Album Review: Jr. Thomas & The Volcanos - Rockstone

Since reviewing JER's Bothered / Unbothered earlier this year, I've dispelled the curse of nerves that had been put up to barricade me against enjoying ska and raggae and have started to revisit some semi-recent favorites, such as 2018's Rockstone, the sophomore LP from Minnesota-born reggae artist, Jr. Thomas, aka Thomas McDowall. The project got its start when Thomas joined forces with former Aggrolites guitarist Brian Dixon with the intention of creating a tribute to the classic, honey-toned reggae of artists like Jimmy Cliff. The title Rockstone is a reference to the fact that we memorialize things we adore in stone so that they last long after we are gone. Hence, the album is a love letter to not just Jamaican music, but also Thomas’ wife, family, friends, and band mates, a tribute to humanity’s boundless capacity for love and drive towards unity. “True love,” as Thomas notes, “cannot be defeated.” A good entry point to this album is “What A Shame” with its warm organ-led melodies, skipping syncopation, and heartfelt vibe. “Til You’re Gone” has a earnestly smitten doo wap feel, while “Rockstone” is a monumentally subdued close-dancing lullaby, and “Second Time Around” is a perfectly balanced slow-jam that could easily pass for a hot Maytals single circa ’68. Rockstone, it's as stready as they come. 

Available via Colemine Records (Not Coalmine Records. Can you imagine a record label going by Coalmine in 2025. Cringe. smdh.)

Album Review: No Problemo! - Year Of The Frog

More Michicagn emo! That's what I need at the moment, and No Problemo! (out of Lansing), wet behind the ears, and with a Spanish 101 under the bench-seat in their van, are fit and decorously determined to deliver. Year Of The Frog is the group's debut EP, hopping up to snag the spotlight a full 6 years after the band formed as a result of a friendship kindled on r/emo.* Their six-song seminar on living your best life, vengefully, and spitefully, online and otherwise, is light enough in tone to float on a lily pad without sinking into the mire below, remaining buoyant while not neglecting substance in terms of lyrics and managing to supply some incredibly crunchy riffs, all of which crinkle and pop deliciously, like deep fried bullfrog served up as the premier repas at a greasy French eatery. The gang gets twinkly on the ruefully optimistic opener "Gas Station Joe Jonas" and follows it up with the slingblade guitar sway of "r/Emo Drive," a quiver of cyanide-laced best wishes unleashed to rain down on a deserving pariah (or just some subreddit mod). The rhythmic interplay on "On My Glob" is easy to get tangled up in, even while the vocals steep you in a dint of bile and top-shelf vinegar. The chaotic energy of the prior track is a fair counterweight to the grungy, second-stringer angst and pushy reverie of growing pains embodied by the simply titled "MVP." The penultimate number, "twitter is a beautiful place & i am no longer afraid to die" is nothing if not grandiose- following a brief prolog of spoken word poetry it confronts the listner like an emphany upon realizing that they've been stood up on a date, causing a whole universe of aniscedents to converse on a single painful point of clarity, while managing to wind us up perfectly for the bubbly, down-and-out closer, "Mr. Pibb Ain't Quite Flyin' Off The Shelves, Todd," a track which match the vehemence of it predecessor as it hauls ass all the way back to twinkle-town, a return to the starting line of the EP that nips at its own toes, demonstrating the band's flexibility one last time by tying the album into a proper em-roboros. 

* Surprisingly, this is not a more common origin story. That said, there is more to life than updoots. 

Album Review: Provoker - Dark Angel EP

Provoker is such a strange creature to me. The LA group replicates cyber-punk aesthetics to package downtempo pop and R'nB, which always seems to be in the process of sinking into its own shadow, like a prehistoric tiger proudly drowning in a tar pit. They remind me a lot of The Weeknd if he sobered up and hired Drab Majesty to back him up on an album. I'm obviously not put off by the group's more accessible inclinations, but what keeps me coming back to their records is the subtly alien and arrestingly rawboned quality of their grooves, especially the guitar work, which has this ugly and lonesome jilt to it, like its violently shrugging away from a reassuring hand on its shoulder or some similar extension of human warmth. Their 2018 debut EP Dark Angel is particularly good at giving this wanton sort of cold shoulder to the listener. Opener "Flinch Awake" is a drizzly veil of nightmare-gaze, whose clawing chord progressions absolutely give the impression that you are being stalked through the entirety of its run time. Much later, the possessive closer "Body Vehicle" revels in an oppressive sort of sodden angst, like someone had seeded a cloud with annotated sheet music transcribed from The Cure's early-80s oeuvre, and now it's pouring buckets of melanocytic acidic tears all down our backs. Then there is the title track, which begins by writhing with stark and sinister assurance before settling into a plaintive, heart-breaking dalliance while bladed riffs pierce its back and sides like the proverbial Saint Sebastian- a martyr for its ill-fated passions. Provoker still has a lot to offer these days, but they really tapped into something dire and divine on Dark Angel. 

Album Review: JJ Sweetheart - Big Things

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