Album Review: Phem - How U Stop Hating Urself (pt 1.5)

We're approaching the dawn of 2022 tonight and it feels appropriate to be thinking about what one wants to accomplish in the coming year. Maybe you want to be fitter. Maybe you want to get a different job, or discover a new hobby. Maybe you want to burn down city hall... whatever, it's your life and your bag. I just hope you give it everything you've got. You'll never know what you could have accomplished if you don't. And even if you fail, you'll have another chance to try again. As long as you're alive, you will always have another chance. So the Mayor of whatever shit town you're from should probably check on the fire insurance policy for his office before the ball drops (I'm kidding... possibly). 

An album that I enjoyed this past year and that I feel is appropriate to contemplate tonight is Phem's How U Stop Hating Urself (pt 1.5). Originally released in 2020 as an EP, it was expanded this year into a full LP with the addition of two new songs. The album is essentially an emotional, relational, and psychological bildungsroman, illustrating the journey of the emerging pop star from someone who lived and suffered for the benefit of others- cursed to roll a boulder of her own doubt and misery of a hill only to have it roll back and flatten her, again and again, like some hopeless greek charity-case- to becoming a subject in her own narrative, capable of making lasting decisions and learning to use her words and take action to realize her intentions. 

Many of the songs smartly frame the punishment Phem elected to accept for herself in the past, as just that, her past. While the present tense of the songs usually involves her taking charge of situations, demanding apologies where they are warranted, and turfing out those who, in her assessment, are out of chances. More so than that, the album sees her embracing the possibility of her own agency and destiny and not allowing others' judgments of her decisions to be the determining factor of whether they were the right choice for her. On this album, Phem reminds me a little bit of a younger, US-born version of Lilly Alen (at least up to 2009's It's Not Me, It's You), only with a looser, more elastic sense of melody, as well as a penchant for pop-punk guitars! 

Learning to accept yourself, live with your decisions and self-actualize might not necessarily be the most sexy subject matter for pop songs- although, being honest with ourselves and others can be pretty sexy too sometimes, if we're being... well, honest. If there is one takeaway you should have from this album, it's that there are some things that you just have to do for yourself, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Trusting your own decisions and not hating yourself for the consequences of those decisions (wanted, warranted, or benign) is the only way to love yourself enough to keep on living. Phem seems to get this, and it's something I hope you will keep in mind as you plot your course through 2022. Happy New Year. 

This record is out via nvr giv up. 

Album Review: AL-90 - Murmansk​-​60

Surprisingly, Russian tape-house producer AL-90 has not released an album since the start of the pandemic. His most recent releases are from 2019; the smooth and giftedly harmonic Watersport567 and the richly resonant collaboration with Monokle, titled Mindperfection. However, this hasn't caused him to drop off my radar, and has, in fact, resulted in me spending a fair amount of time with one of his earlier LPs, Murmansk​-​60. The 2018 album is named for his base of operations (the Port of Murmansk), and I would hazard to say that it represents the peak of his established style up to that it debuted. Lofi and moody, harboring mixed-under basslines and rhythmic guitars, drawn out in phantasmagoric strands from beyond the shadows of perception by a driving club beat. Murmansk​-​60 is like the soundtrack to a haunted highlights reel of a sea-side disco that burnt down the night after the revelries it housed were captured on tape. The mix speeds up and distends at worrying intervals, sounding like it is about to snap and usher forth a hush of silence. However, it never does... one of the striking characteristics of AL-90's music on this album is how sturdy it feels, despite the strain he puts it under. This steadiness is internal though, skeletal and sometimes even metaphysical in nature. It serves to maintain the music's impelling forcefulness, but it leaves the borders and moment-to-moment shapes of the music blurry and ill-defined, and subject to radical transformation without concern for its effect on the listener. It's kind of like a VHS player that edits the film you're watching as it plays- taking scenes out of order and rearranging the narrative against conventions of human logic, confounding character motivations and making enigmas out of epiphanies. There is a reason behind AL-90's vicious but inspired interpolations of sound on Murmansk-60; it's just not reasoning that can be deciphered without peering through the blizzard of static within one's own soul. 

Murmansk-60 is out via Resonance Moscow

Album Review: Meaningful Stone - Cobalt EP

When listening to Kim Ji-min and her band Meaningful Stone's EP Cobalt, I feel like I am hearing her for the first time. Like I am hearing who she really is. The album is her follow-up to the 2020 LP A Call From My Dream, and represents the complete germination and blossoming of something that was planted on her earlier full length... Do you want to know what that is? Well, I'm not going to string you along until next season, so here: Kim is a rock star. 

A Call From My Dream was a whimsical affair that served to allow Kim to process her often vivid dreams through a mellow melange of jazz, folk, and soul. It's a gorgeous album, and from an engineering standpoint, technically better than her most recent, rawer-sounding EP. However, it fails to grab me with the same tenacious enthusiasm. Cobalt is just more fun, and that's more or less of what I'm looking for in a pop album right now. 

The hard beats and power chords that propel Kim's current EP have an antecedent in one of the singles off of A Call From My Dream, "Beep-Boop, Beep-Boop." In that song, Kim confronts her mortality to a stiff, concrete pounding, hip-hop beat, a dreamy swaying groove, and a shock of vulcanized, electric guitar solos. Some of these elements get streamlined for Cobalt, but the heat and the energy remain, as the passion for the music and its performance is thrillingly retained. 

Cobalt has an incredibly strong resemblance to the simple but sturdy alternative rock that reliably charted throughout the '90s. The title track takes cues from grunge and Green Day's Insomniac to cast the support structure for a series of elegantly pivoting melodies stamped with a sense of exuberant and pointed rebellion. Kim picks up her trusty acoustic guitar for "Most," and closer "Fly," both of which are characterized by concise but nimble guitar chords that knit together an unexpectedly dreamy melody, harkening back to her LP without losing their essential rock and roll edge. 

The high point of the album is the damp heat of the power-pop pulsar "Dancing in the Rain," where Kim's vocal melody glides along like it's skating on foot-long pats of butter across an enormous pancake, while attempting to outpace a tsunami of maple syrup that is cresting at her back- laughing at the absurdity of her predicament with each forward thrust. The guitar work on this track is fabulous as well- driving with a hint of melancholy playfully sifted into the heap of sugary fuzz it piles on. It feels like an unreleased Douglas Hopkins penned Gin Blossoms demo, reworked by Avril Lavigne circa Nobody's Home to become level-headed but hot-blooded, indie rock masterpiece. 

You could call what Kim is doing here punk. And you could definitely call it pop. I wouldn't go so far as to call it pop-punk though. It's a little more refined than that. However you want to define it, one thing is for sure, Cobalt is as bright and as brilliant as the elemental stone that shares its name- in fact, I think that's why they share a moniker. Cobalt is as pretty as rock albums come.  

Cobalt is out via Poclanos 

Album Review: Femdot - Not For Sale

It's hard not to see Not For Sale as a pivot point for Chicago area MC Femi Adigun, better known as Femdot. Production-wise the album is miles away from his DJ Premiere-esque tribute to hip-hop's second golden age, 94 Camry Music, and it doesn't even seem to draw directly from the gritty, drill beats of his debut LP Delacreme 2. Rather, Not For Sale feels like the first album where Femi is staking his claim in a definitive style that is unique to his skills and vision. Instead of simply demonstrating his aptitude with the tools others have handed him, he's drawing up his own blueprints and following them to the letter. 

The impetuous for this leap into newly charted waters is outlined on the track "Funds/broke[n]interlude," where Femi is honest about his struggles with liquidity and self-respect in the form of a confession to a former lover, an admission that hang on lines like, "Supposed to be your Superman but can't even afford the cape." The track ends with a "skit" where wisdom is dispensed like change in an empty Starbucks cup (just enough to get you by), and Femi rhapsodizes about the bridge that binds freedom and vulnerability, and the importance of not letting others define who you are, or who you are going to be.

It's an exemplary track of what Not for Sale is bringing to market, constructing its beat out unorthodox samples, like an oaky and acoustic, late '90s college rock guitar riff, and exhibiting a sort of strivership that aims at autonomy and self-understanding in a back-pack rap kind of fashion. It's a far cry from the conspicuous, fast-money hustle often valorized within the genre. It's not that Femi has a problem with that style of rap, mind you (see: 94 Camry Music); it's just it doesn't describe Femi or who he wants to be. 

Freedom is the banner theme of Not for Sale, from the neo-gospel and deep soul tracked, and plunderphonic static infused intro and title-song, on through to "Sacrilegious / Pray Pt 1." and "Mueen / Pray Pt 2." where he wrestles with is own shortcomings and past, while lamenting over the extent to which money rules everything around him, but doesn't motivate, and often interferes with, his life and work; all to a deep bass, R'nB creep on the former part, and a hollow, earthen rhythm on the latter. If you think that he is going to allow society's expectations that he sell himself and his labor to the lowest bidder, or his peers expectations that he live chasing some gaseous, green pipe dream define him, then I'm going to need to refer you back to the title of this album. His life is not for sale, rent-to-own, or lease; make not offers and post no bills. 

I can really feel Femi reaching for, and often finding, clarity of purpose and mind on Not For Sale, in a way that I haven't heard on his previous albums. Witnessing the effort and achievement of such an endeavor is very impressive. It's like watching a new breed of butterfly emerge in a brilliant presentation of sonic, multichromatic metamorphism. Kendrick might have pimped out his winged beauties before setting them loose upon the world, but Femi is building his from the ground up, and he isn't about to inhibit their flight or weigh them down with any attachments to false idols. 

Not for Sale was self-released through Femi's own Delacreme Music Group. 

Album Review: Newgrounds Death Rugby - Pictures of Your Pets

Newgrounds Death Rugby is up there with Guitar Fight from Fooly Cooly as having one of the funnier and more nostalgia triggering names of the present emo revival. I get a rush of warm comforting memories when I hear or read about either band, recalling for me a simpler period of Web-based creative enterprise and entertainment, as well as late nights sipping Mountain Dew while watching Adult Swim in my parents basement... those were truly the salad days for awkward and portly, Mid-Western sad boys. 

To round out the comparison, I should also note, that they both favor sparkly guitars and inserting dialog extracted from video games and other beloved media into their songs. But in 2021, what emo band worth the salt of their own tears doesn't do the same? If you're not, then I'm going to have to require that you to turn your emo card into one of the members of Home Is Where (I won't tell you which one). You can apply to have it reinstated once the 6th/7th/Infinite wave starts in a few months. 

Getting back on track, NGDR released their second LP Pictures of Your Pets earlier this year via Sun Eater Records and it felt a little overlooked. I'm not sure why, but it is a real shame. This is a solid record after all. You have the aforementioned sparkle chords, interlocking with a Mid-West emo beat and some jittery, sloppy and pop-punky sensibilities, all of which combine to make for a darling and highly personal listening experience. 

Vocalist Danny Jorgensen's Carmen Perry-esque delivery seals the deal in a lot of ways, as it sounds like it is being projected from the mix directly at you. It's arresting and hard to escape, like a friend cornering you at a party to ask to talk with you in private about your self-destructive and insensitive behavior as of late. It's sometimes uncomfortable to hear what they have to say, but in either case, it will be good for you to hear them out, so take your medicine. These lyrics aren't always trying to shake sense into you though. Often times Danny is just singing about how sad they feel sometimes and that's very relatable. Who doesn't feel like melting into a drip-pan of their own frustration and self-pity sometimes? If you're reading this, then you're probably thinking to yourself, "Yup. It me." Well, it me also. And rest assured, it Danny and the rest of NGDR, as well. 

Circling back to the nostalgic appeal of NGDR, the other aspect of their sound that really stands out to me is their embrace of '90s indie rock melodies and light, grungy fuzz- both of which serve to add a semblance of established poise and knowing direction to their music that is otherwise very comfortable roiling in the winds of DIY disarray and displays of complete emotional deterioration. It helps them feel more mature as songwriters, as well as carousing to the fore fond recollections of early Piebald and Hot Rod Circuit. 

Once you've given Pictures of Your Pet a chance, I think you'll find it growing on you pretty quickly. It has a lot going for it and I hope you won't let this one slip through your fingers as we turn the page to 2022.
 

It's out via Sun Eater Records. 

Album Review: Cobrah - Cobrah

Swedish dance producer and songwriter Cobrah follows her breakout EP Icon with possibly an even more powerful display of her prowess, a self-titled EP that can't help but slay. Because of her rapping vocal style and industrial punk take on trance and house music, Cobrah is often mislabeled as a hyperpop artist- a label that is most likely applied as both compliment and a qualifier. Use of this genre tag in association with Cobrah is misleading, though. 

Cobrah's music is reminiscent of classic club jams while being wholly and uniquely of this moment, and it's worth taking stock of how the aesthetics of by-gone eras of electronic music have erupted into contemporary pop music without cramming them into the box of a parallel trend. Otherwise, you end up missing the forest from the trees. Kind of liking considering a BDSM whip for a car seat to be the exact same commodity because they're both made out of leather, or claiming that the Melvins were grunge solely because they were contemporaries of Nirvana- fatal category errors all! Hit backspace and start over! 

So what is Cobrah's self-titled then? It's a celebration of life. Or, at least, a certain kind. A life lived for pleasure- giving it to others and receiving it in turn. Cobrah does an exceptional job of creating and sustaining intrigue with severe, bondage aesthetics and illusions to decaying technology as well as the ever-present coils of desire. It would be a mistake to think that this dark pallet of tones, shockingly deep bass, and gothic posturing is an attempt to tempt you into tasting the fruits of evil or confronting you with some reflection of the heart of darkness. Not even close. This shit is just fun!

The brisk and bossy "Dip N Drip" with its refreshingly sexy and slick rhythms and strobe light-like bass lines accentuate the natural percussive pop of Cobrah's relaxed and juicy flow. This relationship between bad-ass beats and slurpy, licentious vocal deliveries also brings the subsequent track "Good Puss" bubbling to life, gradually churning your flesh like it was made of taffy, or like Cobrah is trying to turn you into a meringue for a gelatine pie to be shared between lovers. And both of these tracks feel like a wind-up for the sticky repetition and celebratory scintillation of "Gooey Fluid Girls." 

If you attempt to climb up on and ride this slick bolt of love-struck lightning as it takes off from the dance floor and arches over the horizon of the night, don't be surprised to find that it is just as interested in riding you as well. Pleasure is a two-way conversation, afterall. 

Album Review: Throe - Throematism

I wrote about a doom and drone metal album for New Noise today that was moody and contemplative in ways that I have literally never encountered before. Throe's Throematism is a true standout of the genre. Check out what I had to say about it below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-throe/

Check out the album here. 

Album Review: Skyjelly - Blank Panthers / Priest, Expert, or Wizard

It can be hard to find psychedelic rock bands that are worthy of the name. Usually, if you want to find something that is going to flip your wig, you're better off looking to artists that are genre-agnostic, or at least those who have embraced some inspired recombination of known forms into unanticipated shapes,  like Fire-Toolz, whose crosssection of death/black metal and home-shopping network jazz is nothing if not transportive. King Gizzard is a pretty reliable source of electric and imaginative freakouts as well, but they're also pretty popular, and if you're reading this blog, I'd be shocked if you weren't at least tangentially aware of what the Lizard Wizard is up to. 

One rock band who is deserving of the lysergic label and who you may not be familiar with is though, are the friendly East-Coast spacemonauts Skyjelly. Starting out as a solo project sometime prior to the release of their 2010 album Motorola Monkey, the group currently consists of Dave Melanson, Eric (Jones) Hudson, and Scott Sheik Levesque. Their sound is pretty hard to describe, even though it slots quite securely into the tradition of that noisy stratum of '90s-esque phylum of psych that draws as equally from the quieter, cloudier parts of Flaming Lips and Brian Jonestown's catalogs. They're a Northern-Eastern band with a cool Southern heat, a quizzical sensibility concerning the blues, an impeccable sense for mood and duration, and a poetic sense of dream logic. 

It's a little hard to get a handle on Skyjelly's whole discography, but you don't have to hear everything they've ever released to understand what they're all about. In fact, they have one album that kind of lays out their whole aesthetic in one nice tidy package- well ok, maybe not tidey... and it's not actually one album, its two; 2016's Blank Panthers / Priest, Expert, or Wizard. Skyjelly are pretty good at experimenting and they have some early releases that lean a little more into triphop, and some later  efforts that sound almost like dreampop, but their central conceit is that the blues and rock 'n roll don't have to be driving to take you places- sometimes what matters most is the steadiness of the approach. 

While most rock bands rely on repetition to ground their themes and draw out the essence of a song's emotive core, Skyjelly take this necessary reliance on structure and thoroughly abstracts it. What the band introduces you to, is not just reliant on grooves and rhythms, but more specifically, loops- short sonic motifs whose cyclical design emphasizes a kind of uncanny motion. Like a film, strip skipping in a projector, but where you would expect to see (or rather hear) the same scene play out, again and again, at nausea, you instead get a subtle thread of variations - shade of scènes à faire are emphasized or dialed back, change hew, or are muted so that by the end of a three-minute runtime, you're not even sure how things mutated to reach its final form as the process is so subtle. All you know is that you're miles away from the place where you begin your journey with the band. 

While Blank Panthers / Priest, Expert, or Wizard is definitely more reliant on cleaner and tidier beats and forward pop guitar melodies than some of their other works, but it's still oddly transportive and extremely easy to lose yourself in. This is due not only to the album's somewhat daunting length but also the patience with which the Skyjelly approaches each of these songs- allowing them to resolve in a natural and unforced way, permitting each to demonstrate unique and evolving tendencies in their own naive and peculiar way. With every track on this album, I feel like I'm witnessing some kind of baffling, yet charming creature hatch from an oversized, technicolor egg. You might not think that you'd be able to make a fast, personal connection with an extraterrestrial being, but when one uses the egg tooth at the end of a tubular proboscis to crack the casing of its ovular chamber and then looks at you like it needs a mother, you might just change your mind. As tortured as this metaphor is, that's kind of what I feel like is going on here- I'm learning how to befriend something that is not of this world

Skyjelly are about as cozy, comforting, and abnormally convivial as this side of psychedelic rock can get, and if you're not going to welcome Blank Panthers / Priest, Expert, or Wizard into your life, then you're going to be missing out an unorthodox and wonderful kind of companionship. 

This double album was released through Doom Trip. 

Album Review: Down With Rent - Lotus Eater

Wrote about Conneticate hardcore band's Down With Rent's new LP Lotus Eater for New Noise. It's a fine album. If your New Years' resolution involves smashing the state, think about picking it up. 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-down-with-rent/

Find the album here 

Album Review: Cloudburst - Corridor of Chaos

Sometimes the "smarter" varieties of hardcore can feel like clearinghouses for insecure and emotionally shriveled people. You know who I am talking about. Dudes whose only goal in life is to impress strangers with the knowledge that they've been listening to Hundreth since When Will We Surrender, or how they once worked a merch table for their brother's band at a show that The Locust also happened to play at back in the '00s. Indonesian group Cloudburst are entirely outside of this clout game, and all of us are better off for it. This band exists purely because of vocalist Okta's love of bands like Botch and Norma Jean. He had the desire to play a similar style of music with his friends, and that's the long and short of it. Well, not entirely. Cloudburst is not only a passion project but a killer example of metalcore that does an exceptional job of balancing the gritty with the melodic. What you get from this scenario is a compact and highly effective detonation of skronky, razorwire guitars, concussive grooves, and a battering hail of punishing percussion, all tended to and goaded forward by Okta's air-raid siren-like shrieks. Their EP Corridor of Chaos is true to its name while feeling intensely personal and powerfully candid. Through the fray, Okta often lifts his voice as an oasis in the sonic tempest conjured by the cohort of his bandmates to talk directly to the listener, delivering his message in a clear and unambiguous way- sometimes in the form of a semi-rap, other times with a hint of Madball-esque wounded huff, but always with the intention of being understood- seeking power through connection. There is nothing foggy about Corridor of Chaos- its merits are as clear as day. 

Corridor of Chaos is out via Samstrong Records

Album Review: Upchuck - Upchuck / In Your Mind 7"

Upchuck is a band with an unbelievable amount of potential. You might not believe it, but I went on a two-month hardcore diet this year and when I was ready to come back to the banquet to break my fast Upchuck's two-song 7" kicked me square in the teeth. The Atlanta band has been slowly honing their skill and gathering their strength since 2018. Beginning as a search and destroy mission by their guitarist Mikey, over the course of a year he located willing co-conspirators in the form of mononym compatriots, Hoff, Armando, Chris, and vocalist KT. Upchuck are hardcore, for lack of a better description, but a more accurate definition would be a punk band that goes hard as fuck! They're a muscular-sounding band that doesn't feel weighed down by their bulk. They're also heavy as a motherfucker. You'll want to consult a chiropractor to straighten out your spin after giving the gritty, burly gutter-winding crawl of their eponymous track a full rotation. The lightest aspect of their sound is KT's vocals, which have a certain amount of soulful fluidity to them, and aspect that hides a biting, tart, and dangerous grade- like a glass of OJ with a handful of sand a shard of broken glass sitting at the bottom. Upchuck take their sweet time developing each groove- carefully tending to them, heating them up like iron in a furnace, and letting them get white-hot before striking and decisively showering you in a blinding rain of sparks. The care they take with their rhythm smelting extends so far as to become a brooding drag of Obsessed-styled doom metal in the bridge of the otherwise swift and cutting "In Your Mind," transforming the track's latter half into a bluesy, downer-rock blowout. You can't suppress what Upchuck has welling up inside of them. All you can do is hope you aren't wearing anything that requires dry cleaning when they hit you with the dyspeptic spray of blood, bile, and adrenaline that rushes forth from their spleen. 

This 7" is out courtesy of Famous Class Records. 

Album Review: The Scary Jokes - April Fools

The Scary Jokes is a New Jersey band with a saccharine and deliberately obfuscating sound, in which they hid layers of isolation and depression under a quilt of bitter, brightly colored taffy. Now a three-piece, the group started out as the bedroom HQ'd project of Liz Lehman back in 2014 as a vent to release the exhaust of processed emotions. The band just released their third album BURN PYGMALION​!​!​! A Better Guide to Romance on Needle Juice, prompting the label to also reissue a remastered version of The Scary Joke's 2016 record April Fools. It's this album that I want to talk about today. Not that BURN PYGMALION​!​!​! isn't also great, but it just hits in a different kind of way. 

BURN PYGMALION​!​!​! is a more ambitious project, with a fuller sound, constructed around a narrative where a woman learns to live outside of herself, despite the risks, and accepts the vulnerable being open to others requires. It basically mirrors Shinji's emotional arch and journey from the original series run of Neon Genesis Evangelion. While I know the album is not about them specifically, I still can't help but imagine, while the last track on BURN PYGMALION​!​!​! plays ("Bets Against the Void"), a blue-sky backdrop where the entire Needle Juice team, Liz's friends, the rest of Scary Joke's live band, plus Calvin Johnson and Neil Cicierega, form a loose circle around Liz to clap and cheer "Congratulations" in an entirely sincere succession. It's a kind and somewhat affirmation album, and you should pick it up if that's the kind of thing you are looking for right now. April Fools, however, is a much different experience. 

April Fools is more like a ricin-coated Warther's Original- a deadly, jagged, and indigestible pill that is never-the-less sweet to the taste. It's the loadstone of the band's catalog at the moment and there is good reason why it has been remixed and reissued. The burden of existence which April Fools speaks to with such cheer is probably even more relevant at a time when the entire world is intimately acquainted with the mental effects and realities of isolation due to lockdowns, the paranoia surrounding a fast, adapting and deadly virus, and the broad societal indifference to the human costs imposed by both. Released in 2016 and produced entirely in Garage Band, April Fools is surprisingly detailed in terms of its sequencing and textures, and accomplishes the task of melding K-Records styled loverock with queer informed bedroom punk in a way that captures the essence of many acts outside of either scene, such as the delicacy of Frankie Cosmos's early demos and EPs, as well as the tight, melodramatic and allegorical phrasing of Say Anything's Max Bemis. 

There are some brilliant metaphors for the experience of depression on April Fools, the first, and most penetrating of which, that comes to mind is the discreetly threatening "Icicles," which, through the hum of a warm synth babble and the snap of a bubbly, super-crunchy beat, it illustrates the experience of psychic death, forced ego depletion, and a retreat into a revenge fantasy. The song speaks to the hope that your implosion will somehow destroy both you and the person who's responsible for causing you to feel like less than nothing- like a black hole inverting itself to become a cosmic lance that is then driven through the heart of a radioactive and universe devouring dragon. It's definitely a relatable sentiment, and one that might have crossed your mind as a consolation in situations where you've felt yourself unraveling while being forced to work or socialize with a deeply manipulative person. 

A similarly sardonic and risible description of dealing with damaging personalities while in a state of mental distress can be found in the tiny, gleaming, and reflective shine of "Blood from the Concrete" which sees Liz depicting an act of self-disassembly in order to accommodate someone else's emotional needs- literally tearing themselves apart to make a highway for someone else to drive on, and paving the road to hell with the best of intentions, as well as their own blood, flesh, and bone, in the process. Then there is the wet slapping beat of "Apple Pie" which is a tumid and cloying number that hides a hint of iron and salt, like a puff pastry filled with pureed human hearts and unrequited emotions. The lofty croon of "Catabolic Seed" is also notable for its spinning synth melody which resembles an abstracted form of an alarm bell sounding in Liz's brain as everything around them that was once solid, miraculously, and terribly, dissipates into a cloud of condensed moisture and vapor. 

Even in the depths of all these precious pronouncements of despair, Liz does manage to hint at some signs of growth, such as on the smooth swaying tide of chirps and glittery, gargling beats that keeps the second to last track "Pleasure Cruise" afloat, a song where they describe the dangers of giving yourself over to fantasy and worlds of pure pleasure as a way to avoiding pain, and how this vain escape attempt can cause you to dissolve entirely, leaving nothing behind but debris, or in this case, a pair of shoes that has washed up on a beach in Ecuador. 

In sum, the thoughts and emotions expressed on April Fools are both desperate and insightful, and the words and sounds through which they are conveyed are gorgeously assembled. These songs may not have necessarily come from a healthy place, but I can't help but believe that it was cathartic and therapeutic to expel all this darkness in such a beautiful way- at least, that's the way it feels from the vantage point of both a listener as well as someone who's felt a lot of the things that are probably being sung about on this record. 

 April Fools has been reissued via Needle Juice. 

Album Review: Trappers Cabin - Trappers Cabin

I wrote about this charming folk-pop album from Georgian mountain man Trappers Cabin for New Noise today. Check out what I had to say about the self-titled at the link below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/column/bandcamp-of-the-day-trappers-cabin/

The album is self-released (I think). Find it on Bandcamp. 

Album Review: Phương Tâm - Magical Nights - Saigon Surf Twist & Soul (1964​-​1966)

There are always a couple of great archival compilations of notable but sorely misplaced artists from beyond the borders of the US each year. Compilations that salvage catalogs that have become scattered due to time, war and regional conflict, and the changing ambitions of the artists featured on them. As for the reasons that you might not have heard of Vietnamese singer Phương Tâm before 2021, you can count all three of the aforementioned culprits.  

Starting out as a charismatic dancer and face of the Saigon nightlife during the early '60s, her charm and talent demonstratively translated into a short-lived singing career before leaving the heat and passion of the stage lights for a different kind of warmth and devotion found through matrimony and domestic life in the US. Before embracing the quiet life, however, Phương recorded several dozen tracks for the major Vietnamese record labels operating at the time. Despite the escalating conflict in her country, the record industry in Vietnam thrived up into the '70s, with Phương's voice, and comfort with a diverse array of styles, serving as both inspiration and caster mold for the work of those who followed. 

As you can imagine, many of the recordings she produced during her brief flirtation with pop stardom did not survive the conflict in her country, making it difficult to fully grasp the breadth of her discography. If the enormity of the task of recovering and assembling the disparate threads of this history was a deterrent to its eventual realignment, you wouldn't know it from listening to Sublime Frequencies's compilation of 25 of Phương's recorded singles. 

The compilation is the product of Phương's daughter Hannah Hà's natural curiosity in her mother's previous life as a performer. Her inquisitiveness lead her to connect with Mark Gergis, the man who compiled Sublime Frequencies's 2010 compilation Saigon Rock and Soul. Working with audiophiles and musicians from around the globe, these benevolent co-conspirators were able to recover some remarkably well-preserved masters and tapes, several of which ended up becoming Magical Nights - Saigon Surf Twist & Soul (1964​-​1966). 

While the compilation may sound like little more than an intellectual curiosity and a curatorial effort in what was known locally as action music (nhạc kích động, in Vietnamese), it would be improper to dismiss it as merely that, and nothing else. For lack of a better word, Phương's singing rocks! And the bands that backed her up play with an inveterate confidence of players for whom this style of rock 'n roll was their native vernacular- because in a sense it was. There isn't really a hint anywhere in this comp that Phương and her fellow musicians were imitating received styles and churning out derivative forms of rock, surf, and soul. In fact, these songs sound intensely localized to their time and place. This is partially due to efforts by the musicians to make a style of rock music that felt authentically Vietnamese, but also because of their simple enthusiasm for the material. They were clearly having a lot of fun making these recordings. And making these records obviously felt like important work to them at the time.

It would be a high hurdle to clear to find a rock collection that sounds this fresh and sincere elsewhere in 2021. And with a features length film's worth of genuine surf, psyche, and foot-loose soul to be had here, I'd be curious to know why you'd be willing to exert the effort. There is no sense in twisting yourself into knots, when you could simply step into the inviting glow of these Magical Nights, courtesy of Phương Tâm, the precocious explorations of her daughter Hannah, and their supporters and collaborator.  

This collection is out via Sublime Frequencies

Album Review: Hüstler - Hüstler EP

Hüstler are really making all the right moves. Hooking folks with a savage and spotless demo earlier this year, they've wasted no time in cranking out the follow-up- a capricious and audacious mating ritual of Alien Sex Fiend and the uncivil punk-thrash of Warthog, a riling experience that will force-feed adrenaline into your system with the menacing proficiency of a '90s industrial record. The drum work here stays on beat with a fatal and furious finality- like each slap of the snare is driving a nail through the lid of a pinewood box with the tip stopping just short of the furrowed skin of your forehead. The guitars sound saturated with malice, taking their time to set the mood and give you a taste of fear before peeling a souvenir of skin and fat off your chest with a sharp shave of a dexterous, flaying solo. And then there are the vocals, which sound like they are being regurgitated by a man who has not had his prescribed medications in a fortnight and whose only gestures at modesty are a garter belt and a pair of mismatched, blood-soaked afghan socks. Hüstler are an example of outrageous hardcore punk, that is equally eager to shock as it is to amuse. A chaotic breakdown of societal boundaries through rough sonics and enough of a wink towards spiritual peril and congenital criminality to convert parsons into atheists and fans of GG Allin into abstaining shut-ins whose only hobbies are playing Animal Crossing and listening to recordings of sea breezes. Will Hüstler's self-titled EP change your life? Maybe... if it doesn't kill you first.

Hüstler's s/t EP is out on Sorry State. 

Album Review: Obscura Qalma - Apotheosis

Italian symphonic death metal band Obscura Qalma released an album about existentialism and classic psychoanalysis that I liked quite a bit. I can't claim I was able to follow all of their tangents, but I think I picked up on enough to write a cogent review. Check out what I had to say about Apotheosis over at New Noise below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/column/bandcamp-of-the-day-obscura-qalma/

LP is out via Rising Nemesis Recordings. 

Album Review: Scowl - How Flowers Grow

 
Santa Cruz's Scowl are telling you exactly where to plant it on their debut LP, How Flowers Grow. They're not leaving any stone unturned in the garden of angst from which they spring. Inspired by '90s alternative rock and the hardcore bands they've come up playing shows within Southern California, the band sounds incredibly tight on this album, with a tense, melodic undertow that emerges and blossoms in full on the mid-album highlight "Seeds to Sow." 

How Flowers Grow melo-core though. There are genuine wracking grooves on "Pay Privilege Due" and rope-a-dope chord and vocal combos on "Fuck Around" that will give you a case of hardcore road-rash in a Terror and Negative Approach kind of way. While tracks like "Roots" and "Trophy Hunter" have a threatening, tetanus-lined, metallic hardcore varnish of rust and dried blood. 

But through their vicious exterior protrudes a vindication of vulnerability. A facet of the band that is evident even when they are fully baring their fangs and thorns. This aspect of their sound is observable not only in the way that the band presents and packages their albums- wiggly hand-drawn images of flowers, painted in soft pastels- but also in their lyrics. 

Most of what singer Kat Moss is saying is audible and nearly all of its content speaks to a need to break out of the intolerable confinements of common, ordinary, and everyday drudgery. Through her gruff vocal presentation, the band speaks to the need to demand something more from life and the necessity to provide space for others to do the same- whether that be the abolishment of expectations of gender performance, a pushing back on demands for reducing expectations of what one is capable of in their own life, or the quiet tyranny of shift work that you only do for pay, and not for the benefit of yourself or for a community. 

When meditating on Scowl's message, the lyrics of "Idle Roaring Room" echo within my mind- a song that collapses the feeling of isolation that can surface in a crowded room- where Kat barks and snarls the line "Listen to yourself!" as a challenge and a reminder to fight for the space and the light you need to grow, with the heavy implication, that in doing so, can inspire (and conspire with) others to do the same. 

As good as How Flowers Grow is, it feels like only the starting point of Scowl's evolution, and it will be a delight to see what radical formation that morphs into next. 

How Flowers Grow was released via Flatspot Records. 

Album Review: Anti-Machine - Anti-Machine EP

 I wrote a short review of NYC hardcore punk band Anti-Machine's self-titled RP for No Echo's Best Hardcore of 2021 list. Thanks to Carlos for letting me write about music that I'm excited about for his site for another year. Check out what I had to say about the album below:

Review https://www.noecho.net/lists/best-hardcore-records-of-2021

This EP is out via Toxic State Records. 

Album Review: Floating Room - Shima

It's not easy to put my finger directly on what grabs me about Floating Room's most recent EP Shima, enough so that I feel I need to say something about it. The band is essentially the vehicle of singer and songwriter, and practically everything elser Maya Stoner, and can shapeshift to match her mood on a whim. 

Maya's early LPs were essentially noisy, guitar pop explorations that elaborated on various motifs of expressionistic feedback and meditative textures of dreamy, bedroom pop that seemed like they were more interested in communing with abstract forms than dealing with the harsh reality and knife-like plunge of emotions that actually inspired them. Last year the project coalesced a little bit around familiar indie rock forms, such as jangly guitars, wistful melodies, and brushy percussion on the lush and expensive-sounding EP Tired and True, from which her latest EP Shima is a further deviation. 

What I think leaps out at me about Shima is that it is actually less experimental than its predecessors. This is usually not something that wins an album points with me, mind you. However, the streamlining of Floating Room's aesthetic manages to give the project a clearer sense of direction and allows for a narrowing of focus which really pays dividends in terms of the strength and potency of the performances and songwriting.

Maya shows herself on this EP to be comfortable in the throws of increased propulsion, managing to wrangle a rolling rock beat and hitch it to some grungy and heatseeking guitars in order to raise an elevated platform for which she can project the passionate purr and clarion whistle of her voice and broadcast the calm, prodding invective to dream that is encapsulated in her lyrics. 

It's simple, but effective, and forces a lasting impression on me in a way that her more ephemeral work hadn't previously. I'm particularly smitten with the Dilly Dally-esque fuzzy, freakout on the latter half of "I Wrote This Song For You" which is otherwise a sparring match between cooing vocal melodies and grumbling valleys of steep slopped distortion, as well as the surfy chop of the sandy and breezy "See You Around," which strikes a temperate balance between overheated guitars and cool lapping harmonies. 

It all comes together on the final track "Shimanchu" which has some crazy strong chord progressions and high tension guitar tones that seem to kinetically charge Maya's vocal performance until it erupts into an ecstatic and unexpected horse chorus of evocative shouts, that seem to affirm a kind of desperate loneliness with one step only to defy it with the next. Shima demonstrates that you can say and do a lot when you're as direct as possible with your intentions. 

Shima was released via Famous Class Records. 

Album Review: Pile of Love - Pile of Love

A couple of the goofs from Drug Church, State Champs, and The Story So Far got together to release a college rock album under the name Pile of Love. I normally hate this sort of thing, but this one is pretty darn good. The hooks and harmonies are solid, and the group doesn't take themselves too seriously. In otherwords, they get the vibe right, unlike 90% of the bands who were doing the same kind of thing thirty years ago. Read what I had to say about the album below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-pile-of-love/

You can find Pile of Love's debut LP here. 

Album Review: Aihotz - Matar al superhombre

Aihotz is a Spanish punk band who have a lot of strong, vicious energy- like the spirit of a panther pulsing out of a full-stack speaker. The style of punk they germinate is pretty popular in some circles right now- sharp and austere grooves, with blitzing tempos and heavily distorted vocals. It's kind of like a post-punk version of Discharge- although, in this case, Aihotz leans a little closer to a crusty, speed-riddled version of TSOL. 

While some of what they're doing is familiar, I haven't heard a band play with their guitar distortion or the reverb that they put on the vocals in a comparable way. Aihotz are very enthusiastic about the noise they are able to generate on their 7" Matar al superhombre. However, they're not just making a racket for its own sake. Aihotz are clearly not trying to show off to a bunch of gear heads and prove that they can raise just as much of a nasty ruckus as any other cohort of squatters who might be passing through with a pedalboard in tow. They have something else in mind entirely. 

The way Aihotz force razor wire textured masses of distortion to collide against each other, and the restraint with which they deploy such chaotic elements, gives the impression that they are attempting to unlock something in your mind rather than simply bust your eardrums, and the combination of sonics lends to a darkly lysergic quality to Matar al superhombre. 

What you will encounter on this album may cause your senses to become overwhelmed. Your orientation to become inverted. And your state of mind to be called into question. You may find yourself questioning whether you are enjoying one of the best highs of your life, or if your synapses are rapidly dying as they liquify, with your poor boiled brain spurting out from behind your eyelids like melted strawberry icecream showering from a defective soft-serve machine. It's effectively antagonistic and delightfully deranged, and I'm not sure you can ask more from a punk record in 2021. 

Matar al superhombre is out via Discos Enfermos.

Album Review: Molly Noise - Profane Feminine

Wrote about a very queer, somewhat sad, but ultimately assertive electronic dance record for New Noise today. Check out what I had to say about Molly Noise's Profane Feminine at the links below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-molly-noise/

Find the album here. 

Album Review: Norska - Too Many Winters

It's cold as fuck right now in Chicago and that's got me feeling pretty good. I'm one of the few freaks in this city (and possibly the world) who prefers the winter months to their sweltery sibling seasons. Not because I'm one of those huge, remarkably insulated individuals who can (and do) wear cargo shorts year-round and loves lauding it over their friends, neighbors, and spouses. Just the opposite in fact. I am a thin man and cold air cut through me like a cheese grater through cheddar. No, I like winter because winter is brutal and inhospitable. And like with most unpleasant things, I'm diluted enough to believe that enduring them builds character and spiritual fortitude. That's right, I like winter because it helps me appreciate the daily struggle of survival more. Speaking of brutal stuff I appreciate, this evening I've been enjoying Portland sludge metal band Norska and their 2017 album Too Many Winters. The group performs thundering, shout-vocal prog and bad-trip stoner rock in the vein of early Mastodon, interspersed with doomy driving grooves and epic clean singing sections. Aaron Rieseberg, bassist for respected doom metallers Yob, plays in the band along with his older brother Dustin, and it's no surprise that these two share blood, because it's clear they share one heart and are in total sync when it comes to the dark and viscerally dramatic vibe of Too Many Winters. The album is a marked improvement over their debut, boasting tighter instrumentation and generally more focused compositions. For example, I really like to patient reveal and gradual focus of Samhain” which starts out like a crushing Mastodon track, only to slowly transform into gothic, medieval folk balladry. Other highlights include, "Too Many Winters” where driving, gooey riffs and cavernous vocals give way to a turbid sea of winding, intersecting guitars and chilly distortion, “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” which is a slow-burning, stoner rock odyssey, and “Fire Patience Backbone” which will harden your flesh to ice in a blizzardy hurricane of shout vocals and purposive riffs. Believe me when I say, that I can't get enough of Too Many Winters.

Too Many Winters is out via Brutal Panda. 

Album Review: Archgoat - Worship The Eternal Darkness

Fiendish Finnish black metal legends Archgoat have a new album out titled Worship The Eternal Darkness. I checked it out and then penned some words about it over on New Noise. Check it out below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-archgoat/

Worship The Eternal Darkness is out on Debemur Morti Productions.

Album Review: Computer Girl - Computer Girl EP

Computer Girl is Oklahoma Duo Hannah Edmondson and Christopher Raun, who have, as of yet, one album to their name, and it's a self-titled EP. They perform a kind of indie rock that is melody forward and deceptively layered, communicating sturdily plotted narratives of isolation with highly visual lyrics.

They also take a great deal of care to balance these more traditionally laudable song elements with slickly buffed and digitally divergent sound textures that push you out of the flux of casual listening while continuing to grip you in the orbit of their captivating centrifugal force. There are moments when they sound like Cat Power and other times when they highly resemble good, early St. Vincent, but at all times, Computer Girl is testing their signal strength and finding ways to upgrade their performance, while defining the shape and boundaries to the shadows cast by the LED illumination pools into which we endlessly submerge our consciousnesses. Are we baptized or drowned in the light of the computer monitor? It's hard to tell as life and death are of the same experiential quality in the weightless womb of the web. 

The glitchy, sapiently scuffy and fine detailed, information rerouting and cartography that Computer Girl performs is evocative of the ways in which we are captured by technology, as well as our natural and self-preserving strain against these silicon shackles. It would have been very easy for Computer Girl's music to be a lot less interesting than it is, but I'm glad we don't live in that world. 

Computer Girl EP is self-released. 

Interview: Fire-Toolz

                                  Photo by Lyndon French

Had a conversation with Angel Marcloid of Fire-Toolz for CHIRP Radio this week. She made one of my favorite albums of the year and it felt like a real privilege to be able to chat with her about it and her creative processes. Check out our conversation on CHIRP's site here, and below: 

Eternal Home is out on Hausu Mountain Records

CHIRP Radio · Fire - Toolz Interview

Album Review: Nghtcrwlr - HiSeq_Let The Children Scream

Nghtcrwlr is Kris Esfandiari's dark electronic and digital hardcore project. While it is inspired by Yves Tumor's live sets and her love of '90s electronica, it is far from an homage. Her debut with the project HiSeq_Let The Children Scream demonstrates how the 808 infused id of subterranean dance music can serve a therapeutic and personal end when properly directed- in this case, helping her to continue to process the way certain religious ideals were disseminated to her as a child. 

The Children of the title then are those who were subjected to particular interpretations of scripture through religiously instructional media- some clips of which are inserted throughout the album, namely highlight from the manic musical antics of Psalty the Singing Song Book (oh yes, it's weirder than it sounds- think PeeWee's Playhouse mixed with Jesus Camp). Further radicated the eerieness of these kinds of indoctrinating projects as they are aimed at children, Kris has also included excerpts of Charismatic Christians speaking in glossolalia- a far more disturbing and alarming experience than one might expect. 

Beyond the glaring cultish, Christian reference points, the Let The Children Scream's meaning and goals are left largely to the interpretation of the listener- allowing you to process various sense absorbing and twisted impressions of emotion and sound textures along with Kris, but permitting you the space to draw your own conclusions. The tracks adhere just enough to the conceits of song structure to permit a stable foothold in what is otherwise a tempest of sound, disintegrating the clay husk of a long-dead super-ego in an expressionistic purge. 

We all have things in our past that we've tried to bury- to shove down and forget about. But hiding them doesn't make them go away. If you truly want to have control over the skeletons in your closet, sometimes you have to let them out and give them a good rinse of sunshine. Once they've been cleaned and examined, you may find them to be obedient as well. I think that's the hope expressed on HiSeq_Let The Children Scream at least- that letting something free will cause it to relinquish the control that it has over you. 

 
HiSeq_Let The Children Scream is out Amniote Editions.

Album Review: Empty Black - S/T EP

I wrote about the bleak, heavy vibes of the new Empty Black EP for New Noise today. Very brooding stoner metal with a hint of drone. Just the way I like it. Read my words below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-empty-black/

Empty Black’s self-titled EP is out via The Dregs Records.