Interview: Tommy Kessler

Image by Katlyn Sansone Wentzel

Had the pleasure of speaking with man about town, Tommy Kessler for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series this week. Tommy is one of those guys who has an effortless ability to realize the vision and intention for his work and he's amassed an impressive catalog after moving from St. Louis to Chicago as a result. We mostly talked about his solo work, particularly his double EP Mortal Love, but also got into the history of his solo work and the comp of local artists that he assembled and produced to benefit local, community non-profit Brave Space Alliance. It was a fun conversation and I'm fairly happy with the production job on the final cut too. You can listen on CHIRP's site here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Tommy Kessler Interview

Listen to Mortal Love here: 

Check out the Wiener Tape Comp here: 

Album Review: Aquakultre - Don't Trip

Don't Trip was supposed to be a five-song EP. It still has a kind of humbleness to it. The kind that you might expect from a smaller, transitional release, but it's not modest in scope. The humility and conscious humanity of the album flows from the recognition that it stands atop the mantel of many courageous and talented souls and traditions, all of whom Lance Sampson (as Aquakultre) pays due respect to over the course of the album. From the classic house dwelling R'nB of opener "I Can Wait," to the g-funk bust and scratch of "I'm For Real," the smooth neo-soul hip-swing of "It's All Good," and the Southern seasoned shimmy of "Africvillean Funk," there are histories here that are not just acknowledged through sound and practice, but recognized and reproduced in a continuance of their essential creeds. Mostly joyful, sometimes painful, the album presents each track as another opportunity to give thanks to forebearers as one looks toward the future. Don't Trip is not just a celebration of music and musicians, although it is that as well, but a chance to honor those from whom one draws strength, and vice versa, in a fabric of interwoven relations. The album was conceived during the lockdown while Lance was beginning a then-new relationship with his current partner. The remnants of these origins can be found in songs about long, conversant lunches (literally, the aqua-disco dive "Lunch") and earnest exchanges of reassurances and promises (represented by the sincere sway of "Don't Trip," whose grooves dip like they are bending to catch during a fall). However, the project inevitably expanded as the world began to reopen into a cross-continental collaboration with friends from around the globe (there are around 20(!) guest spots on Don't Trip), one that recognizes the need for kinship where ever one finds themselves, especially when that place is under threat of disappearing. Bringing it back home to Lance's native Canada, the slinky jam "Africvillean Funk," pays tribute to Africville in Bedford Basin, Halifax, Nova Scotia, an underserved and rapidly evaporating, predominately black community, that is envisioned as defiant and unified in the face of a tidal surge of money, neglect, and racism that are aligned against them. Don't Trip, in all its modesty and enthralling levity, devotion and mirth, manages not to be too small an endeavor that it can be simply stumbled past and overlooked, not too large and ambitious a work that it overshadows the subjects of its homage, and ultimately, just the right size to find a place in any heart that has an opening for good tunes, better vibes, and a rejuvenated sense of place and community. 

Find this release and others from Forward Music Group.

Album Review: California Cousins - Secret Footage

What's a better surprise than a "new" California Cousins LP? A fresh 10-speed bike for your birthday? A crisp $100 bill from a relative on your highschool graduation? California Cousins's LP Secret Footage has at least one advantage over either of these- longevity! It's been at least six months since the album dropped (released June 7, 2022), but it's still certifiably fresh! Recall how long it took for that new bike to wind up in the undercarriage of your Dad's car because you negligently left it in the driveway the night before, or how many Monster Energy drink runs to 7-11 it took to deplete that hundo to pocket change, and you'll see what I mean. Unlike these other, lamer, less dependable, more easily destroyed gifts, you can enjoy Secret Footage for as long as it's hosted on California Cousin's Bandcamp page (provided you purchased it [and honestly, only so long as their catalog isn't bought out by an investment firm, who pulls their records as leverage in rate negotiations with another streaming platform... so about a decade]). Until that fateful day, though, you will be able to jam along to and shout along with the gallantly progressive grooves and personal prose that tumble out of the ragged, loud-quite-loud bluffs of the unorthodoxly cut "Patterns" and the amped-up, scaling flight of "Already Peaked," which along with it's poppy-accents, has the structure of a frantic rope-climb where you become more tangled in its slack the higher and faster you ascend. As is California Cousin's preference, many of the tracks of Secret Footage feel like delightfully magnetic pop-punk songs that have been cut up and rearranged by someone who is more familiar with multi-part saga structure of post-hardcore- but with more sparkle-dork fan service (in a good way!). "Sleep City" has a drunken quality to its trembling groove patterns that makes it feel like the song is struggling to stay on its feet while the forward stumble of the vocal hook eggs it onward, "The Fire" playfully tilts between tindery chord combustions and blustering grooves that fan the flames of its final exhaustion, and "Tinnitus" feels like it's trying to referee a boxing match where the combatants lob waves of '90s-inspired indie rock distortion at each other instead of punches. It's one of those albums that you want to share as soon as you hear it due to its unique take on familiar sounds and the enthusiasm that the bands has for their own material- it's a gift that keeps on giving in a cycle and repetition of gratitude and gratification. You might even say, that Secret Footage is as reel as it gets. 

Keep it steady with Acrobate Unstable.

Album Review: Joan Torres's All Is Fused - Embrace Form

It's good to be yourself. Whoever that happens to be, it's worth taking stock of and appreciating the simple pleasure of being that person as a pivot point of perspective. That's my takeaway from the latest album Embrace Form, from San Francisco ensemble All Fused Up led by Joan Torre. The jazz group doesn't have a set playing style for the album. Embarking instead on a fusion approach of sorts, they cycle through varients and inspired motifs cribbed from familiar styles, but not in a way that is directly attributable to any singular tradition or source. Their sound percolates at both a distance and at the threshold of the senses. It emerges in much the same way that your experience of taking in the ambiance of a crowded restaurant or a cafe might- swashes of recognizable patterns (familiar choruses drifting down from the speakers overhead, the clinking of glasses, the rattle of silverware, bits and ends of conversation) catching your ear and announcing their presence in a moment before slipping back behind a curtain of anonymity the next. It's an environment of sensation that is easy to regard as both free-floating and grounding; particular and ubiquitous. Like an impressionist painting of a farmhand cutting wheat- the wind tousles the tall grain of the landscape at a distance, while the foreground stands inert, but when your focus shifts, the field becomes still, and it is the farmhand who is dancing to the music of the wind- a wholly integrated universe that is none-the-less defined by its separation of details. There is no center to Embrace Form, as it is all motion and trading embassies. It is not a technical album, but it still manages to be a demonstration of skill, drawing its potency from connection over complexity. A triumph of the momentum of the ordinary state of things in all its irreducible diversities. In this radical acceptance of the world, you will find yourself in the reflection of others, in the fog of relations and the light of recognition, in a total Embrace (of) Form. 

Album Review: Mamalarky - Pocket Fantasy

Pocket Fantasy could be either a dream come true or the worst nightmare for someone with synesthesia. Dream because it is an uncanny but simple parade of delights. A nightmare due to the relentless motion of its sunny apprehensions. The album is restful in its mooring at the center of these pivoting symptoms of emotion, time, harmony and humanity. For those who are especially sensitive to its messy, permanently inchoate structures, it must be like drowning in their favorite flavor of ice cream. For the rest of us, it might be as close as we come to understanding the subjective shades through which those lucky few experience sound. Listening to the traveling, wonder-band Mamalarky's second LP is like observing an expressionistic painting rendered in mid-air. Melodies twirl and splatter in flight, colliding and blending, exchanging pigments in passing, before slushing onto the canvas of your ears in interpretive swashs and globs. A rorschach of honey and hue that displaces the border between the real and the imaginary with a rainbow bridge to a boundless psychic festival that unfurls outward like a fast-blossoming orchid. "Mythical Bonds" explodes in ripples of manifold, LED-like patterns that tug you forward, as if by a spell, into the wrapped embrace of the one who you dare to dream might willingly receive the warmth of your heart. "You Know I Know" contains a crushed, yellow and gold palette that fragrantly smears itself on your face and clothes as you pass through it as if it were depositing evidence of a headlong charge through a field of tall flowers. "Building Castles" is cut through with piercing beams of purple and white rays, like city lights bouncing back from the camouflaged hull of a spaceship that hovers high above the skyline- a giant hidden disco ball of extraterrestrial origins. As a track with one of the more muscular grooves, "Shining Armor" repels with its chrome-blue coating any wary impore against its advancing acceleration, rotating with an absolute absence of resistance until it is virtually levitating in the throes of its own defiance. Turely a wondrous find, Pocket Fantasy joyously stains all that it touches. 

More cool stuff from Fire Talk. 

Interview: Walker

Photo by James Werner

I continue to meet some very cool people doing this podcast for CHIRP Radio. Case in point, local singer/songwriter/music teacher Walker. He's a very chill human with a great approach to music. If I were the age to be taking music lessons, I'd be honored to have him as my coach/instructor. In this interview, we talk about his methods, his journey to Chicago, his latest album Phew, and the role joy plays in his music. You can check out the whole conversation here, or below: 

Listen to his album Phew below: 

Album Review: Stay Inside - Blight

I can't tell you where Stay Inside is headed, but I can tell you where they're at. The Brooklyn band released their debut LP Viewing in 2020 on No Sleep and it made a worthy impression on me. It showed that the band could write some memorable melodies, but it underserved the thematic punch that they seemed to be striving for throughout. A sense of cohesive emotional reality and urgency, the expression of which bands like mewithoutyou and Cursive have seized as their raison d'être. Their 2022 EP Blight, despite its name, feels more alive in contrast. Addressing some of the too-shy-softness of its predecessor, Stay Inside have sharpened the edge of their guitar work to enhance the dynamics of their performances with a heightened sense of atmosphere and piercing earnestness. These improvements are further accompanied by a willingness not just to pour out their lovelorn and vintage sentiments, but to crack the bottle open and drink from the shard of its neck, reingesting and further refining their catharsis at its point of escape. It's a process that sees them fearless in the face of their shadow selves, willing to reach into the void of their own recesses and expose the squirming arches that help them maintain their essential form in spite of themselves. Blight is an easy listen as well. Its overall smoothness and roomy interiority is reminiscent of the memorializing, interior conferencing and detailed external texturing of Pianos Become the Teeth, but its frequently encountered relief spaces and quietude do nothing to diminish the flush and immediate forcefulness that Stay Inside prevail in throwing themselves into. In doing so, they exhibit a prying kind of interventionism that could hardly be more exacting if it drove to rip and poke at your ribs like one of Birds in Row's barbered murmurations. Blight sees Stay Inside at their most healthful, vibrant, and fearless. Hopefully, it is the first yield of many boon years to come. 

Stay up late with more records from No Sleep. 

Album Review: The Trend - Sgt. Pepper II

The Trend live in an at-capacity theater in my head. I've been watching grainy videos of rock stars from the early '80s all evening because of them; absorbing reel after reel of fecund gyrations in tight, acid-wash jeans, accompanied by the posses of impossibly confident dudes mugging for screaming crowds under blazing stage lights that rain through their curly locks like the blessings of angels; illuminations refracting and flowering around their heads in a halo of perspiration and sexual electricity. The Trend isn't Enuff Z'Nuff, but they're chasing a similar muse, grasping at her golden tassels as she sparrow-dives down the slants of Mount Helikon. As I said, the band is inhabiting a specific space in my mind at the moment. A space that needs occupying- a niche that the overwhelming air displacement generated by their guitars is more than capable of satisfactorily filling- but not by volume alone do they accomplish this feat- they've character to spare as well. Sgt. Pepper II is The Trend's debut and a cheeky tip of the hat that reveals their down-range target. Their music is packed to bursting with the unapologetic ambition to enter the canon of American roots rock. They're sloshed on the swagger of the Guess Who and now have the strong-arming strength of a Billy Squier-sized guitar section and could arm-wrestle a guerilla if they felt inclined, but instead, they're chopping hooks to order, all of them worthy of comparison with prime slices dished up by the Candy Butchers. The world at present seems fairly resistant to this style of rock, and the only successful living example of a group in this lane that someone under 40 might recognize is Weezer (a band that The Trend, certainly resembles at times). But if any catalog of songs is primed to push through the inertia and indifference of the wider American public to the bounty of its own rock 'n roll heritage, it's Sgt. Pepper II. The superfluously titled album is the conduit for such essential tracks as the crooner-cribbing, heart-thumping whirl and tear-jerking centripetal haul of "Dancing Shoes," the passionate prickle of "Coming Home" whose heart-break fueled choruses seeth like a blast furnace, the anguished pursing gait and mod-maudlin ramble of "I Don't Know Why," and last but not least, the beachy, sand-peeling cruise and salt-saturated snap of "Tell That Girl." The Trend are making faded fads feel full and flush again, polishing off decades of dust so that rock's heart of gold can shine with the brilliance of a beacon on a distant shore, guiding the hearty and the faithful back home. 

 Grown with the help of Good Soil Records and Yellow K. 

Album Review: Will Sessions - Electromagnetic Reality

Detriot instrumentalist and instigators Will Sessions have proven their skill and tenacity over the past decade after debuting as the backing band for an Elzhi-fronted rendition of Illmatic. Something which they rewired to sound like the old record that inspired the original. Their latest release, Electromagnetic Reality, is calibrated to vibrate at a different frequency though. The album doesn't preoccupy itself with new wardrobes to dress up old moves, instead sees the band going through a transmogrification of enlightened, retro-curious futurism. Drifting through the fibers of a shag rug nailed tight over a decommissioned dance hall floor- the band drop, splash, and drizzle their way through a desalination process that filters out all the baggage of the last 50 years of funk, allowing their sound to condense into something separate and timeless. Part of the freshness of the ensemble's approach this time around is their crocheting together of like threads in a way that feels unselfconscious of any precedence or potential resistance- klieg light bathed soul instrumentals swirl under the clap of stormy jazz formations churned by whisking currents of perfumed and funky slipstreams. The chop of its soothing tides seems to anticipate hip-hop's cut-and-scratch approach to production but without having to rely on the listener's familiarity with such techniques to make sense of its circadian clip. The result is robust and strappingly rugged without yielding the ingrained intimacy of its tender intentions. Through its candid alliance of form and steady voltage, Electromagnetic Reality snatches the blinding heat of stage lights from the air and permits them to dance on its fingertips without singeing its nails and skin, a ballet of brilliant, commanding motion comfortably cooled and iced by a haze of aerosolized, coca-cola-sweet grooves and star-nebula resonating synths that ensnare and encircle the aloof allure of the distant cosmos, shrinking it down to the inviting dimensions of a wading pool sized champagne chiller. Pop the cork and let that electric gold flow! 

Stay heavy with Fat Beats Distro.

