Album Review: JJ Sweetheart - Big Things

Time for some wholesome woodland jams, from a guy who lives in *checks browser tab* ... Minneapolis! .... I mean, suuuuuure... why the hell not- Minnesota is a very forested state and I could imagine myself needing to live out a scene or two from Gary Paulsen's Hatchet if I ventured farther than a minute off a paved road there, so screw it, everybody who lives there is a basically a druid as far as I'm concerned. Including JJ Sweetheat, a decidedly modern sort of persona, but one with enough grit under his nails and sifted into his aesthetics that you'd swear he spent just about every night with nothing but his own hot breath between him and the open, starry sky. Big Things is JJ's conspicuously titled debut EP where he serenades your innocent ears with an ashy style of campfire-huddling wyrd folk that echos and wails like a diminutive cyclone rising like a dancing prophet from the hollow of a dead tree. "This World" welcomes you into JJ's realm of dusted soles and dusky dances, escaping the press of urbania with drops of electric-country guitars and the insistent, hypno-viper rattle of tambourine percussion. Next "Feral Feelings" draws you further into the updraft of his psychedelic bonfire with its darkly dreamy affect, where you are then tossed up and spun like a dandelion pappus on a cool September current on the mortius-minded fluster-tumble "Too the Grave." The spicy-sweet stroll of "Cinnamon" is wound around a cluster of suitably sticky hooks and gooey guitar rips, while closer "Heart Medal" is a delightfully overheated but subtly starting evaporation point from which JJ can make his exit into the dark night air like smoke escaping a dying ember. You can lose your map, lose your shoes, even lose your mind, but as long as you keep your ears open to Big Things, you'll never be totally lost. 

Album Review: Sacred Monster - Worship the Weird

Worship the Weird is the debut album* from Chicago doom metal band, Sacred Monster (from 2019, a very popular year for rehashing stalwart tales of cosmic horror for whatever reason). They perform a muscular blues-riff anchored interpretation of classic NWOBHM and doom grooves ala Pentagram, with vocals that run the gambit of strained reptilian cries interspersed with the clean ring of King Diamond-esque salvos. The contents of their songs are mostly homages to classic horror and sci-fi, presented with an appropriate measure of Cryptkeeper camp. Like the stomping Twilight Zone tribute "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," the uncanny Clutch-worshiping stutter-groove retelling of an '80s cult-classic "Re-Animator," and the superb, pugnacious knuckle-duster and Dark Tower homage "Face of My Father." The vampy-er tracks tell original stories, with "The Wraith," depicting a story of revenge from beyond the grave with a burning Orange Goblin-esque bridge, and the epic Candlemass-meets-King Diamond haunted asylum tour of "Waverly Hills." Embrace your weirder side and give this a spin.

Find more adherents of the dark arts from Ordo MCM.

*... and the last album too. The group disbanded in 2022. Another metal ulogy. It seems I've been writing a lot of these lately... 

Album Review: Dött ljus - Bottna

Bottna is the Slowcraft Records debut of Stockholm electronic duo Johan Kisro and Petter Lindhagen, known to us as Dött ljus (if you know any Swedish, this is your chance to turn to a friend, who is presumably reading this review simultaneously with you, in the same room, and tell them, "'Hey, Dött ljus' means Dead Light in Swedish," which I am positive will impress them and make them feel more warmly about you as a friend).* Bottna is a brief but impactful listen, submerging its audience in abidingly subtle textures and generously affected moods, that amasss in a gentile swell of nostalgia-priming motifs, as if the chain of memories that laces the quotidian turns of your life into a cognisant pattern were to materialize into a clear, babbling brook, which covers and rushes over you, wetting your face and hands like a baptismal font while eroding the grief and rueful dolor that weighs you to pitted, the sandy bed where your body is stretched prone. Sharp, interposed, and intently articulated beats tickle your ears like the nipping claws of hermit crabs come to whisper a lonesome tale to you in your sleep, accompanied by the soft clattering music of their shifting shells. Breathing sonic architecture contorts and molts like a chrysalis paroling its delicate ward into the catching breeze, while birds comprised of insulated copper and painted aluminum scourer for scraps of tinted vinyl and strips of celluloid to bump up the Boho of the nest they've made in an weathered and sagging willow tree they share with a family of kodama. There is no ceiling to the heights of experience which Bottna contains, only a bedrock of vivid, transformative sound. 

Take it slow. Slowcraft Records.

*If you don't know any Swedish, then I am that friend to you. You're welcome. 

Interview: Pete Min of Colorfield Records

I've been a fan of Pete's work with artists since the start of this blog. His work with Colorfield Records is completely in line with the ethos of my own blog, and in encountering his discography, it made me realize that I am not alone in championing the deserving but underrecognized talent of the world. He gives session musicians and unsung studio heroes a chance to really test their limits and craft music that is challenging to make but easy to enjoy. There are far too few people doing what Pete is doing, but the world is made much more interesting due to his efforts. Check out the interview below: 

Featured in this interview is music from Nicole McCabe's recent Colorfield Records release, A Song To Sing. Check it out here: 

This episode is, in part, dedicated to the great George Lowe, one of the greatest comedic voice actors of all time. Leaving us far too soon, he's returned to his home (Cartoon) planet for a well-deserved rest. RIP (1957-2025) 

Album Review: WOW - Come La Notte

Shadowy cinematic psychedelic pop out of Italy, that could have been written for a David Lynch film with ambitions for mainstream crossover appeal. Combining light oaky percussion, with ghostly synths, ambling guitars, and sultry vocals, the dusky ye-ye duo known as WOW cut an evocative and haunting sonic silhouette on their fourth album, Come La Notte. This is an effortlessly cool record that can be easily slotted into a late-night rendezvous with a good book or a long evening drive for an indelible interjection of je ne sais quoi. Opener “Come La Notte” has a somber spaghetti-western vibe to it, “Nina” adds some lush sweeping vocal harmonies to the mix, while “Morire Per Amore” has a timeless ‘60s psych-R’nB quality, and “Occhi Di Serpente” casts a deep and alluring spell with its trancey saturated bassline and tide-rolling melody. A truly strange and delightful listen.

Find more records to sink your teeth into from Maple Death. 

