Well, we're at the end of another year. Congratulations to
all who made it this far (both into the decade, and into this article... don't
worry, there is A LOT more...). 2024 was an eventful year. Some things that
happened were very good, most weren't... but amongst the better, or at least
more notable developments (for me at least) is that this blog turned 5! Yes, 5
years of reviews, interviews, and my general observations on life, music, and what
have you. Theoretically, this blog is now old enough to walk, talk, feed
itself, and be shuffled off to daycare so that I can make enough money to pay
for daycare (and maybe food and shelter), but between you and me, I'm still
wary of letting it have anything sharper than a rubber spoon, and I definitely
wouldn't let it out of my sight for more than a minute in an environment that
contains anything more flammable than a cement block... other than that, it's
basically self-sufficient, right? This blog should be writing itself pretty soon (maybe with a boost from Open AI) and
then I can retire and live off the accumulated endorsements and clout and coast
into my golden years.
I'm of course kidding. I love writing this blog. It's a
valuable outlet for me, not only to express pent-up creativity but also to
guide and manage my own listening habits. The fact that others care about and
appreciate what I do here is, of course, always humbling. Over the years, many
people, including artists, have informed me that the way I write and the
passion that I put into my words has helped them think differently about music
and has helped them appreciate it in ways that they hadn't before. Learning
that I have had this sort of impact on people's lives always stuns me and warms
my heart. Music is such an important aspect of our lives and culture, and the
fact that I can help people appreciate it a little more means that I'm doing
something worthwhile. Beyond direct feedback though, the numbers speak for
themselves. When I first started this blog, I considered a day when I'd receive
10 unique hits to be a good one. Today, the number of unique visitors to this
blog is in the hundreds and sometimes even the thousands per day. It might not
be much, but some people see value in what I am doing, and I am eternally
stoked that there are some (and more by the day) kindred spirits out there - people
who want to listen to and learn about amazing underground music, and
apparently, don't mind my peculiar brand of tortured prose.
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| Pictured: Me hard at work doing whatever I do here. |
To celebrate this little milestone, I've written about 50
albums that I grew to love this year but hadn't had the chance to write about
yet. Is this a best of list? By default, yes- but I'm not picking winners and
excluding losers, as much as I'm throwing open the doors to my personal library
and the backstage of my psyche, to hopefully clue you into some work by artists
that you maybe didn't know about or hadn't given a chance yet. If you're
already up to speed on all these releases, then at the very least, this post
will be an opportunity for you to relive some of the hits from this past year.
Before we get to the list, I just want to say a few more
things about this blog and where I am headspace-wise. I started this blog as an
outlet to keep track of my own listening, and it became a necessary tool for my
own sanity during COVID, one which I carried on updating even after the world
went (somewhat) back to normal. During all that time I never really considered
it much more than an outlet for myself, but in the ensuing years, as I saw
similarly positioned blogs rise and fall, and the media ecosystem (echo system?) at the top
change and consolidate drastically, I started to feel like what I was doing with this blog mattered more and more. One-person, unmonetized,
uncommercial platforms are not easy to keep up, but they do provide a necessary
oasis away from the algorithmic churn that is intensifying elsewhere and an irreplaceable tool for framing, contextualizing, and promoting new and unsung
music in a way that encourages reflection rather than simply reaction or passive
consumption. There are people who maybe do things better, or at least break the
mold in interesting and increasingly creative ways, (Watch out for my interview
with Molly O'Brien about her blog I Enjoy Music in 2025), but I wholeheartedly believe there is still a
purpose to personal meditations on albums in the form of review, and that's why
I will never give up on it, either as its own art form or as a way of raising a beacon
for bands that deserve the attention. Nothing is dead that still has the means
to change some minds, and I feel as though other writers and I are living proof
of this fact.
In sum, I love writing this blog, and I'm probably
going to keep doing it and playing with the review form to suit my heterodox
interests in music and writing and music writing as long as humanly possible
(and maybe even longer... we'll see what happens with the cloud- maybe someday,
my consciousness will be compiling reviews from an Amazon Echo). Here's to 5
more years, and 5 more after that, and 5 more after that, and… well, you get
the idea. I'll stop yapping and skip to the good part: the reviews!
(Leave) Nelson B - 4.0: The Doppelgänger (Lonely Ghost Records)You might be able to gather from producer (Leave) Nelson B's
name that he's not a man to be fucked with (he's ex-military, after all). But
hear me out... while you should probably avoid sending him unsolicited DMs, you
should unequivocally be fucking with his latest LP, Doppelgänger. As a solo execution of the
resident sample producer of Lonely Ghost Records, Nelson takes the occasion to
cut, cauterize and seamlessly glue into place eleven lucid dream-like vignettes
of mood-altering, sonic-sojourning hip-hop that sweep persuasive percussive
motifs under the laces of frayed-nerve folk ("Covertly Daedelus"),
sun-soaking soul instrumentals ("Needed a Day Off"), oscillating other-worldly
dives into minor Dharmic-operas ("NICU") and churning pools of acid
Game Boy breakcore ("hey, ily is hard to chop yo"). A likely rival to
his diversity of style-shifting techniques, you will not likely find duplicated
this side of the multiverse.