Album Review: Maylee Todd - Maloo

There is a line from an animated anthology of Matrix tie-ins (The Animatrix, © Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (2003)) that's been hard-coded into my brain: "To a machine, all reality is virtual." I always took this to mean that when a being is running entirely according to a program, its existence is defined by probabilities rather than choices, and it can't have a personal stake in any outcome. This might be fine for browser plug-ins, electric sheep, and sentinel drones, but not for creatures of a makeup and constitution like our own. As humans, we are bound by consequences and the definition that our actions deliver on to us. Depending on how you look at it, this can be the utmost meaning of freedom or the domain of total tyranny. I think the ease of navigating the internet and the degree of anonymity it can afford allows an escape from this dichotomy to a degree. Our adventures spelunking through the wake pool of the web have the potential to trap us in nihilistic feedback loops and dissociative disorders, but just as likely, these excursions can lend us the opportunity to examine ourselves from an appropriate and critical distance, or even grant us the space to try on new roles with a great degree of flexibility and on a graduated learning curve. Maloo is just such a vehicle for Canadian singer and producer Maylee Todd. She is the title character of Maylee's latest album, as well as a real avatar that the artist designed for a virtual experience that aims to help people develop better approaches to their mental health. Despite the open possibilities of the world wide web in which its titular character inhabits, Maloo is actually one of the more constrained albums of Maylee's discography. It is very "internety" in that it can appear on the surface to be born out of one of the untamed new agey segments of a Fire-Toolz album, but the wild variance of jazz and folk styles that you might expect from Maylee's work are here mostly funneled into subdued echos of rinsey synth stirs and R'nB with the textural form of a ripple in a reflective pool that had just caught a plummeting bead, shook free from a floating crystal chandelier. This is not to the album's detriment as Maylee's consistency of approach on this release is characterized by a persistent and assured engagement with a limited tool kit which has the effect of unlocking the full magnetic potential of her elective gadgetry. In other words, she does a lot with a little, and proves that a little can go a long way. The economical dreamscape she has seeded and cultivated is captivatingly unreal and liberatingly weightless without severing its umbilical relations to the realm of incarnate humanity in all its triumph, fear, folly, and fealty. The digital dimension is a plane of bright, even blinding shadows. It can help illuminate the world you inhabit, but it can never fully displace it or supersede the life that you have been given to explore it with.  

Another salvo from Stones Throw. 

Interview: Footballhead

Image courtesy of the artist.

Talked with an up-and-coming rock star for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series this week. Ryan Nolen is Footballhead, a one-man band writing and recording some of the most impeccably grand and immediate rock music I've heard in a minute. His Kitchen Fly EP dropped last year and he's already working on a follow-up LP which I'm sure will make just as big (or bigger!) of a splash. If this wasn't all cool enough, he also already lined up opening slots with the likes of Dazy and even put my own knowledge and taste of '90s cartoons to shame during our conversation. This last one really blew me away (I watched a ton of cartoons as a kid/young adult/full-ass adult). You can check out our convo on CHIRP's site here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Footballhead Interview

Listen to the Kitchen Fly EP here: 

Album Review: Ichiko Aoba - Windswept Adan

I appreciate the logic of a thematic album set on an island having an expansive and spacious sound. Windswept Adan, the seventh album by Japan's Ichiko Aoba doesn't concern itself with the limits of geography or boundaries defined by the roil and temper of the ocean. Instead, Ichiko creates reservoirs that flow inward, soaking in the influence of her surroundings, creating a passage into the vast tidepool of the imaginary. In this manner, she manifests within the scope of the project an ever-growing sense of outward spiritual awareness- like a thundercloud swelling with accumulated rain, or a tree that has been growing on a hill for a thousand years- every strain of its evident advance makes way for a more complex and potent affinity between life and the conditions on which it depends. Ichiko was respected as a solo guitar player and singer prior to this release, but her efforts in collaboration with producer Taro Umebayashi have cultivated an abidingly lush and narrative form of chamber pop on Windswept Adan, one that presents a hushed momentum in awe of the triumph of time and the cycles that define it. It speaks, in deliberate, quiet dialog with unseen, edifyingly persuasive forces. Its voice is indistinguishable from the softest breeze, but its power will retrieve what is lost from this world as the sea laid claimed to Thonis many millennia ago.

Available from Ba Da Bing.

Interview: Daydream Plus

Photo by Payson Power

Daydream Plus is one of those projects that strikes you as emblematic of a certain style and ethos, but the more you dig into it, the more confounding it becomes. I initially checked out their Clues Recalled from Memory EP because I was looking for something chill to have on in the background while I read. It did the job, but something was darting out at me and biting around the periphery of my enjoyment. I eventually concluded that it must be the guitar solos. They feel both rangy and concise, occupying a perplexing antagonism between a wavy, pacifying melodicism and a gripping symptom of trouble. As a point of emphasis, these striking guitar lines are a legible method of decoding the album on the whole. That is, they represent the transformation of extravagant post-hardcore chords disciplined through a process of self-limiting refinement until they invert and resurface as a kind of flowy surf rock and ebullient, reedy funk. The project is, without a doubt, A divergent path for two of the dudes who help to bring the eldritch wail of the space-rock and death metal monstrosity Tomb Mold to life. Annnnnd there is your big reveal. Daydream Plus is Payson Power and Max Klebanoff of Tomb Mold, and together they play a cool and transportive style of AOR, that, as previously alluded, has more than a handful of prickly little tricks up its sleeve. I got in touch with Payson to find out what makes this project its odd and calming motion and you can read his responses below. As you'll see, he's put a lot of thought into how to construct these songs. As a bonus, when you are done listening to Clues Recalled from Memory, you'll find that there are plenty of other easy listening suggestions packed into this interview. I may need to reach out to Payson to make a playlist to illustrate some of what he's talking about in this article. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the interview in its original form! 

Interview was conducted via email on January 12, 2023. It has been lightly edited. All spellings are correct as far as Canadians are concerned. 

Who are your biggest guitar influences, and how do you see them manifest through the music of Daydream Plus?
There are so many, but really I'm drawn to lead guitar parts that manage to be both catchy and technical. Legendary players like George Benson, Pat Metheny, and Toshiki Kadomatsu come to mind. It is easy to get caught up in the neverending quest for speed, and we get distracted from playing something simple to the absolute best of our ability... hearing the most accomplished guitarists carry a song with just a few notes and perfectly executed technique can be the most inspiring thing. Of course, I love the shred contingent as well, especially the maniacal breed of play ultra-fast with a clean tone. Musicians like Plini and Owane excel at this. I like to stay in the low gain zone with Daydream Plus, the clarity is really important to the overall sound and vibe. Writing and practicing with a clean tone has been something I've only been doing for a few years, but it's made a world of difference in my playing. Two other big inspirations for me are Mario and Erick from Chon, those dudes have all the chops in the world, plus the most interesting harmonies that take their songs to a whole new level. I've been inspired to pepper my own melody lines with the occasional harmony and I love how animated it sounds. For now, it's just short, controlled bursts, but maybe next time I'll draw out some longer harmonies and map out that dimension with a bit more fervor. When it comes to rhythm guitar, I like to keep it simple. I *attempt* to emulate the pinpoint accuracy and jazzy chords of AOR, while also reimagining the microcosm of Midwestern emo as if it originated from a coastal setting as opposed to a graveyard of landlocked parking lots and street lights.

How did you first encounter "city pop"?
Through YouTube. I heard a vinyl rip of the album Love Trip by Takako Mamiya and was struck by how the album felt like its own little world. Strangely, moments of that record reminded me of one of my favourite songs, the theme tune for WKRP In Cincinnati by Steve Carlisle. Something about the key changes, like letting out a sigh alone on a bench in a parkette. Both pack a similar nostalgia-laden haymaker that I can't quite place. After that I heard Tatsuro Yamashita and since then have proceeded to find great music in that style on a regular basis.

Who are your favorite artists in the "city pop" stratum?
My favourite is probably Anri, I love her catalogue of wistful and melancholy lyrics imprinted on the most opaque pop arrangements. Timely is one of my favourite albums. Tatsuro Yamashita's blindingly sunny production is its own kind of sorcery to me. For You and Ride On Time are easy answers for top tier city pop, but I cannot deny them. Just listen to the song Sparkle and you will feel it. Casiopea I love for their creativity and their ability to write whirlwind pop songs that highlight all the instruments in a way that any musician can soak in and appreciate.

Would you care to weigh in on whether "city pop" is a proper term for this style of music? As I understand, in Japan they think of this stuff as just pop music. What makes the term "city pop" applicable, or not?
I personally am not over the moon about the term. Lots of the most popular city pop doesn't even sound like the metropolitan hustle and bustle that you'd expect from the name. The classification is so vague as well, with the defining characteristics being that it is easy listening and from Japan. Those are some broad strokes! "Yacht rock" I feel even more disdainful towards, so I guess it could be worse. I think AOR is a better way to describe both aforementioned genres, if you must. Ultimately, people just love to put things in boxes. Genre tags are often just as detrimental as they are useful. Terms like shoegaze and slowcore are other examples, they're so limited by a specific set of characteristics. It's hard not to feel stifled when saddled with one of these descriptors. On the other hand, when you say "city pop" people know what you mean, so it works. It's mostly retroactive too, which makes it a little more charming. So yeah, mixed feelings!

