Album Review: No Soy Bill Murray - Error, Fatal Inferno

No Soy Bill Murray implies the existence of a "Soy" Bill Murray, much to the delight of some sarcasm-loving vegans, I'm sure. However, I've never ordered an impossible burger in my life, and don't intend to change my dietary habits on a hypothetical whim, so we'll be sticking with the All Beef Bill Murray for the rest of this review (you're welcome to sample alternatives and report back). As their name implies, No Soy Bill Murray is not, and has no affiliation with, the Evanston-born comedian-turned-actor, best known for his work in the seminal romance Mad Dog and Glory, playing opposite Robert De Niro, rather they're actually from Honduras, not Illinois, and don't have much of a movie career to speak of (at least not yet!). To avoid any of you getting too lost in translation, the group's name literally translates to "I'm Not Bill Murray," which may bust the ghost of some of your expectations concerning the level of schlubby, throwaway repartee the band is likely to display, but that's not my problem, I don't care, and I'm moving on. Their first and only record was released last year- 2025's Error, Fatal Inferno-, and it is a psychedelic shindig fit for the end of days: smooth, relaxing, and steamy, like sunbathing on the charred exposed rim of a gaping hell mouth as it belches tropical-temperature vapors into the atmosphere. The low-key radiance of their floating grooves, the solar-ray-emulating weave of guitar work, and refreshingly lustrous and lucid melodies will almost make you forget the imminent and immediate dangers of surfing on the landslide of modern material and social decline, as experienced across the globe (but particularly in the good ol' US of A). There are really worse (and possibly more deadly) mistakes you could make today than giving Error, Fatal Inferno a spin- it's certainly less of a macabre blunder than The Dead Don't Die.

Album Review: Dream Machine - The Illusion

Feed your head popping poppies, chips of fractured pellucid fog, and scratchy heather to polish the crystal ball that hangs from the inmost concave of your dome. Dream Machine is a husband-and-wife duo, Matthew and Doris Melton, who miraculously arose from the once-still, tepid brew of Matthew's previous group, Warm Soda (which has been reformulated as of 2022). They combine the heavy, proto-metal grooves of bands like Iron Butterfly and Deep Purple with the murky psychedelia of the Doors and the larger-than-life hooks of Heart to create cascades of compelling psychedelic-garage pop. The Illusion (2017) is Dream Machine’s debut record, released on their good friend John Dwyer’s Castle Face Records, and later reacquired by Matthew's own Fuzz City. According to Matthew, the album is an antidote to the feelings of isolation and dislocation caused by social media and is meant to inspire people to share feelings and music face-to-face again, rather than through an ad-supported data mine. Unplug and unwind with the scaling, Deep Purple-esque guitars and huge, sonorous organs on “I Walk in the Fire,” the folding waves of organs and the relentless bass undertow on “Buried Alive,” the sparking jazz, adrenaline-pumping hooks, and ear-snaring chorus of “All for a Chance,” and the confident, toe-tapping, brick-house blues swagger of “Back to You.” Ironically, The Illusion is their most concrete and sincerely palatable work, having released two subsequent albums- Breaking the Circle and 2022's Living the Dream- both of which lack the punchy, raw panache of their debut and somehow fail to radiate the same potency of hypnotic magnetism as their initial pledge. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Album Review: Black Salvation - Uncertainty is Bliss

Dark, heavy, seedy psychedelic rock out of Leipzig Germany. Uncertainty is Bliss is the Relapse Records debut of Black Salvation, the controlled substance-enhanced side project of Uno Bruniusson, lead singer of modern death-rock band Grave Pleasures. It’s hedonistically hypnotic and brimming with magical maleficence, reminiscent of labelmates Ecstatic Vision, but with less guitar wankery. Bruinusson embraces an economical approach to his song-craft, gifting these tracks a tense logic of restraint and secrecy that enhances their shrouded and darkly transcendent appeal. Check out the bluesy bulging chords and tread-jumping groves of “Floating Torpids," the subterranean mysticism, tunneling groves, and mercurial mood shifts of “Breathing Hands," and the haunted, sludgy, suspended and distended 9-minute jam “A Direction is Futile" for a taste of that desolate yearning that beckons to you from beyond the sheath of this mortal veil.

On Relapse... because I am apparently once again covering records from big metal labels... It's like I'm back in 2021 or something.  

