Album Review: Praise - All In A Dream

I'm perpetually searching for the next record that makes me glad to be alive. Not that I'm not happy with my life. But certain records can add something to your existence that it otherwise is lacking. Like a sense of ecstatic jubilance, or a rush of adrenaline that propels you into your day with bounding defiance, as the floor had been replaced with a trampoline. It might seem trite to describe a record on these terms, but I don't think there is a single music lover out there who hasn't felt this way about an album at one time or another. Today that record for me is Praise's All In A Dream. The Baltimore melodic hardcore band is one of those rare breeds that isn't hampered by a lack of speed or aggression. Their music is plenty up-tempo, but winning a land speed record (even as far as Husker Du fans go) or pummeling you into submission isn't high on their list of priorities. Praise's All In A Dream blithe rebellion is less pressed to impress and more geared to inspire. You can pick this up from the guitar tones alone. A kind of benevolent, multi-colored bath of distortion that peers over the horizon of these songs like the first rays of morning light. Beyond these textures, Anthony Dye and Austin Stemper guitar playing is thoroughly hook-oriented, combining to smooth out the anxious violence and slam of youth crew grooves, heightening their ebbs and polishing their flows until they resemble the cadence of a panting breath. This exuberance is matched by Andy Norton's vocals, which have an endearing atonal quality that allows him to shout his lungs out while remaining somewhat conversant, like he's a friend whose overly excited to share an experience with you and the rawness of his enthusiasm has caused him to lose the ability to properly modulate his voice. The entire project is kept on the straight and narrow through the guiding propulsion of Chris Bavaria's bass lines and Daniel Fang's steady but splashy, "slap you awake" kit work, which allows Praise to advance rutty punk anthems like the 360 slide of "Return to Life," the rejuvenating reconcile and rush of "Suddenly Human," and the bracing implore of "Keep Hanging On" with credible uplift, and a momentum that exalts the humble dignity of the lives and hard-won wisdom that prompted their writing in the first place. There is no reason to defer the pleasure of encountering the melodic goodness of All In A Dream for yourself. It might just be the thing you need to greet another day head-on.   

Appearing thanks to Revelation Records

Album Review: Chioke - Chioke

It's cool how rooted Philidelphia singer and songwriter Chioke's self-titled EP is. All too often, R'nB albums have a tendency to get swept up in their own emotions, forgetting to touch the ground beneath them. While it's impressive to witness the heights that some R'nB singers can reach, it can also give you a crick in your neck just trying to keep track of them. Sometimes it's better (for both my level of interest and posture) when a singer is honest and sees eye-to-eye with her audience and that's where Chioke excels. Her EP has a live kind of feel to hit, warm and impactful. Like she's performing in a loft converted into a gallery space; sunlight pouring in behind her as she swings her hips in time with the music flowing from a backing band of trusted associates. Chioke has a very physical presence in the mix on her EP and it gives these tracks so much body the air currents in the room seem to shift and swirl in interaction with her voice as if she had just walked through the room. The backing instrumentation is altogether inspired, featuring innovative takes on numerous timeless touchstones to anchor her performance. "Rushing In" has a four-on-the-floor retro '60s beat with lyrics that are haunted by regret. Turning the page to the following track, "Muse" has a dreamy, crowd-pleasing guitar line and generally feels like a bewitching take on the light funk of The Time. "Great Lake" exists in a space between '90s neo-soul, the sunbleached Cali funk of Knxwledge, and the soft whiplash of Supreme Beings of Leisure, while "Out on the Road" see Chioke's biting flow riding astride competing melodies of breezy synths and tormented guitar chords like a daredevil attempting to ride to motorcycles simultaneously while jumping a semi-trailer. Now that she's cultivated some sturdy roots, there is no telling the peaks she'll reach as she continues to nurture her talents and grow this project. 

Out on Core Valu.