Interview: ESP Mayhem

Deploying a sonic barrage of culture-jamming ballistics from the savanna of perdition that is Neo-Melbourne, ESP Mayhem is the EVP of the ghost in the machine. On a day like today, and in an age like our own, we are all plugged in like flesh transistors neuralinked into a info-validating supply chain that stamps the leveled realities and hyperreal phantasms auto-generated by smiling maskless faces acting as temporary receivers of a transient silicon-threshed symbolic order with the briefest of imprint of our consciousness before consigning these bubbles of fleeting joy to the abyss along with a fragment of our souls- like gum smeared on plywood. ESP Mayhem extends themselves through the gates, ports and check-passes of the nauseatingly manifold mirage of digital excess and unclarity that define the quicksand-like qualities of the concrete world to bully the leveler pullers and burst the tension of the spell that's been cast over us- finding salvation through sublation and recuperating their humanity through agitated accelerationism. Their latest EP Cyber Bully emerged in 2024 to shake down crypto nerds and relieve them of the burden of their hallucinatory lucre while reshuffling the static of stultifying overexcitement that snow blinds our perception in the hopes that a dose of the right kind of chaos can produce an epiphany of eschatological significance... that and they really just like to fuck shit up. You can check out my interview with the band below; it reads a little like the manifesto of a terrorist sect that Johnny Mnemonic might have had to rely on in a pinch for information and logistics. It gets giga-gonzo, you've been warned. 

Who participates in ESP Mayhem, and how do they contribute?

Bruce - Synth; Clock - Vocals; K@rrl - Synth; Klown - Synth; Ralph - Drums. We might change the names and/or people around in the future.

What is the thesis or animating logic behind the group?

In our view, extreme music is an arms race. It's a race that can never be won because the escalation will never stop. The goal is to make the most unsentimentally rageous [sic] and mechanistically horny music we can. Even if we do something that reaches the goal it’s already history because it’s just a matter of time until it’s surpassed. The only options are to go even further or give up. Hyperextend until you explode.

How did you settle on your name?

We decided our logo should combine a metal band’s logo and a logo from outside that world. The combined logos had to form a phrase or word that worked as a band name independent of the source material, and the component logos had to have finger-snap recognisability. There was a very short list of bands, brands and logos that worked. We appropriated Mayhem and ESPN as a graphic shorthand for sonic extremity on the one hand, and the sublimation of violence through spectacle on the other. We chopped “ESPN” down to “ESP”, in the sense of “Extra-Sensory-Perception”, to underline the psychic dimension. Hence ESP Mayhem. The name means no distinction between our music and everything else in the product-scape, no brakes on our out-of-control hubris, and no limits on what we’re prepared to steal.

Why grindcore?

Grindcore is obsessed with aggressive hyper-velocity, instantaneity and disposability. It’s also very information-dense, lots of notes in a hyper compressed burst. Tension, information overload, everything moving too fast - those are the only things in our lives anyway so it’d be dishonest to fuck around with anything else. It’s no accident that mass-entertainment is taking on more and more grindcore-like proportions and gestures. Because everyone feels and thinks this way now. It’s basically the most realistic music of all time.

Are you inspired by the work of other metal performers, or do your influences lie mainly elsewhere?

Melbourne has produced some great grindcore bands so we were lucky to see the style played by some of the best to do it. That’s the foundation of how we understand fast music and how we think it should feel. But we always want something more absurd and more brain-cracking. So we also plagiarise from the most antisocially jacked up, hyperactive dance music - speedcore, anything out of Newcastle (NSW) etc. There’s some worthless computer-world dross mashed in as well, nightcore and ear-biting 8 bit arpeggiation, high-fructose trash sounds designed to fry your pleasure centres [sic] into pouring more money/time down the shitter. Other than that, we just regurgitate the rising tempo of the sensory pummelling we’ve endured our entire lives, in the same way you might make yourself throw up after ill-advisedly eating a mysterious wrong-address delivery meal you find on your doorstep. IE an unpleasant but necessary action to avoid shitting yourself later on.

Was it a deliberate choice to exclude guitars from your ensemble, and if so, why?

It was an accidental, revelatory, bad, great idea. We happened to plug a synthesizer into a guitar amp and discovered you could make noise that lands like a tungsten cube dropped from orbit. No nuance or warmth, just pure force. But none of us had any experience playing electronic music. We don’t really understand how the instruments work, and we’re all intellectually paralysed from too much high pressure/low duration media (grindcore and grindcore-ized media in general) so it’s nearly impossible for us to learn. But synthesizers are just too loud and we’re addicted to power so we can’t stop. If someone accidentally bumps their instrument it instantly blows everyone’s ears out and we all scream in pain. It’s awful.

What was the thought process going into your latest release, Cyber Bully?

We wanted it to sound like Megatron trying to auto-fellate and accidentally machine-gunning his own head off. More piercing sonic aggression, more jarring speed-to-dance transitions, more blatantly ripping things off, more gleeful mockery and disrespect, just more. There’s no point or really any possibility of subtlety or thoughtfulness now so we always want to go as far and fast in the wrong direction as we can.

What are your thoughts on the circularity of time and history?

Time and history are circular, but also linear. We have no evidence to back this up, we just infer it from the overall feeling of constant upheaval combined with total inertia.

How do the contradictory but intersecting modern phenomena of stultifying boredom and constant excitement and/or agitation play out through your work?

Things are so continuously exciting now that excitement itself has become experientially boring, because it never lets up. Like when was the last time you didn’t feel angry, horny, scared or otherwise wound up. And it’s not just you, everyone is sitting there in a state of private agitation. But it’s not like you can opt out of the situation, so why not go further. There’s an episode of the TV show Max Headroom, where watching a high speed advertisement is found to spike the viewer’s nervous system to the point that they spontaneously combust. Ratchet up the boredom, ratchet up the pressure until the whole thing explodes in media-induced, self-obliterating tedium. You should be trying to cross that line, one way or another. Extreme boredom makes extreme music.

How does your work draw attention to the invasive nature of technology and underscore our intimacy with it?

Our band setup is like reverse-cybergrind, we kept the drummer and replaced all the guitars with prosumer electronic equipment. IE more unwanted and unasked-for change for the sake of it masked as “innovation” and “development”. It’s like what we see with technology, but even more stupid. People don’t really want it but we keep pushing it on them and eventually they give in. A few people might say it’s good, they don’t really think that, we just shoved it in their faces til they thought they did. After we convince them, it's not too long til they think they convinced themselves. But unlike the technologists we make no claim to be improving anything. We’re making things worse and more difficult, so perversely actually making things better.

How do you think our interactions with information technology, particularly social media, transform and augment our sense of identity and place in the world?

The Self As Asset has been realised through social media - the kipple machine that crushes everything into advertising, as it simultaneously crushes advertising into everything. The term Personal Brand used to get thrown around but you don’t hear it now cause the concept has become so internalised that it’s redundant - of course a person is a brand, why bring it up. Between Personal Branding and Corporate Personhood a circle is completed - on the one hand people take on the characteristics of brands, and on the other corporations take the characteristics of people. We’re encouraged to understand ourselves through the language of therapy but we should use the language of marketing instead, it’s more accurate.

How does the concept of "junkspace" relate to your approach, outlook, and output?

Neo-Melbourne is a quintessential junkspace. It’s like living in a big cardboard box full of print-on-demand neon signage. All lowest-bid-contract dross stretched over the skeleton of a failed plan. Nothing rings true here and things don’t work out for the good. So ESPM makes something else from the junk. We grab whatever we like and use it however we can to advance our project. You see the bare bones of everything we ripped off and how starkly we smashed it all together, a junkspace aesthetic. But it conforms to our logic now. The incongruities made sense all along, we are just stacking the pieces up in a way that makes the pattern reveal itself.