Interview: SkyJelly

I had a delightful encounter of the 5th kind with an enigmatic and musically inclined entity going by the codename SkyJelly Jones. SkyJelly is the ring lead of the (what else) SkyJelly, a merry band of galactic bards who made landfall earlier this year with their album Spirit Guide with the aid and abatement of I Heart Noise Records, delivering a mix of psychedelic desert rock and North African folk that is (literally) out of this world! You can check out my conversation with SkyJelly Jones below: 

Listen to Spirit Guide here: 

Album Review: Sugaar Pan - Hug A Tree And Burn The Forest

Composer and multidisciplinary, genre-agnostic maven Iker Garmendia presents a peculiar twist on the notion of sacrifice with his album Hug A Tree And Burn The Forest. The concept of a sacrifice is that the gods demand of a community that they give up something of value so that the functional order of the world may be preserved and the people might retain the divine's favor. Although, by the nature of such a gift to the gods, ultimately, one member, or a small group of members within the community, will bear the burden of this offering- a benefit to the many by the loss of a few. Iker turns this around on us. What if those obliged to sacrifice, determined that it was worth seeing the world burn so that an intended offering may be preserved?  What if you allowed an entire forest to char to cinders merely to save one tree? The lonely, winsome paragon of ghostly pan flutes, atonal guitars, super-heated feedback, and resonate throat singing, which Iker delivers on this record, telegraphs a trajectory that traces a discrete path through the bramble of assigned charges and nobel surrender, illustrating an anarchic breaking point with authority and obligation that reveals a certain symptom of liberation, as solitary as it may be. For what is liberty but the love of life, and what is love but the unassailable verdict that the object of one's affection takes precedence over all else? Even if such a choice leaves the world shattered, and its shards scattered like a fist full of sand dropped in the sea.   

2023 Year-End Invitational

Well, we made it, folks. Another year for the records. It felt pretty sticky there for a minute, but we pulled through as a species without dying in a nuclear fire or getting bonked by an asteroid. As is my tradition, every year, the human race survives without imploding and experiencing an extinction-level event, and I write a short list of all the albums that I enjoyed but didn't get a chance to cover in any other fashion. I call it an invitational as it's a celebration of all the weird or overlooked music that gets released every year and which I hope people spend a little time with before moving on to the next hot thing. On top of that, I hope this list inspires you in some way. I'd like you to come away from it with some new article of knowledge, insight, or creative stimulus that aids you in tackling some artistic endeavor or makes it easier to try something new. You've got a whole year ahead starting today, might as well make the most of it. 

Debby Friday - Good Luck (Sub Pop) 

So why the fuck would I start a list of album recommendations with a dance album? What is an indie blogger doing writing about dance music in 2023? No one is going to read a BlogSpot article to learn about new grooves in the era of TikTok! You're right. Or are you? 2023 was weirder than I could have imagined, and 2024 is gearing up to be even stranger. As an outside voice in the media wilderness of the world-wide-web, I have to put my chips down on the off chance that someone might break their thumb in the hinge of a door or something, rendering them unable to doom scroll long enough to focus their attention on a single point of interest for an adequate duration of time for it to make a meaningful impact on their psyche, and double down on the off chance, that the single point in question is somehow, actually, my blog. If a Zoomer or one of their elders (face it, you're all slaves to scroll!) gleans a single jam that helps bring to life their New Year's and the days beyond for even three and a half minutes after reading this article, I can consider my work a success- not only on my behalf but the entire alternative music sphere in the aggregate. So here's my pitch: Good Luck by Debby Friday- a pervasively feminine, dark-horse beat-trap, brimming with out-sized aggression, and patterned with the smooth, leather stitching of industrial-underground electronica, pinched at the seams with a sunless ecstasy. It's a Janus face-Santigold, alternating in strobes of sequenced glimmer and glaring brushes of obsidian, dancing in heals on the heads of nails ripped from the bowls of an iron maiden. House music for a house fire, a party that pillages the heart, a pit of languid fury, and a cauldron of cacophony churned by the venom-tipped nail of a priestess who uses a rattlesnake as a cincher for her evening gown, a garment so deeply dark and mesmerizing that it appears to be have been cut clean from the looming face of the night sky. How does that grab you? Ok, let me simplify things for the tl;drs who wandered in: Shit's lit, play it! Good luck tonight. 