Album Review: Amir Yaghmai - Go Bozo

I often find myself wondering, what is the point of an album? It's not as pessimistic of a question as it sounds. I obviously think albums are an important art form. But the fact that I believe they are important in no way lessons my curiosity about them. If anything, it makes them even more extraordinary. The best answer I can come up with as to why I think albums matter is that they allow a musician the space to explore many different sides of an idea, a sound, or a mood, all while enabling them to separate and organize their discrete and overlapping inquiries into manageable pieces as a cohesive statement. That's the best I can do. But even this explanation seems overly functional. The truest answer I have of what an album means as an art form is defined not by words, but by experience. You have to immerse yourself in it to know what it is and why it's worth appreciating. And I presume this is true for both the connoisseur (a name I would give to anyone who likes music) and the musician who makes what the listener enjoys. These thoughts are at the top of mind when I drop into Amir Yaghmai's debut album Go Bozo. It's not an album that he intended to make, but it is the album he ended up making regardless, and I find this lack of pretense intriguing and instructive. When the session guitarist and frequent Julian Casablancas collaborator was approached by Colorfield Records about making a record for them, he reportedly felt some need for pause. His career had been defined by taking direction from others and helping them achieve their artistic vision, but to make a record on his own was an anxious and intimidating proposition. He did it though. The record was made. Guided by intuition, Go Bozo is an uncommon variation and collision of '70s Continental disco, modern club beats, and progressive rock, whose boundaries are both clearly manifest and yet always on the verge of metamorphosis. Opener "Full Bozomode" exhibits a startling calm, like an electrical storm passing through a cloud nebular observed via telescope at a distance of millions of lightyears away. Not all of the tracks orbit a single, central groove, but when they do, like on "Bozo Beach," it can really drag you through some exotic places; like a Martian fashion runway encircled by an acidic bubble bath, a volleyball practice where the teams play with a wrecking ball in giant mecha suits over a net made of lazars, or the secret dojo of a cyborg partisan army training to engaging in hand-to-hand combat with interdimensional terrorists. The title track of Go Bozo has this woozy sort of sloshiness to it that handles like a homage to Ethiopian jazz that was decoded from scrambled and waterlogged VHS tapes, and the bemused and cluttered freak outing "Special Price for Geeks" melds what sounds like Spanish guitar playing with Grimes outtakes that have been remixed on one of those ancient modular synths that takes up an entire room. Go Bozo is highly imaginative and eclectic, but it is also somewhat naive. And that's one of its strengths. It doesn't have a clear destination. It was made with the understanding that the process is the goal, and the point of completion for the project is when all of its diverging tangents converge at a natural point of departure. In this instance, Go Bozo's centripetal climax is the final track, "Lamb & Tato" a resonating coda where we are exposed to Amir's unadorned and plaintive voice, reciting a lyrical poem in dialogue with a younger, more frantic conversant over a stark and submerged piano melody and a wash of careful violin interventions. It's personal and distant, funny and sober, and innocent in a tortured kind of way- you'd have to be a real bozo not to feel at least a little charmed and enlightened while listening to what Amir has to offer here.  

Available through Colorfield Record.

 

Metal Monday: Sweet Cobra, City & i.o, Dødskvad & Chainbreaker

Dipping back into the dungeon vaults for another Metal Monday tonight. As usual, these are some of the metal albums that I've been listening to lately and that I felt like I had something to say about. I'm starting off with two more progressive and experimental albums and rounding off with two mayhem-wielding records for those who prefer a more old-school style. Regardless of what you're into, I hope you find something you like here. 

Sweet Cobra - Threes (Pax Aeternum Digital)

Threes is not Sweet Cobra's third album. The Chicago band has been around for close to twenty years, and have kept a dependable release schedule over these many, many years. The most conclusive answer I can offer as to the record's name is that it's a reference to the stable trifecta that forms the group's line up; vocalist and bassist Timothy Remis, guitarist Robert Arthur Lanham Jr., and drummer Jason Gagovski. Birthed into the underground as a hardcore band in 2004, they've consistently been challenging their own habits and evolving their punk sensibilities ever since. While it appeared as if they had all but embraced a well-earned metal pedigree by the mid-'10s, they've once again sidestepped the shadow of their own legacy with Threes. The album has as its base, the sludgy post-hardcore of their 2015 album Earth, but tracts towards more eclectic territory with the supple psychedelic folk-grunge of "Least Worst," earnest and dust-laden confessions and covenants such as "Alive On Arrival" and dreamy, twisted noise-hymnals in the vein of "Fable." And while it may not be very metal, it is impressive to see Sweet Cobra try their hand at some Mid-Western garage thunder and power-pop when it comes to the live-wire hook-peel of "Escaped Goat." Luck may come in threes, but an album like this is one of a kind. 

