Lifeguard are a band that knows bands, their styles, their history, and why their sound works, but they're never vultures or revivalists. Rather like the great art punks of the late seventies and early eighties they rip and tear apart these sounds and ideas with surgical precision. Restitching the pieces together into phenomenal three-minute slabs of Frankenstein punk that emanate a roaring radiant electricity.
At this point, the only thing we can really expect from Black Country, New Road is to always be surprised. It must have been a challenge to rediscover their identity as a band, but they’ve pulled off their reinvention with grace, beauty, and intention, and created a record bursting with passionate ambition.
While Dogsbody’s combination of high-tension dance grooves and rattling screech proved an excellent simulation of pleasure and terror, it left a lingering question: how would a band with a sound so distinct keep it up? The resounding answer presented by Model/Actriz’s follow-up Pirouette, confidently and beautifully.
In every city’s music scene, there’s always that handful of bands that seem to be everywhere. Portland, Maine’s Amiright? has been one of those very bands for almost a decade. On Husk of a Body, the band takes their angular, cursive style of indie rock, pumps it full of depth, fuzz, and color, and drives that new sonic perspective into a lot of really interesting new directions.
SPELLING—the solo project of Chrystia Cabral—armed herself with a swarm of musicians from a 31-piece orchestra for her 2021 release The Turning Wheel; the impetus for the well-rounded, sonic alchemist that Cabral has morphed into. Portrait of My Heart represents what SPELLING does best: delivering the unexpected.
Akron, Ohio’s Funeral Commercial brilliantly meld the angst and emotion of post-rock, shoegaze, math rock, and midwest emo on their most ambitious full-length project to date. On Dead Before I Die, Funeral Commercial are at their best, expressing the emotions that come with grief and loss in all extremities.
