Album Review: Gun - Neo Notown

It's hard to overstate the mythic position that guns have within the contemporary imagination. Sources of power and dispensers of fear, they are implements that set their sights on the hinge points of history, striking them and spinning them on their axis; an exchange of smoke and blood in incalculable magnitudes; the trajectory of countless pivotal, piercing brass streaks tear through the tomes of time like a bullet through butterfly wings, rewriting the course of human affairs in their wake. One of the enduring legacies of the Mongol incursion into Europe, it was the gun that changed the tides of the Sengoku period when Portuguese traders washed up on the Southern rim of the Japanese archipelago, bringing this violent innovation full circle and changing the nature of conquest in East Asia 400 years after gunpowder was introduced to the West by the great horde. Every revolution in the modern era has leaned on this tool as both agency and arsenal, justice and deliverance, while every uprising that has seen itself smothered was choked out in a haze of hot, chalky blue residue coughed out by the same. Then there is America's specific relationship to these instruments of grandiose annihilation, a pillar and totem of popular political strength; they mostly serve as playthings for the socially marginal and declassed for performing toothless tantrums in provincial wooded areas, and as the means for settling petty grudges and satisfying venomous resentments in a litany of tragedies recounted across timelines and news feeds, landing in the lap of the public with little more than a resigned sigh. Few would aver to embody such a disputatious and complex legacy, or don such a heritage of revolution and ruin by choice, and yet New York City tetrad Gun have proven so bold. On their second LP, Neo Notown, the group compresses their insurgent energy into a progressive message of hope broadcast across a desaturated techno-surveillance dystopia, not unlike the Big Apple of present-day, or any other collapsing megacity one can find themselves slowly crushed by across the globe. A jet-set soundtrack that twists early '00s alt metal, industrial rock, noise punk, and funk into a riffled cylinder of steel by which to discharge a burst of pure adrenaline to your cortex in a colorful splash of heat-ignited, reactive rebellion. They sweep and stun from the outset on the groove-swagger slugfest opener and title track, before bouncing the turnstile and grinding the rails on "Laser Gun," directing fluctuating phaser fields of pitch-shifting guitar fluctuations to power a Cypress Hill-summiting royal with a panged, determined, and desperate trust in the direction of Stabbing Westward. Wacked-out grooves rebound off brick facades, flickering streetlights, and past spying doorway portals on the clandestine cylinder slide and delayed sizzling payload of "Bullet Town," while "Walking on the Sun" sprays straight from the hip, letting the trigger slip as they carve a full-metal manifesto in the air, bars whirling in a ballet of carnage like spent cases spinning south of heaven, all while grooves claw at the seams of sonic propriety, prying away the varnish in a torquing separation of flesh from its fetters. "Star-Crossed Fighters" brings a knife to the fray, one large and sharp enough to rive the roof clean off a Buick, surprising the interior of the cabin, and your skull, with a glistening bath of uninvited sunshine, a high point which leaves room for the downshifting reprieve of "The Armory" to follow. Once fully recharged and resupplied, Gun takes aim and empties the clip on "Ready, Set, Action!" - a rich and chewy serving of lead salad with a side of gut-ripping riffs and stomp-steady grooves that will reduce the brawn of the unworthy to a pliable pulp, a fine-grain pâté suitable for the palate of the discerning sewer-dwelling vermin, it is a triumph that is preceded by a sweeping procession of closer "Victory" a track that rolls over the vanquished with light-footed, moonwalking grooves and a Richter scale-busting beat. You've heard voices of previous generations tell you to load up on guns and bring your friends; well, presently, you and your pals just need one to seize the day, and this is it- point-blank and in your face. Fill your hands, you son of a bitch, and show what grit you've got to give! Neo Notown or bust! 