Townies - Of This I Am Certain (We're Trying Records)
There aren't that many things that I am 100% sure about
(other than it continuing to cost an arm and a leg to make an omelet in 2025
and beyond), but I am adamant that Of This I Am Certain is a significant stylistic and artistic step
up for tender-hearted emo trio Townies. Their debut LP graduates from the
twinkle-dom proving grounds of their first two EPs, with the group finding within them
the melodic heroism to embrace their latent Mesigners-potential to belt out
huge catchy choruses over memorably brash and striking chords to give credence
to the grit they feel sifting and siphoning out the many holes life has poked
in their souls. Could you still call it groc rock? Does it matter so long as it
still blasts your socks off? I'm certain that the answer is worth its weight in
bullion... or eggs... bullets... whatever future people end up using for currency.
Rid of Me - Access to the Lonely (Knife Hit Records)
Philly noise-rock dark horses Rid of Me are somehow even more dark and compelling on their second LP
Access to the Lonely, a testament to the depths of desperation and indignity that the human spirit can survive. Even more so then it's predecessors, the LP is a far more cohesive collection of tracks that blends and bends in tortured contortions while retaining its essential antagonistic form, taking the quiet-loud-quiet dynamics of the '80s underground and exploding them in a way that would even make the guys from KEN Mode nervous with anticipation and ponderous apprehension. If you're looking for a record that will make you feel like a body cemented to the bed of the Schuylkill River, trawl no further.
Lightheaded - Combustible Gems (Slumberland Records)
It's not an original observation to note how seasoned New
Jersey jangle gang Lightheaded sound on their debut LP Combustible Gems, but that's alright, because the record hits me like a 5-carat stone bouncing off my crown every time I listen to it. The record has this classic, sunny melodicism and shimmery Rickenbacker rollick
to it that makes the it feel like it was concealed in a vault during the
late '60s only to be forgotten, excavated, tossed in a heap at a rummage sale,
scooped up by a sharp-eyed and curious Freshman, and debuted over a dedicated
college radio frequency sometime in the late '80s. Dusky-eyed but spritely
tempered, overcome with the fealty to the softest of teenaged feelies, and
enraptured at the sight of paisley patterns, Combustible Gems is one nostalgic
trip that is as rock solid as they come.
Sissy Remains - Sissy Remains (Broken Sound Tapes)
What happens when you shave away all of the noise-bro
chauvinism from no-wave? Well, you're left with Sissy Remains. The
debut self-titled from the North Carolina-based electro-punk project is a
parched and understated exploration of mood and movement, where voices echo
like an anxious cough heard above the hiss of CRT TV static, grooves crinkle
and spark like aluminum in the microwave, and beats sputter like a Roland
that's been uploaded with a virus that infects it with a timekeeping form of
tourettes. While Sissy Remains’ LP often feels dissociative and deliberately
uninviting, there is a girlish playfulness hidden under the folds of its
understated chaos that gives it an undeniable humanness and pervasive sense of
warmth that is enchanting, to say the least. Once it gets its little teeth into
you, you'll be begging it to never let go.
Dry Erase - Decay Model (Phantom Records)
Dry Erase is a bristly acoustic anomaly who represent an alternating current that spills through the ruptured grating of our present timeline to rope-tow ghoulish triphop reclamations, cynically literate goth rock, and clockwork, psychologically-disturbed minimalist post-punk into contemporary continuity with each other. On their second LP,
Decay Model, bare splintered bones and exposed sparking wires twist and copulate in a tortured helix and danse macabre around a maypole wrapped in telefaxed credit swap confirmation and reems of printed diplomatic correspondence concerning conflicts that turned hot over sugar cane futures and sea cans full of avocados. Poetry with the texture of rotten meat. Basslines that slide under your fingernails like the furry tips of a tarantula's pedipalps searching for sympathy or perhaps a speck of sustenance. It has beats that creak and groan like a recalled prosthetic joint carelessly installed in a homeless and discarded homunculus. Sometimes, the world can be so strange that only the strangest sounds can mirror its truths.
Straw Man Army - Earthworks (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)
Earthworks is the third LP from NY anarcho-punk duo Straw Man Army, seeing the group complete their trilogy of anarchic, minimalistic and modish prognosis of the American project and its projected future- news flash: it doesn't end well. Living on a native burial ground is usually a premise that concludes in calamity, and
Earthworks does not stray from this trope when facing its themes (evidenced by the fateful course repeated on the second track "Look Alive"). The bendy, reedy riffs and caustic delivery of every melancholic lyrical indictment serve to depict a culture at war with itself and the shadows of its past, an Empire of dirt watered with rivers of blood. Music, not so much for playing musical chairs on the Titanic, as much as turning those chairs into a raft while there is still time to do so.
Blous3 - Synchronized Swimming (Cherub Dream Records)
I could be a hack and begin and end this review of Sacramento's Blous3 and their LP Synchronized Swimming by saying that it represents the most consistent Sonic Youth has been since the early '90s... but I'm not a hack, so here goes. Blous3 is a group that has managed to muster an aesthetic that somehow manages to combine the dyspeptic melodicism of post-hardcore in the vein of Unwound, and dare I say, Super Unison, with the disorienting dystopian cacophony of East-coast no-wave, and in the process they have managed to summon a cindery muse that communicates something of the blindness and amnesiac aura of present-day society, where nearly everything seems to be known and accounted for, while truth and any collective grip on reality appear to become slipperier and less well defined by the day. We are all just synchronized swimmers in the fog of another's delusion, and we are all just divers in the dark, the only silver lining to be had in this mirthless miasma is that it is a pool of deepening iniquity that we tread in unison.
