A classically-amalgamated DIY project from Melbourne, the five-piece comes from several other bands, including Future Suck, Kosmetika, Blonde Revolver, and The Vacant Smiles. Yes We Do, was released via the always reliable Spoilsport Records, using post-punk as a mere base to build new wave synths, pop flourishes, and garage guitars.
Melbourne’s The Murlocs return with their fifth album to provide some much-needed bluesy brightness to listener’s lives. Bittersweet Demons, again released by the excellent Flightless Records, courses on a long and winding path, each turn infectious and melodious. It’s a soulful and rowdy record, rollicking and ballsy.
Sometimes all that has come before can’t prepare you for what comes next, which could be said about Mandatory Enjoyment, Dummy’s full length debut, out October 22nd via Trouble In Mind Records (Mountain Movers, FACS). It’s not so much that they’ve taken a hard stylistic turn from their EPs as much as they’ve distilled it down to perfection.
How about some mutant Japanese surf from Toronto? Well, if you didn't have a chance to previously encounter this seven-piece band through their singles, Shirushi, the debut album by Teke::Teke, is a perfect start. Actually, it is a perfect start for all of us, as it is an excellent surprise, out of almost nowhere.
Smile Machine may be a new name, but Jordyn Blakely is most definitely a familiar face on the music grid, having drummed for a cadre of who's who in the "indie" music universe. On Bye for Now, Blakely places herself front and center of a muscular and versatile EP that shows off her range as a musician and so much more.
Do You Like Salt? captures the band at their artist punk best, engineered by Dischord staple Justin Moyer. Due out 8/20 via Crafted Sounds, it’s an album that finds its own groove, sputtering and darting around impeccably tight rhythms and an irreverent sense of humor, drawing comparisons to bands past (PYLON) and present (Fake Fruit).
Like so much music created during the pandemic, it’s hard not to look at things through that lens of isolation. Whether or not it was Russell Edling who had spent that year in Shadowland – or even what Shadowland is – is up for interpretation. Was it the literal confines of his home or was it something more metaphorical?
“No genre is my new favorite genre,” reads his bio, along with some stuff about pendulum’s swinging and heat domes. You could call this “outsider music,” even though it’s definitely “insider” enough that the melodies know how to stay in your head. Stinkin Donuts expertly toes this line between here and there.
LYSOL’s full length debut, Soup For My Family, is due out this Friday, July 30th. The Seattle punk band give us that “fuck it all” release we so desperately need from time to time (…most of the time). The album is raw and unfiltered, ripping with paint peeling riffs and furious rhythms that pound with a primitive garage punk intensity.
Easy Bammer is the debut record from May Rio, the dreamy NYC indie pop project of May Rio Sembera. Although a bit of a necessary departure into hazy lo-fi bedroom pop due to the unfortunate nature of humanity and a pandemic, the record carries much of the same charm Rio’s band Poppies have in abundance.
PACKS’ debut Take The Cake has all the unassuming beauty of nature in suburbia; subtle and spare, the album follows Madeline Link as she drifts through post-adolescent malaise. The romantic gloss Link imparts on everyday life doesn’t hide the disconnect between Link and the world around her as she struggles to find her place within it.
We might all have a part to play in addressing the climate crisis, but I for one am more than happy to let Snapped Ankles provide the soundtrack to dance as weirdly as you want. Limbs flailing in anxious frustration, losing consciousness of the singularity of selfhood and melding with the sweaty weirdos around you, truly may help.
Baton Rouge duo Spllit had recorded Spllit Together in 2019 and released it at the beginning of 2020. That record has since been remastered by Sweeping Promises’ Caufield Schnug, and paired together with Darlene, a new A-Side length album, set for release together as Spllit Sides, due out July 30th via Feel it Records.