Album Review: Paul Coleman - The Weather Man

You don't have to dig much to pry up stories about artists getting screwed sideways in the music industry. The frequency and severity of the repercussions reaped from advances taken and recouped in mythic levels of psychic damage, or the prevalence of general business chicanery, became almost a rite of passage for alternative artists in their dealings with the vampiric patronage of major label syndicates in the '90s- souls were reaved and dreams were decimated, scarring a whole generation of rock star wannabes- but you don't have to hunt down the survivors of the first wave of grunge to fill your ears with the horrors that circle the periphery of the lime light like a school of dagger-toothed piranhas- just buy any DIY musician a Pabst or treat them to a Yerba, and they'll unspool a yarn that will leave you hanging by the collar in despair over their dealings with the industry and the backstabbings, cross-stabbings, and bag-nabbings that define even the dive bar, dreg-scraping levels of the industry. One fine fellow who certainly saw his fill of it was Chicago's Paul Coleman. Originally of the (ironically) fatally fleeting funk ensemble Rasputin's Stash, and the pristine but untimely tarnished soul-pop quartet Crystal Winds, the enterprising keyman was presented with the opportunity to create a soundtrack for the newly launched Weather Channel sometime in the early '90s- a potential windfall that came his way because an executive at the channel was dating fellow Crystal Winds bandmate Corky Brown's (aka M.C. (Morris) Brown) sister. Writing the entire repertoire over a sleepless two-week marathon, the final cuts were accepted by the programming director and played on air, offering a refreshingly buoyant complement to the dry business of local forecasts and barometric reports- none of which ended up benefiting Paul though, as his whimsical climate compositions were tossed out with a sudden change in ownership, and he was never paid. It's always painful to witness talented people crash headfirst into the realities of corporate acquisition and power plays, like moths disappearing into a mass of goo as they intersect with a sedan windshield screaming down the Eisenhower, but as the fates preserve, Paul's recordings have been salvaged and repackaged for modern listeners' vindication under the title The Weather Man. The selection offered by this project presents a lighter side of funk, a crisp and invigorating, lean and balanced portrait of elegant simplicity that invites interpretation and absorbing contemplation, just as passing clouds compel the earthbound to divine galloping signs and symbols in the sky and place perspective on our relative position in a large, interconnected globe. Softly textured and accommodating, The Weather Man teems with a mist of optimism and a belief that all things will find a site of affordance to brace against the tempest and find one's fortunes in the fronts of simmering, silver-lined clouds as they swirl and billow about us. Hopefully these tracks bring you more luck than their maestro, or at least remind you to get everything in writing before you commit your heart and soul to it.

Destination is only excuse for the journey (Athens of the North).

Album Review: Ikebe Shakedown - Kings Left Behind

Thrones are toppled, kingdoms laid to waste, histories are reduced to sand, and all roads lead to ruin... but not if you're Ikebe Shakedown. The seven-member instrumental funk band out of Brooklyn, New York, may seem like they've abdicated and gone incognito since their 2019 LP, but their legacy has yet to be turned to ash by the ravages of time. Their sound is horn-driven, highly cinematic, stylishly psychedelic, and inspired by the soulful charm of Curtis Mayfield, the weighty rhythmic pulse of Fela Kuti, and the epic scope of '70s spaghetti western soundtracks. Kings Left Behind (as previously alluded, released in 2019)is the band's fourth studio album (and most recent), recorded straight to reel-to-reel by the band's bassist, Vince Chiarito. The album unveils an oasis of melodious intrigue with "Not Another Drop," establishing the group's predilection for gonzo grooves, which is supercharged on the following smoky, hookah-haze-infused "Unqualified," and is fully realized with a vengeance on the mid-album stinger, the momentous, bongo-and-horn-driven spanner "Hammer Into Anvil." "The Witness" takes things in a more mischievous direction, with its quivering guitars and spit-and-pucker percussion, a track that would slot easily into the soundtrack of some lost supernatural western thriller, set in a traveling carnival where all the orphaned performers inexplicably have telekinetic powers and a predilection to deploy them in a zeal for vindication. The most retro-sounding tracks on the album come near the end, with the spy-thriller-esque "No Going Back" and the rose-tinted slow jam "Kings Left Behind," a worthy pair of companions to help mask the cry of a gunshot ringing out over shifting desert dunes. It's the kind of album Coalmine Records exists to put out into the world. They dig through the rough and excavate the gems, so you don't have to.

Ain't no diamonds without Coal(mine Records).

2025 Year-End Invitational

Ah, another year, another year older, another year closer to kissing dirt. I should be less glib in my introduction for this year's list because this year was not so bad on my ears. Many artists of note, prestige, and accreditation that I've managed to keep a bead on had releases. Melody's Echo loaded a hot one into the Chamber, and Stereolab made themselves heard again with a fresh sonic assay. Billy Woods dropped an album in the same year that he and Elucid ignited a heater with The Alchemist, and then The Alchemist daisy-chained that dish with a second serving of Alfredo along with Freddie Gibbs. La Dispute crashed back into view with No One Was Driving the Car, White Reaper showed they still have something left in the tank with Only Slightly Empty, and Deftones shared some Private Music with the public. Also, Turnstile released Glow On again for some reason. It's all fantastic, and you won't hear a disparaging word from these lips as far as the quality of any of it, but...  why do I still feel underwhelmed? Am I just spoiled for choice? Spiritually sick? I can't say for sure, but I just can't muster the will to commentate on any of it. 

"Saying thing is your job! You have one job! Why you no do job good?!?" I hear you shrieking at me (hypothetically). Firstly, no, my actual job is much less interesting than writing about music (and incidentally pays much better too [emphasis for exaggeration]), and secondly, none of the "big" releases this year are of the kind that I even entertain for coverage here, normally. They're all either on major labels (or on labels that are large enough that they can run in the same pack as the majors on occasion), and they all have large enough audiences that my throwing 2 cents into the coffee can doesn't do much for either of us (emotionally, commercially, artistically, etc...)  