The more modern, technical guitar parts you're pulling in from post-hardcore sound very natural in the overall mix. Was it difficult to integrate these parts with your other "poppier" influences on this record? What did you need to remain conscious of to get the vibe right?
Thanks! I am glad it sounds that way. I wrote those parts with the help of a looper pedal playing my chord progression repeatedly. Once I had a skeleton of a lead guitar part I would just start whittling it down and reshaping it, over and over, until I am convinced I can't improve on it any further. Often the finished product had basically nothing in common with the first-pass skeleton melody. The lead also makes me go back and reevaluate how the chords are played rhythmically, and that's the step where I blend the two parts into something really cohesive. I wanted the leads to sound very natural and never jarring. To achieve the intended vibe I tried to think of the guitar lead as a vocal melody; that's what prevented me from going overboard with unnecessary bursts of notes. Ultimately, the combo of poppy jazz chords and softly angular leads worked better than I had hoped, I was stoked when everything clicked.

A comment on your Bandcamp page references Toe. Is this a fair comparison in your mind? Does this style of post-hardcore and indie rock do anything to contextualize your sound? I can see it from a "math-rock" angle, but the comparisons seem to stop there for me.
I can't say I hear a ton of Toe in our music, but I'm certainly not upset by the comparison. I think Max's drumming has a lot to do with that. Toe are an incredible band, and if our songs give anyone the same feeling that is fantastic. I wouldn't say that post-hardcore has a ton to do with our sound, although the genre has been very inspiring for my entire life as a musician. The difference here is letting the poppier elements steer the ship, and aiming for a more typical song structure. I often default to my teenage self and play something angular or atonal and then start working on removing the "stressful" elements. The songs are allowed to feel a little melancholy or tense, as long as I can pack them in bubble wrap when they're done. This is where the AOR influence swoops in. I'm trying to capture a mood while still writing songs that sound like me. I can't speak for Max when it comes to writing drum parts, but it's safe to say he pulls inspiration from everything he listens to, and he is all over the map when it comes to influences.


What are your thoughts on the manufactured nature of much of AOR and most definitely "city pop," as in its often music that is attempting to respond to, or directly reflects, life in a high-tech, industrial society? Do you have any thoughts on this?
I don't necessarily think it's trying to reflect that type of life so much as it is trying to provide an escape, especially to people in the throes of extreme work culture. Fantasizing about living in the impossibly beautiful album art of Hiroshi Nagai and Eizin Suzuki is the next best thing to taking a vacation. It's hard to beat the feeling of getting swept up in a record like Hot Is Cool by Horii Katsumi Project and letting it take you out to sea with impeccable grooves as your life preserver. Or if you're in the mood for life in the fast lane you can put on After 5 Clash by Toshiki Kadomatsu and picture yourself hitting the clubs every night in search of the love of your life amid the most compressed guitar tone you've ever heard. Or listening to Minute By Minute by the Doobie Brothers and all of a sudden you're driving down the highway towards the sprawl of LA in a Cadillac towards a sun that never sets, pining over an old flame who still has your MXR Phase 90. Should you call them? Maybe. It's not exactly an expensive pedal, but still. I think you're onto something with the music as a response to life in the accelerated world, but for me the music runs the gamut of every day emotion and there is an antidote for every degree of longing.

A lot of people in metal and hardcore seem to be finding their way into AOR. And it's not just older (30+) either. Why do you think people who seek out aggressive music, also seek out mellower stuff like what you're playing?
That's a good question. I know what you're referring to for sure, a lot of classic (and some not-so-classic) AOR seems to be having a resurgence. Maybe it's nostalgia for a different era that's only getting further and further away. Everything old is new again, and we miss the world we never got to visit. Maybe it's more simple than that and it's just jarring since AOR has been labeled "uncool" for so long. Overall I would just say it's about balance though.

What do your bandmates in Tomb Mold think of the project?
Well, Max has been down since day one! Whenever I imagine a drum part, he ends up playing something way better. We have a decade of playing together in bands, so it's a perfect fit. Derrick is a fan as he loves anything with this many guitar solos. I enjoy the fact that all of us have our other projects (Derrick with Dream Unending and Max with Death Kneel) that are completely different from Tomb Mold, and I know those guys do too. I think our involvement in other types of music has helped us to try different things, and we use our collective experience to build something interesting and powerful in the swirling death metal whirlpool. (I asked my dawgs to help me answer this one, I am paraphrasing them both).

Is Daydream Plus a live band? If so, what venues could you see yourselves playing at in Ontario?
I'd love to, and I'm confident we will! The songs were written in a way that a four person band could play them live with basically zero compromises on the studio versions. We'll wait a bit before we introduce an auxiliary percussionist and make it needlessly complicated. As far as venues, I'm down to play pretty much anywhere. I'd honestly like to play a house show, it's been a minute.

Are there more Daydream Plus tunes in the works?
Yes, the next release is almost fully written. I still need to write the bass parts, which is not my strong suit. I love the challenge though.

Anything else you'd like to add?
Just a thank you to anyone who has supported the band in any way. I wanted to shout out John Slaby for painting the cover, and Matthew Tomasi for being patient with me doing a million takes of everything. That's it! I really enjoyed answering these questions, thank you for having me!

Album Review: Thanks for Coming - You Haven't Missed Much

Thanks for Coming's first LP with Danger Collective is steadfastly and deceptively modest as a direct corollary of its delicate nature. These mostly DIY recordings were selectively fished from singer-songwriter Rachel Brown's cascade of Bandcamp releases (numbering 79 in all!). The collection is dubbed You Haven't Missed Much, a bemusing title as it contains songs from the artist's formative high school salad days while tracing their trajectory through the threshold of a collegiate training in film. It is also ostensibly meant to be an introduction to Rachel's oeuvre for a fresh crop of ears after joining their current label. One impression that the title makes is that there isn't much to be gleaned from the artist's past catalog and that it might be rightly overlooked. But I don't agree. I don't think that's quite the case. I'm not a Thanks for Coming scholar by any means, but any assemblage of work that contains both the oscillating and winking shot of starlight that is the synth-derived ode "Belief in a World of Doubt," and the kitten-whisker soft cuff and dashingly befuddled declaration of teenage admiration that is "Yr Kind of Cool," is worth every second of time invested in it. Opener "Stephen Hawking's Goldfish Analogy" is a more recent single, originally released with a disposable plastic bag on its cover, a fitting splash of iconography for a wavy scrabble of submerged and pebbly progressions anchored in the vantage point that all things fade, except the things you wish wouldn't. The uncluttered instrumentation of many of these songs leaves a respectable sphere of motion within which Rachel's unguarded and sleepy vocal presence can rove and stretch itself into nervous combinations of light pageantry. "My Name" has the elastic rustle and pull of a Tegan and Sara penned projection of longing, while "U R Not Sick, Yr Electric" is a rawly recorded confession that places a gauging stressor on the melody of each line causing them to bunch up at the tail like Rachel was smearing a ball of clay with their thumb, or rather like Mal Blum squeezing the juice out of a moldy peach pressed between their chin and breastbone, ringing free a chunky drizzle of emotions in a messy but cathartic act of applied pressure. I can feel Rachel reaching through the bars of these songs in a generous extension of their warmth and humanity, but I'm afraid to take their hand less the added strain of bones and flesh gripping such a gift should cause the perfect tension that suspends it to shatter. Still, it is an affront to the spirit to deny such an offer. To experience their gesture returned to them is likely their intent and why they feel compelled to extend themselves in the form of songs in the first place. Their gratitude is presaged- it's in their name. They've already lauded your presence, the least you can do is relax and enjoy all they have to offer.  