Red Dons - Generations (Taken By Surprise)

Skipping sidewinders, I truly did not expect to hear from these guys again. A little (maybe necessary, maybe, not) backstory, a whiles away and yesteryear, a younger version of this writer was flirting (earnestly and naively) with the not-so-d-beat and blackened-inspired side of crust punk, and Red Dons crept up on that boy like a camel spider up a desert marine's fatigues in the form of Death to Idealism. That little guy (meaning me) had no idea what had clawed its way across his skin; all he knew was that he couldn't shake it! Fast forward a decade, and here are the Dons once again invading my life, without warning or invitation. It's not an unwelcome intrusion, mind you- even after a decade, there isn't another band competing with their style of dusky post-punk and icey garage rock, and certainly, not one that captures the same dower tenure of forlorn melodicism, a crooning miasma that sounds like it could be echoing up from between the slots of a London sewer grate as easily as around the corner of Portland squat that doubles as a local graffiti gallery. Besides sounding more confident and sure-footed than ever, Generations sees the band returning as if no time had passed between this 7" and their 2017 release Genocide, or even the 2007 LP that first introduced me to the band. Red is the color of the Pheonix's fire. And the Dons are as eternal as the equinox. 

A Giant Dog - Bite (Merge)

Now this one really snuck up on me, and it surprised me to no end to learn of its existence during an unrelated tangent while researching a totally different band (in case you are curious, I was looking up background info on The Cowboys). A Giant Dog, at one point, was easily one of my favorite bands. A group that I discovered during a very strange transitionary period in my life, during which their bombastic anthems of depravity, depression, and desperation really clicked with me on multiple levels. Their material has always had an elevated sense of gravity, inevitability, and poetic irony, much like the Greek tragedies of antiquity, and I'm excited that they've taken the step of raising the stakes further and wrestled with their potential as a group on their latest album Bite- a concept album about finding love and escaping a cybernetic bastille with your horny hide (mostly) intact. The band adopts a somewhat more serious and polished aesthetic for the album, flirting with what feels like the cosmic Fleetwood Mac stage of their career (an honor few bands live long enough to attain), with luxurious shimmering grooves, breathtaking orchestral accompaniments, and a batter of beat-up bluesy callbacks. Rock bands, in general, have a dubious reputation when it comes to taking on the nightmares of neuromancery and a life moored in the meta-ether of cyberspace (see Styx's Killroy Was Here), but the band carries it off with campy bursts of alternating enthusiasm and righteous fury, much in the fashion of Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, a reference point that suits their efforts temperamentally, as well as in style and effect. All of the group's signature piercing riffs, brilliant wrenching humor and angst, and darkly dreamy melodicism are here, in a mint coat of gold plating with freshly filed fangs. Once bitten, you may never want them to let you go. 

Ana Frango Elétrico - Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua (Mr. Bongo)

Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua from Brazillian pop personality and producer Ana Frango Elétrico has already received significant praise elsewhere, to the point where I very nearly decided against covering it. Somewhat unexpectedly, as it's not the kind of electronic, club-oriented pop that I'm used to people sharing and squeezing into my X timeline- it has a much older profile, and that's one of the things that I find so fascinating about it. Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua is definitely a Brazillian funk record of a certain fashion, but one where the emphasis of the songs is the tactile quality of Ana's voice as a vehicle for lyrics and melody, rather than the momentum and force of the beats and grooves. It's a brave creative choice, one that helps to emphasize the introspective nature of the songs as well as the unique textures of her voice as she sings in a plurality of languages. The accentuation of Ana's voice in the sweep of these upbeat, reflectively harmonious recitatives gives the album a chanson Française quality and a proto-rock and roll aura, almost like the singer is interpreting something that is yet to take shape, but once it does, it will sweep the world in a blithe storm. There is no barricade hearty enough to withstand the swoon of enthusiasm this record exudes. 

Marnie Stern - The Comeback Kid (Joyful Noise Recordings)

I did not expect this list to be so nostalgia-driven, but that is one of the beautiful things about writing an article like this- it's often as surprising to me what ends up being included as it probably is for you. We're both flying blind, for better or worse... Speaking of surprises, a new LP from Marnie Stern was not on my 2023 BINGO card! Although, I will take it over some of the things that were (especially the spaces that I had for zombie outbreak, nuclear winter, and the government confirming that they're in active communications with extra-terrestrials-  thankfully, only one of which had been previously filled). It has been 10 long years since her last album, The Chronicles of Marnia, and The Comeback Kid is an aptly titled successor to what was previously my favorite album of hers. Marnie is still one of the wildest and most uniquely talented guitarists and singers I can think of, and her latest album is another incredible display of her prowess, from the rainbow hopping, electric jelly-bean flavored jounce of her feather-light, platinum-alloy sharp guitar work, to the variegated warble of her vocal delivery- which always reminded me of what PJ Harvey might be so inspired to adopt if she had been commissioned to write a song for Adventure Time- everything I've loved about her style is present in all it brilliant, technicolored, star-smashing delirium. And what's more, it's coming at me like a county-wide hunk of space debris about to drill through the Yucatan coastline- you really can't make a more lasting impact than that, in my humble opinion.  