Then there is the fact that they're all huge la discourse artists, aka music makers that you have to have an opinion on (mandatorily sanguine btw unless you're carving a niche brand as a "discerning" contrarian [ie a fussy little bitch]) in order to build a reputation as a take-haver, taste-contriver, and cultural instigator (read: gatekeeper). None of that interests me. I'm not looking to become a marketable personality, one who imposes a canon on people, enforces a listening regimen, or gives people anxiety about what they are or aren't committing brainpower to enjoying (however low voltage). My goal here is to share what I find interesting/invigorating with you as a supplement to your other habits of listening and engagement, as a personal labor of love and expressive outlet, and hopefully in a way that is enough off the beaten path that you escape the dehumanizing torrent of algorithmic optimization- at least for the one minute to an hour or so it takes to read/listen one of my reviews/interviews (hey, a minute of fresh air in the prison yard a day helps reduce stress and illness in inmates according to leading studies on the subject, so you can think of me as providing a similar benefit). 

The other thing about all these big, crucial names in music (really any flagship standard-bearers in the moment) is that even when what they're doing is good, worthy, and platinum standard (which, in my estimation, it mostly is), emotionally, for me, it just lands like more "content." Like, I like what they do, but keeping up with them kind of feels like being on a treadmill long after the buildup of lactic acid in my system has caused my organs to begin humming with a concerning arrhythmia. As in, "Oh, so-and-so has a drop on the way, I should probably know what that's about," instead of IDK, giving my brain a break, or whatever... Continuing as before, it often feels like running an extra mile after I've already completed a 5k. I have to ask myself, am I doing this for my own health, or am I doing it because other people are going to run that extra mile, so I should too...? It's a paradox I've wrestled with for a while without a clear or satisfying resolution. 

Something that Danny Brown (whose LP, Stardust, was an essential release for me this year) said in an interview recently that resonated with me is that there are "too many artists, and not enough fans." This was in response to a general question about why it's harder than ever to find fresh-sounding music, and it's a sentiment I understand deeply. Everyone is trying to sell you something and no one is happy with what they've got. Too many proclaimers, and not enough people to hear their pronouncements. Too many profits, and not enough disciples. Too much butter and not enough popcorn. Especially as someone who considers themselves both an artist (don't laugh) and an avid listener (ok, fine, laugh), I think I have to get better at being the latter and be more comfortable with modest ambitions towards the former. In other words, I need to focus on listening more deeply and thoughtfully, and being more selective about what I hear, while having fewer expectations as to my status as an indie/DIY/punk/emo/blowhard/etc...etc... blogger. After all, appreciation is the point, and if something doesn't call out to me, it's alright to leave it unexamined, resting, at peace where it lies. I've already started to do just that, filtering more of what I hear and not chasing things down if they don't immediately grab my attention. But as far as content here, I'm definitely looking to make a notable pivot in coverage- after I clean out the current backlog of albums angling for my assessment (said list is about 900 albums long btw). 

It might be a minute, but where I'd like to direct my focus in the future is at more international artists, specifically those coming out of Africa and South and Central America. For various reasons, these parts of the world are on the rise and rapidly more self-sustaining, and these trends are going to result in a cultural output in the coming years that I'm excited to see blossom into maturity. I've already received two emails in the last week of this year from publicists promoting amapiano artists, so the shift might be easier than I realized, as the universe may be pulling me in that direction with or without my conscious assent. 

In sum, my goals for 2026, for this blog and my life, are to be more chill towards myself and music, and to be a better listener, appreciating what I have and looking towards a brighter future (even if the brightest stars are not shining nearest to my home). As for 2025, below is a list of 25 albums I thought were rad as hell and/or touched my soul but didn't get around to writing about in the preceding 12 months. Have at them and have a Happy New Year!

Weatherday - Hornet Disaster (Topshelf Records)

2025 really was off to a good start when Hornet Disaster dropped in March. I had no idea it was on its way until Top Shelf emailed me about it, and it's been at the top of my mind since. There are some top-notch emo elegies here (naturally, again, issued on Top Shelf), and some that will affirm and ensure Weatherday's status as a seminally influential underground artist for decades to come, tracks such as "Hug" with its dreary sense of yearning and crawling, as well as the anguish-sickened passages, biting blizzard-y feedback swells of "Blood Online" and the wired-warp and seething surge of alienated implosion that is "Nostalgia Drive Avatar." Funnily, even though its predecessor Come In was only released in 2019, Hornet Disaster has the feeling of a revival album for the artist, which is understandable, as the impact that Weatherday has had on the modern underground music scene at an international level is almost incalculable, and frankly, that meant that they had a lot to prove with this release. It's not as overtly reclusive or peculiarly scratchy and experimental as what we've come to know Weatherday for, but it's just as daringly sentimental and compelling in its wounded gait, maintaining its shadowy eminence without sacrificing its emotional core. Despite everything, Weatherday is still themself. Forever.

