh Sees can't and won't be stopped. John Dwyer and company (regardless of whom that company may be) have released one impeccable album after another for the past ten years, building from one release to the next, sustaining their past while pushing the envelope ever further with each successive record. A Weird Exits finds the band (complete with duel drummers Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon) embracing their garage punk with a raw intensity and a penchant for prog rock inspired divergence. The band's rattled madness sounds as strong as ever when they're jittering through hyper punk headspace, but it's the serene drifts of mind expanded instrumentals and added psych explorations that set this album apart as they use drifting synths, organs, cello and more to soften the palate while keeping things delightfully bent and charmingly deranged. The duel drumming certainly doesn't hurt anything either. Bless Thee Oh Sees, a true national treasure. - DG

5. DUST FROM 1000 YRS | "Someday"

Who knew a bloody Charlie Brown cartoon could be so endearing? Well, when backed by the sultry and sulking vocals of Dust From 1000 Yrs' Ben Rector, the aforementioned unthinkable proposition becomes thinkable. In the band's newest video for their song "Someday," Dust From 1000 Yrs combines the gruesome with the hilarious, to create a visual result that is nothing short of perfectly sardonic. Simplistic doodles placed upon photographs of leaves, twigs, and other miscellaneous naturally found objects, and combined with a reoccurring interchanging close up between Charlie Brown and the band's lead, leave us with a sense of melancholy that is only further encouraged by the song's beautifully heartbreaking lyrics about feeling lost in an unfamiliar place. - HS

6. OPERATOR MUSIC BAND | "Clean Touch" (Very Fresh cover)

New Professor Music just turned five years old and it's time to celebrate. To mark the momentous occasion, the label are sharing 10 for 5: New Professor 5th Birthday Covers Compilation, a collection of the label's artists covering one another in a wonderful display of community and love for all New Professor Music represents.

One such stand-out on the compilation comes from Operator Music Band (aka the band you love to love, exhibit A) covering Very Fresh's "Clean Touch". While both bands are fairly new additions to the label, they've been making an impact on their local Brooklyn scene in big ways over the last couple years. Operator Music Band's analog synth and krautpop influences add a futuristic boogie to Very Fresh's single, locking into a motorik groove with warm swells of fuzzy keys and warbling vocals. It's a cover that retains the goodness of the original while the band manipulate and recreate the song to their own deviations. - DG

7. FLUFF | "Fluff"

One could (and we will!) call Fluff the most impressive Brooklyn DIY supergroup to exist in recent years. The temporary band, made up of Dan Arnes of Leapling fame, Nate Terepka of Zula notoriety, and Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader of the beloved Ava Luna, released this dreamy one-off single last week which has since had us begging for more from this meeting of brilliant musical minds. While all at once sounding like a combination of all of the bands as well as each band separately, "Fluff" puts on display what we know and love most about these Brooklyn hard hitters; we are simultaneously lifted by the sound of Leapling's poignantly gentle vocals, swaying to the fragments of Zula's arhythmic beats, and reminiscing about Ava Luna's funky flow. While 'fluff' is often used to describe a filler of sorts, we believe that this instance of the word is anything but. - HS

8. ZULA | "Basketball"

Music takes on a whole new meaning when it comes to Zula. The band creates a world in which all of our preconceived notions regarding tempo, rhythm, and song structure are instantly dissolved and made to seem to be of much less importance. As perfectly displayed on their newest release, a complex six minute long song called "Basketball" off of their upcoming LP, Grasshopper, set to be released later this month on Inflated Records, it somehow seems as though Zula have found a way to even further polish their remarkably unique funk-pop-rock sound. With the combined use of repetition and complication, complements of funky guitar tones and bouncing keyboard melodies, "Basketball" takes us on a shimmery journey through the depths of Zula's mind and epitomizes what we most dearly admire about this anything but ordinary band. - HS

9. FORTH WANDERERS | "Slop"

Hailing from the notably, and somewhat surprisingly, vibrant music scene that is Montclair, New Jersey, the youthful quintet of rockers are back at it again with the first follow up single to their gleamingly impactful 2014 debut LP, Tough Love. Forth Wanderers' latest song, which is set to be accompanied by three other tracks on an EP also titled Slop, out later this year on Father/Daughter Records, combines the band's signature melancholy-ridden lyrics voiced by soulful singer Ava Trilling with sweet and easy guitar riffs, a pairing the band continues to come closer to perfecting with each tune they release. - HS

10. THE CONQUERORS | "Turned Me To Stone"

The Conquerors are a retro psych band from Kansas City that play the purest of pop with something dark lying just underneath the mix. It's sweet and catchy, but there's an unspoken danger within that I can't quite put my finger on. Their latest single "Turn Me To Stone" picks up the pop fury with inescapable organs and a soul hook that'd make James Brown proud. It's impeccably tight with just a pinch of reckless disregard. The Conquerors may dwell in a world of retro pastiche but they sound alive and well, blending good ol' fashioned rock 'n' roll and soul’s glory days together to create a true barn burner. "Turned Me To Stone" is both dreamy and wild and damnit, it's down right fun to listen to. - DG

Further Listening: