Album Review: S. Raekwon - I Like It When You Smile

There was a time when someone doing what S. Raekwon is doing would have probably been aiming to land an in-studio performance on TRL. Now his kind of stuff is considered "indie" and he has to angle for write-ups on blogs like mine and Bandcamp Daily. He's lucked out, if I'm being honest. Seriously. Once upon a time, being a pop star and an R'nB artist was all about exposure via basic cable, and how you'd land such a covetous position was by mimicking whatever the last person featured on basic cable was doing. The internet has thankfully exploded this dynamic. It's not about grabbing a moment's attention from a sea of millions of passive viewers by delivering on their expectations. Now you can do whatever you want, and as long as you can find an audience for it, smaller than a million, but still large enough to sustain you, then you have as good of a shot as anyone. Why S. Raekwon has me thinking in these terms is because of the way he molds together contemporary polished pop dynamics with a sort of early-'00s style of easy-going college rock. It's perfect for radio airplay, and also perfect that that sort of thing doesn't matter anymore. His sound is both timeless and easily identified with. Even if you've never heard anything like it before, it will bring on a flood of memories that you feared you'd lost. Intensely optimistic and inspiringly personal. Akin to something that a college band would be playing at a house party in one of those unapologetically schmaltzy romantic comedies, where after the climactic resolution, the romantic leads at the center of the flick realize all the ways that their misadventures and misunderstandings have brought them closer together, and then they kiss under some fireworks or something. Call me corny, but that type of sentimental storytelling appeals to men mightly, and it's what makes I Like It When You Smile kind of irresistible as well. The aspects of his sound that appreciated about his 2021 LP Where I'm at Now are just that much more focused and purposefully indulged on his latest EP. His vocals feel less searching and more instantly gratifying and pointed, like a love letter folded into a paper airplane and sent sailing on an arching collision course with the landing strip of your heart. The grooves are tighter too, while also managing to be more relaxed and effortless, as if all it took for his band to get on his level was a wink and a countdown while he snapped his fingers to set the beat. There are sections of incredibly breezy guitar and piano combos that skip carefree on the prickly peaks of boom-bap beats, and these magnificent medleys feel as cool and natural to the album as the sunny early morning stum of the solo guitar that backs up the lovey-dovey "Talk" or the adoring organ coos and subtle building grace that backlights "Tomorrow." It feels like Raekwon has really figured out what his sound is with this release. And now, all he wants to do is see you smile. 

Find it from Father/Daughter Records.

Album Review: Macula Dog - Orange 2

It's an unusual flex to include the word "orange" in the title of your album. Popular lyricism is often defined by simple and memorable rhyming schemes, and "orange" is famously refractory in this respect. It's also a color with little obvious thematic or emotional currency. Unlike red, which can represent high emotions like anger or love, or yellow, which can be associated with both hope and health as well as cowardice and sickness, orange doesn't benefit from any of these correlations. It's sort of an abstract-neutral. Not red. Not yellow. Not hot or cold. Existing in a state of perpetual separation and obstinance. Maybe this is why experimental duo Macula Dog have chosen it for the title of a song about chemical addiction, a song that shares the title for their second LP, Orange 2. Dependencies of all kinds, chemical or otherwise, can result in a serious diminishment of one's quality of life, and once established, might never let go of you. Like a steady and recurring cancer of the spirit. A squatter who has adversely possessed a plot of your personhood. A devil in a dugout on your shoulder. Only for Macula Dog, they're not subordinate to vices, so much as a volitionally crooked muse. An insistent imp that fixes them into their keyboards like a backward screw, always catching and tearing at their surroundings. The bizarreness of their approach is reflected back at the listener from the very start, with the title track, where you will encounter something of an IV drip of mashing pulpy bass and rung-out acidic grooves that disintegrates before your eyes, broken and distributed in a rotating tempest as if they were sugar cubes stirred into a hot cup of tea. The song keeps itself together, but just barely, limping and tripping over aluminum-tinted percussion as it's punctured by thumb-tack-shaped sparks of electro-detritus. Its existence is not so much a struggle as a bafflement- surviving not to thrive but to spite the idea of surrender. The dialectical ends of its will and capitulating tendencies swallowing each other in a double-headed ouroboros helix. Breaking down only to sprout and die again, like changeling mushrooms bursting through a peat of immaculate dry rot. It's not just the title track either; Orange 2 is simply able to live within the blunt discomfort of its own skin while undergoing a chilling remodeling procedure with each song, where its bones and joints are continuously pulled asunder and rearranged into hostile architecture. A number like "I Love It," resembles the reshuffling of Oh No! It's Devo, cut into angular jigsaw pieces and assembled blindly according to texture and shape, while "Half Cycle" inverts the sonic accompaniment of a planetarium's midday laser show so that twinkling synth riffs and spasming guitar solos jut out of the atmosphere like pillars of sun flare, preventing the earth from collapsing into the sky. There is a homely sort of drunkness to the vocal performance of the band as well that is augmented by oscillating vocal filters- affective digital alterations that can't settle on a cadence but seem to be so overwhelmed by their own woozy, contrarian crapulence that they carry on anyway. There are hints here and there that Macula Dog were truly attempting to make concessions to pop accessibility on tracks like "Plastic Wrap" with firm, rolling melodies, as well as on the soundcard shredder "Go Green," but they couldn't restrain themselves from vandalizing every utterance as it ushered forth from their combined efforts, in much the same manner that a fun house mirror can't help but reflect a repulsively cartoonish impression of the things that stand before it, or much in the way that a scorpion will always murder its ferry frog while forging a river, Macula Dog can't be anything other than their mutinous selves. It's this inclination toward a perverse form of revelry and squinting self-actuation that lends to "Neosporin" the bludgeoning essence of splattering concrete, or "Smart Man Do" its savant-like dislocated acuity for rhythm, where its pairing of beats and vocals come to resemble Invader Zim's Gir after he's been chopped and gutted and reborn as a talking drum machine. If there is a line of restraint, they will cross it. As a result, Orange 2 is almost too original for its own good. But it is good. Because of, not despite, its indiscrete obtuseness, a quality that comes as close to charming as anything generally indigestible can. 

Running wild thanks to Warf Cat Records

Album Review: Expert Timing - Stargazing

Expert Timing is a group comprised of husband and wife duo Jeff and Katrina Snyder, and their friends Gibran and Nik, who describe themselves as "bubblegrunge." And, in case you were wondering, they were doing so before Spotify used the term to confuse and dismay the entirety human population during their apps' year-in-review wraps in 2021 (FYI, Expert Timing was formed in 2016! This is what we call prior art, bitch!). You'd think this fact would entitle the band to some kind of compensatory royalty, right? I'm sure a Hundred Million dollars would do it... or a pound of flesh from Daniel Ek. Either would make up for a fair rate of return the app owes them (and most musicians) for the use of their music all these years. Whichever. I'm not picky... although they might be. While we wait for the band to either announce their retirement and/or for Spotify to figure out which it can more easily part with, its money or its CEO, I encourage you to check out Expert Timing's second LP Stargazing; it's pretty spectacular! As you might expect from previously illuded genre designation, the album has a classic '90s, warm and nostalgic sensibility about it, conjured without pretense or a hint of irony. Expert Timing exhibit all the splendor and curiosity of an untamed and still thriving specimen of that prior decade's pop-punk and powerpop explosion. A playful and ever-spry instance of rare guitar-pop passion that shares healthy and adaptable taxonomical distinctions with The Rentals, Hot Rod Circuit, and early Fountains Of Wayne. I love all of it, but I'm particularly fond of the hooky wind-up of "Super Ordinary Unimpressed" with its trembling gait and confident leaping stride, the gyrating patterns and electric taffy-pull of the slightly sour sugar-bopper "Autonomy," the dream-loaded bossy strut of "New Queen," and the simmering build and ultimately sensational pirouette of "I Can See You Dancing," which arrives near the end of the album like the soundtrack to the last triumphant dance at a high school prom, where destined lovers finally unite below the stage lights, encircled by their peers, swaying chest to chest and cheek to cheek. Stargazing has me thoroughly dazzled with its bright, joyful noise, and is leaving me wishing for a night that won't end so long as I can keep it blasting through my stereo speakers. 

Another reason to be thankful for Count Your Lucky Stars.

Album Review: The Cradle - Radio Wars

Radio Wars is the first album of the prolific Paco Cathcart, aka The Cradle, that I've listened to all the way through. And I dig it. I have a thing for principled, personal and ephemeral DIY recordings, and Radio Wars is certainly all three in no uncertain terms. Paco has done some folker stuff in the past that I never really vibed with, but Radio Wars hits a lot of key pleasure points in my brain that make it easy for me to tune into its frequency. Stuff like frantic electronic production, dreamy but palpable textures, breathy filtered singing, colorful synth chords and loops, and the odd cowbell sound effect. I have no idea where I picked up an affinity for these things, but Paco clearly understands how much I love them, otherwise, they wouldn't have included them all in their album (often in the same track!). It's like I'm in the presence of a star. A master of the moment. A known face in the throng of indie's elite coterie. As if Hot Chip were personally demoing some new material for me, in my apartment, down-scaled to suit the intimacy of the setting, with all the windows, open so the neighbors can hear. Private and yet uncontained. An eclectic and electric congregation and weirdo dance party of wizardly possums and wisened, urban-garden-dwelling fairies casting spells to feed your imagination and nurture it from a guppy to a 12-foot-long, mythical koi. When Radio Wars is on, I can't help the sensation that there is a lot of fresh air rushing in around me, gasping through open portals and unseen cracks in the floor and walls, and that even though I am in a confined space, my present environment is not enough to contain everything that is flowing through, past and around me. Radio Wars is an act of sharing. I can say that conclusively, not only because it was authored and recorded by someone with the intent to be heard, but also because it is a work that was created with the clear conviction that the connections we form through art are always strong enough to bridge the divides that keep us apart.

Reeling over at NNA Tapes.

Album Review: Carpool - For Nasal Use Only

I, like most good, decent people on this Earth, seriously enjoyed Erotic Nightmare Summer when it came out in June of 2020. I'm of course talking about the LP from Rochester's Carpool, not the sexy night terrors that visited me that year (the nature of which I will not elaborate on further). The album (not the night terrors) was a solid take on that well-worn Prince Daddy school of indie and emo, where the band hammer strums their solid body electric guitars like they're playing acoustic while classic rock flare and odd bursts of sparkle chords creep in around the corners, replete with introspective lyrical turns of phrase and an overall performance that is conducive to shout induced vocal strain. Honestly, when a band can pull this off, I have very few notes, just two thumbs up. It's taken Carpool two years to follow their last release with For Nasal Use Only, and I'd say it has been worth the wait, but that implies that I anticipated where the band was going with their latest EP. I didn't anticipate shit. As far as I'm concerned, this is the Carpool reintroducing themselves all over again. Not because they've changed their sound, but because they've made it over in such a way that comparing their past to their present is like comparing the features of a 2015 model sedan to a current model import sports car- they're faster, smoother, more versatile, and gosh darn prettier to boot. Firstly, Carpool are much better at spacing out their individual performances to allow for each member's contributions to shine through, and yet they all jell together with a lovely sense of cohesiveness. The forwardness of the synths in the mix aids in this more balanced approach, but they also seem more comfortable playing together as well, and this comfort allows them to move in impressive coordination like a murmuration of birds or a large school of fish. This fine-tuned display of coordinated effort allows for the opener, "Anime Flashback," to achieve this grand and gradual, sparkling momentum, splitting open and reforming without losing its essential shape, like a cloudburst of pure sunshine. The melodies they construct here are less frantic as well, as exemplified by "Discretion of Possession (A Love Song)," which I swear has as much contemporary country and gospel in its DNA as anything you'll hear on the radio out in the sticks that surround a give urban enclave. This refounded emphasis on melody also helps strengthen their established sound, such as on the closer "Everyone's Happy (Talk My Shit)," where a springy counter-rhythm platforms a high-fiving call and response between the lead and background vocals and acts as a taut throughline for an extended and ruminating bridge that comes on like a latent hallucination after smashing too many edibles at a house party. The high points of this last example is alternative rock par excellence, on the level with "Teenage Dirtbag," and I won't countenance your counterfactuals without a fight. For Nasal Use Only is an opening up of the band's sound that I hope they can keep building on to reach their potential. I'm not making any predictions, though. Whatever they do next, I'm sure it will be great (and I'm keeping my figures crossed that I haven't jinxed them by saying as much)!

More cool stuff from Acrobat Unstable Records.

Album Review: Courtney and Brad - A Square is a Shape of Power

Some say that if you don't plan to succeed, then you should plan to fail. Others say, "OK, Boomer." Which are you? When it comes to making art, if there is no room for spontaneity or reflexive innovation, then you're probably not engaged in a creative process- you're just making a product. In giving form to your expression, sometimes the best plan is no plan at all. That's at least the premise at the heart of  Courtney Swain's and Bradford Krieger's collaboration as Courtney and Brad. The duo entered the studio with only the objective of working together and have since been able to produce a growing discography from their impromptu sessions, starting with DLRDG 003: Our First EP and now followed by their debut LP A Square is a Shape of Power. A Square is a Shape of Power, in particular, is a vindication of their no-precepts process, an approach that permits the subliminal currents of mood and influence to instruct their transformation. These tracks, edited from single-takes, have the fluid coherence of a dream, blending sentimental folk, understated and romantic balladry, humble post-rock, and numerous but district pop influences to the point where they forge a woodshed version of enka as a long tail experiment in internationalist folk relations and an alt-country answer to the cultural collapse of hyperpop. The collision of their influences and their idiosyncratic synthesis is evident throughout, but take on a particularly delicious form in "New Onion Smile," which overlays a karaoke version of a disco groove as the basis for Courtney's melodious peaks and tranquil lows, which when received, simultaneously sound like they are echoing forth from a mountain top in a neighboring village while being confined to the compression range of a drug store's overhead speaker system. These contradictory yet harmonious confluences persist to perplex and delight throughout the course of A Square is a Shape of Power, especially when it comes to the shimmering lounge and country posh chamber pop of "I gotchu," the ambient texture-prone and cosmic-spotlight shoegaze of "Moongazing," the campfire-warmed Shibuya flutter of "Mayonnaise," and the wiggly rhythmic bounce and shrink-wrapped anti-rock of the title track. Everything has a purpose here, even if its significance is incidental- including the lyrics, all of which Courtney sings in Japanese. Her choice of language adds an additional facet of catharsis to these songs, a deep maudlin calm mixed with an intoxicating optimism, an overlap of qualities that are naturally captured by the performance of say, Shinichi Mori, but which is often difficult to personify for artists singing in English. Even though it is probably only a consequence of the group's recording choices rather than any deliberate decision in its own right, I find the measured pace of A Square is a Shape of Power to be gratifying and appropriate to the overall tone of the project. It is as if the band is naturally slowing down in order to move at a speed that is suitable to their ends and which fundamentally resists the tyrannical spiral of the world that has the rest of us caught in its updraft. When everything around you demands that you hammer yourself into a certain shape, the most powerful thing you can do is to become something unexpected. When we're told that there is only room for triangular pegs, Courtney and Brad demonstrate on A Square is a Shape of Power that it's possible to make room for yourself as something that can't be replicated.

 Available from Dear Life Records.

Album Review: Flex TMG - Whisper Swish 12"

There are so many reference points for disco and they all tend to collide with and obscure each other when discussing its legacy. Do a little experiment, when you think of the word disco, what comes to mind first? Glossy pop singers? Big band funk? German studio experiments? They're all correct and also mutually exclusive. You can't mean them all when you talk about disco. What is inevitably meant when discussing the genre is one definition over the others, and yet, they are all qualifiedly disco. Your meaning is, therefore, entirely context-dependent. To a degree, this is how any discussion of genre or influence works, but it proves particularly true when it comes to disco. As an example, when I say that a band sounds like Blondie, a lot of (even most) people are going to think of Parallel Lines. That is unless you qualify it further with an elusion to "Heart of Glass." That qualifier will really throw a wrench in some people's gears, as it's almost TOO specific. That song was of a particular era, and that era will never be repeated. No punk band will ever attempt to make a straight-up, no cap, no camp, completely earnest disco track ever again. Right? Well, never say never. Flex TMG is an Oakland duo comprised, respectively, of Fake Fruit and Blues Lawyer players, Hannah D'amato and Rob Miller. And they're a punk band you have made a disco record. It's their debut and it's titled Whisper Swish. It would be tempting to simply slot this band in with other funky post-punk acts as a revival of ESG or Bush Tetras, but being obtuse and catchy is only half of Flex TMG's appeal, the other half of their appeal is that they genuinely make good body music- like a dressed-down form of Deee-Lite, or some early version of a Madison Avenue demo. Their truly the best of two worlds, a meeting at the intersection of sophisticated punk and clear-headed, DIY dance euphoria. For instance, "Hits The Right Way" has this orbital spiral that is strangely transportive, taking you to a place between '90s acid house drench and '80s club punk fallout as you tumble down a latter of layered grooves until to plop in the lap of the mother groove. "Sideways" has this late-night, public-access, sci-fi showcase vibe with its trouble-shooting bass chords and irradiated cosmic sound scans running in the background of quirked-up, jutting and jaunty topline melodies, while "Ghost" with its playful tin-timbre toms, cozy cresting textures, and big, scratchy, tom-cat guitars, will stretch and summersault in delight of your company, like a giant orange cat caressing between your shins in a figure eight pattern, begging to be fed and scratched behind the ears. And finally, there is "Come On Over (Bebé)," a slinky, Caribbean rhythm-drenched number with a hooky bass deployment that will wrap around your waist and pull you out under the spotlights to show off what you've got as if you were front row at a Donna Summer concert in 1977. Whisper Swish is an amazing amount of fun and a record that pulls power and influence from an often-overlooked dimension of disco's legacy. Whisper Swish isn't a secret you will want to keep to yourself, though. It's the kind you'll want to shout out to the whole neighborhood (preferably while carrying a boom box on your shoulder)! 

Available on Domestic Departure.

Album Review: Digikitty - Kitty Cola

It's a little difficult to properly trace the history of Philidelphia electronic artist Lucy Digi Kitty aka Digikitty, so I'm not really going to try. In part because I'm most excited about their current work, but also because I'm afraid of getting something wrong. As far as I can tell, she's been releasing chirpy variations of digitally enabled fifth-wave emo in the vein of Hey, Ily with a heavy reliance on reverse reverb for about a hear and a half. She's released a ton of music over her short career with the project, a lot of it under the name Beatricks- a name she no longer uses for reasons that will likely always remain a mystery to me. If you are a good internet sleuth, you couldn't probably find out more. I am not, so here the low down as far as I can tell; Lucy has been making a lot of chiptune emo and shoegaze with electronic beats and she used to go by another name. Caught up? Good. Let's talk about Kitty Cola. Released at the end of October 2022, Kitty Cola represents a hard turn into erratic, almost spastic breakcore. Her music still hangs on to many of her 8-bit emo inclinations - confessional lyrics, echoey vocal filters, jangling melodies, and low resolution soundcard effects - but Kitty Cola has evolved drastically beyond the constraints of her former sound, dipping into valleys of hazy, heady techno and darting through collapsing corridors of crumbling feedback while operating under think cross-section canopies of brutalist synth arches. Some parts sound like a Game Gear committing suicide by bludgening itself with it own internal speaker, other times its spirit appears to be attempting to communicate with you through a cracked and neglected Tamagotchi, while other parts could only be explained by the demonic possession of a patchwork drummachine resulting from spell instructions in a Tumblr post being skimmed and improperly executed. Turely, some of these tracks sound like they've been ripped straight out of hell, exemplified by the vicious melodies and charred and extra crispy guitars of the Sega soundclash "Marciline the Drum and Bass Queen." The transformation of Digikitty's sound is not restricted to a hand full of tracks on Kitty Cola either. It's a total aesthetic turnover. "im a bit of a crybaby" back paddles like it was swimming in an ice bath of ethereal goth textures, "If it Bleeds Then it Dies" is like if My Bloody Valentine had written the title screen music for a mass-market Dreamcast game about urban delinquency akin to Jet Set Radio, and "Cigarette Butts in Old Coffee" is a laudable slow-shuffling weeper that attempts to revive SoundCloud era hip-hop by resorecting all of that moments most degected habits and inward looking proclivities. Kitty Cola is like if Lucy boiled down all of her previous work in vat of cherry coke and used the resulting syrupy lacquer to paint a custom retro racing arcade cabinet stuffed with dynamite and then list the fuse. Its fast. Its dangerous. Its verging on the absurd. But most of all, its outrageously fun. I don't know where this project is headed, but I'm stoked to find out! 

Hardcore Hangout: Punitive Damage, The Mall, Hacker, Crisis Man, Squint, Cleaver, GridIron, & Broken Vow

It's the end of another long week and I hope you're relaxing with a preferred beverage while reading this. I know not everyone has the luxury of being home and comfortable at the end of the day on Friday, but take this message as my sincere wish that they did. As a bit of a celebration for another work week concurred, I've treated myself to a buffet of (semi) recent hardcore releases. Very few things remind me of why I love music as easily as a top-notch hardcore record and I've assembled my thoughts on a few of the albums I spun today just in case you're the same way and need some recommendations. Maybe you know these records. Maybe they're totally new to you. Either way, I'm stoked we can listen to them in solidarity, knowing that we aren't beaten yet. Have a good weekend! 

Punitive Damage - This is the Blackout (Atomic Action!)

I covered Punitive Damage's We Don't Forget EP as a standalone review back in the summer of 2020. I thought it showed a lot of potentials as far as ugly, pounding, '80s hardcore revival goes. Their latest LP This is the Blackout feels unprecedented in comparison. They've honed in on more of a powerviolence meets classic rock style that is somewhere between Punch and Kiss and it really suits them. Their newfound embrace of camp, hard rock and backwater Americana even lends itself to some saloon style, Jerry Lewis-esque piano riffs cameoing on the fantastic and rabble-rousing single "Bottom Feeder." That track and others are like a bottle of whisky smashing over the back of your head, a soaking and bloody wake-up call that trouble is brewing all around you, and you best get your mits up and be ready for a brawl. The lyrical content is refreshing as well, emphasizing the need for community and affinity and speaking from singer Jerkova's perspective as a daughter of Mexican immigrants, a vantage point that gives new salience to the group's fury. Punative Damage are like a totally different band on This is the Blackout than they were two years ago. Unequivocally for the better, in my opinion.

The Mall - Time Vehicle Earth (Self-Released)

Time Vehicle Earth is the second LP from St. Louis's gothic digital hardcore group The Mall, and the first since Spencer Bible joined founding member Mark Plant to make the band a duo. The album's content hinges on themes of the absolute unity of all things, as in, the planet and the universe are a single entity that we all inhabit and play a role in creating with our actions. Nothing that we put out into the world dissipates in a vacuum, and all of our energy is returned to us in one form or another. For their part, what The Mall are putting out there is high-octane goth techno that lashes and bites like leather whip and beats that will make you stomp and hoof around like someone lit a book of matches under your toes. While the dark analog thrills and frantically recursive electronic percussion have their own sense of progression and purpose, the project is definitely elevated by Mark's raspy, distressed shout that sounds like Scott Vogel trying out for KMFDM, but being a lot more belligerent than the job actually requires. The world might not be ending tomorrow, but that doesn't mean you can't dance like it was. 

Hacker - Pick A Path (Sorry State Records) 

As many of us come to terms with the next chapter of the ever-unfurling technological dystopia that our society finds itself in, it might be time to look for some sage advice in unlikely places... Well, unlikely for some. I've gleaned more life advice from the words of hardcore singers than I care to divulge. But this isn't about John Joseph. Right now, I'm talking about Melbourne's Hacker. The down under thunder five-sum followed up their laudable 2019 demo with the sci-fi-themed Pick A Path. The album recounts fictional rebellion against the system of machines that control humanity, soundtracked by harry, oozing and deliberately disfigured grooves that splinter in all directions like a guerilla army on the move. Synthesizing the insurgent messiness of Poison Idea with the nasty wind-up and knock-out that has been refined with deadly precision by recent core-revival bands like Rival Mob, Pick A Path is a synergy of new and old that combusts like an EMF bomb in a server farm, frying circuit boards and shattering the shackles of the mind. Hack or get hacked! 

Crisis Man - Asleep in America (Digital Regress)

Man, if there aren't just some records that get into your cuts and make a gooey, bloody little mess there. Crisis Man's Asleep In America is one of those records that lives in me like a nesting, disgruntled badger. Released this past spring, it consists of nine songs that cover a gambit of topics that concern the disaffection of living in the contemporary United States. Sonically, Crisis Man has this cracked and squirrelly allure to them that combines lean and oiled, razor-sharp riffs with fat-ass low-end grooves, binding them together like a tango between six feet of barbed wire and a waterbed. The guitar cords slip and skitter like a centipede burrowing through a jar of vaseline amongst over-warmed and sprawling throngs of synth-fueled paranoia. A gregarious cacophony that generates just enough confusion for the yelping and unhinged yodel of the group's vocal performances to sneak up behind you and stick a fork in your kneck. If Asleep In America can't wake you up, then you might have turned over from coma patient to cadaver. 

Squint - Wash Away (Sunday Drive Records)

Hey look! Another freakin' fantastic St.Louis band on this list. Squint really left me wanting more in the best kind of way after their scruffy, heartfelt and fuzzy debut EP Feel It dropped earlier this year. That album could have been two hours long and I probably would have still listened to it consecutively for days on end. Now they've mercifully followed up their debut with another EP, this one titled Wash Away, and it's a beautiful pivot of focus for the band. They've done some amazing groundwork in the last couple of months, digging into their sound and restructuring it so that the guitar melodies are both meaner and more melodic as well as able to support increasingly colorful waves of Sugar coated Dinosuar Jr.-inspired distortion. This release sees Singer Brennen Wilkinson even more passionately engaged as well, hurling himself forward and into the fray and finding traction through the firm tread of his own anguished, imploring cry. It should be obvious by now, but I'll say it as it wasn't: the blissful scuffle of Wash Away is very easy to get swept up in. 

Cleaver - No More Must Crawl (Klonosphere Records)

Cleaver is a French metallic hardcore band who have taken up the cause of reproducing a familiar style of Converge-inspired hardcore. This might not sound particularly remarkable to you, but that's just the jaded hipster in you talking. The reality is that we all want more Converge and Poison the Well in our lives, and when the originals can't deliver, there are always those willing to shoulder the mantel of their forebearers, perpetuating the claustrophobic chaos that we crave. That's at least how I would defend a lesser band than Cleaver. Cleaver themselves don't require validation or explanation. All they need you to do is unfasten the lock on the door to your mind, and their LP No More Must Crawl do the rest- kicking it off its hinges, flattening you under their thread as they lumber through the doorway and ransacking the privacy of your inner sanctum. There is so much going on with the tracks on this LP that it's like a whirlwind between your ears. Like getting strapped to the undercarriage of a rollercoaster and having to ride it all the way to the end. It's like... it's just awesome. But not in the Bill and Ted kind of way. More in the, "I don't know that my body can handle this much stimulation without barfing," kind of way. Cut loose your expectations and give yourself over to Cleaver. 

GridIron - No Good at Goodbyes (Triple B Records) 

GridIron sounds the way hardcore exists, abstractly, in my mind. Affirmative. Confident. Intimidating. And able and willing to pile drive you through a coffee table as a joke, or just because. Few bands entirely live up to this expectation in reality, but GridIron does. Their LP No Good At Goodbyes is a beast if there ever was one. Stalking like a tiger while leaving footprints in its wake as wide and deep as potholes. The group's rapping singing style is fluid and satisfyingly aggressive, with a loose but direct dialect that is suitable to a streetwise outlook, and the gorilla-sized grooves the band musters could stand up with any thrown down by Downset or Vision of Disorder. Listening to No Good at Goodbyes feels like preparing for the fight of your life. If you think you've got what it takes, then step into the ring with GridIron. If not, then you better practice saying goodbye, good night, and sayonara. 

 

Broken Vow - Sane Minds End (Sunday Drive Records)

Alright, so you've reached the end of the list. You're probably battered and bruised and in need of a hug, but that's all going to have to wait because we have one more bastard for you to cross paths with. Broken Vow is a Connecticut band that released, what I feel, is a stone-cold classic last year, the Sane Minds End EP. Everything about it just feels grand and ostentatious, like the band is getting at some truth that lies buried and dormant inside all of us- stirring only occasionally just to remind you that it is hibernating in the pit of your being. They accomplish this with an enormous sweep of thrashy riffs and clattering heavy metal grooves that borrow equally from the metalcore of Strain as the thoughtful headrush of Turning Point. And then there are the vocals, which sound like the singer is howling against the wind, vainly trying to force the currents of the air to reverse direction until their throat becomes hoarse, dry and quivering with fatigue. Broken Vow throws every ounce of passion they had at this little record and the results will pin you to the ceiling like you just stepped on a landmine. Sensitive but not passive, aggressive without being numb to pain, Sane Minds End feels like the dawning of something big, a covenant, a promise of a return, and I am here for whatever Broken Vow brings down from the mountain to share with us next.

Album Review: Praise - All In A Dream

I'm perpetually searching for the next record that makes me glad to be alive. Not that I'm not happy with my life. But certain records can add something to your existence that it otherwise is lacking. Like a sense of ecstatic jubilance, or a rush of adrenaline that propels you into your day with bounding defiance, as the floor had been replaced with a trampoline. It might seem trite to describe a record on these terms, but I don't think there is a single music lover out there who hasn't felt this way about an album at one time or another. Today that record for me is Praise's All In A Dream. The Baltimore melodic hardcore band is one of those rare breeds that isn't hampered by a lack of speed or aggression. Their music is plenty up-tempo, but winning a land speed record (even as far as Husker Du fans go) or pummeling you into submission isn't high on their list of priorities. Praise's All In A Dream blithe rebellion is less pressed to impress and more geared to inspire. You can pick this up from the guitar tones alone. A kind of benevolent, multi-colored bath of distortion that peers over the horizon of these songs like the first rays of morning light. Beyond these textures, Anthony Dye and Austin Stemper guitar playing is thoroughly hook-oriented, combining to smooth out the anxious violence and slam of youth crew grooves, heightening their ebbs and polishing their flows until they resemble the cadence of a panting breath. This exuberance is matched by Andy Norton's vocals, which have an endearing atonal quality that allows him to shout his lungs out while remaining somewhat conversant, like he's a friend whose overly excited to share an experience with you and the rawness of his enthusiasm has caused him to lose the ability to properly modulate his voice. The entire project is kept on the straight and narrow through the guiding propulsion of Chris Bavaria's bass lines and Daniel Fang's steady but splashy, "slap you awake" kit work, which allows Praise to advance rutty punk anthems like the 360 slide of "Return to Life," the rejuvenating reconcile and rush of "Suddenly Human," and the bracing implore of "Keep Hanging On" with credible uplift, and a momentum that exalts the humble dignity of the lives and hard-won wisdom that prompted their writing in the first place. There is no reason to defer the pleasure of encountering the melodic goodness of All In A Dream for yourself. It might just be the thing you need to greet another day head-on.   

Appearing thanks to Revelation Records

Album Review: Chioke - Chioke

It's cool how rooted Philidelphia singer and songwriter Chioke's self-titled EP is. All too often, R'nB albums have a tendency to get swept up in their own emotions, forgetting to touch the ground beneath them. While it's impressive to witness the heights that some R'nB singers can reach, it can also give you a crick in your neck just trying to keep track of them. Sometimes it's better (for both my level of interest and posture) when a singer is honest and sees eye-to-eye with her audience and that's where Chioke excels. Her EP has a live kind of feel to hit, warm and impactful. Like she's performing in a loft converted into a gallery space; sunlight pouring in behind her as she swings her hips in time with the music flowing from a backing band of trusted associates. Chioke has a very physical presence in the mix on her EP and it gives these tracks so much body the air currents in the room seem to shift and swirl in interaction with her voice as if she had just walked through the room. The backing instrumentation is altogether inspired, featuring innovative takes on numerous timeless touchstones to anchor her performance. "Rushing In" has a four-on-the-floor retro '60s beat with lyrics that are haunted by regret. Turning the page to the following track, "Muse" has a dreamy, crowd-pleasing guitar line and generally feels like a bewitching take on the light funk of The Time. "Great Lake" exists in a space between '90s neo-soul, the sunbleached Cali funk of Knxwledge, and the soft whiplash of Supreme Beings of Leisure, while "Out on the Road" see Chioke's biting flow riding astride competing melodies of breezy synths and tormented guitar chords like a daredevil attempting to ride to motorcycles simultaneously while jumping a semi-trailer. Now that she's cultivated some sturdy roots, there is no telling the peaks she'll reach as she continues to nurture her talents and grow this project. 

Out on Core Valu.

Album Review: Amir Yaghmai - Go Bozo

I often find myself wondering, what is the point of an album? It's not as pessimistic of a question as it sounds. I obviously think albums are an important art form. But the fact that I believe they are important in no way lessons my curiosity about them. If anything, it makes them even more extraordinary. The best answer I can come up with as to why I think albums matter is that they allow a musician the space to explore many different sides of an idea, a sound, or a mood, all while enabling them to separate and organize their discrete and overlapping inquiries into manageable pieces as a cohesive statement. That's the best I can do. But even this explanation seems overly functional. The truest answer I have of what an album means as an art form is defined not by words, but by experience. You have to immerse yourself in it to know what it is and why it's worth appreciating. And I presume this is true for both the connoisseur (a name I would give to anyone who likes music) and the musician who makes what the listener enjoys. These thoughts are at the top of mind when I drop into Amir Yaghmai's debut album Go Bozo. It's not an album that he intended to make, but it is the album he ended up making regardless, and I find this lack of pretense intriguing and instructive. When the session guitarist and frequent Julian Casablancas collaborator was approached by Colorfield Records about making a record for them, he reportedly felt some need for pause. His career had been defined by taking direction from others and helping them achieve their artistic vision, but to make a record on his own was an anxious and intimidating proposition. He did it though. The record was made. Guided by intuition, Go Bozo is an uncommon variation and collision of '70s Continental disco, modern club beats, and progressive rock, whose boundaries are both clearly manifest and yet always on the verge of metamorphosis. Opener "Full Bozomode" exhibits a startling calm, like an electrical storm passing through a cloud nebular observed via telescope at a distance of millions of lightyears away. Not all of the tracks orbit a single, central groove, but when they do, like on "Bozo Beach," it can really drag you through some exotic places; like a Martian fashion runway encircled by an acidic bubble bath, a volleyball practice where the teams play with a wrecking ball in giant mecha suits over a net made of lazars, or the secret dojo of a cyborg partisan army training to engaging in hand-to-hand combat with interdimensional terrorists. The title track of Go Bozo has this woozy sort of sloshiness to it that handles like a homage to Ethiopian jazz that was decoded from scrambled and waterlogged VHS tapes, and the bemused and cluttered freak outing "Special Price for Geeks" melds what sounds like Spanish guitar playing with Grimes outtakes that have been remixed on one of those ancient modular synths that takes up an entire room. Go Bozo is highly imaginative and eclectic, but it is also somewhat naive. And that's one of its strengths. It doesn't have a clear destination. It was made with the understanding that the process is the goal, and the point of completion for the project is when all of its diverging tangents converge at a natural point of departure. In this instance, Go Bozo's centripetal climax is the final track, "Lamb & Tato" a resonating coda where we are exposed to Amir's unadorned and plaintive voice, reciting a lyrical poem in dialogue with a younger, more frantic conversant over a stark and submerged piano melody and a wash of careful violin interventions. It's personal and distant, funny and sober, and innocent in a tortured kind of way- you'd have to be a real bozo not to feel at least a little charmed and enlightened while listening to what Amir has to offer here.  

Available through Colorfield Record.

 

Metal Monday: Sweet Cobra, City & i.o, Dødskvad & Chainbreaker

Dipping back into the dungeon vaults for another Metal Monday tonight. As usual, these are some of the metal albums that I've been listening to lately and that I felt like I had something to say about. I'm starting off with two more progressive and experimental albums and rounding off with two mayhem-wielding records for those who prefer a more old-school style. Regardless of what you're into, I hope you find something you like here. 

Sweet Cobra - Threes (Pax Aeternum Digital)

Threes is not Sweet Cobra's third album. The Chicago band has been around for close to twenty years, and have kept a dependable release schedule over these many, many years. The most conclusive answer I can offer as to the record's name is that it's a reference to the stable trifecta that forms the group's line up; vocalist and bassist Timothy Remis, guitarist Robert Arthur Lanham Jr., and drummer Jason Gagovski. Birthed into the underground as a hardcore band in 2004, they've consistently been challenging their own habits and evolving their punk sensibilities ever since. While it appeared as if they had all but embraced a well-earned metal pedigree by the mid-'10s, they've once again sidestepped the shadow of their own legacy with Threes. The album has as its base, the sludgy post-hardcore of their 2015 album Earth, but tracts towards more eclectic territory with the supple psychedelic folk-grunge of "Least Worst," earnest and dust-laden confessions and covenants such as "Alive On Arrival" and dreamy, twisted noise-hymnals in the vein of "Fable." And while it may not be very metal, it is impressive to see Sweet Cobra try their hand at some Mid-Western garage thunder and power-pop when it comes to the live-wire hook-peel of "Escaped Goat." Luck may come in threes, but an album like this is one of a kind. 

City & i.o - Chaos is God Neighbour (Éditions Appærent)

I don't know that the primarily ambient and brutal electronica experiment City & i.o would consider themselves a metal project, but their music tends to fill a similar nitch for me in terms of what I look for in a metal album; intensity, transgression, and brazenly dark forays into the imagination. Also, their album Chaos is God Neighbour features blast beats and shrieking black metal vocals, so I would say that the facts are in favor of including them on this list. Chaos is God Neighbour was written in blitz during 2020, giving it a frenzied and claustrophobic feel, and accomplishes the task of taking the listener on a truly harrowing journey. As a bold move, they begin the album with the longest track (6 minutes 38 seconds) and proceed with tracks of ever-shortening length on through to the finale which clocks in at a trim minute thirty. You can think of it like climbing a mountain that has been inverted. The base is wider, the incline is gradual, and its features are more accommodating. But as you continue your downward ascent, the area you have to grasp becomes more narrow, the surfaces steep and treacherous, and its elements harsher and more unforgiving. As you progress, the mists and clouds around become a sheet of hail, and you are battered with increasing intensity until you reach the summit and find sanctuary. By the end, you feel like you've been through some kind of ritual. A purification of the darkest order which you may be the only living soul to have seen through to the end. 

Dødskvad - Kr​ø​nike II (Caligari Records)

Krønike II continues the Norwegian death metal band Dødskvad's exploration of their country's bloody and heathen past. A sequel to, what else, Krønike I, the album punctures the assumed procession of time, causing it to shrivel and recoil with filthy blood and glory grooves, slicing steely riffs, percussion that sounds like the footsteps of a battalion of lost souls, and phantasmal synth interventions that thicken the mix with an imposing sense of foreboding awe. The heavy atmosphere of the album makes it all the more dramatic when a solo cuts through the formidable aura, producing a supernatural hue and showering sparks, like a bolt of lightning striking a sword that had been plowed into the dirt to mark the grave of a fallen soldier. Kr​ø​nike II is a place where the skeletal hand of vanquished warriors still has a grip on the present, for the dead become restless and eager when Dødskvad takes up the reigns. 

Chainbreaker - Lethal Desire (Hells Headbangers)

Roadwarrior speed metal from the land of Razor and Slaughter. Chainbreaker formed in 2013 but didn't unleash their battle-hardened debut Lethal Desire until 2019. Why rush perfection? That's a rhetorical question. Because you can't! This very fast, very mean, and unapologetically virile heavy metal that was made to soundtrack the ransacking and raising to the ground of your hometown. Swift and precisely deadly, it continues the tradition of legendary Canadian speed without feeling derivative or out of touch. But, you know, with riffs this badass and chopper-grooves this fierce, I'd be afraid to imply anything else. The way these guys handle their instruments, it feels like any one of them could benchpress me one-handed. I mean, they'd have to be a bunch of sons of bitches to make an album like this! Lethal Desire is a rarefied masterwork of sheer power! 

Album Review: Careen - Careen Love Health

Bellingham's Careen makes small-batch indie rock, as both a matter style and bare quantity. Since their formation in 2017 they've released primarily EPs and demos with raw but coherent production and performances that resuscitate die-hard trends of '90s post-hardcore. Their latest, Careen Love Health is no different. It's loud when it's loud, and it's soft when it's soft, with lyrics that orientate towards oblique literary references and near prolix of prose that spill off the page with unruly enthusiasm. The slow trot, and waltz-out at the start and in the interim of tracks like "In the Light of" and "Longest Piss" have a lulling transitory quality to them, like they are phasing in and out of lucidity, making it all the more shocking when a looming overcast of flashing buzz-saw riffs and lambaste grooves a la Blind Idiot God overtake this field of dreams and wet your back with fury and tears. These Rodan vs Slint dialectics are really impressive and represent the central, mean, and little thumping organ that pumps oxygen to the rest of this low-key recluse. However, there is something to be said for the band when they separate and build on their strengths separately as well. Like when they ride out the gate on the back of a bitter "fuck you" riff that only builds in its cresting intensity on a song like on "Spit Choke," or when the group coasts at a simmer to a shirking moody gamble through a purport of unfocused alienation on "Unalloyed," Careen demonstrates that even when dissected and abstracted, their style proves persuasive. On the whole, Careen Love Health shows the band to be in an exemplary state of fitness, whether they are unleashing the full force of their angst like a howling lion, or quietly cultivating their thoughts in diffident, bookish contemplation. 

