Tough Age call their music “culmination rock” and what a description this is. The work of Jarrett Samson, Jesse Locke, and Penny Clark is really the combining of years of sonic ideas, lost bands, and defining experiences. Since 2012, each album has refined their tight and energetic sound further; so Which Way Am I? is their strongest release.
What really makes these songs stand out is the writing. Okusami juxtaposes deeply personal, confessional songwriting against apocalyptic imagery. There’s a crack in the world that everyone falls through, fires that burn everything to the ground, and suns that will never come up again. Amidst all the chaos real life plays out.
There is something so purely free about The Cradle’s latest LP, Laughing In My Sleep. Drawing from various worlds of music, its an eclectic listen made up of medieval melodies and Éthiopiques-inspired polyrhythms. Paco Cathcart equally embraces olden folk tunes as much as he does avant-garde / post-punk experiments.
Sometimes out of the ashes rises something even more astonishing and beautiful than that was once before it, Knot prove that axiom to be wholly true. With their self-titled debut, the quartet have made an album full of intense questioning, rising anger and reveling in a universal interconnectedness.
Elliott Smith’s self titled is an utterly depressing album to its core. It’s full of some of the most haunting and beautiful songs you’ll ever hear, but it’ll take a toll on your mood by the end of it. It’s littered with reoccurring themes of drug abuse, feeling strung out, and self hatred throughout the tracklist.
When the world is on fire, sometimes it’s best to embrace your anger, and that’s exactly what Watcher have done with their latest album. Influenced by American death metal like Morbid Angel and Death, sludge rockers like Harvey Milk, along with Revolution Summer-era bands, Punishment is a clear refinement of Watcher’s sound.
Gone are the days of “Love, love me do”, which is why Eric Slick’s decision to make a love album, a top-to-bottom expression of sweet, childish, jealous, insecure, saccharine love, is so refreshing. It’s not cool to wear your heart on your sleeve, but Wiseacre isn’t concerned with aloof nonchalance.
With the exception of the title and cover, there’s no strong indication that this is a record made to fulfill an obligation required to exit a record contract. This is a fun and energetic set of songs that contains a sense of levity throughout. Even when the subject matter is weighty, there is either a tenderness or momentum.
On their third record, SUGAREGG, they’re at the top of their game, with what feels like an impossible amount of energy. It’s fascinating how easy it is to point to a song and know it’s Bully, they’re unmistakable, a band that sounds distinct in a crowded genre, in large part to bandleader Alicia Bognanno’s raspy, oft shouted vocals.
Helvetia is back with the charmingly lo-fi This Devastating Map. The solo project of Jason Albertini, an original member of Duster and former bass player for Built to Spill, each release from Helvetia manages to sound different from the last, yet usually sits within a common realm: fuzzy, home recorded psych-pop music.
Endless Space (Between You & I) is entirely a record of its own, suffused with a purity that only true dream pop can provide. Everything is ethereal (unsurprising from the person who released an EP titled Ethereality in 2018) and the songs never cease to sparkle, awash as they are in technicolor reverie.
V.V. Lightbody is the type of artist that will take your breath away. She writes expertly crafted songs that are steeped in emotional nuance and humble wisdom. On Make A Shrine Or Burn It her self described “Nap Rock” sound is built up into an endlessly entertaining album of complex arrangements and tightly performed musical moments.
In some ways, I Was Born Swimming is a perfect record for this period of isolation. Recounting intimate moments from her life (literally starting from her own birth on the titular track), Williams navigates through feelings of loneliness, anxiousness, and heartbreak with the goal of constantly moving forward.