Striking out from Danger Collective Records.

Metal Monday: Belushi Speed Ball, Foot, Limousine Beach & Mortal Relic

For the first Metal Monday of 2023 we're keeping it on the lighter side. Metal can be a dark and depressing place, with themes of depravity, mayhem and wanton bloodshed filling its tomes... and we haven't even touched on the anti-social stuff yet! So instead of finding the evilest, meanest-sounding bands I could, I'm offering you a short list of artists who have a sense of humor and humility. More than that, these bands are fun (imho)! This is the fun metal list. Welcome to 2023! The fun year! 

Belushi Speed Ball - What, Us Worry (SonaBlast! Records)

I had heard rumors of Louisville's Belushi Speed Ball and their misdeeds and misadventures for many a year. It's honestly kind of shameful that I didn't take the time to listen to them until about three weeks ago. From what I can tell, they've been around since at least 2014, doing a kind of sonic parody thrash-punk hybrid in the vein of Lich King, who are themselves more of a "fun-guy-at-a-bar-fight" blending of VIO-LENCE and S.O.D. I anticipated a party band with some riffs. I did not anticipate that Belushi could convert some semblance of a shenanigan-fueled jamboree with any sort of life-like fidelity to a record like What, Us Worry. I'm struggling to find parallels with other "funny" thrash bands like Gwar and Ghoul, because as much as those other bands commit to the bit, they lack Belushi's raw (and even, at times, distressing) sense of spontaneity. I am encountering a kind of delightful consternation with this album. I want to shout, "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?" about every three minutes. But I am counseled by the sage advice which the album's title evokes. Honestly, you kind of have to be along for the ride with this one. All the knuckle-scalping, side-winding riffs that you'd expect from a modern thrash album are here, but the wild energy and genre-twisting antics of What, Us Worry is without a genuine pear, plunging like a trust-fall mixed with a head-first stage-dive into the jaws of death, they bungee between biceps-flexing hardcore and pickled-brained ska, while somehow still managing to cram in an entire grindcore album worth of material into the last four minutes of runtime. I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that there is song length riff on a Spongbob bit, too... and it kind of slaps. This album also contains some of the weirdest fucking skits I've ever heard. Like, they kind of have the structure of psychotic episodes or mass delusions. It all seems to work because the band makes you feel like you're in on the joke, which beyond the musicianship, is a true feat of showmanship (or possibly a sign that I'm susceptible to professional-grade malarkey [Or both!]). My poor brain and my liver feel bruised and abused after imbibing to this record multiple times, and yet I still feel obliged to recommend it to you. Is it possible that I've become such a glutton for punishment that I'm compelled to divert the overflow of my anguish downstream to you? Or maybe, just maybe, Belushi really is just that fucking good at what they do. Either way- THINK FAST! 'cause here comes a Speed Ball, center plate and up your nose! 

Foot - You are Weightless (Copper Feast Records)

Australia's Foot earnestly have one of the better takes on the whole stoner/ dessert rock thing that I've heard in a while. This area of rock and roll really only has two speeds, either gunning for a land speed record or hitting the emergency break and letting things grind out at a lurching crawl- either way you're going to be in danger of heatstroke from all the microwaving feedback the guitars give off. Foot's innovation on their latest album You Are Weightless is to strike a balance between the two oft-elected gears and keep things buoyant and discernably temperate. While a lot of stoner rock intends to be set in space, very few actually illicit the sensation of floating in the void, something the band accomplishes consistently with overlapping and oscillating grooves, skyward punching organ riffs, and satellite signaling electronics a la latter-day Cave In. They also freshen things up with cool, mucky distortion and mirky, smooth, determined and oddly ominous melodies that trace a kabbalistic thread between Alice in Chains and Ghost. There is also a cover of Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Gold Lion" situated in the middle of this baby, which is alright by me! 

Limousine Beach - Limousine Beach (Tee Pee Records)

Limousine Beach are cruising at their own delightful pace on their self-titled for Tee Pee Records. The album harkens back to a simpler time in rock and metal's storied past, to an era when everyone lived for the weekend, tights were a wardrobe option for all sexes/genders, and a big enough riff could take you anywhere you wanted to go. I love that the band is reviving Phil Lynott's playing and guitar tones with the record and bending them to a simple kind of hook structure that you'd expect from one of Kiss's jaw-dropping smackers. It's kind of the best of both those worlds. They then mix it up a bit more with some Deep Purple propulsion on the likes of "Black Market Bus Pass," then stir up some proto-hair metal entanglements with "Hear You Callin'" and even let in a light breeze of Styx-esque whimsy on the opener "Stealin' Wine." In the dead of winter, everyone needs a get-away, and Limousine Beach is offering as good of a destination as any to escape from the ice-box doldrums of January. 

Mortal Relic - Lair of the Dungeon Lord (WereGnome Records)

This isn't strictly a metal album, but it kind of gets the vibe right. Especially, if you're into the more cosmic-sounding stuff, or like me, are a huge nerd. Mortal Relic's Lair of the Dungeon Lord is a dungeon-crawler-themed synthwave record that sounds like it is attempting to soundtrack a documentary on supernova formations. Just as often, though, it is an acoustic, medieval folk album... that is also attempting to soundtrack a documentary on meteorites that periodically tour our corner of the galaxy. Did I mention this thing sounds like it's from outer space? Well, it does. It's also pretty wholesome and cozy feeling at times, which is not what I would expect for an album that takes as its premise the plundering of tombs and the mass slaying of Kobolds. If you're going to be up late for any reason, particularly doing something creative, this is hard to beat. Also, there is one black metal track. It's near the end and it's called "Battle Magic." So it counts for the list, after all. I bet feel silly now for having doubted me.  

2022 Year- End Invitational

This is the third year of this blog and another great one as far as I'm concerned. I have no metrics to back this that I care to share, but its simple existence is edifying enough for me. Writing about and sharing music is a real joy and I love having a vehicle for these conversations. I'm also thankful for you, the reader (faithful and otherwise), for checking this blog out and supporting what I do. We will likely never meet in person, but I'm glad that we can still make a connection, however diffuse, through the labyrinth of tubes and info slurry known as the internet. Connection is essential. It's what keeps us grounded in this world. 

    

As is my style, I've put together a year-end list to cap off my musical explorations for the year. In this list, I've collected a bunch of releases that have made an impression on me, but which I didn't get around to covering earlier in the year, or otherwise thought the year would be incomplete without giving them a shout. As always, this is an invitation to you to explore and get acquainted with some releases you might have missed, or might enjoy returning to for a second (or third) listen. Take your time, seriously. This list isn't going anyway, so if it takes you a couple of hours, days, or whatever to get through it, then grant yourself that indulgence. This is an open-ended invitation to dwell on some sounds at a pace that suits you and to resist the algorithm and its hypnotic pull. 

Lastly, I'd like to address whether this is a "Best of" list or not. I genuinely hate the idea of ranking music in any form (even if I understand the utility some claim ranked lists have). That said, of course this is a "Best of/AOTY" list. It has to be by default. But only so far as the entirety of my output each year constitutes a "Best of" collection, with the Invitational acting as a capstone. My reviews this year, as every year, are the best of what I've heard. If I took the time to write about an album this year, then it stands to reason that I thought the album was better than another album that I didn't write about. Take that for what it's worth when comparing this list to others you might have read. I've read those other lists too, and I'm familiar with their recommendations... 