 

MJ Noble - Songs From My Castle Tower (Doom Trip)

The immediate and insistent impression that I was seeded with upon beholding the cover of MJ Nobel's third album, Songs From My Castle Tower, was that it was the vessel of a cybernetic current and celestially radiant flow of ethereal inspiration, cascading over and between the battlements of an Avalonian spire, pouring down on the teeming mass of mortals below like cool, molten starlight... Now, it may be somewhat anticlimactic to acknowledge, but these initial impressions, gleaned from appearances alone, were impeccably precise. An elfin excursion into a vespertine grove of dark illumination is exactly what this album is- emancipation in a fantastical world of blissfully incarnate passion, rendered in arresting fidelity at the nexus of wondering daydreams and fiber-optic fanned eudaimonia. Folk music for a digital dynast with root privileges to your heart.

Citric Dummies - Split With Turnstile (Feel It Records)

My esteem for Feel It Records grows by the day. Sam's work with the label became a gold standard in my personal punk headcanon after splunking into Why Bother?'s catalog; now it's going platinum with this Citric Dummies LP, Split With Turnstile (which, ironically, is more vital than the album that the actual Turnstile released this year). A bio that I read of them alludes to their sound jumbling and interlocking odds and stray crumbs from Barely Legal era Hives, the Dwarves, and the buzz-bomb of contemporaries Dark Thoughts, and while that's all enough to stake your life on when it comes to this record, in essence, it's a vindication of that classic early hardcore style as a means of liberating your crown clean off your dome- fast, irreverent, catchy, and uncontainably hostile- they're like a dog that bites your leg and, via a metastatic psychic mutation, is able to inject a scathing and scandalous rejection of the human condition in its current-year craven state, directly into the mainline of your arteries like snake venom. This record is the good kind of sick!

Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You A Million Dollars (Self-Released)

With one of the most Coen brothers-esque titles I may have bonafided with these tired eyes, Houston "dust-gaze" bowlers Shallowater grant a sip of succor to the people lost in the godless desert of 2025 with their second LP God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars. Much has been made of the "country" side of this record, and while it does have quite a bit of twang tucked in around the trim, it's really only "country" in the way that an old windmill left in a fallow wheatfield to oxidize into an indigestible cereal of sharp, coarse particulates could be considered "country," or an old barn cat caught in a snare laid for a fox outside the henhouse- a dark reflection and a fateful and justly cruel metaphor for the silent, progressive decay and barrenness of spirit and soil that has exhausted the heartland. That kind of "country."

life - we won't say a word until tomorrow (Self-Released)

It's been a banner year for Damián Ojeda. Ok, every year is a big year for Damián, but between his various black metal, shoegaze, emo, and skramz marquees, he's dropped something like 40 separate albums- the majority of which I have not heard because I have a job and a wife—but more than life simply getting in the way of bingeing on his output, I'm frequently stricken with an awe-induced paralysis by his work, wherein I feel compelled to spend long stretches of time simply wallowing in and soaking up the vibe and nuances of each release, incapable of moving on until I've wrung all the serotonin I can out of it. Case in point: I haven't been able to step past his summer release, we won't say a word until tomorrow, under the life honorific, to get a taste of the other three or four other life titles he's dropped since. It's just a beautifully painful listen. Conscious and cathartic, patient and devoted, bleak and blissful. Most bands are lucky to come within spitting distance of something this compelling in their entire career, and yet, this probably just felt like another Friday to Damián when he unveiled it to the world. Now, this is a fantastic record; I've already said as much, and the semi-final track "allusion to summer distance" was literally my song of the summer, but what really wins it a bushel of roses from me is the locket-shaped snippet on the cover of this album which encloses Nana Osaki and Nana Komatsu in an eternal embrace and whirl of intractable kismet. Ai Yazawa is a genius, an inimitable talent, and her manga about tragically fated love and diehard friendship vibes so hard with this album that it almost feels like they were made with each other in mind. It's all the heartbreak you can handle- sealed with a kiss.

Menace4Hire - With All That I Know Now (Self-Released)

On With All That I Know Now, Chicago MC Menace4Hire invokes a nostalgic and contemplative frame of mind, weaving observations and hard-wrung conclusions together like a colorful ribbon that connects the sun-faded images of a life in reflection as they lie static in a heavy photo album. Dust-tripping skips and loops rotate under Menace's studious reels of commentary, and lissome yet graceful flow like the treadmill of his mind, propelling him forward and sparing him from stagnant complacency, as the wheels turn and epiphanies emerge like daylight pouring over the horizon. There will be plenty more for Menace to come to know, as he is still young and the world has yet to put its full weight on his shoulders, but he's already got sure footing, clear eyes, and wisdom to bank, and that counts for a lot.

