On their new EP, I’m So Lucky, blood-curdling screams over abrasive textures stir up dissonance and paranoia. As uneasy as it is to listen to, they make it worth every second through rich layers and dazzling samples. As the “Philly shoegaze” landscape and subculture begin to crystallize, Spirit of the Beehive continues to hold their own.
Stepmother is boiling over and ready to shred with reckless abandon. Their sound is big on boogie, ripping solos, and sun-fried riffs as vast as desert expanse. Led by guitarist/vocalist Graham Clise (Witch, Annihilation Time, Lecherous Gaze), the sound of Detroit and California is alive in the trio, even from their Melbourne origins.
Drolomon is CS Cleaners’ debut EP, concocting a hypnotic combination of classic punk, a la Black Flag, the art rock looseness of Tropical Fuck Storm, and the optimism of Sports Team. After their debut single “Income Pain,” a gritted teeth love letter to hardcore, the group planted their feet in warehouse floors sticky with beer and sweat.
Be Your Own Pet has reunited and released their third record, Mommy. Teasing another unapologetically piercing garage rock experience, the album opens with searing guitar solos and thunderous drum patterns. However, it’s in the second half of the album that the band’s experimentation takes center stage.
Grass Jaw share “Enough (To Feel Bad About),” a song that feels personal but relatable. It’s bleak, reflecting on death, life lived, and how we spend our days. With backing vocals from Huan-Hua Chye and trombone from Steve Zielinski, this one really swells into a place of grandeur, the song steadily building.
PALS is a great example of what a debut record should do. It provides an introduction to a band that is clearly hungry to break out and show what they can do, while still being incredibly well produced, funny, catchy, and succinctly and tightly played. The musicianship and creativity here holds a lot of promise.
Meg Duffy and Gregory Uhlmann have recorded an album under the name Duffy x Uhlmann. The project is a tranquil folksy wander, just the two of them playing simple hypnotic interlocking lines that develop a warm and welcoming atmosphere. It rarely feels busy, even if there is subtle virtuosity in their musical chemistry.
There’s a real shimmer to her songs, sweet and charming, with attention to tonality and the detail in her warped and weaving recordings. Set to release a new self-titled album on September 27th via I’m Into Life Records (Open Head, The Lentils, Jolee Gordon), the album is great from start to finish, it’s shape in fluid motion.
When the band go from making music to trying to make a grander statement -- as the two halves fully represent -- everything clicks into place. The record as this living entity shifts from mostly good to having depth and personality. The layers in that second half find them building on their influences with courageous abandon.
Sadie Dupuis and her crew are BIG on sonics; they played about fifty different guitars, through over a hundred effects pedals and thirty amps at Rancho de la Luna and Sonic Ranch for Rabbit Rabbit. The band has always had a guitar focus, and the riffs have continuously been hot, but engineer Sarah Tudzin, brought added heat.
With their latest album, Hand Is Bad, out September 29th via Amish Records, the band seem to have peeled things down to a place somewhere between no wave and ambiance. The songs are as much about texture as they are anything abrasive, with room to breath, room to wander. It’s clean but lurking in the shadow.
With widescreen guitars that encapsulate everything like molasses coming down a mountain, Mums play it loud and heavy, but slow dripped and soaked in primal melodies. Guitars threaten to come apart at the seems, the fuzz blistering in all directions, recalling the joy in sustained decay and raw pop that we’ve come to associate with bands like Part Chimp, Torche, and Cherubs.
GBMystical was releasing bedroom pop, garage rock, folk rock, and indie throwbacks. Genre, it seems, is as fluid as water, for Munawet. However, by no means would one expect him to set his sights on tried and true sludgy, thrashy, groovy metal for his next project. Yet, that is exactly what The Mantis is - crunchy, pummeling and speeding.
Given that it has taken a number of years for this new album to appear, one could read I Was a Thing of Beauty as a make-or-break moment for the band. Clearly, they possess enough patience to wait for songs to come together. Like their esteemed influences, they seem content for the time being to revise their sound as it suits them.