Superdestroyer - Goon (Lonely Ghost Records) 

One of the albums that I hope people look back on as a pivot point for this current wave of emo, as well as the contemporary online underground music world, is Superdestroyer's Goon. As the head of Lonely Ghost Records, he's had an impeccable run of teaming up with and distributing innovative and genre-defying artists, from Hey, Ily, to Discussing the Sun, to Cheem. His solo adventures are no less inspired and his debut LP Goon blends emo-trap, with deathcore, garage punk, synth-wave, and about five other different sub-categories of sound to make a tight and somewhat claustrophobic hybrid he's dubbed "Beach Gaze." I think it's worth pointing out that this term is highly context-dependent and probably will not be applicable to future releases, as the surreal saline of sound he's focusing on with this release is meant to depict a family vacation to the beach devolving into a cross-dimensional nightmare and harrowing hallucination. Illustrating the alienation of the self from the family unit and the fraying of social ties, the album progresses in its intensity before climaxing and crashing into a serene and clarifying pool of dreamy synth-soaked passages. Sort of as if the Griswalds' latest vacation ended up taking them to the ship from Event Horizon, which Clark then managed to emergency land in the clear blue lagoons of Pandora (I like to think the family survives the experience, but with all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, who can say). No one else is trying to do what Superdestroyer is attempting to with his sound right now, and the chaos-to-clarity structure ala Zen Arcade makes it seem all the more momentous. Goon is the smoke test that causes the surface tension of our reality to glitch so that you can see the code behind it. Whether you have the gumption to try and crawl through the fissures it creates and into a new and better sense of self-awareness is up to you. 

Disq - Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet (Saddle Creek)

There is a tendency amongst critics to assign a label to things that they notice and which have a passing similarity to each other and call them a trend. I'm preparing to do that exact thing at the moment. I've become aware that there are a number of acts out there now who are basically playing a strain of psychedelic-punk but would in no way own that term if you bestowed it on them. They're all just doing their own thing, and it just so happens to come out all weird and spacey. Dummy is one such band. Madison's Disq is another. I'd like to call this kind of stuff "Keen Punk," as it's incredibly earnest, extremely cool, and unconcerned with meeting people's expectations- only exceeding them. Disq's second LP Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet minces and serves pungent melodies with spikes of acidic groove oozing in from 90's techno and arbitraged attempts to interpret Lou Reed's metallurgic nightmares. One part crushed Pixies, with two parts DMT cut with ESG, raised with yeast sourced from Archers of Loaf, baked in a pan forged with Rivers Cuomo-tempered alloys, and served to a rabid Teenage Fanclub. It's indie in the original meaning of the term, as independent of any one contemporary school of sound, a synthesis of all and none of them, and proud of its status in regard to both.   

Grotto Terrazza - Kalte Köstlichkeiten (Maple Death Records)

Kalte Köstlichkeiten is the debut LP from Munich producer Thomas Schamann under the name Grotto Terrazza. It sees him focusing his stark and paranoid style of conspiratorial synthwave in a manner that is still striking but discernably more tempered than anything he's done before. It retains the reviving quality of a winter rain from his earlier EP, enlivening the senses with intrigue while avoiding the risk of frostbite as the temperature of the production never drops below freezing. It also has the character of a spy thriller, set in an abstract painting, comprised of all illusionary angles and tricks of unevenly leavened dimensionality, causing you to trip over your own sense of perception as you waltz to a fabricated Play Mobil funk band in a smokey den of sin. You could traverse other nonlinear aesthetic plains, but few will be as simultaneously chill and captivating as Kalte Köstlichkeiten. 

Cool Original - Outtakes from "Bad Summer" (Topshelf Records)

The latest album from Nathan Tucker as Cool Original (or Cool American, if you may), is essentially an acoustic indie rock record. Now, if you've listened to outtakes from "Bad Summer" before reading the previous sentence, then you're probably getting a nosebleed right now from your brain attempting to process this information. But before you fire off an angry reply, take a minute to collect yourself and then go back and listen to the record and try to hear the acoustic parts underpinning literally every section. Now that I've pointed it out, you can't NOT hear it. Even though the record sounds like some kind of Platonist jetski wave or blissed-out yacht rock for disco-dipped imaginary friends, its DNA is undeniable as a guitar-pop-based record, specifically an acoustic pop record. And I think that is cool. I think it is very cool that this is the maximalist version of what a low-key and lo-fi indie rock can become with the right production approach and enough love. It goes from a solo show at a VFW to something like a jello-wrestling match in the belly of a drum machine, or a boom-bap preset run through a submerged distortion peddle to create a subaquatic sound that is soothing to cranky, bedazzled lobsters, or a long-form incantation performed by Evan Dando on some retro production equipment in an attempt to summon the ghost of Adam Schlesinger to bless a necklace he got out of a vending machine in Atlantic City. "Bad Summer" proves that you can build just about anything, no matter how obtuse, if the foundation you're using is sturdy enough. 

Nok Cultural Ensemble - Njhyi (SA Recordings)

Nok Cultural Collective released its debut recording this year, Njhyi. The project is the latest endeavor from Atyap percussionist and York local Edward Wakili-Hick, which probes an assemblage of African drumming styles through improvisation and reflection. At its base, this record is a collaboration between Edward and a circumference of percussionists, engaging each other through a congregation of thoughtful exchanges transposed as rhythms enticed out of log drums, tall kpanlogos, cowbells, and broad, pie-shaped ravannes. The core players (Onome Edgeworth, Dwayne Kilvington and Joseph Deenmamode) are joined by other notable collaborators such as fellow Sons of Kemet collaborator Theon Cross, roots rapper Watusi87, and the incomparable clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid, all of whom shepherd meditations on Africa's oldest civilizations through a dark middle passage of post-punk austerity to a weary but flourishing conclusion that sees the percussive styles of the earlier segments of the album blending with hip-hop, dub, and brisk broken-beat house. These are songs about community, best enjoyed with friends. 

Methyl Ethel - Are You Haunted? (Future Classic)

Methyl Ethel's Jake Webb allows the many spirits of past lives to return to their original body on his latest album with the project, Are You Haunted? It's a humorous title with a serious and sublime undertow. Explored throughout the album are memories and the imprints of past anxieties that live on in the ridges and discolored tissue of old scars and dormant but lingering fears. His reaction to the rising tickle of old wounds and the slow tarnishment of happy reflections by the passage of time is to laugh at the absurd and elastic pace at which he has distanced himself from them and the unpredictable intrusiveness with which these memories resurface. I appreciate his consistent thoughtfulness in examining the ever-longer thread of his own history (or histories) and the differing manifolds of the people who he has been, but what I enjoy the most is the style of Are You Haunted? It feels like a time capsule of late '00s indie rock; breathy blurts for vocal deliveries, handclap percussion, disco pianos, pouty melancholic melodies, baroque gang vocals, aggressive electro-drumlines, swaggering four-on-the-floor grooves... It's all old enough to feel new again and the repurposing of these time-weathered elements has finally allowed him to avoid direct comparisons to Tame Impala, finding himself instead somewhere between Lykki Li, Feist, and 2009 Bat for Lashes. Although now the drab and moody disco detour he's embarked on seems to have put him on a crash course with Haley Fohr's Jackie Lynn persona. Which is fine. Maybe it will cause the two of them to do a joint tour of the USA at some point. I'd be up for that. Heck, I'd put money down for it today if I thought it was a sure thing.

Sacco & Vanzetti - No Rocks (Self-Released)

Named for the infamous and (likely) falsely tried and executed anarchist radicals, Sacco & Vanzetti, the New Jersey duo of the same name gets a fair amount out of mileage from their notorious namesakes. Interspersing various dialogues from cut from pop cultural references and dramatizations of the men's stories with mean and dirty boom-bap beats, the S'nV team brings a rich and original variety of conscious rap to bear upon your waiting ears. Their main target tends to be abuse by police and the institutions that supposedly met out justice in this country, but they also take on issues of racism, social disintegration, and the general state of mounting stress that seems to add more crushing weight to life in America with each passing day. The production, despite feeling streetwise and grimy, simultaneously manages to be polished and lustrous with a deep and dynamic bass range that complements the wet and toothy flow on which these fearless lyrics are delivered. Their bars are heavy, not just because they're rock solid, but because they also contain a high quotient of solid gold wisdom ready to be distributed amongst the masses. 