Captain Jazz - Captain Jazz (Fiadh Productions)

What I like most about the second Captain Jazz LP is how wholesome, and frankly, normal it is. Like, this could very easily be a prickly, mysterious guy record, but the jokes, memes, and references mostly land in the "aww yeah, shared cultural references are fun" zone, rather than then the "it's clear you want to impress upon me how utterly alienated you are from the world at large" zone. The music is generally a pretty enticing vehicle for some tightly wound poetics, pairing a twinkly variety of skramz with melodic hardcore elements, which are sometimes bolstered by brushes of breakcore and glowing auras of atmospheric feedback, amongst other surprises. "Microphones in 3030" is parsed by an oddly abrupt rapping verse that still manages to work with the groove, and I'm pretty sure the pop-punk "0X" is supposed to be some playful riffing on Angels & Airwaves and Tom DeLonge's pet obsessions, which is as funny as it is unexpected. There is a lot more here to unpack, but you'll get more by exploring this record on your own than reading me pick apart its every detail. Oh, and if you're curious about who is behind this album, I came across this helpful documentary about the group.

BBBBBBB – Positive Violence (Deathbomb Arc)

Part of me loves that there are albums out there that, by their very nature, defy critical assessment in the standard sense... the only problem is, how do I tell people about your experience of a record and make it appealing enough to a potential reader when what you're attempting to describe is simply chaos incarnate... only in a good way. That's my dilemma with Japanese experimental electronic/punk/noise group BBBBBBB and their LP Positive Violence. The album, which includes fresh mixes of tracks from their Shin God and Oh Sawagi EPs (released together on cassette by Deathbomb Arc), sounds like a prank played on your ears by a mischievous but well-meaning, studio-dwelling spirit, a minor kami who has a joke that he can only tell through ragged, hyper-kinetic riddles of sound that appear at first glance to be Atari Teenage Riot castoffs that someone's treated like a man-sized Stretch Armstrong, alternating them between practiced stress positions, a la Jericho-style Lion Tamers and a Ric Flair's patented Figure Four. The thing is, the more you listen to this album, the wilder and hairier it ends up sounding- like running MC Ride through a juicer multiple times only to end up with more pulp, pelt, fiber, and fury than you started with and for all your efforts. What I mean to say, is that this is not an easy record to digest, but it's worth the dyspepsia. Take an antacid and indulge in the flaying of your inhibitions. 

 

Dosser - Violent Picture / Violent Sound (Really Rad Records)

This is a very cool and tightly performed grunge-revival record that takes a good deal of care to reify the hooky, aggressive, cross-over potential of the genre at its peak. They totally nail the vibe of those early Foo Fighters releases, zigging and then zagging between brooding, maudlin, soul-searing passages and trench-clearing, 4x4 fire-ball hook salvos, with hints of something angrier than what many of their contemporaries seem capable of mustering (ie., bands pulling off a '90s flavored brand of melodic-punk). I'd be lying if I said that this flannel shredding bray and tendency to bare their hearts as wide and ragged as the holes in their jeans wasn't a style that suited them. They're true believers in their sound and what they take from their influences, and the vindication of their sentiments is confirmed by their heavy and impassioned performance and delivery. It would be fighting words to suggest otherwise, to either me, or the band (presumably, I don't know them that well). 

Frog - Grog (Self-Released)

Frog's fifth album Grog was a record that a lot of people clearly needed this year. It's tough living in an uncertain world, where isolation is ubiquitous, and truth and friendship are scarce commodities. But when this record dropped, a lot of people were excited about it and I observed people bonding over this cottage crop of alternative country curios in ways that I could not have anticipated. A simple, weird, defiant record can do that sometimes. It can break folks out of their blue streak and get them talking about something other than their miseries. It's no coincidence that Grog emerges from a place of fraternity and whimsical idiosyncrasy as the bonds of its tributaries are reflected in the uncalculating contrariness and homely elegance of its irregular but captivating gait. It's like a compass that only points upwards, or a map that you can only read in total darkness- whatever the obvious path is, they've mastered its parallel, off-road ramble. It might not break every mold, but Grog can certainly do something for the mundane funk you may find yourself in. 

devəlmāˈker - The Antonym Experience (Self-Released)

When you woke up yesterday, you probably thought to yourself, "I don't have enough self-reflective, electric folk music in my life; I should get some of that today." And then you laid in bed all day watching Family Guy clips on YouTube instead. Don't blame yourself, bro. Life can be like that. Sometimes you get what you want; sometimes you settle for piecemeal hunks of Fox's Animation Domination. Well, if you've found your way here, your prayers have been answered (I hope). I don't recommend a lot of solo guitar music, but devəlmāˈker's The Antonym Experience definitely speaks to me- a contemplative reservoir of wary feedback fecund oblations that take flight and expand from a central pillar of dogged, rattled riffage, the updraft of which allows the lyrics and vocal performances to stay at eye-level with each other amongst a backscattering of beat hollow insights. Hopefully, the introspection of this record will help inspire you to make the changes that you need to make in your life. Sometimes all you need is someone dragging their battered bones up from the asphalt to show others the way. 