City & i.o - Chaos is God Neighbour (Éditions Appærent)

I don't know that the primarily ambient and brutal electronica experiment City & i.o would consider themselves a metal project, but their music tends to fill a similar nitch for me in terms of what I look for in a metal album; intensity, transgression, and brazenly dark forays into the imagination. Also, their album Chaos is God Neighbour features blast beats and shrieking black metal vocals, so I would say that the facts are in favor of including them on this list. Chaos is God Neighbour was written in blitz during 2020, giving it a frenzied and claustrophobic feel, and accomplishes the task of taking the listener on a truly harrowing journey. As a bold move, they begin the album with the longest track (6 minutes 38 seconds) and proceed with tracks of ever-shortening length on through to the finale which clocks in at a trim minute thirty. You can think of it like climbing a mountain that has been inverted. The base is wider, the incline is gradual, and its features are more accommodating. But as you continue your downward ascent, the area you have to grasp becomes more narrow, the surfaces steep and treacherous, and its elements harsher and more unforgiving. As you progress, the mists and clouds around become a sheet of hail, and you are battered with increasing intensity until you reach the summit and find sanctuary. By the end, you feel like you've been through some kind of ritual. A purification of the darkest order which you may be the only living soul to have seen through to the end. 

Dødskvad - Kr​ø​nike II (Caligari Records)

Krønike II continues the Norwegian death metal band Dødskvad's exploration of their country's bloody and heathen past. A sequel to, what else, Krønike I, the album punctures the assumed procession of time, causing it to shrivel and recoil with filthy blood and glory grooves, slicing steely riffs, percussion that sounds like the footsteps of a battalion of lost souls, and phantasmal synth interventions that thicken the mix with an imposing sense of foreboding awe. The heavy atmosphere of the album makes it all the more dramatic when a solo cuts through the formidable aura, producing a supernatural hue and showering sparks, like a bolt of lightning striking a sword that had been plowed into the dirt to mark the grave of a fallen soldier. Kr​ø​nike II is a place where the skeletal hand of vanquished warriors still has a grip on the present, for the dead become restless and eager when Dødskvad takes up the reigns. 

Chainbreaker - Lethal Desire (Hells Headbangers)

Roadwarrior speed metal from the land of Razor and Slaughter. Chainbreaker formed in 2013 but didn't unleash their battle-hardened debut Lethal Desire until 2019. Why rush perfection? That's a rhetorical question. Because you can't! This very fast, very mean, and unapologetically virile heavy metal that was made to soundtrack the ransacking and raising to the ground of your hometown. Swift and precisely deadly, it continues the tradition of legendary Canadian speed without feeling derivative or out of touch. But, you know, with riffs this badass and chopper-grooves this fierce, I'd be afraid to imply anything else. The way these guys handle their instruments, it feels like any one of them could benchpress me one-handed. I mean, they'd have to be a bunch of sons of bitches to make an album like this! Lethal Desire is a rarefied masterwork of sheer power! 

Album Review: Careen - Careen Love Health

Bellingham's Careen makes small-batch indie rock, as both a matter style and bare quantity. Since their formation in 2017 they've released primarily EPs and demos with raw but coherent production and performances that resuscitate die-hard trends of '90s post-hardcore. Their latest, Careen Love Health is no different. It's loud when it's loud, and it's soft when it's soft, with lyrics that orientate towards oblique literary references and near prolix of prose that spill off the page with unruly enthusiasm. The slow trot, and waltz-out at the start and in the interim of tracks like "In the Light of" and "Longest Piss" have a lulling transitory quality to them, like they are phasing in and out of lucidity, making it all the more shocking when a looming overcast of flashing buzz-saw riffs and lambaste grooves a la Blind Idiot God overtake this field of dreams and wet your back with fury and tears. These Rodan vs Slint dialectics are really impressive and represent the central, mean, and little thumping organ that pumps oxygen to the rest of this low-key recluse. However, there is something to be said for the band when they separate and build on their strengths separately as well. Like when they ride out the gate on the back of a bitter "fuck you" riff that only builds in its cresting intensity on a song like on "Spit Choke," or when the group coasts at a simmer to a shirking moody gamble through a purport of unfocused alienation on "Unalloyed," Careen demonstrates that even when dissected and abstracted, their style proves persuasive. On the whole, Careen Love Health shows the band to be in an exemplary state of fitness, whether they are unleashing the full force of their angst like a howling lion, or quietly cultivating their thoughts in diffident, bookish contemplation. 