What is the value of novelty in popular culture at this moment? Is it still attainable, is it worth pursuing?

It’s not attainable but it’s worth pursuing. With pop culture It’s more straightforward and more rewarding to repeat things, and in life it’s easier to do nothing at all. But tomorrow will arrive whether you want it or not. And you have to put an idea forward if you don’t want more of the same. If we have to live in a bullshit future then we’re gonna try and make it our bullshit, not someone else’s, stinking the place up. And everyone else’s bullshit is ours now anyway. Intellectual property is theft and anyone bristling at their art/bullshit being stolen is dumb for imagining they’re losing something and a cop for caring. All we have ever done is lift so many touchstones from the manic ends of popular culture and music scenes into the one mix, so there’s nothing really new. But on paper ESP Mayhem is a novelty act because of what we steal and why. We would go further and say that now, every act should be a novelty act, and this is the only way to stay ahead of the kipple machine. Realise your own delusions or steal ours and turn it into something else, we don’t care. But you are either a novelty act or you enter the kipple factory, that’s the choice.

What if any, are the beneficial and ethical uses for AI in art and creative endeavors at this stage of its technological development?

There’s no ethical use for AI because it’s a big machine for ripping things off. ESPM is in direct competition with AI in that regard. And we are winning. With all the money and raw intellectual horsepower sloshing around in the AI industries it should be the other way around but no, we can rip things off faster, more totally and more fluently than the stupid AIs. That’s where we’re at, historically speaking. The great white hope of technological advancement has been outperformed by a synthgrind band from the Cleveland of the southern hemisphere. It’s a grim outlook.

What does the term "cyberpunk" mean to you in relation to your work, if anything?

“Neo-Melbourne” alludes to the idea that all those old Cyberpunk stories have been more or less realised in our present day. But the term cyberpunk is historical now, it makes sense as a pinterest moodboard but doesn’t quite capture the flavour of this moment. We need a new anachronistic portmanteau to describe a world of grinning human sharks swimming upstream in a sea of techno-garbage. It should keep the “social technics vs music subculture” form of “Cyberpunk”, but instead blend the relentless pumping of uptempo hardcore, with overblown CCRU-style net-mysticism. Something like Xenodonk, or Deus Ex Makina.

What is the most dystopian part of living in Melbourne?

Smelling the countryside burn as you walk past 3-million-dollar townhouses in your old neighbourhood.

Album Review: Pinky Lemon - Pinky Hell

Admitting this will likely make me sound completely unhinged, but whenever I order a drink at a restaurant or a kiosk, I have an irrational paranoia that the person preparing my order is going to bleed in it. This has never happened in experience (as far as I know), and it doesn't cause me much anxiety, but whenever I watch someone pouring coffee or dispensing juice, I can't help but think, "If they got a nosebleed right now, there is only about a foot between their nostrils and my beverage, and then my drink could end up with an extra-iron supplement in it." I can't account for this aspect of my psychology. It could be the result of some starved desire for affection (not that my conscious mind is aware of such a deficit) or the rendering down of the literal transaction occurring (me buying a coffee) into base biological terms (there is a fluid transfer from the barista to me in exchange for currency). Whatever it is, the reality of someone adding their own brand of syrup extract to my morning joe probably wouldn't be that bad for me- the iron would help me maintain my own hemoglobin and might even assist me in warding off restless leg syndrome. Now that I've put this out into the world, someone is probably going to pass me a pink lemonade that they flavored themselves just to vindicate me and my anguished fixations for no reason other than I was foolish enough to say something about one of my mild phobias in public. Oh well, I can always use more viscera to liven up my day- I seek it out in movies, video games and music, why not in everything I consume? Sometimes I think it's the lack of carnality that keeps me from celebrating the shoegaze "revival" as much as others. It's not that I never write about shoegaze bands... It's just that it can be a challenge to get excited about release after release of nearly indistinguishable waves of distortion and weightlessness, inconsequential vocal deliveries that all too often define the genre. D.C.'s Pinky Lemon feels like they are headed in the right direction on their 2024 EP, Pinky Hell, though. I would certainly describe the group as part of the footgazi resurgence taking hold in the corridor between Philadelphia and the Capitol at the moment, but like Soft Body 2, the distortion and feedback that they rely on is slightly more crystalized and concretely compelling than what you might find elsewhere, helping to further focus the sharply toothsome rhythms that they employ. The interplay between groove and texture is a very important sight of exploration for the band, with many moments on Pinky Hell conjuring for me something akin to the spooky, danceable crisis of an early '00s witch house mix, one that reinterprets My Blood Valentine as a sort of lost media artifact, reconstructed from scrapes and slivers extracted from the detritus of an abandoned vaporwave YouTube channel. Opener, "Floodgate" sounds strikingly blown out, saturating the senses with dreamy chords that cluster around the ears like stray daydreams, emitting strobes of brilliant variegated thunder before dissipating into a mist of nectarous talc. The following track, "1 MIL" confirms the overall embodied nature of the album, a suitably urgent pop-punk pounce that skitters on its nails like a cat on ice through portals of elegant clarity- a struggle for preeminence that it can only glimpse before collapsing back into its fleshy confines, and ultimately stumbling over the border of safety and into a discordant gap of mechanical cardiac cycles that is "Reuploading." The reverent plunge of "Cheer" sounds like the band slow-motion crashing a space cruiser they boosted from an Ultra Deluxe album's lore, only to survive their mishap by ruggedly reverting to a post-amplified state of acoustic punk, that graciously molts into a blossom of dissident Deftones inflected tweecore on "i died // nvm." Through all its changes and transgressions, Pinky Hell ultimately settles into its final form on "2 MIL," a breakbeat-backed soul-scrubber that feels like it's exfoliating a deep region of your essence with its raw, contorting chords and cooling scrapes of glassy-glinting synths that ends as abruptly as a title card reading "To be continued...". A sanguine parting note for one hell of an album. 

Album Review: Ails - The Unraveling

Ails was the second phase of vocalist Laurie Shanaman and guitarist Christy Cather’s life work of reshaping the American metal scene. The duo first played together in the phenomenal black metal band Ludicra, where they advanced a fresh take on the acidic hail-storm of second-wave blast-beats and tremulous, while adding a momentous sense of atmosphere and vamperic folk-rock, complemented by Shanaman’s amphibious growl and the occasional clean singing segment. Ails on their LP, The Unraveling, is a less straightforward rock project than their previous band. Here they double down on bleak, damp atmosphere, not in a metal hipster, “ambient” or shoegazey kind of way, instead embracing elements of death-doom a la Hooded Menace, while striving to write serrated, alienating riffs that fulfill the eldritch covenant of their Nordic forbearers. The harsh whirlwind of cresting tremulous, coiling grooves, acid-plaque feedback, and wounded female vocal squalls may not be welcoming to the uninitiated, but given a chance, these tortured missives can be a cathartic departure for you and your more adventurous listeners. 