Serengeti - Kenny Dennis IV (Othar)
Chicago rapper Serengeti deepens the legacy of his alter-ego
Kenny Dennis with a fourth LP elaborating on the aging Southside Chicagoan and
all-seasons sports enthusiast's exploits. There are actually two interwinding
stories on this LP- one told from Kenny's perspective, characterized by
easy-gliding but resonating soul-soaked donuts with an icing of spicy,
giardiniera-flavored hooks that enlarge the ephemera of the protagonist's
work-a-day, plebian lifestyle with monumental metaphorical import. The other
narrative arch is relayed from the perspective of comedian Anders Holm, who
reconnects with Kenny after retiring from the life of a professional parkour-er
to embark on a fanciful odyssey through the Midwest backed by a rustic and
eerie, neo-gothic pastiche soundtrack courtesy of Sufjan Stevens. The threads
eventually weave together in a seemingly super-ordinary spectral encounter in
Kenny's apartment, putting a bow on a beautifully realized and layered tapestry
that articulates the gauzy barriers that delineate self-perception,
self-knowledge, and our awareness of the world. Sometimes, the simplest of
things are the hardest to explain.
This record was my introduction to the Macedonian jazz trio
Svetlost and I'm pretty impressed with what I found. Relying on deep grooves
riding a ripple of hard-driving percussion, the LP has a better sense of
forward motion and willingness to embrace vitalic impulses than most rock
records I've heard this year. Not surprising as their main sources of influence
are doom metal, noise rock, and other bands that combine doom metal with noise
rock and jazz. It's not as straightforward as it sounds, though, and there is
an undercurrent of uninhibited improvisation that depends on honed technical
acumen, which draws the trio closer in execution to the circuitously groovy
likes of The Art Ensemble of Chicago than more cleanly categorized but still
experimental rock acts like River of Nile. One more thing; the name of the
album is inspired by an untitled piece by the jazz duo Muntean and Rosenblum,
informally associated with a phrase found in the records liner notes: EVERYTHING
WAS AS IT HAD BEEN A MINUTE AGO, EXCEPT FOR A SENSE OF GENERAL SUSPENSION, AS
OF THINGS HOLDING THEMSELVES IN STILLNESS, NOT DARING TO BREATHE.
NYC duo Snow Strippers pack together rough sequences of
glittering electronics and pretty polymer-based vocal performances in an
invitation to a laser-light show in a subwoofer-lined space that lies somewhere
between your occipital lobe and the canopy of your newly bedazzled adrenal
gland. On their follow-up to last year's Night Killaz Vol. 1, deep club mixes
overwhelm you with longing and ease you down a resin-encrusted slide to the
other side of dissociation and into a plushy lined nest of cerebral satiety,
panting in the afterglow of spellbound enamored excess- a lesson in
nocturnal jouissance somewhere between the bleak romantic, witchy trance
of Sidewalks and Skeletons, and the soul-battery overclocking chaos of Crystal
Castles.
Billiam - Animation Cel (Legless Records)
Malbourn's Billiam is one of a handful of artists who seem
to have a mostly international following and somehow still feel like a local
goofball. They just have this extremely friendly, frenetic energy about them
that may remind you of that one person who works at the local health food
store who always has a smile on their face or a guy from your hometown who
somehow manages to land an opening slot at every house show within driving
distance from his house. Billiam's busy, hare-brained brand of garage rock has
developed over the years into a sprawling catalog, of which Animation Cel is
the latest, and subjectively, greatest edition- honing their abundance of spastic
and herk-and-jerk lo-fi tendencies into groovy refuges of overcaffeinated
tangents and buzzbomber ecstasy. With Animation Cel, Billiam has seemingly
perfected all their best moves, and it will be worth tuning in to see how they
expand their storyboard/playbook from here and into next season.
Chinese American Bear - Wah!!! (Moshi Moshi Music)I first became aware of Seattle duo Chinese American Bear
when they played Reggie’s on Chicago's
near-Southside (one of my favorite venues). It's worth noting that this venue
is within walking distance from the city's Chinatown district, which,
incidentally, would be a pretty chill place to take a stroll while listening to
their record Wah!!! (pronounced, Wow if you're EFL). Sung in half Mandarin and
half English, these tracks feel like an update to the slinkier side of '90s
psychedelic-pop with a splash of Pizzicato-style yé-yé panache and a powdery
speckling of sunny slacker skiff-riffs a la Mac DeMarco during his most laid
back but consequential 2010s run. Sweet and yummy, with enough of a kick to
rattle the birdhouse you keep your brain cooped up in but energized by enough natural magnetism to
hold it, and you, together for the entire duration of this sugar-powered,
kaleidoscopic ride.
Jock - Labyrinth (Cherub Dream Records)California noise goths Jock have arrived to bury you in
vibes on their debut EP Labyrinth, a web of atmospherically angsty currents and
overcast displays of winsome sound that linger hauntingly like the resonating
toll of a distant belfry in an abandoned church. Embodying beauty in decay,
stark shocks of arpeggiated grooves, and intangible melodicism weave through
these tracks like a shade leaping from mirror to mirror as it encircles a
cobweb-strewn den. A dire message from below ferried on angel's wings.
95Corolla - Long Time Listener / First Time Caller ( We're Trying Records)
In decades past, an emo band who played music this catchy and destined to embark on their own version of the Eras tour would have a dated Simpson's reference or some similar article of pop culture ephemera hanging around their neck like a Gen X albatross. A group with a name like 95Corolla would have been more likely to have joined a weed-fueled warband with the likes of Zeke or New Bomb Turks to maraud across the American West for a couple of summers, before semi-retiring from the road and settling for a full-time job with benefits (What is the modern-day equivalent of these bands... Tuff Sudz? I could see that marquee.) Low and behold, the group most likely to pick up the mantel of Taking Back Sunday on the bloody, hung-over morning (decades) after is a group from Tennessee who are as durable as raw leather but come across as soft and cool as high-grain suede. Their debut LP,
Long Time Listener / First Time Caller, is your first and best opportunity to get acquainted with the bigness and affable introspection of their hooky, hail-mary-throwing sound. When a good time calls, don't leave it hanging. Pick up the receiver- this one is for you!
