Mannequin Pussy - "Patience" | Album Review
The four-piece’s third full-length record, Patience, is an effortless display of femme power, unbridled rage, and candid introspection. Despite its short 26-minute runtime, the album is a diary of sorts that sees guitarist and vocalist Marisa Dabice explore past memories and possible futures in a bid to figure this shit called life out.
The Berries - "Berryland" | Album Review
Listening to Seattle’s The Berries for the first time will place you in an intersection of nostalgia, mood, and genre. Their latest ten-track LP Berryland, released via Run For Cover, continues with the band’s bending of orthodox spheres of music, hinting at mid-1990s alternative rock, a touch of southern twang and Americana.
Ma'am - "Can't Talk, Being Chased." | Album Review
Can’t Talk, Being Chased is densely layered, complete with tasty country flourishes like fiddle, lap steel, and horns, but still feels appropriately rough around the edges. You could imagine the band honing the album highlight “Mute ‘Em All” in a Philadelphia basement, adding every possible overdub to try and make it sound like it wasn’t honed in a Philadelphia basement.
(Sandy) Alex G - "House of Sugar" | Album Review
Mope Grooves - "Desire" | Album Review
Fire-Toolz - "Field Whispers (Into The Crystal Palace)" | Album Review
Fire-Toolz’s Orange Milk debut is a dense amalgamation of maximalist prog and quantum physics, the holographic principle of glitched jazz fusion. Field Whispers (Into The Crystal Palace) is Marcloid’s experimentation with calculated mayhem, as the producer jukes fluidly through acerbic breakdowns and splintering blast beats.
Zach Burba - "Your Music" | Album Review
This collection of new work by iji's Zach Burba feels like a homecoming. It's a collage of home-studio tracks for which Burba casually incorporated friends and absorbed their worlds. It takes a bevy of styles and moods and places them under the same warm haze. Your Music lends credence to an embrace of process, method, and habit.
Thelma - "The Only Thing" | Album Review
Robert Pollard With Doug Gillard - "Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department (Reissue)" | Album Review
Upon the 20th anniversary of Robert Pollard and Doug Gillard’s Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department we get a remaster of one of the shining moments in Pollard’s never-ending discography. This record was birthed from Pollard sending Gillard songs he had written for Gillard to compose music for separately which Pollard would add vocals to later.
Halshug - "Drøm" | Album Review
Mauno - "Really Well" | Album Review
Bethlehem Steel - "Bethlehem Steel" | Album Review
This record strikes one as the confident expression of a band very solid in what they’re making. If one looks at the liner notes, they can see another expression of this: their previous full-length was credited as being written by Rebecca Ryskalczyk, while Bethlehem Steel credits the band itself as writing the songs. This is a band hitting their stride.
Frankie Cosmos - "Close It Quietly" | Album Review
The logic of DIY rarely leaves room for an unusual grace, but in Close it Quietly, the new album by Frankie Cosmos, there is room for passages and interferences of pure softness. Greta Kline seems to have found, after a long search for several LPs and albums, a structure and a clearer way to an ideal of limpid and moving beauty.
Shormey - "Boogie Tape Vol. 1" | Album Review
Shormey, a Virginia-based musician, crafts ethereal and grooving jams that fall somewhere between disco, funk, and psychedelia. On her debut EP Boogie Tape Vol. 1, she proves that, while her music may have a retro aesthetic and call to mind some artists of the past, Shormey is simultaneously in her own lane.
Beeef - "Bull In The Shade" | Album Review
Bull in the Shade is the sophomore full length release from Allston (Boston) indie rock quartet Beeef, that increases the muscle in the tunesmith and lends an interesting perspective towards songwriting. Perry Eaton uses a slightly quirky vocal delivery that grabs attention immediately while the band establish mostly frantic instrumentation.
DUMP HIM - "Dykes To Watch Out For" | Album Review
Pom Pom Squad - "Ow" | Album Review
Pom Pom Squad’s new EP, Ow, is a step above the already-great Hate It Here in every way. The songs are more polished, but they’ve lost none of the edge that made the debut songs so strong. The vocal hooks are stronger, the production clearer, and the song sequencing highlights Berrin’s strength for storytelling
Infinity Crush - "Virtual Heaven" | Album Review
Parsnip - "When The Tree Bears Fruit" | Album Review
When the Tree Bears Fruit is the very impressive debut full length from Australian quartet Parsnip who combine eccentricity and a wide-eyed innocence with agitating and crashing garage pop. The quartet prove themselves quite adept at ramshackle melodies indebted to the late 60’s psych scene via early Flying Nun bands.