The Unraveling is Ails’s debut LP released by the practitioners of dark, inscrutable sound curation over at The Flenser, and unfortunately, it may also be their last as it was released in 2018, and they have yet to produce a successor. Another vibrant alternative metal project, cut down in its youth by expositio, or maybe lack thereof...

Album Review: Michael Cera Palin - We Could Be Brave

I'd be very surprised to learn that any of the guys from Atlanta's Michael Cera Pallin could see another country from their house- even if they were to stand on their roofs and hike up on their toes. Atlanta's pretty far removed from most internationally recognized partitions, unless there is a micronation nearby like Petoria that I'm oblivious to.* But who am I kidding (Not you! I'm nothing but honest with you!), being part of a scene and a subculture can be like being a member of your own private nation in some ways- there are customs and borders, anthems and sites of worship, ambassadors and refugees, etc...-  so I guess you could say that they see another foreign provenance from their place of residence after all, observing the clueless barbarian roaming around the city gates of their polity, blind to the riches concealed from their line of sight. If you could count yourself so bold, curious, and gallant, then maybe you could find yourself an honored guest, or at least an unmolested tourist, within their domain. Personally, I'm taking MCP's debut LP We Could Be Brave, as just that, a summons to a world beyond my provincial purview. Take, if you will, the stocky punch and roll of opener "Feast or Famine," which mediates the strummy affectedness of Mom Jeans with an overhanded volley approach to PUP venerating melody, dipping around your defenses and rocking you with a stunning ploy of earnest reflection and whiplash-hooks- it's almost too insistent that you give into band's steering command- lassoing you with elastic rhythms and reeling you into a zone of near claustrophobic catharsis. The next track is even more emphatic, acting like a cyclone that siphons the grief, pride, and fervor of the Mid-West and Great Lakes regions and funnels them into a concentrated etching tool that the band uses to carve their debts and deficiencies into the sands of time, only to witness them being washed away by the ripples and tides their own presence produces in the waters of Chronos- wiping the slate as if it were marked with mere chalk and not the fragments of past selves. Elsewhere, a rain of fluttering portraits showers from above, scattering and plastering themselves against burning pillars of searching clarity caught in counter-currents of amplified distortion and clashing social principles on the flea-bitten stinger "Murder Hornet Fursona"- the high points of which are met with, almost like the repetition of a poem, in a variation on mood, in the audacious and post-punky dip and drag of the justifiably discourteous, twinkle-spark scan "Gracious." Later down the line, we encounter "Despite," which sounds like the afterthoughts that bubble up out of the slick of mud that's been washed off a clear conscience, followed by the bashy balancing act "Broken Face," which teeters on the margins of both self-help and self-implosion without any apparent indicators as to which demarcation it would prefer to land. It's fitting, but rarely encountered that an album will conclude with the title track, almost like a final curtain drop after the listener has been pulled up on stage to take part in the closing bow- this bow lasts for 11 minutes though, and transitions through several fiery build-ups and busts, making the conclusion of the album more like an obstacle course you run with friends rather than a soft breathy kiss goodnight (not that it doesn't contain an appropriate air of finality- the band just seems to have trouble letting you go by the end after having spent so much time to get to know you). There are those who are could be brave enough to be themselves and seek out kindred souls, and then there are those who are brave enough to step fully into such a commonwealth of kinship- I think, despite their modesty, Michael Cera Palin can be counted as the latter.

Big Scary Monsters, living in the milk crates in your closet, warding off the bad vibes that float in through the vents. 

*If memory serves, there was a breakaway sect of the Kingdom of Talossa that settled there at one point. 

Album Review: Earth Heart - Homesick

Digging into the back of my crates to find the unrequited relics of a previous eon of musical obsession. When my lungs look like two bowls of spilled porridge running down the rungs of my rib cage from breathing in all this disintegrated binding glue spewed from crumbling heaps of vinyl, I hope you kids will appreciate what I've done for you here... who am I kidding? I'd do this sort of thing even if it didn't pay!* Lock in because I've got a sleeper hit** for y'all, salvaged from the dumpster fire of 2016. A gem passed from one dying era to another. Buzzy, angular garage rock out of Boston, MA, that knows no limits, up to and including the maximum gain on their amps- torquing that sucker all the way over and then popping it off like a loose toenail. Earth Heart is the kind of stabby, rudimentary rock that was more or less prototypical indie-sleaze rock, released at just about the time that all the filth and vital furry had rung from that scene's collective amygdalas. Homesick is their debut and final LP, the end was the beginning, and the beginning was the end, and so on you see. Instrumentally, they're pretty much Joy Division meets the Thermals with surf guitars. Vocally, we have something like Cassie Ramone doing an Iggy Pop impersonation. Pitchfork would have rubbed themselves raw over this album had it dropped during the first Obama administration, but back in '16 they were too busy chasing ad payola and playing footsie with pop-star publicists to singe their prissy little fingers on Earth Heart's fire-digging frenzy. And now? Well, now they have better things to do, apparently, like pushing high gloss photos and premium cologne on a demographic that barely deodorizes and regularly wears Ts and jeans to graduation parties and family funerals alike.*** That's fine. Their loss. You're here and not there because you and I know where the goods are buried, and hate to get our feet wet- so we seek higher ground and avoid sinking ships. Speaking of high points, the songwriting on Homesick is as classic as it comes, simplistic, even riffy, and wonderfully uncomplicated with a reverb-y finish. My favorite track on the album is probably “Homesick” with its carefree air and stipulated jangle guitars, drawing lyrically from singer Katie Coriander’s years as a bald-headed vagabond, squatting across the country after spontaneously throwing away all her possessions and abandoning her apartment. I’d also recommend the stumbling, dark rockabilly cruiser “Burn,” and the rhythmic post-punky twirl of “Iron Lung” as good places to start. Really though there is no bad place to drop the needle on this one. Even almost a decade into its existence, Homesick holds up as a statement in its own right, as well as a final flaring whisp of a waning era- sturdy as it is stirring- dependable even as the passion it excuses threatens to burn the casa that it's raised down to the floorboards. 

* Which incidentally it doesn't! 