Flora Hibberd - Swirl (22Twenty)

Lucky you that you get to share a planet with Flora Hibberd. And what good fortune that she has an album out this year, called Swirl. And while we're counting our blessings, there is a song on that album titled "Lucky You," a peppy and sardonic twist on Americana and a tender take on garage-pop that sizzles with impulsive fluorescence- kind of like the record on the whole. Swirl was recorded by the London-born, Paris-palisaded guitarist/singer/songwriter in the Northwestern city of Eau Claire, which since at least For Emma, Forever Ago has garnered a reputation for sublating the traditions and trappings of standard American playing styles- in other words, Flora Hibberd, who on this LP exhibits intersecting qualities of Haley Fohr and Cat Power, happens to find herself at ease and in good company in her circuitous yet delicate evasion and amendment of orthodoxy

Superdestroyer / Leave (Nelson) B - NCTV Vol. 2: Negative thoughts about myself and people I love dearly (Lonely Ghost Records)

Superdestroyer and LNB are moots irl. That's pretty much it. That's why this album happened. You can learn more about its precursor in this interview I did with the guys last year. Ok, bye! *shoving noises, muffled commotion* Alright, fine! So my editor (ie my conscience) is telling me that I need to say more about this record, because it's made by good people, who happen to be two of my favorite emo/DIY personalities, and it's a very fun and edifying listen... which is exactly why it's hard to come up with things to say about it... Like, have you ever looked at that panel of Dr.Manhattan sitting ponderously on the surface of Mars, gazing longingly starward, and thought to yourself, "yeah, same." Alright, now imagine there are two Dr. Ms, and they both just lost someone irreplaceable to them. That's the vibe of this LP, only less forlorn and crowned with a finish of stardust and cosmic dynamism.

they are gutting a body of water - LOTTO (ATO Records)

They Are Gutting a Body of Water... what, do they live near a data center or something? You think I'm just being funny, but there is something somewhat prophetic about this Philly group (who everyone insists are shoegaze, though to my ears they're doing a grunged-up version of Sunny Day Real Estate, but WHAT DO I KNOW? I'm only an expert when it comes to these sorts of things) and their album LOTTO, a distorted, weathered tome and sonic manuscript, depicting a world drained of vitality and its sense-making structures, where people filter in and out like flames in the dark, choked to a snuff by a high wind. Apparitions glide around the periphery of a séance circle, a distant zone blighted by a spiritual fugue of amnesia. It's bleak enough of a setting that it could almost be mistaken for our own broken system of sinking pirate-ocracy. Don't you feel fortunate to have lived long enough to witness a fanatical state of parasitism, once only imaginable in fiction, become grounded reality? Maybe fortunate isn't the right word. But only the depths of irony can do justice to the inheritance of such a wretched windfall.

Cola Boyy - Quit to Play Chess (Record Makers)

Look at this photo of Matthew Urango, aka Cola Boyy. Look at this little pimp! Bro looks like he's got the world at the end of a yo-yo string- give it a flick and let it ride like a platinum disco record at a late-night house party. Quit to Play Chess is the gold-hearted, neo-disco-funk auteur's final record, unfortunately, as he passed away earlier this year, but it contains his best realized efforts to date. "Abundant" is a term I would use liberally to describe the passionate and distinctive confluences of crunchy Caribbean rhythms, surfy chop chords, drum and bass rattle, equitable yacht rock, and big hairy disco grooves that generously extend over the whole of this album and breathe a technicolor authenticity into its plentiful vision of the world's potential. You'd have to have a piece missing from your heart not to vibe with the pure mood manifest on this record. RIP Matthew. Thank you for this solid gold send-off.

Lealani - Beep Bop Boop (Self-Released)

It's a tale as old as... well, AOL chat rooms. Girl goes online. Girl falls in love... with a machine. What, you think she was going to get a boyfriend? Well, sure, ok, but what can a man do for you that an optimized hard drive and fiber optics connection can't? Ok... I'm hearing something about... jars? Jar opening can be automated. What can't be automated is girls (well, a girl in this case) leveraging their love of technology to approximate sonic encounters with extraterrestrial travelers party-crashing from digital destinations unknown. Beep Bop Boop is Lealani's second solo LP, a neon-aura glam bath of leisurely gratifying and marginally disquieting, petite pop-epigrams and escapist codas that function like little trap doors in the floor of a stuffed animal factory, which drop into recesses of dayglo laughter and pots of harmonizing amphibians. AI could never match what Beep Bop Boop is rolling out, and if it tried, Lealani would likely glitch-prompt it into oblivion with the chaos seed of her psyche.

Faetooth - Labyrinthine (The Flenser)

Personally, I'm psyched that bands are starting to describe their music as distinct and definite genres of their own making more and more often. It shows a real clarity of vision and a desire to control one's own narrative. Take Faetooth: they're calling their style "Fairy Doom." There are a number of ways that you could interpret said designation, but it gets the point of their sound- a combination of the earthen whimsy of Chelsea Wolfe, the witchy desperation of Ragana, the avant-chaos of Thou, and the ambient fury of Show Me the Body- across to you like a flaming bolt to the breastplate. The cold majesty of their latest LP, Labyrinthine, feels best appreciated in the absolute, most dismal spans of winter, the periods during which it genuinely seems sane to ponder whether a thaw will ever grace the land again. We haven't hit that point quite yet in the Midwest as of this writing, but when we do, I'll be thankful to have the frigid solace of this album to keep me company.