Arthur King - UMN (March of the Penguins) (AKP Recordings)This sound project from Arthur King aka Peter Walker was
originally improvised as an accompaniment to a public showing of Luc Jacquet's
March of the Penguins as part of the Unknown Movie Night series. Glacial and
expansive, yet worldly and emotionally retentive, the hibernal quality and
subtle grandness of its aural geometry earnestly illustrate the splendor and
trepidation of the journey which it accompanies, weaving and chortling in the
throes of one of life's great harrowing cycles.
Bleak Magician - How the Disappearance Appeared to Us (Self-Released)
Bleak Magician's How the Disappearance Appeared to Us is a
tribute to the mystery of a man who went missing only to reappear and assist
with its completion. Bleak Magician's prime mover, Srogi Mroczek, who primarily
works in and around black metal projects, wrote the majority of the album
following the fraternal flight of his sibling, only to have the wayward brother reappear on the
first day of recording and perform on the album meant to embody his absence.
The oily, acerbic quality of the music is like a family portrait being boiled
in turpentine, colors running and leeching from its pores to reveal a
bone-shaded canvas beneath made of interwoven strands of dead connections and
static as thick as flies around a dying calf. A coronation of detachments, a
temple lined with candles that bare no heat, like Tom Waits barking outside
the Devil's dunk tank, a dayglow bridge across the River Styx so bright that it
will bleach your vision to cross it.
Yuni Wa - You've Come So Far (Doom Trip Records)Little Rock's Yuni Wa produces a golden ouroboros on his
40th release to date, You've Come So Far. While not his most recent effort
(that would be the club and jungle-infused Yunism), the nebulous circuit board blaze and synthetic mood lighting of
this scintillating retrospective hints at a future yet to be realized by projecting his past self into the
stream of the present as it hurdles him forward in a leapfrog motion over eons
and promontories of epiphany. Recycling his past work through an explosive
process of reimagining, he has injected himself with the venom of chance,
re-rolling the die again and again, and invariably managing to reconcile the results with fortune in his corner.
2003ub313 - Giants (The Charon Collective)
High-minded post-hardcore out of Minnesota, 2003ub313 keep their eyes trained on the sky on their EP,
Giants. Tracking the path of celestial colossi through the cosmos, the group reflects on their own relative place in the twisted topography of this island of dirt, contemplating how they can become worthy of the stewardship they have been entrusted with in this mutinous garden, as they are beset by scavenging clouds of doubt that intervene between them and the light of flourishing attainment. This is a record that necessarily describes eternal struggles for balance in personal terms, not because such struggles are merely reducible to a single vantage point, but because eternity is the tapestry that links all such passing junctures together into a meaningful pattern with significance beyond any of its individual threads, even as each entwine give it its shape.
How Much - 083024.vacantdreams (Fish Prints / Infinity Dungeon / Ingrown Records)
Thor Mailet of Fish Prints Records (also the recording project of the same name) recorded
083024.vacantdreams with his friend Cosmo Fenn, and a few other co-conspirators, in a house in Maine over the course of two sleepless days (verified! they did not sleep at all for 48 hours straight), producing a tangential series of hauntingly vespertine and Catherdrale-shaped resonances through which they chase the dreams that eluded its makers during the advent of its birth. An investigation into open-air claustrophobia, narrow minimalist accretions, slushy spouts of cold remembrance, and winking moon phases that glisten without the aid of the sun. It's always nightfall somewhere.
Alien Nosejob - Turns the Colour of Bad Shit (Total Punk Records)
This is the 7th release from Jake Robertson with his
ever-shape-shifting sleaze-rock hybrid Alien Nosejob. Turns the Colour of Bad
Shit is a welcome divergence from the blurry-eyed mod rock of The Derivative
Sounds of…Or… A Dog Always Returns to its Vomit (released just 10 months prior,
but still a far cry from the thoughtful but wiry psychedelia of Various Fads
& Technological Achievements. Here, Jack has adopted a kind of hip-checking,
greaser-geek, and pastiche-psychedelic Adverts-esque amalgamation, a form that
allows him to rage righteously against phonies, sandbag-headed pillocks,
wannabe rock stars, and any number of other juicy, deserving targets just
begging to have their grapes squeezed. It's easily the most pissed-off-sounding
record since Once Again the Present Becomes the Past and it's a look (and sound!)
that suits him well.
Year Twins - Leveled (We're Trying Records)
The Danish theorist Søren Kierkegaard described in his
writings a progressive draining of meaning from the modern world which he
termed "Leveling," a process of abstraction that befalls individuals,
where all of their unique struggles and motives are assigned the same value as
any other idle human activity, as if a tablecloth has been thrown over
them, flattening out and obscuring their existence, rendering them equivalent
to a piece of furniture, occupying space, but not really living. I get the
sense that this existential obscurance is touched on, however lightly, on Ohio
trio Year Twins' LP, Leveled, especially on the title track (spelled
"LVLD"), where a prickly tug and torrent of riffs elevate lyrics that
describe fears of one's self-fading away in another's mind and familiar faces
melting away into lusterless textures devoid of meaning, becoming like the wood grain of
a table. Elsewhere on the mathy, 6th-floor head-dive "Turn Into
Dracula," the group describes a process of becoming the living dead
through grinding repetition and gradual social isolation, while the riotously
Rosenstock-esque "Ghost Thief Funeral" provides a vantage point from
which to view a thorough acquiescence, and receding from all human
interactions, as if the narrator had become a ghost haunting an endless
procession at their own wake. Despite all this, Leveled has great energy and
could be described (and I am actually saying this) as a plucky, pop-punk album
about disappearing into your own shadow, staining the Earth at your point of
disappearance as a memorial to one's own lack of purpose and distinction. In
other words, a life that has been totally Leveled.
Alright, everybody, settle down. We now have an answer for why there are UFOs scanning the New Jersey coast... they're lost, simple as. Where they want to be is in Arizona so that they can beam up some new jams from Vapor Eyes- get 'um fresh from the ol' brain tap. Vapor Eyes is a house music project from producer David Cohen (formerly of Chicago, I believe). Cohen is a self-described “passionate crate digger” who claims influences from rock to hip-hop, and everything in between, and his latest EP
Watch the Skies is exemplary of his uniquely smooth and effortless seeming sequencing style, combining floaty jazz loops with punchy reggae hooks, bucking breakbeat fills, and vapory tranquil injections of FM ear-candy, pricked and prodded by discontinuous lines of inquiry scraped from AM band junkyards. Part meditation, part prayer for a high power to intervene in our mortal follies... or at least to send a big enough asteroid to put an end to the madness.
+CAREGIVER+ - Within A Forest Dark (Outcast Tape Infirmary)
Nashville post-hardcore group +CAREGIVER+ appears to have finally locked in on their desired/optimal sound on their EP,
Within A Forest Dark- combining tender and vulnerably poetic lyrics with unrelentingly ascendant Coheed-cultivated solos and rare-form rock grooves, scorched and tarred with harrowing ribbons of blackened metalcore and death-embodying hardcore. Between its ambition and brutality, it's a record that feels drawn and wound between punishing pillars of La Dispute and Wolves in the Throne Room, like a blaze of midwestern twinkle-core in the northern sky.
Undeath - More Insane (Prosthetic Records) Undeath aren't fucking around. The album is called More
Insane, and that's exactly what it delivers- insanity, and more of it. Crunchy,
bone-splintering riffs, vicious and relentless percussion, and vocals that have
the visceral quality of a bear drunk on blood and fermented stomach juices,
having just noshed the carcass of a hiker who's been baking in the summer sun
since mid-July. What's most interesting about the group's dynamics, and what
they really kick into high gear on this release, is their sense of melodicism.
Not in the typical groove metal or gritty-guitars/clean-vocals sort of way,
rather, the group has this uncanny sense of timing and an unsettling
acquaintance with harmonic layering that gives the grooves and solos on this
record an almost lyrical quality- every riff handing down another tale of
pitiless sorrow and bitter triumph, until your bones are bowing like bamboo shoots from the weight of it all. If you're not careful, they might just split you
like a wishbone- a dark wish for carnage fulfilled in flesh.
You Don't Have To Be Prepared is the first record I've encountered from El Paso group, EEP. Its name seems like it could double as the secondary title for a disaster preparedness manual... if it were trying to be cheeky, that is. Something like,
You Don't Have To Be Prepared... Unless You Want to Survive. Luckily, or maybe the opposite of that, what the band seems to be referring to is not readiness to persevere through a fire or an earthquake (although they may encounter these from time to time out West), but life itself, a challenge that is thrust upon all of us without warning, and which we ultimately step into, and leave, with nothing but your own skin (and after you reach the end of the road, not even that). Overall, it's an easy-going album, relaxed in tone and thoughtful in sonic and lyrical elocution that barters for a chance in the hopes of winning a few good years of the smooth road beneath their wheels.
MK Ultras - MK Ultras (Target Killer Records / Big Neck Records)
Programmed to kill every lingering moment of boredom and
last shred of decency you have left to cling to, Ohio's MK Ultras are a
refreshingly retro and persuasively passionate take on classic hardcore punk.
On their self-titled, the group elevates melody over predictable mosh-pooling
riffs without failing to deliver the menacing stomp and cunning clip of
alienated burst-fire anger that feeds our basest intuitions. Paranoid and
pulsing with flayed-brained intensity, they're a Ramones-infused and
Wipers-flavored blotter bath to waterboard away any nagging intrusive thoughts
or traumatic conditioning that might otherwise sully the eternal reflection of
sunshine cast off your smooth and spotless mind.
Footballhead - Overthinking Everything (Tiny Engines) For various reasons (none of which I'm inclined to explain
at this very moment... alright, it was me- I'm the reason), my father-in-law was introduced to Footballhead’s music,
and now, every time I go to his house, he puts on their album Overthinking
Everything, and cranks the volume WAY UP, because as he explains to me every
time he does this, you have to play the record really really loud in order to
get the most out of it. I think about how happy this makes him when I listen to
the record privately at a more reasonable volume, and it makes me happy too.
Ultimately, this record is all about familiarity, friendship, connection, and
overcoming the personal insecurities that might drive a wedge between you and
the simple pleasures of life and those you share it with, celebrating the
mystery of our affinities, as well as giddy sonic pluralism of early '00s skate
culture (if that speaks to you as well). In that way, it's easily the most
optimistic and, at the same time, least cynical pop-punk records I've
encountered, maybe ever. Of course, if you don't want to overthink it- you can
just ride all the sick riffs and arena-sized grooves this album has to offer into a total state of punk rock bliss!