** A comatose hit, tbh.

*** Men! I'm talking about you, you shlubs! 

Album Review: Chancha Via Circuito & El Búho - Tenalach

Chancha Via Circuito is an Argentinian folk artist and hip-hop producer who I would have considered the tip of the cumbia music revival spear back when I first discovered him in 2018. I couldn't tell you if his stuff is still considered cutting edge in those spaces anymore, as I lost the pulse of where Latin folk meets contemporary electronic music about three years ago. However, I'm glad that I'm revisiting his work, as it's introducing me to his second collab with British-born, Latin-beat empresario El Búho, a bright and atmospherically dense EP titled, Tenalach. Chancha Via Circuito's music integrates a number of pan-South American influences into his compositions, including dancehall, Andean folk, and southern hemisphere house, all of which blend wonderfully with El Búho's skill for smoothing out rhythms and heightening the aura of a mix in order to embellish it's layered, furtive secrets. For Tenalach the duo leads the listener deep into the green hearth at the center of a cathedral made of lush living walls- the gate to a digital wilderness and sandbox of sorts where your body can become as weightless as a dancing leaf or as settled and firm as the trunk of a great tree- where the possibilities of adventure and etching one's own radical form of semiotics are limitless, but not as myriad as the furrows for acquiescence into the mossy, aboding logic of the lavishly and iconically abundant glade of this emaculatly cultivated environ. In short, it is what the soundtrack to EarthBound might have sounded like if it had taken a detour through the Serranía de Chiribiquete before hitting a sidequest in the Andes. There might not be any place like home, but there is truly no other place quite like Tenalach. 

Shake it more with Shika Shika.

Album Review: Shady Lady and the Malefactor - A Nickname

With the world perpetually feeling like it's about to lurch off its axis and go peeling off into the starry abyss, keeping yourself out of a state of delirium can be a full-time commitment. Like with any long-term obligations, though, sometimes you just need a break and to let yourself have a manic episode now and again- you know, as a little treat. That seems to be the angle Swedish synth-punks Shady Lady and the Malefactor are coming from, and it's working out just dandy for them on their peculiarly monikered debut EP, A Nickname. Sounding like a demented B-52s who have timeskipped backward from a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque future hellscape to our present day, they embody a playfully antagonistic bacchanal of paranoia and tinfoil-chewing tenacity, folded into the ragged swaddle of siren-spiral sonics, lances of lysergic oscillations, and an afterburn of radiant space-aged sanguinity that's become twisted and scorched to the bone while plummeting through the acidic atmosphere of our waste-trap of a planet. Big proclamatory hooks hassle the senses and redecorate the interior of your headcase to make it ready for a host of unsettled moods, observations, and atypical trysts in a kind of inverted cerebral feng shui, digging out a firepit atop your brainstem in which a blaze of impish psychic turmoil can burn unobstructed. It all might be a bit much to swallow if it weren't so infectiously catchy, but there is no panacea for this kind of cognitive virus Shady Lady and the Malefactor are passing around- you just have to let this strain of rock and roll rubella roil until the fever breaks- which frankly, doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon. Get ready to spin-out in style! 

Album Review: Isiliel - 月虹創聖記

It almost seems like a lifetime since Myrkur released her debut self-titled on Relapse- 10 years might as well be a century the way things change in music, but I still recall the weird and contentious debates around that record's cross-pollination of black metal, folk, and pop like it was yesterday. People can be very protective of the things they care about, and music is no exception, especially when you start mixing fruits and porridge- regardless of how delicious the results may be. Myrkur has since gone strictly folk, which suits her, but it leaves room for others to take the spotlight in her stead. I'm not saying that Japan's Isiliel is an exact match for the absentee Myrkur, but she indeed represents a compelling condensation point between many of the same sonic trends- although manifesting in a more heroic overall embodiment of their provocative virtues. On her debut 月虹創聖記, Isiliel dons the persona of a warrior-priestess, a triumphant pillar of dark, feminine strength- as sturdy as a mountain and twice as imposing. Representing here a deified personification of elemental forces, I have no doubt that if her (hypothetical, or actual, as the case may be) daughter were kidnapped by the lord of the underworld, she'd almost certainly be capable of storming the gates of hell and rescuing her offspring on her own, but would probably bring to bear 6 months of winter to blight the land afterward anyway, as a show of strength and a warning to any deviant daemon who might try to pull the same antics as the last chump. While she may appear like an icey demoness to her foes, hyperborean sleat is not her only, or even primary weapon, as Isiliel could effortlessly melt a glacier with the force and heat of her voice alone, meaning that whatever cold snap might be gripping your heart when you put on 月虹創聖記 has about a snowball's chance in hell of surviving until the final crescendo. Strength alone does not carry the day, though, as it's not simply the power of Isiliel performance that makes it remarkable but also its dexterity, as it deftly weaves between cutting glances of tremolo guitars, above galloping blast-beats, and around an outcropping of traditional instrumentation like an arrow guided by the preternatural-skill of a master archer, curving betwixt trees, rocks, and other natural obstructions in order to strike at the center of her enemies' breast. Verily, Isiliel could be your worst nightmare or your greatest ally; it all depends on how much due deference and adoration you bestow on this lady of snow and steel. 

Isiliel rides on but one chariot and its name is Imperiet IV. 

Album Review: Meatwound - Culero

Meatwound... what a fucking name. It could either be a butcher's term of art or a tactless way of describing a condition that will require half a dozen stitches and a trip to the ER... in either case, it's most certainly a name befitting a sludgy hardcore band out of Florida. Meatwound haven't been particularly active since 2019, but that was a big year for them, so I suppose they've earned a vacay (or a dirt nap). Why was it so eventful? Well, it's the year they released their most ambitious album to date, Cularo, a menacing slab of boggy, strong-arming putrescence that will slap across your soon-to-be bruised, fat little cherub cheeks like it was made to order. Culero (“coward” en español, but can mean much worse things based on the context) is slightly more atmospheric than their 2017 LP Largo, but maintains the sludgy, Helmet meets Unsane strain of punk the band has cultivated since 2015's Addio. Heavy, caustic, unbalanced hardcore with deliberate and dynamic rhythms and concrete cracking beats, their sound on this LP is not quite as methodical as Fistula, and not nearly as adventurous as Unwound, but manages to be just potent and weighty as the former and exciting in execution as the latter. This freshly elected atmospheric direction the band has taken to slithering down is best exhibited on the acid mist psychedelic organ-driven odyssey of “Elder,” which introduces some Hawkwind-esque space rock explorations to the group's spiteful oeuvre. Dummy-hard haymakers like opener “Void Center” and the doomy downpour of “Fist of God” deliver the punishing gooey noise-core the band is best known for, while closer “...In the Fields with the Beasts” leans towards surging fast-core with lyrics liberally (and lovingly) cribs from the works of Ray Bradbury. No matter where you find yourself in the claustrophobic grooves of Culero's interior, there is nowhere to run and even fewer places to hide from Meatwound's flesh-scaring fury. 

Released on Financial Ruin Records (it is unclear to me how literal this name has become for the label).