Johnny Football Hero - Contingency Plan (Lonely Ghost Records)

Johnny Football Hero sounds completely pissed off on their LP, Contingency Plan. Their outrage and the outpour of grievance is at such an extraordinary, heated degree of fervency that it's transformed them into an entirely different band. The thing that makes them somewhat recognizable on this release, when compared to their '21 EP, Complacency, is the subject matter of their songs, which remains a reflection of the near-ubiquitous batter-thick spread of suffering that blankets the swelter of our modern hell world. It's all post-hardcore, incoming like a cloud of Nerf-footballs strapped with c4- whistling, blazing, and hot with intent, striking with precision and spreading the fever of their indignant fervor like a plague of premeditated epiphany and motivated malcontent. Emergencies call for action, and action is what Johnny Football Hero aims to inspire.  

84 Tigers - Nothing Ends (Spartan Records)

I'm presuming that the Reed brothers zeroed in on the name for their band because '85 Bears would have been too traitorous and '83 Lions would have been too obvious for the proud Motor City denizens, and for a project birthed to examine themes of nostalgia, loss, and maturation, you don't want a nom de plume that distracts too much from the subject matter, or the music for that matter. 84 Tigers’s second LP, the affirmatively titled Nothing Ends, offers a tightfisted, sober strain of melocore that raises the gut-plunging introspection of Chuck Ragan's repertoire, with a deservedly grungy afterburn to its headstrong chord crunch, and possesses a bitter acidity in the absorbing plateaus of its marrow that stings in nettling distinction with the pragmatic yet replenishing assurances of its lyrical content. A tyrant and a confidant, folded into one.

Samba Touré - Baarakelaw (Glitterbeat Records)

Literally the last time I wrote about a blues artist was when I interviewed Deludium Skies back in February. So, for this next pick I'm going to be discussing a tribute to the Rolling Stones' Sticky Finge—NAHHHHHH, psych! Screw that Boomer-slop impostor Americana- listen to Samba Touré's Baarakelaw. It's better for you, it's more soulful, it's got more heart, it's real; it's about the sweat and scratch required to dust up the dough to make a loaf of bread, and the blood and clay that build the foundations of communities. Transcendent, rhythmic guitars woven in poetic patterns, pulling threads and mosaic imprints into a tapestry of contemporary life in conversation with the traditions upon which it is founded. It's not technically the blues, but it's how you can best translate what Samba is up to if you're not Malian.

Liaam - Dancing With My Clothes On (Self-Released)

There is something about Liaam that makes me think he'd thrive in a standard-cable package slot where he's allowed to make surrealist skits with sock puppets... but maybe that's entirely because he reminds me of another twiggy, wiggly man with a similar-sounding name. It has nothing to do with his music, which sounds like he's afflicted with an itchy case of Half Japanese, with a far more terminal secondary diagnosis of Swell Maps... I'm afraid it's inoperable, ma'am. The best thing we can do for him is let him dance with his favorite collegiate blazer and tapered slacks until the friction starts to spark and he goes out in a puff of pyrrhic glory. I think it's what he would want, ma'am... that and his own TV show...

Sallow Moth - Mossbane Lantern (Lilang Isla)

The Sallow Moth saga continues with Mossbane Lantern, named for a vegetated artifact of either profoundly magical or obscure technical origins that rests discreetly hidden in an icy inlet and grants its possessor the ability to teleport long distances, or even interdimensionally... It would probably be helpful if I mentioned that Sallow Moth is a conceptual sci-fi sound project by super-industrious metal master Garry Brents, in which he explores a universe set into chaos by mutant celestial moths who have degenerated from their positions as cosmic gardeners and naturalist stewards into a force that threatens the fabric of reality itself. Mossbane Lantern is Garry's only LP with this project in 2025 (the other releases under the Sallow Moth banner being a demo and a pair of EPs) and is technically a continuation of the Vial EP from 2024. This all might sound crazy, but it really pales in comparison to the actual music on this beast, which sounds like Cynic performing some manner of manic, fungus-flavored jungle-jazz to appease a disturbed Quetzalcoatl-like apparition. It's the farthest thing you can imagine from normal and restrained, and that's why it rules!

Bones Shredder - Morbid Little Thing (Sunken Teeth)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What the actual fuck?!? This record makes me feel like it’s 2002 again! Dark, bruisingly catchy and beguilingly haunting pop-punk is not something I ever thought I'd hear with fresh ears posterior to the Bush-era implosion of everything charmingly irreverent about punk in the daunting umbra of perpetual imperialism and economic disarray. I guess things just had to get bad enough for people to stop worrying and embrace the terminal glissade enough to welcome morbid make-out anthems like the sanguinely pining "Let Me In" and tuneful tug of "Pulling Teeth" into the crypt of their heart chamber. It helps that there is as much Pinkerton as From Here to Infirmary in this venomous brew, helping to balance out the persistent allusions to tragedy with an obliging antivenin of hope.

YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds (AD 93)

The last time I encountered NYC quartet YHWH Nailgun was when I stumbled across their 2022 EP while killing time in an Airbnb in Louisville. I have such a vivid memory of that place, as well as the way YHWH's ricochet and recoil contrasted with its pseudo-Victorian decor, dark-shrouded interior, and sturdy but ancient furniture, shattering the idle calm of that place as if it were a radiation-laden satellite tumbling back in time to Deep Impact the house Wuthering Heights was based on. Their LP 45 Pounds eternalizes the freak energy that captivated me initially, while continuing to be just as incongruously alien within the modern setting of my home as they appeared to me while I was hibernating between the folds of an Emily Brontë novel. On this album, YHWH articulates something sonically akin to a lobotomized David Byrne, whose frontal lobe has been partially replaced with an outdated TV antenna that only picks up scrambled broadcasts of West African variety shows and rejected episodes of Later... with Jools Holland from an alternative dimension where Xiu Xiu had pivoted to become a particularly bizarre and brazen, hemp and barbed-wire necklace-hawking jam band. It's called 45 Pounds, but to me it's as dense and massive as a black hole caving in God's forehead.

Summer 2000 - Blue Meringue (Self-Released)

What is a Blue Meringue? According to Summer 2000, it's something along the lines of a wake pool filled with tar- an undulating state of paralysis where you're somehow always propelled forward while simultaneously sinking deeper into place- like trying to use a bungee cord to escape a whirlpool, or a Toyota pinned in place by a block of cement gouging into its undercarriage while it spins its wheels. It's a good metaphor for the necessity of growing through one's experiences while still feeling inadequate with the results. In the end, you can't really ever escape yourself due to the inertia of your flaws; you can only ever learn to live with and accept yourself and make the best of the consequences, even if you're perpetually aggrieved by how far you have fallen short of expectations. You're only human after all, and even when you've run over the median barrier and bent up your axle, as long as you're alive, you can always call a tow and get back on the road... eventually. Your insurance agent and/or SO might not be too happy with you, but as long as you're trying your best, you run a good chance of being forgiven for your roadside mishaps... probably. That's what I'm getting from Summer 2K's Blue Meringue, at least. A simple reminder of your inescapable humanness from a deeply thoughtful album.

Bug Moment - The Lazer Collection (Self-Released)

The first (and actually only) time I've seen Milwaukee's Bug Moment was when I caught them opening at a show at the Cactus Club where Blind Equation, Hey, ily, and Heccra were also playing... It was one of the most stacked lineups I can recall seeing outside of Chicago this year, and it's still one of my 2025 highlights. Being in that kind of company should give you a good idea of what to expect on their EP, The Lazer Collection, but then again, they're their own breed of shimmering, polychromatic anomaly, separate from their peers. Bug Moment certainly favors twinkly guitar antics, extreme metal vocals, and micromusic-esque infusions of electronics, but they also have this huge, whirlwind quality to their music, as well as perfectly calibrated pop-punk and alternative songwriting instincts that make comparisons to Paramore and Flyleaf unforced and positively apt. I like this album a lot. You could even say I've got the Bug Moment bug! ...at least for the time being.

La Rat - La Rat (South of North)

Sometimes to find the good stuff you have to dig deep... or look in the gutter. That's where I presume La Rat spends most of their time (although I found them via my Bandcamp feed, which, seeing as it mainly consists of solo noise and ambient projects at the moment, could be considered part of the internet's sanitation drainage system and digital superfund site, and might require government intervention to regulate accordingly). The Amsterdam-based duo's self-titled LP is a strange and vibey hip-hop volume detailing accounts of urban scavengery, that pack-rats together sooty soul samples and rough-cut R'n'B grooves into clumpy tangles of dirty delights, which vocalist Goya van der Heijden burrows into and gnaws to pulp with the scissors-like incisors of her squeaky but breathy, hushed but boldly furtive flow. This one is all cheddar, hold the cheese.

El Michels Affair - 24 Hr Sports (Big Crown Records)

I don't have to shout it out every time Leon Michels releases an album, but then again, it feels like I do, as I find them so compelling. To me, Leon is re-engineering the soul album one effort at a time, understanding the influence that soul had on hip-hop, and then working backward from hip-hop back to soul while conserving the marrow of each: the cool swelter and richness of sentiment from soul, and the scrappy, pioneering drive of hip-hop, and forging something unique and unpredictable in their fusion. For his 24 Hr Sports LP, Leon drops the Ghanaian hand-painted movie poster shtick in favor of '80s-uncle's-parlor nostalgia, with a soft-focus photo of a giant trophy adorning the cover. He certainly earned the reward pictured here for past efforts as much as for present ones. We should really give the man a medal every year in an Olympic-style ceremony. Maybe if we start saving our change in a coffee can, we'll have enough to put on that kind of production in time for his next LP in '27-'28 or so.