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Album Review: Arthur King - Changing Landscapes (Mina Las Pintadas)

Arthur King's Changing Landscapes was performed and recorded in a Chilean copper mine. I want to pause there because this fact was what drew me into the album. A mine is a unique setting for a creative project with a sonic potential that is worth exploring, but it goes deeper than that. He could have recorded many other places to get a deep, resonating sound, but he chose this location and it served a purpose. It left an undeniable psychographic imprint on the work. Mines are not natural places. They are human incursions into non-hospitable terrain- a kind of terraforming of the interior of the Earth. A process of injecting the wants and needs of our civilization as well as the instruments and architecture of modernity into ancient formations that pre-date humanity itself. They represent an infiltration of impossible space wherein humans set up residence in corridors of stone flesh- an expedition into the darker recesses of the imagination that is made possible by the expansion of our environment through excavation. They're places of both awe and disorientation, eerie and inspiring at the same time, and it is this synergy that Changing Landscapes embodies. Through spans of interlacing percussion, wondering navigational flutes and a clanging toil of suggestive atmospherics, Arthur King cultivates grooves that harmonize with the processes of geological time in a transcendent conversation with the chthonic anatomy upon which all else rests and from which we all ultimately rely on for subsistence. The frequent use of recursive murmuring percussion suggests the jostling and function of great pressure-forged, quarts organs while the whispering interludes consciously recall the phantasmal interiority of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, illuminating a spiritual component while proposing a living presence much older than any mortal interloper. Changing Landscapes is revealing in its structural ambitions, showing the life of a world below the procrustean layer we inhabit, while unlocking the penetrating nature of our perception and uncovering an abiding potential to find harmony in the hidden place of the cosmic body we call home. 

From AKP Recordings

Album Review: Isabella Lovestory - Amor Hardcore

I think part of the appeal of reggaeton is that it's difficult to over-intellectualize. It has a malleable framework, which makes it compatible with a lot of different styles, but these mashups and amalgamations seem to be primarily led by sonic and aesthetic conciliations rather than philosophical principles. Punk can be that way too. There are definitely interesting ways of approaching and thinking about playing punk rock, but if you forget to get the "feel" right, you haven't made much worth anyone's time. It's this kind of step first and figure out where you're going later approach that compels a lot of exciting art to be made and which I think finds a particularly fascinating forum on Isabella Lovestory's Amor Hardcore. The fashion-conscious, international pop star integrates an array of opposites, from shoegaze to reggaeton, from cross-continental hip hop to murky industrial punk, colliding and submerging them into an outsized outpour of gestural euphoria. Even as she clips and sterilizes, molds and melds together stark and pliant, aching and balmy antipodes, she never loses a sense of where all these disparate influences and cracked details intrinsically fit together. It's both arresting and accommodating- like she's smashed a bunch of vases and then recombined their shards into a ceramic status of a dragon that you can still hold a bouquet for you. That's the trick of Amor Hardcore- there is no trick. It is what it is in its unity of surface-level distinctions, and this surface-level presentation is more informative than an ancillary understanding that you place in its orbit. Just like love, Amor Hardcore reveals itself only in your acceptance of it at face value. 

Album Review: Alexia Avina - A Little Older & Crush

I came across singer and songwriter Alexia Avina's discography recently and it captured me in a manner that I didn't expect. There is an intricateness to her approach to pop music that seems almost unreal. As in, how can something so carefully composed, also be so unassuming? It presents as if its gracefully pleated and waving folds were shaped by sheer accident without human intervention. Equivalent to a pearl in a crinkly clamshell that has washed ashore or a patch of bark that resembles a human face. A design without a designer. An unadulterated natural emergence. This ethereal tendency in her music has become more pronounced with time, reaching both its pinnacle, and possibly its disillusionment this year. While Alexia released her most petal-soft album early in 2022, she also demonstrated her favor for a flower's thorns with her most recent EP. The latter development is an intriguing rerouting of her project's course and one that might signal a new overall approach to her work. We won't know for sure until she releases another album, but I think it's worth unpacking the differences in her output this year all the same. So I'm going to compare her 2022 LP A Little Older with the Crush EP to get a better sense of where they diverge. 