Benny Bock - Vanishing Act (Colorfield Records)

For his debut album Vanishing Act Benny Bock isn't playing any tricks. For this project, the sound designer and session musician is using his considerable skill and awareness of resonating forms to engage with and study a wide range of analog synths in order to make a confident envoy into jazz and techno, paving a meeting point between the two to compose them in contrast and context to each other and the cityscapes they so often reflect and emerge from as the folk songs of the landless cultivators of the concrete Balkan plateaus. Despite conjuring an incredibly diverse web of sound from a dozen plus classic synthesizers over the course of the album, the Vanishing Act never feels hurried or disjointed, as each instrument is given its proper place and the arrangements are consciously structured to allow the strengths of each to emerge to the fore. The result is diverting, colorful, beautiful, and timeless.  

Udumakahle - S'qhuba Izinkomo (Dumakahle Entertainment)

Once one of the more popular styles of African popular music, maskandi has fewer and fewer adherents each year as young people flock to more accessible, edgier, and often aggressive styles of electronic music. Despite this, South Africa's Udumakahle perseveres as one of the genre's most archetypal adherents. His latest album S'qhuba Izinkomo continues to highlight his fluttery and earnest playing style as well as his clean and circuitous singing prose. The music is simple, lush, and at times predictable, but only to the extent that it is dependable in its gracious repeating structures. This is rural folk music about doing your best by a young man who is, without hesitation, putting his best foot forward with every measure and every step. You can't buy this kind of sincerity. It has to come from the heart. 

POLIÇA – Madness (Memphis Industries)

Madness is a companion to Minneapolis-based Poliça's fourth album When We Stay Alive, and a capstone on their past decade as a band. The four-piece ensemble still plays best when sticking to the shadows, whispering hints of lingering pain of desire and hurt to come, while recalling overlapping conceptual schemas and diverging platelets where combinations of Chromatics and Portishead shift and mingle like the colors of a kaleidoscope. For this latest pivot, they have added a new member to the cohort, an "anthropomorphic" devise that producer and founding member Ryan Olson calls AllOvers(c). The "new member of the family" allows for the haunting hue of the band's emotive shifts and enticements to feel that much more unreal- affecting an uncanniness and a sense of guardedness that is unnerved by its own presence and lack of presentness. It's a profound transformation of their sound that manages to keep possession of its fundamental essence, almost as if the band were a disembodied spirit who has found a new vessel through which it can continue its journey through purgatory. Madness is a fitting conclusion to this chapter in the band's saga. 

Circuit3 - Technology For The Youth (AnalogueTrash)

Named for a Soviet-era technology magazine, Technology For The Youth is Irish producer and songwriter Circuit3's latest album-length plead for sanity in a world that seems to be running out of it by the day. Fueled by analog synths and his own distant airy vocal transmissions, Technology For The Youth represents a renewed hope for scientific advancement and prosperity through the light of reason with a backdrop of historical instances of USA-Soviet collaboration in space exploration as both its theme and justification for continued hope in the perpetuity of human progress- even when faced with seemingly impassable political and cultural barriers. Foregrounding familiar takes on elevated sounds pioneered by New Order and the Pet Shop Boys, Circuit3 probes the possibility of the future for still surviving signs of intelligent life on Earth. God willing, he finds what he is looking for. God willing, we all do. 

Pool Kids - Pool Kids (Skeletal Lightning)

The Pool Kids debut may be one of the most celebrated albums of the year, but I found out about it entirely independent of John Darnielle and others' co-signs, and that's why I think it's worth me talking about it and putting the band on this list. The Chicago-based (former Florida residents) are a pop band at heart. They can write hooks like they're giving you directions to their favorite watering hole and deliver them with the urgency of a Wells Fargo stagecoach attempting to outrun a gang of desperados. Everything they do is great, full stop. But what really makes them interesting to me is how flexible and adaptive their sound is. They might come across as something like a Kevin Shields-produced version of Paramore, or the byproduct of Hop Along on a working vacation with Beach House, or even the end result of Taylor Swift paying Mike Kinsella and co. enough money to reform American Football and tour as her backing band, but none of these attributed descriptions exhaust the core potential of the group. It's clear they're just picking up things they like, smashing them together and making them work, and the results are simply phenomenal. From what I'm hearing on their debut, they could go any number of directions from here, and it's going to be very cool to see what ground they cover next. Keep tabs on Pool Kids, they're truly a band to watch. 

Coupons - Wasted Intimacy (Counter Intuitive Records)

Every time I hear something new from Albany's Coupons, I become a little bit more of a fan. Out of all the bands I encounter, there is something indescribably refreshing about them. They play indie rock and punk the way I wish every band did, as an outcropping and extension of, as well as conversation with, the community they arise out of, and the enthusiasm with which they exert themselves in this endeavor is unfailingly inspired. More so than their 2020 release Up & Up, Wasted Intimacy sees the group doing a take on the Hollies as if they were convalescing at Radiator Hospital, fully embracing the Americana meets no bullshit power-pop potential of their sound. It's perfect for getting your heart broken/filled with mirth at a house party and drinking and singing so much you start crying out of joy, anguish, yearning, and dread, all at the same time, plus a bunch of other emotions you can't quite place. Getting to know other indie bands intimately might be a waste of time, but not when it comes to Coupons- they're an investment, my friend. 

NNAMDÏ - Please Have A Seat (Secretly Canadian)

Typically, when someone tells you to "Please Have A Seat," it's because they have bad news. Chicago-based MC and experimental composer NNAMDÏ's latest release Please Have A Seat is literally all good news, so you could stand, transition into downward dog, or jump up and do some aerobics while it's on.  Whatever, you do you.  However, he'd obviously prefer if you were sitting down while you listened to his record. Not because he's trying to be controlling, but because he wants you to absorb the record while it's on and come to terms with your own presentness while enjoying it. The record is an invitation to sit and savor the simple pleasure of being alive for a full forty minutes. Coincidentally, that's what this list is all about too. It's not often that my intentions line up with those of talented people I admire, so I'm taking full advantage of the serendipity to reiterate my own mission statement. Something else I'd like to point out is that Please Have A Seat does not feel its length. Even when giving it my full attention, it feels like I'm tumbling into the future while it's on. While I fully endorse all the quirks and animated energies of 2020's Brat, the sense of spontaneity Please Have A Seat captures is on another level as it takes every possible off-ramp and trolls every potential diverting tributary without becoming disharmonious or convoluted. He's letting the full spectrum of his personality interface with you without a filter, and as his orbit looms large, it's nearly impossible not to be drawn in. It's true that we all contain legions, and that is why this album, in all its compounding multiplicities, will be comprehensible to you. But if you and I contain legions, then it's clear that NNAMDÏ contains legions upon legions- a leader of one and one million alike. 

Sobs - Air Guitar (Topshelf Records)

Sobs should be an international pop sensation in the making. Glistening, blitzes of bliss and huggable harmonies gush over you in a torrent of self-assured abandon on their debut LP, Air Guitar. Drinking in this release presents the same level of satisfaction as sitting below the dispenser of a giant slurpy machine and allowing a rain of rainbow-sticky goodness to drench your hair and face in an ecstatic coat of pure, gratuitous confection. "Dealbreaker" is a hurricane of ecstasy and supersized silk-lined guitar hooks, and the title track provides a gloss of Shibuya varnish to a blindly overdriven version of Velocity Girl style jangle. "Friday Night" benefits from twin heralds of new wave ripple on the front end and bursts of bubbly breakcore on the back end, a bridging dichotomy that elevates the track above a mere Juliana Hatfield honorific. And then bruised and bass rip-riding "Burn Book" fumes from a smiting swath of teenage passion. Air Guitar is like a ripe peach, garnished with caramelized sugar; every hook is like another sumptuous bite and by the time you're through juice will be running down your cheeks and chin like tears of joy.  