Gazoota - Genesis (Self-Released)

The debut LP from post-psychedelic group Gazoota feels like it was made as part of some elaborate ritual out in the California desert. Charged with a dry storm of kineticism, its drawling, hypnotic intuition for melodicism rises like a great lantern in the night sky to illuminate the concentric caper of bodies in free, blushing motion. The group is able to transcend notional attachments of folk and mirror-ball sounds in a narcotic exchange of sense and order that awakens the cold embers of the psyche as if it were a snuff of cosmic-smelling salts. An oasis of enigmas on which to embark on a fantastic voyage through a primordial horizon of peace- the beginning of something remarkable, and yet altogether welcoming, like a door left ajar for a weary stranger. 

Leatherette - Small Talk (Bronson Records)

I have this powerful mental association with Bronson Records- every time their name comes up, my brain immediately begins searching for some way to tie them to Charles Bronson... and no, I don't mean the actor. Luckily, there is an album in their discography that actually lends itself to this peculiar quirk of my psychology- Leatherette's Small Talk. I loved their album Fiesta when it dropped last year, and Small Talk is every bit as aggrieved, catchy, and twisted as its predecessor. One of the things that I love the most about Leatherette is how antagonistic their vocalist Jonny's presence is- amongst the swirl and gall of back-bending, rubber-limbed grooves, and snappy, rhythmic panache, he always stands withdrawn, beckoning you towards him with a baffling concoction of promise and rebuff. Every verse he delivers is like a line in the sand that he's pensively stretched his palm across- if you accept his invitation, will you be rewarded with a handshake or a shattered septum? Sometimes the honor of a madman has to be tested before you can be certain where his intentions lie. Sparing with the devil is often preferable to discussing the weather in heaven with the angels. 

Penguin Cafe - Rain Before Seven​.​.​. (Erased Tapes)

Rain Before Seven​.​.​. is the fifth album from the Arthur Jeffes-led orchestral ensemble Penguin Cafe- a group he convened to interpret scores written by his late father, Simon Jeffes. The album's title is a play on an old phrase meant to invoke a sense of optimism in the audience in anticipation of glimpsing some streak of light as it emerges from the far end of the proverbial tunnel. It's very emotionally engaging material, and while fully instrumental, the scores nurture a highly narrative interpretation, invoking scenes of tranquil domesticity, industriousness, and the whimsy of burgeoning romance, passively manifested and yet sympathetically absorbed. An extension of the consolation towards one's fellows through the periscope of empathic response, the album is a reckoning with the vast interconnectedness of all things, real, imagined, and soon to be wrought by the fulfillment of dreams.

Laure Briard - Ne Pas Trop Rester Bleue (Midnight Special Records)

It never occurred to me that there was much overlap between California and France before hearing Laure Briard's Ne Pas Trop Rester Bleue. I mean, there is wine, and the fact that both are cultural meccas within the West, but in terms of vibe, aesthetic and spirit... it definitely never occurred to me that the two cultural loadstones could collide before I encountered sunny yéyé serenades like "Magical Cowboy" and flirty canter of "The smell of your Hair." The album is explicitly inspired by the deserts of the Western United States and has an invariant sunny side that is amazingly untouched by the harsh climate of its austere muse. Instead, it rises above the tasset grounding of the senses like a vapor cloud or mirage, untouchable by death but still seemingly embodying it. This is most certainly the case for the title track, where the jaunt of the verses is panged by a pallor of distress in the chorus, ambivalent to the mortal destiny that stalks its every step and betraying its awareness of the inevitable with only a minimal dew of perspiration and wink towards the shadows which bloom in the periphery. It's hard to stay blue when listening to this album, even while in the pluck of a fate that rises up to meet you like the bed and belly of a pit of quicksand.