Album Review: The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Named for the enormous but short-lived Southeast Asian Lepidoptera, Chicago’s sludgy post-metal pioneers spread their powerful wings and take flight like the mighty Mothra, doing battle with and slaying the stellar expectations set by their previous three albums. Coma Noir improves upon the band’s winning kaleidoscopic interchange of influences and sonic touchstones, notably combining the pooling groove grind of Neurosis with the celestial psychedelics of Ufomammut, and the agonizing and lamentful atmosphere of Paradise Lost, a kaiju-sized force of pure contempt fortified and propelled by a driving head-long hardcore pummel. While not as technically proficient as fellow local post-metallers Pelican or as brooding as doom dreadnought Bongripper, The Atlas Moth excel in song craft, with lyrics that address issues both societal and existential using dynamic compositions that effortlessly thread influences with memorable chord progressions that shift tempos and transition melodies without losing momentum or sacrificing the adrenalized mush of each cyclopic rhythm. The white-phosphorus glare of the riff bombardment of “Coma Noir” burns hot with fury, while the trippy post-hardcore space rock of “Last Transmission from the Late Great Planet Earth” threatens to put a dent in the axis of the lonely spinning island they share with us, later the irradiated electro riff-rock of “The Frozen Crown” groans with the crushing weight of a cold blighted anguish which anchors its grudging resolve, and finally concluding with the fatalistic doom metal noir of “Chloroform," a terminal and caustically conclusive knock-out. A rustle in an alley, a bird drops dead from the sky, a pair of glowing eyes in the distance- unsettling emblems of foreboding pour into your head like dirty water circling a sink drain, filling you with fear to the point of bursting- stir and strain, but there is no waking from the depthless sleep that has overtaken you, a fit of nocturnal torment monitored from under the brim of shadowy wide-brimmed custodian's gaze, a constant presence of ambivalent chaos. 

Don't fake it, make it (Prosthetic Records)

Interview: Career Day

Had the pleasure of connecting with Desmond of NYC emo outfit Career Day to talk about their 2024 EP I'll Always Be This, and just life in general. I did not realize how much hockey meant to Desmond before we got into our dialog or how deeply involved he was in activism out East. This conversation was more or less destined to happen after I wrote a very positive review of the band's EP Pride Was Somewhere Else for New Noise back in 2021, and I'm stoked that Desmond and my mutual appreciation of each other's work eventually led us to have such an in-depth discussion about his life journey, band and career. I didn't think it was possible, but I definitely admire what Desmond and the band are doing more now than ever. 

Listen to my interview with Career Day: 

Hear their latest EP I'll Always Be This:

 

Album Review: Cocojoey - Cocojoey's World

I am thoroughly convinced that Chicago-based producer Cocojoey's LP Cocojoey's World is the product of a stand user. What else could explain its crazy dynamism, a tendency towards preternatural mutations, and indomitable fighting spirit? The record seems to burst, almost fully formed, like a xenomorphic tapeworm from its creator's psyche, like a beautifully twisted bassline braided from the spectral tendrils of their very soul. Sure, that may be a gruesome way of describing such a peppy collection of cyber-centripetal cerebrally-embellished electronic music. Still, it would be a shame to let go understated the visceral, gooey aura of this assortment of aural vignettes- from the opening littoral tunnel crawl of "Cocojoey's Theme" to the asteroid belt hopscotch R'nB of "Out There," the listener is drawn through the gravity and magnetism of one acid-fusion framed portal after another, encountering fully defined galactic planes and graced to witness feats on the scale of Fire-Toolz performing a Voltron like transformation sequence with Blind Equation and Frank Javcee achieving a Genocyber style, full body molting after tasting the tainted backwash in a Big Gulp they shared with BBBBBBB. In its exploration of the fringes of cybergrind and subterranean production ethos that came to fruition after the crest and consolidation of the '10s vaporwave scene, Cocojoey's World feels like such a personal and bespoke instrument of expression that to take it on its face is to more or less to plunge, cannonball-style, into the subliminal brine of its creator's cognitive soup. Again, I'm convinced it's the work of a stand- a paranormally manifest eruption of fluid sonic geometry that flows from the soul-made flesh, a feather-light psychic golem awakened via celestial intervention. Either that, or Cocojoey is just really talented and has a perfect grip on the aesthetics they are pursuing. Hear it for yourself and draw your own conclusion. You already know how I feel. 

Album Review: Samara Lubelski - Flickers at the Station

I'm trying to get back in the swing of writing about albums consistently in 2025, so I'm going to take it easy on myself and look back at an old favorite. Flickers at the Station is a 2018 album from Samara Lubelski. Samara is a multi-instrumentalist who was residing in Soho, NYC, at the time of Flickers's release (not sure where she is now- she may be rooted to the concrete of a rent-controlled brownstone, or may have drifted off over the salty sea in search of enlightenment like a fabled seabird- I'd be credulous in either scenario). Starting out as a professional violinist, she quickly transitioned to guitar, bass, and cello, and in the process, became a go-to studio musician for the likes of Thurston Moore, the Fiery Furnaces, and Body/Head’s Bill Nace, among others- but that's all flavor text- where's the main dish? Between her 1997 solo debut, In the Valley, and 2018, Samara became known for her prolific output as much as her skills as a musician capable of capturing the drift of the unknown with a sort of rapt immediacy. Flickers at the Station is her ninth LP, seeing her stick mostly to guitar and vocals to craft intricately layered, jangly, and somewhat avant-garde baroque pop with a whimsically nostalgic centripetal core. The album was recorded in the German countryside, backed by her folk popper friends and frequent collaborators, the Metabolismus, the setting bequeathed a certain pastoral wariness to the urbane ye-ye flush that ripples through the album and breaths life into the dazzling wilt of its pilot light, like a retreat into a thalassic pool of nameless earthen shapes, whose overlapping embrace and comingling patterns inseminate the synapses with variegated parturition of offspring who speak in a language of life beyond mere sensory intuition. Don't be remiss; that flickering in the distance is your stop- an egress point into a cenote of contemplative configurations that you'll know before you endure and endure like a ray of sunshine coursing down your crown. 

Pull up a chair and have yourself a listen- Drawing Room Records.