 

As you should anticipate from my description above, A Little Older is the maturation point of the ephemeral quality of Alexia's heretofore aesthetic. The album is centered on the interplay of her guitar playing and her voice, which is a typical configuration as far as these things go, only Alexia's voice is not just in the fore but in the background and suffused within the margin of these tracks as well. Her voice IS these tracks in a lot of ways- filling in the gaps with its widening sweep, interweaving with sparse percussion and her own redolent guitar playing like the wind catching blades of tall grass as it dashes across a prairie. It's like an untainted font of oxygen. You can't always feel it, but you also can't deny that it is there and swirling around you. It's interesting that many of these songs were apparently written as far back as 2018 and therefore may share some DNA with her debut Betting on an Island- a delicate guitar pop album in its own right, but one which is both more crowded and provincial than its present descendant. Looking back, the exceptional tenderness of A Little Older feels like the fulfillment of the promise of this earlier release. 

Crush is of a different genus than its predecessor. Alexia's playing style and vocal performance are still recognizable, but they have been altered, becoming more direct and authoritative- the precision of her playing and the ambiance of her vocals both conscripted into playing more declarative roles. Less suggestive, more incisive; listening to Crush in reflection on the balnace of her past work, the impression builds that she had previously been in the process of weaving a cacoon for herself- from which she has now emerged, not as a butterfly, but something just as beautiful. So beautiful in fact, that you might not notice the stinger tucked between her variegated folds. I feel like when moving from acoustic guitar to synths, and in adopting a more cold and determined aesthetic overall, she has introduced a detectable measure of non-toxic venom into the elegant unveiling of her sound. A chiding, shrewdness that peers out from the darling facade like eyeholes cut into an embellished portrait of an oil painting. It is this forthright consciousness and observable canniness on Crush that serve as another layer of depth to her presentation and style and which strike out from the prettiness of these songs most noticeably. Crush feels like a literal sea change in this regard- as if it is no longer the ocean that carries the boat, but the boat that suspends itself on the ocean. It will be interesting to see if she remains in this channel, or what other fathoms she dives to on future releases. 

Find it on Lost Map Records

Album Review: Tomorrow's Echo - Demon

Germany's Tomorrow Echo is a two-member post-punk act that has managed to cultivate an acutely despondent collection of songs on their debut EP Demon. It's incredibly simple in structure but undeniably effective. There are chilling, glancing synth stabs, visceral and wiry basslines, and relentless mechanical percussion, and then there is frontwoman Sabs Edge's vocal performance. Sabs voice leaks out of her body as if it were pouring out of a stab wound. Like all harmonious functioning of her anatomy has already ceased and her spirit in the form of ephemeral stirring utterances and vacillating moans is an attempting to free itself like a rat whose foot is clamped in a wire-jaw trap. The alignment of Sabs and instrumentalist Reece Thomas talents put flesh and blood feeling back into a world of pure alienation. Like a heartbeat murmuring in an eviscerated cadaver or a tear running down the face of a marble bust, Tomorrow's Echo entreat signs of life that are detectable in places that are rightfully believed barren of such indicia. 