Rob Mazurek - Exploding Star Orchestra - Lightning Dreamers (International Anthem)

Heraclitus said that no one steps in the same river twice, but can you step in two rivers at once? I don't know that Rob Mazurek's latest set of pieces for the Exploding Star Orchestra either answers this question or fully addresses the aforementioned aphorism, but it is partly inspired by the divergent axis of two great rivers in Brazil- contrastingly named, the White and the Black. His experience traversing these bodies of water impelled him to reflect on the current of time and the flow of humanity, shared pasts, and disparate futures, converging and reassembling in the folds of eternity, clinging to a spinning pin-head floating through the vapor. Even the tracks on Lightning Dreamers that don't direct the listener's attention to a stream of reflection on the simultaneous gestures of humanity and history nonetheless are possessed of a chimeric fluidity that pulses with a shameless potentiality, like water and mercury, like sand and volcanic ash, like flesh and earth, we're all dreamers and shapeshifters, becoming what we were to fashion the attire that we'll be introduced to our future selves in. Lightning Dreamers is a catcher's mitt sewn to collect a cannonball aimed at the moon. 

Sprite - Sprite (Self- Released)

Chicago's Sprite conjures a credible melancholic storm of thunderous, reverb-rankled jangle rock on their debut, self-titled EP. It's impressive how propulsive and, at the same time, soupy these tunes are, like you're doing donuts on an airboat in the middle of a marsh during a monsoon- drowning in a centripetal crush of passion, gaining inertia, and putrid, palustrine discharge. It's heady and hard to keep your lungs clear while wading through, but it's worth the fight as its lows produce a breathless kind of high, and its highs will leave you hanging in the air like a cloud shelf whose temper could chew the tip off a skyscraper. 

Parent Teacher - Impending Doom (Wilbur & Moore Records)

Impending Doom, despite the urgency of its manicure, is a hushed, outsider pop record that should ease your transition into the new year. Parent Teacher has his mischievous side, evidenced by the frequent dry-mouthed turns of phrase that weave through his lyrics sheets like a pot-stirring python, but sonically the album coasts around the rim of your senses as Apollo's chariot rides overhead- you can bask in its glow and photosynthesize its rays to nourish your innards without the fear of being trampled or displaced by its passing. However, if you want to dive into the dialogue that Parent Teacher has drafted, you'll find it rich in subtlety and perspective. Turns out the only immediate demise you should be concerned with is the death of your boredom. 

 

Leucrocuta - Chastity Platinum: Dead Scream (Grimalkin Records)

Kindling the spirit of the ancient foe of the Ethiopian herdsman and his dogs, Toronto artist Leucrocuta embarks on a quest through the fractured faultlines of identity and the cracked state of our suspiciously disoriented reality on their latest record. It's not hard at all to imagine Chastity Platinum: Dead Scream as the outgrowth of a relatively benign Mononoke, a spiritual presence once dedicated to spreading disorder but which has quietly slipped into a kind of semi-retirement to contemplate its disruptive impulses and deeper existential questions of humanity's susceptibility to their malign influence. A chill, subtly anarchic record that melds a no-wave approach to funk with an ambiance of low-key Loki darkwave, idling through slippery beats and corkscrew basslines to reach a base paradigm of acerbic spiritual, serenity, if not bristled ataraxia. A beat in the dark to tune the aching pulse of your aching desire. 

Album Review: Prairiewolf - Prairiewolf

The night is cool and pure. The wind drifts under your chin and over your shoulders like a lover's breath. The dark shrowd of the sky covers you like the wing of a mother bird. Sight knows no obstacles here. You can see in telescopic leaps- over hills, down gulls, and over ranges of perilous peaks. The lack of light focuses your senses. You perceive beyond perception. You sense of smell is impeccable, a coyote could not better challenge your organ's receptiveness to the slightest source of fragrance. You are nourished by the mere thought of a hearty meal. You can trace underground rivers through vibrations that rise like smoke through the sand, billowing between your toes like a sudden germination of daffodils. The stones you lean against and press into the dirt with your heel are your kin. You have a prosperous family. A generous family. The lizards that dwell beneath the stones are your wards, charges, and students- scaly scholars awaiting in supplication the mercy of bread and honey which come rolling from your fingertips. Your hands are raw from giving. The heart of a dead man, buried in a mining accident still beats, perceptible by the ears at a distance- a tattletale letter postmarked between the envelope of today and yesterday. Time is endless. Each grain of sand is a mountain. Every mountain is a sentry awaiting retirement. You have always been here. You are welcome to leave, but a morsel of this moment will stay with you until there is no more you to memorialize the beauty of that which can not be either fully grasped or denied. Only the night knows what you have taken with you, and what you leave behind. 

Keep it moving with Centripetal Force.