Mildred - Pt. 1 (Dead Mothers Collective)

Does the apocalypse need a prequel? I guess every disaster has its stages. LA's Milred jumped right to the conclusion of their conceptual drama in a hymn to a tragedy of errors and eras with Pt. 2, and now follows up with this year's Pt. 1, a significantly more involved piece of work spanning more than two hours in run time and incorporating the talents of more than 23 musicians. Still, even at the length of a Golden-Age Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic, this noisy eruption of Birthday Party-esque provocation and Kakotheos-oriented post-hardcore will likely feel shorter and less dyspepsia-inducing than your average Sunday sermon- especially if you have the misfortune of being dragged to one of those houses of "worship" that have incorporated bespoke addresses from a Kirkified-AI prompt into their liturgy- an accepted state of affairs in this country, despite it being outwardly more blasphemous (and unintentionally surreal) than the band Liturgy's entire catalog- not for lack of trying, of course.

Dikembe - King (Skeletal Lightning)

If there was any doubt that I'd save the best for last, fear not, for "best" is a subjective concept, but actually, the King EP from Dikembe is an unexpected delight this year. Not because Dikembe isn't in the habit of delivering catchy, heartfelt, and momentously urgent melodic hardcore, but because it's so effortlessly straightforward and on-point. They really do make it look easy, and that's really what you need after a long year: something that can throw the emergency brake on during the spin-out and give you about 20 minutes or so of breathing room. If that doesn't earn them the right to unilaterally appoint themselves "king" for the moment, then they should stop handing out crowns because they're passing them out to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Long live the squatchy sonic sovereign!

That's it! You made it to the end. Congratulations! Now get out and seize the night! Good luck out there bud. Onward to 2026!

Pictured: Me trying to enjoy my evening.

Interview: Oliver Ghoul

                                  

Gather 'round, boils and ghouls! It's time to get your freak on and shake the dust from those old bones! Oliver Ghoul is here to put down a sick beat for your next monster mash and/or wake, keeping spirits higher than even the lowest gallows humor. He's a man possessed by boogie fever and it's catching like the black death! Our intrepid ghost, erm, host was able to pry some of the gory details of his musick-making process and the reap-cording of his debut LP, Ghoul for You, out of his carcass for the latest episode of this here bog's podcasket. Grab yourself a shovel and dig in! 

Sorry, getting into the spirit of the season there... All jokes aside, Oliver Ghoul is an impressive solo artist who is fantastic at what he does, creating a conicopia of psychedelic sounds drawing from '60s grooves, '70s funk, '90s hip-hop, and afternoons chillin' on the couch catching up on old school Scooby-Doo reruns that I thoroughly enjoy and relate to. I'm really pleased to present my interview with him below: Check out Oliver's debut LP Fool for You:

Album Review: Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band - Sonbonbela

 
Even in the shadow of death, there is the presence of light, for what casts the shadow if not the blazing facticity of the sun, the giver of life? Sonbonbela is the third full-length album from Mamadou Sanou, aka Baba Commandant. Mamadou passed sometime after the release of this record, but in life, he was a veteran of the West African DIY scene, getting his start in Victor Démé’s respected Mandinka funk band. Hailing from Burkina Faso, Mamadou knits together the last 30 years of Burkinabe funk and Mandingue guitar music to give life to an afrobeat sound that is as fresh and soothing as a cold drink of mango juice on a sweltering, cloudless day, while remaining as urgent and arresting as an air-raid siren sounding overhead. Sonbonbela is vibrant, raw and spontaneous, perfectly capturing the vivacious energy of a live performance while clearly honing the benefits of precision offered by studio recording. "Chasser Les Sachets" is a shapeshifting and fluid, guitar-groove ushered gallop, "Afro Mandingo" is an enlivening clatter and heed-snaring tumble through the calming confluence of rhythmic catharsis, while the title-track “Sonbonbela” crashes into your senses like it was airdropped into an afterparty, relying on more traditional funk instrumentation to achieve its groovy gravitas, it manages to be serious in tone but affectively jovial in delivery. Death is but a door, life is only a window, truth is found in the eternal expanse that unites our present with our past and a quickly cohering future. There is no hiding from something that is everywhere—in the air, in the water, and sewn into the fabric of both flesh and memory. You cannot silence a dead man. Rest in power, Mamadou Sanou.

Exalted sounds, echoing through the aether of the now and the soon-to-be hereafter (Sublime Frequencies).

2024 Year-End Invitational

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. 

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 Doppelg​ä​nger (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, Doppelg​än​ger. 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.  

Svetlost - Everything Was as It Had Been a Minute Ago (PMGJazz & Inverted Spectrum Records)

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.

Snow Strippers - Night Killaz Vol. 2 (Surf Gang Records)

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.  

Vapor Eyes - Watch the Skies (Self-Released)

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.

EEP - You Don't Have To Be Prepared (Hogar Records)

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.  

Laughing - Because It's True (Celluloid Lunch & Meritorio Records)

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.  

SiP - Leos Ultras (Not Not Fun Records)

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.

Amáutica - Sin Altares (Aenaos Records)

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!