Collateral - We Still Know (Fortress Records)
Florida hardcore that is faster and more reckless than an oversized pickup truck helmed by a dude in a Salt Life shirt- Collateral is on a mission to maximize the damage they can inflict on the upper 48 from their HQ in the Sunshine State on their debut EP,
We Still Know. These are seven tracks awash in tides of face-gnawing, shark-toothed riffs, iron-toed ass-kicking grooves, and mean and gnarly mosh parts- all tailored to give you a reason to go war with your fellow life-convicts and unleash relentless low-pressure fronts of windmill kicks and hurricanes of human flesh on each other in the pit. On this record, Collateral loses nothing and trades up in a big way in their pursuit of delivering a world-shattering beat down.
Mo Dotti - Opaque (Self-Released)
Coming two years after the group's 2022 LP,
Guided Imagery, their second LP,
Opaque, is even more transparently beautiful and whimsical than its predecessor, with the group feeling more fluid and softly persuasive in their presentation of wavy, organic geometry as it radiates out in ebullient vistas of living sound. Synesthetic reels play out in reems of dangling scenery, through the gaps of which you are pulled like a sparrow gliding on the invisible carriage of a jet stream. A nurturing luster to feed the blooming of a carnelian-shaded blossom in the depths of a receptive inner terrace, a secluded shelf within your inner walls where heart and soul meet.
RXM Reality - No. 1 in the World (Hausu Mountain Records)
As esoteric as producer RXM Reality's tracks tend to be, I
don't think the title of this album, No. 1 in the World, is all that much of a
gag. I think he'd genuinely be stoked for people to be jamming on his brazen, babbling rivulets and the stony, spine-twisting house beats he's skillfully shaped while they shop for personal items at Walgreens, or during the lull betwixt sprees of play at sporting events, or even to ring in the nuptials at a wedding reception. Wherever you'd expect to hear the music that knits together our
common social fabric, RXM Reality would be happy to lend his slick and snaggy
grooves to the mix. He probably has a better shot at breaking into these
domains than other 'extreme' sound artists, frankly, as there is a well-cast
cushiness to his sequencing and tonal tempering, and the smoothness of his
grooves is unmatched despite their outward jaggedness. He might not be crashing
the New Years party at the Sphere in Las Vegas just yet, but it's truly just a
matter of time. It's his (RXM) Reality; we are just fortunate enough to live in
it.
If you're not laughing, you're crying. It was the unofficial motto of Ebisu Town, as well as many pauperized human settlements throughout history, both real and embedded in the imagination. Montreal's Laughing is far from crying poverty but nevertheless invites you to share in a hearty howl at the cosmic joke and collapsed disposition of modern living through cleanly laced hooks and honeydew-drizzled harmonies, smuggling an almost adolescent devotion to principles of power pop goodness and fluid post-country dappled recastings that bobble and swirl like bodies playing tag in a celestial lava-lap. Their latest album is a whisper as loud as a cannon, signaling the falling veil of some inviolable certitude- it is written, it is sung, it is passed down
Because It's True.
Estee Nack x Giallo Point - Papitas 2 (Mass Control Records)
Ten hot, fresh, and greasy slabs of hater-bait and grim guidance pushed out between the grate-like teeth of the reaper's maw have landed face up in golden splendor on your plate courtesy of the culinary cerebral summit of Estee Nack & Giallo Point in the form of their latest collaboration,
Papitas 2. Chewy bars flesh out tense, specter-raising loops, giving texture and girth to stories where muscle, the flash of reflexes, and keen and keener minds separate the quick from the dead. Juice and blood blend together in this palpable exposition of pulp fictions and the grind of a life carved out of death's own rind.
Arcadia Grey - Casually Crashing (Smart Punk Records)
When I first approached Arcadia Grey's second LP, Casually Crashing, I immediately spotted the song title "PDaddy Hoodie." With all the revelations about the music industry that came to light in 2024, I'm very glad that someone is focusing on the positives in this world, i.e., the myriad benefits of listening to Prince Daddy and promoting the wearability of their merch vs. the nigh confirmed details of the den of sadism swirling around P Diddy. To the surprise of no one, the music industry is once again shown to be an enormous, stewing pile of garbage, with only a few fresh peaks of laudable decency rising above the muck. Arcadia Grey has staked their claim atop one of these high refuges, exemplified by Casually Crashing's convivial and theatrical-inclined take on pop-punk and DIY emo in service of sincere odes to growing up and learning strength and self-reliance... and yet, still lacking the courage to confront your roommate about the dishes. One step at a time, I guess... one foot in front of the other, and pretty soon you'll be crashing out that door.
Gurry Wurry - Happy For Now (Self-Released)
I'm just going to say it... Gurry Wurry's
Happy For Now is beautiful and yet, completely confusing. The Scottish singer has this deep and barreling tone to his vocals that comes across like he's singing with his whole chest... if his chest were the size of an average water heater. He projects in this strange resonant style of singing in a way that almost makes it sound like he's drowning... and dragging you into the drink with him. Couple this performance with reservedly affectionate and dedicatedly hammy guitar work and sticky synth work that stains the compositions on this record like squid ink, and you have a confoundingly gorgeous monstrosity that feels like it was raised up all wrong but still manages to stand proudly on all four misshapened limbs.
Happy For Now feels purposefully inelegant, but that's just what makes it undeniably distinguished.
