There’s a repeated line in W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘Easter 1916’: A terrible beauty is born. This devastating line could describe the feeling of listening to Joy Division’s Closer for the first time. It’s a colossal work of art; a post-punk pillar; an ingenious sonic landscape; a blinding existential vision of songwriting.
Austin, TX’s Spirit Ghost have a new EP along the way, but before the band get there they’re sharing some new singles, the first of which being “Matt Demon.” Comprised of Alex Whitelaw, Tim Zoidis, and Billy Hickey, they’re following up 2018’s Skeleton Surf Rider with a batch of recordings produced by Holiday Music’s Mike Hlady.
Just Look At That Sky, the sophomore full-length from Chicago’s Ganser, is the sound of summer. Maybe not in the traditional sense of friendly fun in the sun, but as it builds on their penchant for dark, pulsing atmospherics and razor-sharp attitude, it captures the feel of a summer under lockdown and a post-punk band at their most dialed-in.
New York’s Blue Yonder only formed in the early months of 2020, but yet somehow they’ve been productive enough to write and record Ladies of the Night, their debut record. Out 9/25 via Spirit Lust, the band sound awfully promising based on their first single, the swooning and dreamy Americana tinged “Lover of Mine.”
Speckled with slacker anthems and folk charmers, Dark Tones’ Pulling Nails Out of Walls catalogues the loneliness, the pointlessness, and the weight of being an island. The record aims to make sense of one’s own solitude, or at least to sharpie “I WAS HERE” on the inside of a bathroom stall, just to prove one’s own existence.
Nova Scotia rockers Kestrels want to remind you of another era and their latest album Dream Or Don’t Dream is their love letter to ‘90s rock, mixing the hushed aesthetics of shoegaze with the fuzz and energy of power-pop. In its meshing of big-name rock backing talent and its commitment, Kestrels will find an interested audience.
Future Punx’s 2020 took everything loved about their contemporaries and amped it up a notch. It is one of those records that, especially in our current situation, makes you want to walk out the front door and go see any live band and dance. It is something special. Our interview with the band’s Jake Pepper via e-mail confirms this theory.
Last month, multidisciplinary wunderkind Dan Drohan released the genre-evasive You’re a Crusher/drocan! The album is a pop record doing the best it can to hide the fact that it is a pop record. Today we’re premiering the video for “Leave It Loading,” the stunning opener, filmed in collaboration with cinematographer Emile Bertherat.
Psychic Energy are that new Western MA band you need to know, and some of the band’s members may already be familiar. The trio of Candace (Bunny’s A Swine, Footings), Dana (Ex-Temper), and Josh (The Capitulators) may only be on a first name basis to us, but it’s fitting as their debut EP, Post Nothing, feels welcoming.
The goal of Abscess Time isn't aimed at kicking against the boundaries of the existent heavy music scene, but rather to give better definition to those lines that have been previously drawn. I think it's clear that in refining rather than expanding their sound, Pyrrhon have given us a more precise picture of what they're capable of.
Possible Humans is a five-piece band out of Melbourne, for those that love guitars and driving bass lines. Everybody Split is their first full length, initially released in April 2019 as a small run by Hobbies Galore. This initial run was followed by a US and worldwide release in August by Trouble in Mind Records based out of Chicago.