Joe Rainey - Niineta (37d03d)

I'm glad that I came across this album during my many aimless voyages through the information soup of the internet. Particularly because it is so unique in both style and intention. The debut LP from Minneapolis pow-wow singer Joe Rainey is not aiming to perfectly preserve any traditional definition of native music but instead directs itself towards translating a respect for those traditions into the world of popular forms. Working with producer Andrew Broder of the experimental group Fog, the duo interlace samples of singing recorded by Joe over the course of decades and drafts them into dialog with Joe's own vocal improvisations to provoke a spiritually suggestive and metaphysically rousing encounter- one that is akin to a percussive oriented and cinematic rephrasing of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but which traverses the legacy of the first peoples of the Americas in a taxonomy of phantoms and a study of enduring probities that pierce the real so finely that it cannot be seen- requiring the extension of our moral and other faculties to be properly perceive them. There are times that Niineta feels edifying, while many other sections are more than aggressive and less than reassuring, but throughout, the album never fails to pique an all-consuming sense of fascination in its directness and fidelity.

Eva Shaw - Solo (Mad Fatti)

Producer and everything girl Eva Shaw's debut LP is an expression of unadulterated, genuine sensation and mood. Solo is an epic, down-and-dirty trap album made for no one in particular, besides herself. It's lengthy and roomy enough to let you get comfortable in her world, but also harsh enough never to let you forget whose world it is. The physical and bold nature of her production choices on this release makes it feel like the hip-hop equivalent of a Dario Argento film; composed of bold outlines, a bias towards the visceral, and unafraid to show you actual violence but chiefly preoccupied with the rough course of calamity swirling around the interior of its creator's subconscious. An entire career separates this album from Eva's start as a songwriter, and now that it's here, I doubt there are any residual questions about the independence of her vision. 

Summerbruise - The View Never Changes (Old Press Records)

Wholesome fucking middle-American emo. You can't beat it. Indianapolis's Summerbruise embodies this very specific and unassumingly glorious style better than most on their LP The View Never Changes. Jaunty, piano and guitar duel grooves. Buzzy firecracker riffs. Paul McCartney-core, wobbling melodies set to funny, observational poetry suited to pop structures that can't help but spill their guts as soon as they stop gritting their teeth. A lot of this album reminds me of the torrential pop precociousness of Say Anything, where every riff hits like an epiphany, and every hook pulls you into the spiral of their emotive tempest a little more. These guys could make a thousand albums just like this one, and I'd never get bored of them for even a minute. 

Two Meters - Two Meters (Knifepunch Records)

Two Meters is the creation of Floridian Tyler Costolo. Most of his material so far was released before the pandemic, and this year's self-titled LP is his first release since the onset of COVID. It's a bleaker album, less bluesy than prior works, but just as discordant and painfully restrained in its progression. The album has the composure of someone attempting to ward off invasive thoughts while choking on their own marginally constrained hysteria. Subtle folk guitar chords and distressed extended measures of melody are harangued by noisy and boxed-in blastbeats and growls, making the overall impression of the record sound like Sun O))) essentially imploding into a well of auto-cannibalizing annihilation. Tracks like "Rain Down" traverse a grey plain in an apostate crawl across the dark and desiccated lips of a wilting rose, eventually winding its way to an oasis of harmony and syncopated resolution, while "Low" and "Sun" lurch as if trudging over burning coals in a penitent kind of blackened-death, slowcore stooper. Suffice it to say, Two Meters will bring you six feet closer to hell.  

Making Movies - Xopa (Cosmica Artists)

Not intending to be dramatic, Making Movies wrote and recorded their album Xopa like it was the last thing they were ever going to make. The Kansas City, MO-based Latin band's approach caused them to throw their entire bushel basket into the furnace and burn it up like parched, sawdust-coated tinder. The result is an exceptionally explosive album that charges up cumbia rhythms with Midwestern rock and roll to create a rolling thunder strike that could reduce a multimillion-dollar stadium to a pile of pebbles. While the exulting salsa shake-up of "Sala De Los Pescadores" with its spearing grooves and swiping, sword-dancing-like interchanges, and the tightrope tapdancing and voltaic whip of "Nos Entenderan" are certainly highlights of this release, the album also manages to shine just as bright during its intimate, sober moments, such as on the tranquil familial ballad "Mama" and the slinky and tropical "Porcelina," featuring incomparable contributions from Denver duo Tennis. There are no punches pulled on Xopa, even if some of them land softer than others. 

 

YHWH Nailgun - No Midwife And I Wingflap (Ramp Local)

Four-man maelstrom YHWH Nailgun are living in their own country, time zone, and frame of mind on their second EP No Midwife And I Wingflap. This brief but impressive release takes on industrial and post-rock as if these were foreign concepts within the underground cannon- revving their reified motifs and signifiers until they backfire and suck themselves inside out. "Too Bright To See" is like an indie-funk revue encoded to a punctured hard drive, from which the echo-copy representations of musicians whose images have been captured vainly attempt to free themselves before they are erased from existence by the deterioration of their prison dwelling. "Back Muscle" sounds like Samuel T. Herring being boiled alive in a vat of Throbbing Gristle, and "Venison Mama" ruptures and wails with fractal percussion as if it were a reflex stress test of a band playing Battles-covers while having their molecular structures creatively rearranged. Lastly, "Look At Me, I'm A Rainer" gives off the impression of a Pere Ubu CD-R album rip being stripped layer by layer by a laser drill while it attempts to rotate and play the compressed mastered recordings it contains while being systematically dismantled. Unfailingly broken until its shards become a powder-fine mosaic, No Midwife And I Wingflap sustains itself through hostility to even the aesthetics of the counter-conventional. 

For Tracy Hyde - Hotel insomnia (P-Vine Records)

Japenese shoegaze is an extremely strange and diverse arena of music that tenuously connects scattering, rough-hewn punk riffs with profoundly startling and crepuscular sonic imprints and somehow manages to keep them all circling each other and within the same musical universe. In such a peculiar place, it is a small comfort to find something familiar. Tokyo's For Tracy Hyde is one of these bands that is most easy to acquaint oneself with coming from the outside. Approaching the genre from the direction of indie pop, they present a high gloss and perceptibly congenial appeal to propulsive Luminous Orange-esque and UK-infused fuzz-fare on their 5th LP Hotel Insomnia. If jangly chord progressions cause a little bell in your heart to ring and compounding melodic phrases cause your soul to become ascendingly weightless, then you are going to be on cloud 9 while this record is on.  You might even want to tie yourself down, less you float away without a care, lifted into the atmosphere by the delight that For Tracy Hyde has poured into the basin of your being. 

Erica Eso - 192 (Hausu Mountain Records)

This is an unusual release for the Chicago-based label Hausu Mountain, but it's no less interesting from my perspective. While Hausu generally specializes in left-field but attainably palatable experimental music, Erica Eso's 192 is a straight pop record. Neither this fact nor its relative brevity, keep it from being an absorbing listen-through. The quintet, led by Weston Minissali, performs a melange and arable blend of funky, originative R'nB in the Brainfeeder mold, esteemed and self-consciously lovesick new wave, and minute progressive maneuvers that might earn them a jealous glance from modern-day adherents of Yes. Analog and digital blur on 192 in the collapsing space between industrial output and plangent soul. Primal emotions find fissures through which to spill out and crystalize over spherical synthesizer purls and pulses. Troutface mask-adorned post-rock scales replicated in a cradle of swarthy kisses and knot-tugging bassline. 192 is a musical gem factory operating at peak efficiency.  

yesterdayneverhappened - The Demon At Dusk (Loveshock Records x Daybreak)

When attempting to explain Chicago producer yesterdayneverhappened's The Demon At Dusk, it would be more concise to describe what it's not rather than what it is. It doesn't do much good to attempt to conceptualize a negative though, so here goes... The Demon At Dusk is a fractured synthesis of soul, funk, and punk spread through a twisted, convoluted process of folding together breakcore, footwork, and VGM, resulting in a frantic, improbably melodic, and infectious listen that progresses with the fury and kinetic flow of a Tekken tag-team tournament with a club-goth color scheme. It's an awesome and unpredictable rush and a masterfully malicious beat matrix ready for you to jack into as you bask in the afterglow of your last passionate, depleted-uranium kiss good night to the year that was 2022.