Ghost Funk Orchestra - A Trip To The Moon (Coalmine Records)
Returning on a sling-shot orbit that flung him through parts unknown, producer Seth Applebaum has once again entered airspace within earshot of terrestrial mammalia in order to beam down a frequency of funky and bodacious reverie as cool and enigmatic as the dark side of the moon. Ghost Funk Orchestra's A Trip to the Moon continues the project’s mission of carving its signature in the absorbing knot of warp tethers that interchange along the oracular evolutionary seams of '60s funk, modish garage rock, and spotlight-stealing R'n’B, all while planting its flag in an array of outlying constellations, and drawing them together in a cosmic sort of macrame, a process that has the effect of to transforming the entirety of the Milky Way into one giant love nest. Prepare to explore strange new worlds of desire, to seek out new loves and new ways of loving, and to boldly go where only Eros knows the way...
Mary Sue - Voice Memos From A Winter In China (Clementi Sound)
Singapore rapper, Mary Sue, documents his tour across China
in his sweetly, wistful and sanguine LP, Voice Memos From A Winter In China.
Through slickly reflective and graciously obliged lines, we follow Mary Sue
along long expenses of freshly paved highway, around mountain bluffs and into
placid snow-swept valleys, through the back doors of hole-in-the-wall bars,
between the booths of family-owned restaurants, and under the guarding blaze of
small-stage lights as they sanctify space for his platonic shift into a rhyming
sage of ethnographic elucidation and trans-continental civil concordance.
Classic, but not classist, it's the road record of the year, if not the
decade.
Home Invasion - Enemy (WAR Records)
Enemy is the first LP from Chicago hardcore rage factory
Home Invasion since they rangled a new vocalist, James Farn. As James explained to
No Echo
back in April of this year, the group's goal with the record was to make
something that compelled the listener to think of themselves as potential human
ordnance, ready to drop from the stage onto their fellow fleshy wastoids in
order to inflict maximum devastation. "If your feet don’t leave the ground
while listening, we have failed," is a direct quote from the band, and honestly,
if the circle-saw-like riffs, fast-core grooves, and fiery, human-blast
furnace-like vocals don't get your feet moving, it's probably because your
heart stopped during one of their songs and you're currently in need of
defibrillation. Luckily for you, the guitar parts carry enough electricity to
cold start a Buick. If that isn't enough to raise you from the floor, then you
might be better off staying supine until somebody can plant you somewhere you
can rot in peace.
Jimmy Lacy's SiP has emerged from his hermitage located somewhere in the Chicago marshes with a richly subdued LP of calmly transmundane melodic grooves, grown and pasteurized to suit even the most discerning of palates. He calls this LP
Leos Ultras, an abundantly botanical series of tenderly cultivated, densely patterned ruminations raised to prompt contented self-reflection and appreciative assessments of the social ecology from which each of us ultimately germinated, in both a literal and sociological sense. It is a wordless commemoration of all the common things that are too miraculous to explain in mere linguistic terms.
Anna Öberg - Sin (Xenophone International)
Sin, the fourth album from Swedish singer Anna Öberg
continues her course and prolonged incursion into the world of EDM. Coming from
a punk background, Anna brings a certain punchy vitality to her vocal
performances that complements the gliding basslines and icy synth burn of the
accompanying instrumentation with a suitably human intercession of soil, blood,
and spleen. Formidably mysterious and yet accommodatingly vitalistic,
Sin is
the ghost in the machine that transforms creaking tinmen into lithe and
exquisitely vulgarian acrobats.
Finom - Not God (Joyful Noise Recordings)
If someone asks if you're a god, the smart answer is usually "yes." Chicago's Finom run against such vestibules of conventional (and filmic) wisdom and seek to question contemporary assumptions of authority and control, all in one neat and tidy, spiny and shiny package- Not God is the fourth album by singer/songwriter duo Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart, and the first under their current nom de plume (RIP Homme and Ohmme, long live Finom). The refined minimalism of the group's approach is carried over into this latest record in a manner that continues to serve their defiantly distinctive and intuitive style of writing and performance in increasingly provocative ways. Descriptions of vices such as dirt eating, battles with technology over control of one's itinerary (and sanity), and outlines of the self as a house that someone else occupies, give these character sketches of modern life the figurative flesh required to leap from the merely metaphorical and land with both feet in the realm of the real. Finom might say that they're not God, but they're certainly channeling something transcendent on this record.
Bedbug - pack your bags the sun is growing (Disposable America)
I don't know why it tickles me so much that Dylan Citron describes his project Bedbug as indie rock. It is literally the thing Dylan says it is. It's rock music that is not distributed by a major label. But indie qua rock has developed a specific character and sound over the decades, which the project fits, but not exactly. I would call what they are doing emo, more specifically, which, in my own critical bias, is a determination that I'm forced to make due to the utter convergence of DIY and emo aesthetics in the last five years. Even though what Dylan is doing here feels very of the moment, their record,
pack your bags the sun is growing, isn't reducible to the sum of the work and influence of their peers. It is a furtive and yet playfully subdued inquest into the complexities of life's uncertainties through abstract storytelling and refreshingly tender instrumentation that are as clean in their fidelity as the lyrics are empathically composed- a product of an enduring and winding pursuit of small truths sifted from fluctuating expenses. It's a singular plot of marshy reflections where tiny creatures can coast on a mossy dream.
Argentinian dark rock duo El Guru and Romina Dusk express a mystic orientation sans institutional sanction on their second album
Sin Altares. Coming seven years after their previous release, the agonizing and gothically chimerical quality of their Earthy and exquisite elocutions paints a profound picture of endless nights stirred by undercurrents of vibrant phantasmal elegies. A dark and beautiful record, veiled in esoteric intimacies, and undaunted by the strength required to bring their swarthy invocations to the pale of enlightened recognition.