Album Review: Oruã - Íngreme

Oruã's Íngreme feels odder than it should. The spark of the record is owed to the band's support for Built to Spill during a US tour in 2019. The songs were a kind of grounding exercise for the group while on this journey. There isn't a specific Oruã's sound per say; they'll do sound collages when it suits them, and jazz when it feels right, but what is really striking about Íngreme is the way that it feels like a meeting point between all of these disparate strands while translating them into the sphere of '90s indie rock. It's truly invigorating to hear the way in which Oruã are able to thread the warped and time-distending qualities of Brazilian funk and psyche and lace them elegantly with clumpy indie rock grooves and art-punk percussive flare. It feels like stumbling on a '60s freak-out in the basement of a Berkeley townhouse- a wormhole that connects today to our evaporated, wigged-out past as if they were part of one subterranean digestive track, each nurturing the other and calling the other into simultaneous and spontaneous being. Like Os Mutantes growing spurs to be fired by Archers of Loaf into the broadsided palate (pallet?) of organized disorder raised by groups like Fixtures to create oil stain rainbow effects that jell and spread across a continuum of practice and insight. Its origins might be clearly delineated, but there isn't any containing Íngreme once it's poured its contents out into your ears. It's like water flowing downhill, there isn't anything it won't pick up and carry with it downstream, and there isn't any nook or cranny that it won't fill and fully investigate while on its kaleidoscopic voyage.

Change your view, change it all with Transfusão Noise Records.

Album Review: Mong Tong 夢東 - Mystery 秘神

Taiwanese funk and psychedelic project Mong Tong 夢東 is one of the many musical undertakings of brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi. Their latest album Mystery 秘神 combines their love for vintage transcendental rock sounds with an obsession over local occult mythology in what is a strangely transportive and well-rounded record. I have no means of measuring the distance between the possible points of triangulation of the secret sources of knowledge they employ and the specific sounds I am hearing, but the shifts in mood and overall pacing of the record still manage to craft a compelling narrative; even though there is not a single original word spoken during the entire trip. That's ok; sometimes the mind sees what the eyes can't and hears what the ears ignore. You don't have to gaze into the enigma of the album to appreciate it as it's more than pleasing on a purely aesthetic level as a foggy amalgam of the guitar styles and personality of Takeshi Terauchi and Iron Butterfly. Although, imagining yourself descending the steps of an ancient temple to do battle with disembodied horrors in order to retrieve a magic iron box that can be used to trap a usurper sorcerer who is terrorizing a kingdom can certainly add a layer of intrigue to the experience of the album... if you're open to that sort of thing, that is.

Go deeper with Guruguru Brain.

Album Review: The Drin - Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom

Most psychedelic bands worthy of attention have a certain mystery attached to their music, substantiated by the inverted nature of their sound, or the altered state they aim to conger through it. It's usually just an aesthetic though, or they otherwise make the entire map of the terrain they'll be exploring with your apparent through the lyrics and other cues. Few feel as esoteric as The Drin. Your first clue at this should be their cover art, which tends towards the monochromatic, chewed-up xerox layouts popular amongst the more enigmatic circles within post-punk and hardcore. A format that they deviated from slightly with their 2022 release Down River In the Distance, where a shot of a band member in the woods appears like a negative from an ill-fated expedition to hunt down the Flatwoods Monster. Their most recent effort, Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom, takes on yet another deviant form while retaining the same dark aura, emerging as if through the b-grade, '80s cinema trope where a child's innocuous artwork reveals some dark secret of the seemingly gentle Mid-Western town they inhabit. Crawling down the attic stairs on all fours to the sounds of charismatic hymns and the buzzing of flies, the opening track "Venom" slithers between the shadows cast by the muntins of a window cracked pane, winding amongst the moldings and along the base of sagging drywall, until it can skirt up your pant leg like a rat up a drain pipe. Up through the cracks in the floorboards, rattles the rhythmic creak of "Five and Dime Conjurers," its course progressions slicing through and wounding the warm quietude of the track's humble ambiance, poisoning it and giving it a sickly sweet fragrance, like bile mixed with lavender water. "Peaceful, Easy, Feeling" is a clattering, claustrophobic sputter that will toss you around as if you've been blindfolded and stuffed in the trunk of a car, permitting you to sense the grinding din of an unpaved road beneath you, while jostling unceremoniously on the alter of a spare tire, shaken by the jounce of the wheels striking rocks and potholes in its path, while the barely audible dialogue of your captures filters back through the hallow frame of your steal cell, echoing like a credo of doom. Provided you make it to the second half of the album with your sanity in check, "Walk So Far" will draw you out of hiding and into the open, gripped by the howl of a baneful wind and the shrieks of small devilish birds, your gaze fixed at the center of sun, whose golden shade has turned a watery red, like the center of an iris when saturated with light from an otoscope- a peaceful horror whose hypnotic, slavish thrash resolves into the skeletal bellydance of "Go Your Way Alone," where flesh peels like the blooming of a rose, and the ashy melodicism of "The Day (Azoic)," with its brushing grooves and the slow reap of its chord progressions, a song that will suspend you in an astral plane above the blackened heap of a long extinguished funeral pyre, where all your earthly remain charred and splintered. The Drin are brewing an uncommon alloy of proprietary mischief on Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom. You can't always tell what's in it, but you can sense it, carving through some knot in your brain that the world at large would prefer to stay tied.