Album Review: JER - BOTHERED / UNBOTHERED

I'm hesitant to share my appreciation for ska on this blog. This is partly because I don't listen to as much of it as I used to, but also... I'm sort of gun-shy about it. Back in high school, I committed the terrible, unforced error of mentioning to the guy who ran the local record store in my "quaint" little hometown that I may have enjoyed going to see a semi-local ska band by the name of The Invaders, and that I've been known to appreciate a Reel Big Fish record from time to time... he took it like I had kicked his dog. Having evidently outed myself as a poser and having revealed my character to have been deeply flawed, he proceeded to debate me on the merits of ska and how liking it made me a pariah every time I entered his store (which was often, because I was a music lover even then, and my town only had one f*ing record store >.<). As you might expect, this was a debate I always lost- it was his store and the outcome of our conversation was predetermined. After all, it was his world- I just exchanged currency for goods in it, and the only rule in that ratty little fiefdom of his was that "ska sucks," and I would do best not to forget it. Needless to say, I don't talk much about ska anymore. Actually, it seems like most people don't. Ska doesn't have the purchase or visibility that it once did in popular culture (the reasons for which will not be speculated upon here, but I have my theories*). Those who do keep the genre alive like Kill Lincoln and Catbite, sort of do so in the shadow and sustaining influence of Jeff Rosenstock, whose run with Bomb the Music Industry, as well as the echo imprint it has on his solo work, has had a profound impact on the sounds of the current underground to such a pervasive extent that it nearly impossible to quantify. Speaking of Jeff's contributions- he has a habit of being a guest musician on a lot of record by artists who count him as one of their influences- including ska artists... Artists like Jeremy Hunter, or Jer for short. Known alternatively as Skatune Network, Jer made a name for themselves, didactically exploring and proclaiming the gospel of two-tone to a young and curious audience of budding music aficionados over on their YouTube channel. Inevitably, their love of the genre and clear demonstration of ability (their channel 70% ska covers and they are all rock solid) would result in a record 2022's Bothered/Unbothered. It's a phenomenal LP, just indisputably, from the polish of its songwriting to the bounce of its grooves, tied off with catchy hooks, memorable lyrics, and of course, bossy bad-ass brass sections- and it's been rightly and admiringly praised by a number of outlets that normally don't cover ska, let alone have very nice things to say about it.** And you know, beyond just being a great ska record, I like to think it helped to break down some of the build-up of apprehension around the genre that's accumulated over the years. Like I admitted early, even casually enjoying a skankable beat or an upstroke guitar chord within the last two decades could single you out for ridicule in many music circles, and it's really refreshing to see a record so unabashedly embrace a style with the confidence and conviction that the love that is put into it will be contagious to the listener, regardless of whether or not they are primed to accept. There is, of course, a lot more to the record, sonically and thematically, other than simply the love of the game, so to speak, as Bothered/Unbothered also deals with some pretty stark and indisputable realities concerning justice and representation for people of color in a place as unequal as the United States, and drills down deep with its criticisms, not sparing primarily white cultural spaces- like most punk scenes- in its exacting assessments. But as real and heavy as things can get, the strength of the infectious joy that runs riot through this dancehall crashing cascade of a release never lets the bastards grind Jer or the vibe of the record down. It's why Bothered/Unbothered is such a perfect name for this LP- because even though the whole damn world seems (and often is) conspiring to gang up on you, survival means dodging and rolling through the punches until you're in a position to do something about it. The world is a wild place right now, and it's only going to get wilder, and you have to do what you can to cut through the gatling pulse of blows headed your way. Because the least of my or anyone's worries at the moment is someone trying to take a piss on you because of the music you like- there are bigger issues at play, and if the least you can do is accept yourself and be unbothered by others unsolicited appraisals of you and what feels right to yourself, then that's just the first big step you have to take in proving your inner truth to the world. I feel like that's the story of ska right now, a sliver of insight into this record and the formidable storm of clout Jer has been able to amass around it, as well as just being an essential lesson in life during trying times. When you can't do anything else, at least make art that brings you and others like you joy***... When you can do more, you can do that as well, and then you just keep kicking ass until you're sick of kicking so much ass. That's the best and only way you prove the haters wrong and put them in their place.    

Out on Bad Time Records (most misleading name ever).

*Ok ok, I'll give you a little taste. I think it's, in part, a practical thing- Ska bands usually have more members than regular punk bands, and it's not as easy to organize people as it used to be- despite everyone having a node of an interconnected social/cyber web in their back pocket. People just have less free time and more distractions available to them than they did in, say, the '90s... that and at some point in the early '00s people decided that having fun was lame and they'd rather sit alone in a basement and weep quietly to themselves while updating their LiveJournals. 

** Pitchfork, Needle Drop, etc... all the usual harbingers of the decline of civilization as we know it. 

*** Me, I write a blog. Some people like it. You, probably have some real talent. Don't let it go to waste.

Interview: Deludium Skies

Now I'm not an expert in geology or ecologist, but I'm fairly certain that there are no deserts in Austria. I get my confidence in this claim coming from a country that has a lot of dusty planes within its borders. So I'm pretty impressed that a guy like Karl, an Austrian guitarist whose project Deludium Skies has developed from a simple droning tonal experiment, into a hauntingly doom-laden descent, can capture the essence of those endless empty steppes and vast overbearing sheets of sky of my homeland in a way that kind of makes you feel like you're on an empty highway, driving endlessly, cutting through a looming nothingness and overcome by its enormity and the boundless breadth. His guitar work has a crushing softness to it that resembles the incremental weight of a thousand grains of sand gradually pooling over your feet and between your knees- immobilizing in its casual accumulation of presence and patient-fated tumble. It's not the kind of blues you'd hear in a Tennessee gin joint- more like the kind someone might coax out of the dark as they watch said watering hole burn to the ground from the vantage of a seedy hotel. There may be something that only someone on the outside of this house of tinder and yellowing playing cards we call a country that can only truly be captured from a distance... I needed to know, so I asked Karl... what is illuminated under the rolling thunder of those Deludium Skies?

How long have you been working on Deludium Skies as a project?
Should be 15 years by now. I started with the first tracks in late 2010 and then released two EPs in 2011/2012 with relatively raw drone stuff done only with guitar and occasional synths. That question made me listen to some of those tracks for the first time in many years by the way; there are still some cool parts here and there, but all in all I'm not too happy with the sloppy transitions and the production value in general...

How has the project changed over the years?
It started with lo-fi doom/drone/ambient soundscapes, later evolving into more refined and versatile, often melodic, tracks, mixed with much more influences like folk, jazz, blues etc. - also a broader range of instruments.
I guess Aspirations from 2018 was the first major step towards the current style of DS.

Has it always been a solo endeavor? When do you feel compelled to rope in collaborators?
Yep, it started as pure solo project. More out of lack of opportunity, living in a small town with a few thousand people, not knowing anyone personally who actually plays an instrument and is into the more experimental side of music. There's always been guests on the albums in the last five years, though.
Not sure if "compelled" is the fitting description there... I always love to bring in external creative input and many different instruments, especially those I absolutely can't play, like all kinds of wind instruments.

How did you learn guitar, and who were your primary influences?
I got my first e-guitar as young teen (cheap brand strat-type) in the 90s, but wasn't too motivated, I was almost twenty till I approached it more seriously, learned at least a few chords and basics from one of those beginner's books. I still don't know that much about music theory to be honest, I prefer to just fiddle around and come up with something by myself. That's why I never invested much time in learning other's songs either, which makes the external influences hard to pin down, but I guess I was mostly into metal back then, mainly goth/doom/black.

How were you introduced to the blues?
I started to really appreciate it in my mid twenties, when I dug deeper into 60s/70s folk rock releases, they're heavily influenced by blues, like Bob Dylan, Davy Graham, Tim Buckley. Then soon stumbled over some cool more recent blues infused stuff as well, like Mark Lanegan and Songs: Ohia.

