It’s been less than a year since Gentle Heat released their debut album, but the Chicago quartet are back with a new EP, Liminal. Due out on February 1st via Skeletal Lightning, the band continue to refine their propulsive pop noise with influences from krautrock, power-pop, and post-hardcore with a squeaky clean delivery.
In December 2018, Living Statue Records released a tribute to Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs to benefit No More Dysphoria, a non-profit working to help make transitioning a more viable option for those in need, that carries the spirit and love of 69 Love Songs with a wide ranging assortment of DIY/”Indie” artists.
The album’s first single, “Paul At Art’s Grave” is a shinning example of the band’s off-kilter pop. It’s jangly and damn near whimsical, but there’s still a sense of isolation and despair hidden in the joyous melody. With themes of space and hibernation, the song follows a front-porch barn burner of guitar picking (the could just as easily be a banjo).
Their collaboration is innate and the results are spectacular. Recorded on the winter solstice of 2018 in West Philly, Ther and Sadurn’s split finds the songwriters swapping songwriting duties — Jones taking even numbered tracks with DeGroot filling in the odds. It’s simple and unhindered by post-production, creating a space as intimate as the basement where it was recorded.
Nosebleeds Always is a compilation of sorts, documenting a year’s worth of withheld demos born between the walls of the Brooklyn-based artist’s apartment. The rough, brilliant sketches found on the late 2018 release demonstrate Rachel Brown’s remarkable prolificacy and melodic prowess, further proving their place as one of the most important budding songwriters right now.
Using manipulated tape sounds and vivid swirls of melodic dissonance akin to Mega Bog or Helvetia’s earliest output, Ouch is a fantastic album that truly gets better with every listen. Originally released last summer as a digital download, Art Of The Uncarved Block are set to reissue the album on January 25th with an expanded cassette and two bonus tracks.
Camp Counselor is ready to release another EP, Scabs, due out January 15th via It Takes Time Records. Their songs are personal and bare, with an emotional tone that never hides itself in production or abstraction on an EP that deals with “letting your wounds heal and leaving behind the ones you no longer need.”
The long-running band (whose members also play in C.H.E.W., Options, etc.) have a dynamic sound that feels compact and dense, carefully constructed and ready to burst upon exposure. There’s a painstaking quality to the way each song is built, the guitars weaving between rhythmic heft that’s somewhere between crushing and dreamy (often in both territories at once).
Earl has always had something to respond to and Some Rap Songs is no exception. Despite the fact that most of it was written and recorded before the death of his estranged father, South African poet Keorpatse Kgositsile, the beauty and pain of Earl’s music has never felt more apparent, more on his sleeve, more honest.