Home Entertainment - Qi (Self-Released)
Chicago's Home Entertainment are the "roaches of rock 'n roll"- or so they say... What they actually are three dudes who know how to write a catchy riff and a sailing hook. Their second LP,
Qi (as in "chee," not IQ backwards), is a sardonically stochastic press-ganging of live-wire post-punk grooves, proggy wormholes and interstitial diversions, and freak-brained garage rock with pathological pop-sensibilities. Instantaneously engaging and brimming with sarcastic seeming observations, you can enjoy
Qi anywhere you find the torpor of boredom seeping in, at home, at work, on the L, a meeting with your accountant about your impending IRS audit- whenever tedium threatens, Home Entertainment attenuates.
your arms are my cocoon - death of a rabbit (Reasonable Records)
your arms are my cocoon continues to be one of the many roughly hewn but still lustrous gems of the underground - not just in Chicago but in the wider world of DIY. Each release from YAAMC feels more momentous than the last and much more ostentatious than anything so subtle and intermittently shy-seeming should (especially when you consider how much of it is typically captured via smartphone).
death of a rabbit is, of course, no exception in this regard. Easily their most ambitious release to-date, the album explores the birth and (un)death of a relationship through airy lofts of drizzly dry guitar chords, wooly electronic textures, and insistently self-immolating dives into skramzy schisms. Sometimes, the record feels like burning alive in your own bed, while other times, you are set free to float above the ashes of what only seems like another's calamity as it unfolds. Suffocating under the weight of one's own devotion never felt so cozy.
Blushing - Sugarcoat (Kanine Records)
There is really no need to confectionize anything about the
latest release from Austin quadruple, Blushing, in order to make their music easier to swallow- that's because everything about it is sweet to its core already. Sugarcoat, the
third LP from the group, is a delightfully punchy amalgamation of grungy walls
of echo and gorgeously bold grooves that crackle and combust like technicolor
sweets packed with firecrackers. Swirling through the sugary chaos are the
clarion belts of vocalists Michelle Soto and Christina Carmona, whose calm but
ranging harmonies resolve into a variegated plain of modest composure by which
the listener can traverse the fog of distortion and candied calamity unscathed.
Catch this glow-up before it blows-up!
Anna Butterss - Mighty Vertebrate (International Anthem)
Mighty Vertebrate is such an amazing title for jazz bassist Anna Butterss's second solo album. It really is. Why, you ask? Because it's an album that is the product of a certain boldness of approach. Every track, every part, was born of some self-imposed limitation as well as an openness to accept the results of these elective boundaries. It is also the product of a particular tendency towards boldness in the face of the uncertainties of collaboration- allowing others (most notably Jeff Parker) to leave their mark on the album in unmistakable ways. These subtle arbitrations of creative valor have cultivated one of the more uniquely flexible, sonically chimeric, and yet distinctive jazz records of the year- an unequivocal inspiration to listeners and peers alike.
Castle Rat - Into The Realm (King Volume Records)
Honestly, if you come across a year-end, AOTY, or just a general recap of 2024 that doesn't include Castle Rat's
Into The Realm, you might as well burn it, send it to hell, and forget about it. This is one of the most gorgeously dark and moody albums I've heard all year. It is graceful and exudes a prideful kind of darkness, having been recorded in the shell of an abandoned church in keeping with its diabolically defiant nature. A ruin-raiding caravan of doom-laden blues in the vein of Coven and other such witchy sonic phantasma, baring its whimsically washed barbarism down a path of grim enlightenment revealed by the prismatic luster of an ancient crystal of unknown origins. It's like a clash of ancient acuity with a modern fog-storm of techno-wizardry in a future plain that manifests its own infernal existence by the manipulation of leprous muses and the beautiful damned. A near-perfect heavy metal record as far as I am concerned.
Amy O - Mirror, Reflect (Winspear)
The making of Bloomington musician Amy O's album
Mirror, Reflect brings to mind a Japanese phrase that I'm rather fond of: 継続は力なり(Keizoku wa chikara nari), which more or less means, "persistence is power" in English. A product of a consistent dedication to process, this collection of invariably Heavenly raising lo-fi punk manifests dreamy contemplations on motherhood, friendship, and living with uncertainty in a playful daydream demarcated by lilac textured vocals, puckish minimalism and the soft embrace of plushy feedback. Every step you take is one step closer to where you need to be, and
Mirror, Reflect is the soundtrack to the cyclical process of renewal that makes personal progress possible.
Konoha - Komorebi (We're Trying Records)
Konah's Komorebi is the first Italian emo band I've ever encountered. Ironically, they've elected to give their album (and themselves) a Japanese name, but I think the reference to light shining through overhead foliage which the album's title invokes is very fitting for the group's material. There is a maximalist earnestness to the way they throw themselves into the music on this record, almost like they're trying to punch holes in the surface of a barrier that separates them from the listener to allow the light, sound, and fury from their side to stream through and illuminate the dark beyond- very much like the mid-day sun cutting through the shadow cast by a great gnarled tree. I think a lot of groups could learn from the passion on display here because it is truly something to behold and easily transcends any hurdles, such as language or cultural context, which might otherwise alienate people not familiar with the Italian language or life in the Northern section of the peninsula they call home.
Hey! Look at that, you made it to the end. That's super!
Year Twins - Leveled (We're Trying Records) 