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Album Review: Arthur King - Changing Landscapes (Mina Las Pintadas)

Arthur King's Changing Landscapes was performed and recorded in a Chilean copper mine. I want to pause there because this fact was what drew me into the album. A mine is a unique setting for a creative project with a sonic potential that is worth exploring, but it goes deeper than that. He could have recorded many other places to get a deep, resonating sound, but he chose this location and it served a purpose. It left an undeniable psychographic imprint on the work. Mines are not natural places. They are human incursions into non-hospitable terrain- a kind of terraforming of the interior of the Earth. A process of injecting the wants and needs of our civilization as well as the instruments and architecture of modernity into ancient formations that pre-date humanity itself. They represent an infiltration of impossible space wherein humans set up residence in corridors of stone flesh- an expedition into the darker recesses of the imagination that is made possible by the expansion of our environment through excavation. They're places of both awe and disorientation, eerie and inspiring at the same time, and it is this synergy that Changing Landscapes embodies. Through spans of interlacing percussion, wondering navigational flutes and a clanging toil of suggestive atmospherics, Arthur King cultivates grooves that harmonize with the processes of geological time in a transcendent conversation with the chthonic anatomy upon which all else rests and from which we all ultimately rely on for subsistence. The frequent use of recursive murmuring percussion suggests the jostling and function of great pressure-forged, quarts organs while the whispering interludes consciously recall the phantasmal interiority of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, illuminating a spiritual component while proposing a living presence much older than any mortal interloper. Changing Landscapes is revealing in its structural ambitions, showing the life of a world below the procrustean layer we inhabit, while unlocking the penetrating nature of our perception and uncovering an abiding potential to find harmony in the hidden place of the cosmic body we call home. 

From AKP Recordings

Album Review: Isabella Lovestory - Amor Hardcore

I think part of the appeal of reggaeton is that it's difficult to over-intellectualize. It has a malleable framework, which makes it compatible with a lot of different styles, but these mashups and amalgamations seem to be primarily led by sonic and aesthetic conciliations rather than philosophical principles. Punk can be that way too. There are definitely interesting ways of approaching and thinking about playing punk rock, but if you forget to get the "feel" right, you haven't made much worth anyone's time. It's this kind of step first and figure out where you're going later approach that compels a lot of exciting art to be made and which I think finds a particularly fascinating forum on Isabella Lovestory's Amor Hardcore. The fashion-conscious, international pop star integrates an array of opposites, from shoegaze to reggaeton, from cross-continental hip hop to murky industrial punk, colliding and submerging them into an outsized outpour of gestural euphoria. Even as she clips and sterilizes, molds and melds together stark and pliant, aching and balmy antipodes, she never loses a sense of where all these disparate influences and cracked details intrinsically fit together. It's both arresting and accommodating- like she's smashed a bunch of vases and then recombined their shards into a ceramic status of a dragon that you can still hold a bouquet for you. That's the trick of Amor Hardcore- there is no trick. It is what it is in its unity of surface-level distinctions, and this surface-level presentation is more informative than an ancillary understanding that you place in its orbit. Just like love, Amor Hardcore reveals itself only in your acceptance of it at face value. 

Album Review: Alexia Avina - A Little Older & Crush

I came across singer and songwriter Alexia Avina's discography recently and it captured me in a manner that I didn't expect. There is an intricateness to her approach to pop music that seems almost unreal. As in, how can something so carefully composed, also be so unassuming? It presents as if its gracefully pleated and waving folds were shaped by sheer accident without human intervention. Equivalent to a pearl in a crinkly clamshell that has washed ashore or a patch of bark that resembles a human face. A design without a designer. An unadulterated natural emergence. This ethereal tendency in her music has become more pronounced with time, reaching both its pinnacle, and possibly its disillusionment this year. While Alexia released her most petal-soft album early in 2022, she also demonstrated her favor for a flower's thorns with her most recent EP. The latter development is an intriguing rerouting of her project's course and one that might signal a new overall approach to her work. We won't know for sure until she releases another album, but I think it's worth unpacking the differences in her output this year all the same. So I'm going to compare her 2022 LP A Little Older with the Crush EP to get a better sense of where they diverge. 

 

As you should anticipate from my description above, A Little Older is the maturation point of the ephemeral quality of Alexia's heretofore aesthetic. The album is centered on the interplay of her guitar playing and her voice, which is a typical configuration as far as these things go, only Alexia's voice is not just in the fore but in the background and suffused within the margin of these tracks as well. Her voice IS these tracks in a lot of ways- filling in the gaps with its widening sweep, interweaving with sparse percussion and her own redolent guitar playing like the wind catching blades of tall grass as it dashes across a prairie. It's like an untainted font of oxygen. You can't always feel it, but you also can't deny that it is there and swirling around you. It's interesting that many of these songs were apparently written as far back as 2018 and therefore may share some DNA with her debut Betting on an Island- a delicate guitar pop album in its own right, but one which is both more crowded and provincial than its present descendant. Looking back, the exceptional tenderness of A Little Older feels like the fulfillment of the promise of this earlier release. 

Crush is of a different genus than its predecessor. Alexia's playing style and vocal performance are still recognizable, but they have been altered, becoming more direct and authoritative- the precision of her playing and the ambiance of her vocals both conscripted into playing more declarative roles. Less suggestive, more incisive; listening to Crush in reflection on the balnace of her past work, the impression builds that she had previously been in the process of weaving a cacoon for herself- from which she has now emerged, not as a butterfly, but something just as beautiful. So beautiful in fact, that you might not notice the stinger tucked between her variegated folds. I feel like when moving from acoustic guitar to synths, and in adopting a more cold and determined aesthetic overall, she has introduced a detectable measure of non-toxic venom into the elegant unveiling of her sound. A chiding, shrewdness that peers out from the darling facade like eyeholes cut into an embellished portrait of an oil painting. It is this forthright consciousness and observable canniness on Crush that serve as another layer of depth to her presentation and style and which strike out from the prettiness of these songs most noticeably. Crush feels like a literal sea change in this regard- as if it is no longer the ocean that carries the boat, but the boat that suspends itself on the ocean. It will be interesting to see if she remains in this channel, or what other fathoms she dives to on future releases. 

Find it on Lost Map Records