What would you consider to be your major influences, music and otherwise?
Like already mentioned, it's not so easy to exactly pin down. I love to listen and discover various forms of music, probably many of them had a bit of an influence, direct or indirect. A selection of artists I always come back to, aside from the already mentioned: Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Bardo Pond, Portishead, Esbjörn Svensson Trio, CAN, Black Sabbath, Miles Davis.
I also do enjoy a lot of movies; Cronenberg, Miyazaki, Gilliam, Malle, Melville, etc.

Would you consider what you are doing "metal"? If not, how would you best describe it to the uninitiated?
Well, there are a couple of quite thick and heavy sounding tracks that might as well pass as doom(ish) metal, overall I'd see it more as heavier experimental rock, or drone rock.

Is there precedence in Austira for your style of playing and approach, or do you feel like you're breaking fairly fresh ground?
I don't think there is, in fact the only other Austrian drone act with a heart for experiments that spontaneously comes to my mind is Goddess Limax Black. No wonder, it's a usually a monotonous and minimalistic style, not exactly predestined and known for getting too adventurous, so there won't be that many comparable acts on an international scale either. I'm like a tiny niche inside already niche music - hence the huge success, I guess...

How does the symbolism of mountains inform and elevate your latest release, Stardust Echos?
Sometimes I got a distinctive theme in mind before or early during the recording of an album, but in this case I already had finished at least half of the tracks before I came up with titles and a cover concept, and it was done pretty impulsive within a day. I initially thought a desert themed cover would fit to the music, but that seemed too close to the cover from the 2021 album Destination Desolation. So I altered it and ended up with a mountain in a desert landscape (inspired by the Hoggar Mountains in Algeria), combined with a psychedelic spacey sky above.

Is there a particular mood or state of mind you are hoping to induce within the listener with this release?
Never thought about it. Relaxed and open minded would be my instinctive answer.

How often do you perform these tracks live, and how do you go about recreating the unique atmosphere of the album in a live setting?
So far, never. I was never asked to do so, and honestly, I'm neither used to nor eager to perform in front of many people anyway.
Also other problems would come up: there are a lot of improvised parts on every album and I almost never write anything down. So I'd have to figure out first, how the fuck I played this and that part. Not to mention finding band members, I can only play one instrument at a time...

What is next in store for this project?
Nothing planned so far. That's not unusual though, sometimes I record nothing in months, and then a couple of tracks within a week.
Might take a bit longer this time, I'm not feeling very motivated at the moment, because of shit sales (*nudge nudge wink wink*) and general lack of support.

Check out Karl's latest album Stardust Echoes here: 

Album Review: Excuse Me Who Are You? - Double Bind

Excuse me, who are you? I hear it a lot. For example, when I helpfully attempt to add additional orders of french fries to strangers' orders at drive-throughs, or when employees at pet supply retailers discover that I've MacGyvered my way into the cat adoption area to give all my future fur children imprisoned there a pat on the head, and always and inevitably, when I'm discovered by a member of the housekeeping staff to be impersonating a sports journalist to get a comped executive suite and a crate of grapefruits to myself while tumbling through Nevada.* However, I've never heard the phrase in a moment of bliss that didn't involve me risking arrest, or at the very least, an uneasy confrontation... that is until now: Out of Madison Wisconsin, bellows and cries a group that certainly is no stranger to the eccentricities and nonconforming pleasures that make life worth the wages and weight of alienation, immeasurable Sisyphean toil, and the manifold of intolerances that all too often dictates its terms. Excuse Me Who Are You probably don't endorse me scamming hotels while pretending to cover dirt-buggy bolts across the Majove, but I fully endorse their understatedly gallant, glitteringly gut-wrenching and thoroughly delightful album Double Bind- a post-hardcore cast cascade of bright and sharply flexing chords, winding grooves that spin and splunk like a bowling ball rolling through an Escher print while dragging a splattering ream of ink soaked dairy passages behind it, and shout-sung vocals that bare their fangs like a bellicose wolf before the moon as a trumpeter of lost and lonely agitation in an unfeeling and unsympathetic world. EMWAY is a band that very clearly takes their performance and the subject matter of their songs as seriously as a chemical dependency, without losing sight of the fact that the music they're making is meant to be fun- many of the tracks include amusing cutaways and scrapped soundbites, while titled range from text emojis to ironic musings on the slippery divide between death and sleep, with the most diverting (literally) being the web address to the official page celebrating Mima of Perfect Blue- a roll of the tragic waggishness that impresses upon the fact that the emotive, psychological, and digital acquire a concreteness in our experience that is as real as the foundation of wood, stone and steal beneath our feet and an acknowledgment of the ephemeral fluids of our digital selves as they bleed into the cold heart of meat space. While they're certainly capable of raising a reflective ruckus on their own, the group is not alone in conjuring these missives of clever catharsis and cutting inquiry, being helped to attain ebullient new heights with the 8-bit aid of Hey, Ily, and learn to practice an uncommon subtly of softness and certainty in collaboration with fellow Wisconsinites Tiny Voices (just to name a few of the guest features on the album). Unwind your sorrow and put some slack in the line; exercise the ghosts and guilt that tie this Double Bind. 

I've only got two thumbs, so that's as many as I'm giving this Double Bind- a record released by Thumbs Up Records. 

*I fear this one might not have been me actually... or at the very least that I'm misrecollecting something. 

Interview : Molly O'Brien of I Enjoy Music + 2024 Recap

Everybody seems set to move on from 2024 already, but I'm not sure why (especially when the future is looking bleaker by the day). A lot of great music came out last year and I doubt most humans on this planet have given it all the fair shake it deserves (I know I haven't!). Even more exciting than the release of some objectively fantastic tunes is the emergence of some truly outstanding trends in style and approach by contemporary underground and alternative artists. Turn of the millennium kosmische continuums have doubled back and invaded the 21st Century in a big and exhilarating way, emo chiptune seems poised to break into the big time, indie cabaret is becoming commonplace, and unpretentious DIY yacht rock is now a thing- in short, creativity abounds and there is no containing the rich imaginative blaze these developments represent.

To get my arms (and head!) around the bountiful brilliance of this past year, I invited the ever-affable and resourceful Molly O'Brien of the blog I Enjoy Music to talk about 5 of her favorite albums from this past year and discuss 5 albums that I thought had something special to say as well. We go deep on each entry on our lists, so buckle up!

Albums discussed in this episode:

Fantasy of a Broken Heart - Feats of Engineering

Dummy - Free Energy

Hey, Ily! - Hey, I Loathe You!

Ludivine Issambourg - Above the Laws

Revival Season - Golden Age of Snitching

Ekko Astral - pink balloons

Jimmy Montague - Tomorrow's Coffee

Sun Kin - Sunset World

Kim Gordon - The Collective

Check out Molly's blog: https://www.ienjoymusic.net/