More strange vibes from Feel It Records.

Album Review: Grass Is Green - Vacation Vinny

It's important for me to memorialize Vacation Vinny in some way as we near its 10-year anniversary. Released in 2014, it was the Grass is Green's last album, but it stands as one of the better examples of its era. Example of what you ask? It's hard to explain, but there was at one point a genuine counter-weight to the types of indie bands whose music was used in commercials and who received high marks from, now, bizarrely, dominant media publications (none of whom I will name here, because, frankly, I don't need to). The Boston band felt like they were, intentionally or not, a part of that thoroughly necessary corrective force- a weird, almost indescribable, confluence of post-punk, post-hardcore, and freaky hippy energy, that favored tons of feedback and a plug-in-n-play, casual garage rock ethos. The culmination of a hard underground approach and an ethereal blending of aesthetics that was sustained by fellow travelers like Krill, Gnarwhal, Two Inch Astronaut, and My Dad, and which found a home on the ever-exploratory Exploding in Sound. I listened to Vacation Vinny a lot when it first came out, not really realizing that the era that it came out of was either significant (at least to me), or that it might turn over at some point and dissipate. All I knew at the time was that I preferred what Grass Is Green was doing to anything that the "people in the know" were telling me I should be listening to. All the weird phases that opener "Sammy So-Sick" ripples through still astonish me- building up steam with a little Mid-West jangle and cooling down with a drift of mellow surf-psyche before steadily lashing out in increasingly soggy, murky, and discordant fits of intense relapse and nervous convalescence. "Disjoint" tags in as the follow-up, and wastes no time hurdling itself down the short corridor of the tracks run time like a man attempting to escape a straightjacket by propelling himself through the neck as if he were a gasping fish leaping through a porthole and back to the sea. Later "Scattering Ram" wriggles and protests as if it's avoiding an uncomfortable subject (like alimony payments or its parent's divorce) only to covertly counter with its own forceful rebuttals and accusations, in a hot flow of feedback and evasive but cogent grooves that resemble Pavement peeling out in the spirit of Drive Like Jehu. That heated exchange is then followed by the one-legged loping of "Spore," which proceeds through a series of languid swells and small bursts, with purposefully placed guitars and percussive splashes dispursing as if they were mushroom glands erupting in slow motion, staining the air with plumbs of sticky fragrances, deciduous hues, and earthy blots. There are still plenty of bands doing creative and exciting work, but few could qualify as being as willfully or colorfully obtuse as Grass is Green. Even after all these years, Vacation Vinny is a welcome escape from the ordinary. 

A million pieces made whole by Exploding In Sound Records.

2022 Year- End Invitational

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

    

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

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

Superdestroyer - Goon (Lonely Ghost Records) 

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

Disq - Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet (Saddle Creek)

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

Grotto Terrazza - Kalte Köstlichkeiten (Maple Death Records)

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

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

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

Nok Cultural Ensemble - Njhyi (SA Recordings)

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

Methyl Ethel - Are You Haunted? (Future Classic)

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

Sacco & Vanzetti - No Rocks (Self-Released)

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

Benny Bock - Vanishing Act (Colorfield Records)

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

Udumakahle - S'qhuba Izinkomo (Dumakahle Entertainment)

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

POLIÇA – Madness (Memphis Industries)

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

Circuit3 - Technology For The Youth (AnalogueTrash)

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

Pool Kids - Pool Kids (Skeletal Lightning)

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

Coupons - Wasted Intimacy (Counter Intuitive Records)

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

NNAMDÏ - Please Have A Seat (Secretly Canadian)

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

Sobs - Air Guitar (Topshelf Records)

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

Joe Rainey - Niineta (37d03d)

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

Eva Shaw - Solo (Mad Fatti)

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

Summerbruise - The View Never Changes (Old Press Records)

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

Two Meters - Two Meters (Knifepunch Records)

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

Making Movies - Xopa (Cosmica Artists)

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

 

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

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

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

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

Erica Eso - 192 (Hausu Mountain Records)

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

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

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