Album Review: Ali Murray - Wilderness of Life

I very rarely cover Scottish artists on this blog. It's not that I have anything against them. I've been to Glasgow. I've had haggis (in Glasgow). I even got a picture with the statue of the Duke of Wellington. So I'm not opposed to the country or its culture. For whatever reason, they seem to be avoiding me. I receive pitches from all over the world, but the only Scottish person who has ever written me, to my knowledge, is Ali Murray. And, before you ponder too long on my reaction to his email, I want to clarify that it was one of the nicer ones I've ever received. He's a very courteous and thoughtful fellow and these personality traits carry over to and saturate his latest album Wilderness of Life. First and foremost, I appreciate the gloomy aesthetic of the album. It's like it was recorded under a heavy overcast and the overbearing density of the atmosphere somehow fused with the tape. It's a facet of the production that lends the songs a semblance of pondering melancholy that interacts encouragingly with the lyrics. The vast majority of which hover in tense suspension over the sheer drop of a rocky shore- searching the horizon for clarity with one foot over the ledge of a cliff and the other chained to the hope of this world. While these expressions of existentialism and fleeting despair are essential to the molding of this album's sound, Wilderness is far from a passive troth of ennui. It contains a wealth of subtly propellent quantities that barter in equivalent sonic currencies to post-rock acts like This Will Destroy You in exchange with the jangly wafting shoegaze of The Evpatoria Report, all kept in continuous rotation by a safeguarding surefooted certainty borrowed from mature punk acts like the Cure and subtler shades of artists in the stratum of The Story So Far. Navigating the Wilderness of Life is possible by applying a method of finding the light as it peaks between the trees and foliage and following it home. It is a testament to Ali Murray's worldly attunements and sensibilities that he understands that such guiding beacon rays shine brightest for those who are peering through the dark. 

Album Review: Jobber - Hell in a Cell

If I have one major complaint about modern alternative rock and punk is that it just doesn't know how to make our internal conflicts sound cool anymore. Every song about an encounter with ambivalence or a brush with guilt is framed with a hint of sadness or distress, like being confused about your emotions and your role in life is a character flaw rather than a persistent state of the human condition. Bands like Polvo, Veruca Salt, the Pixies (and on and on and on...) all thrived at the point where the whirlwind inside us breached the surface of one's composer in a tide of lionized confusion, and the '90s in general was a golden era for exalting the tensions that color one's consciousness and torment the conscience in exciting and relatable ways. NYC's Jobber is a good example of this aesthetic in our current moment- a punk band with a muscular physique and soft interior, who cast a sweet set of melodies into the lingering cusp of riffs that rip like bear claws, and whose debut EP Hell in a Cell is literally and metaphorically about wrestling. In all its forms! Whether that be the attempts to dam the crushing flood of emotions that sweep through us each day, the fight many of us endure for a sense of dignity at our jobs, or the literal (nonmetaphorical) joy many of us take in the theater of thespian combat that is pro wrestling. The band's name is even a reference to someone who is hired to lose a match. Let that sink in. This is a band that sounds like a combination of Helium, that dog. and The Rentals who is named for someone whose job it is to get their ass handed to them for your amusement. It's a peak synergy of content and form. A name for someone who is humiliated for a living serving as the title and marquee for art about being humiliated by the conditions of your life and which pays partial homage to people who recite soap opera dialog in their underwear on TV. The lyrics reflect these conditions too; brooding while navigating one's workplace and its "hall of hate," anticipating fresh bad news like a "40 ft drop," being a "heavyweight of indecision" forced to "consort with adversaries," and enduring the daily irritation of witnessing people with fake jobs wielding real and definite power over your life and well being. It's enough to make anyone want to drop the People's Elbow on their supervisor! But what's really astounding about the album is that Jobber is able to make such plebian straits powerful and ascendant, like their subject is actually the protagonist in a contest of righteous purpose, set loose in a theatrical labyrinth stocked with bullying marketing minotaur, micromanagement traps, and Satanic priests dispatched from the Temple of VC Viceroys- a pitched battle demarcated by rage, petty skirmishes, and uncertain chances for survival, and endured for the honor of doing it again the next day. Making the depths of this ambiguity sound important, and dare I say fun and meaningful (!) is the final test of Jobber's strength. A test they pass, by the way! Consequently, Hell in a Cell becomes the wooshing sense of triumph that fills your ears as you descend from the tight ropes into the fray, knowing that even if the mass of torment you've dropped into can claim your body and mind, it can never take from you the conviction of spirit that you were never meant to be fodder for other's benefit. After all, every hold they put you in can be reversed once you learn their tricks. In the meantime, you can learn to inhabit the ambiguity of your situation like an underdog face angling for their chance to shitcan whoever is running this circus. Also, Mankind has a cameo on the opening track. That alone should qualify Hell in a Cell as an all-time champ! 

Out on Exploding In Sound Records

Interview: Discussing the Sun

Image courtesy of the artists

Had a really wonderful conversation with Mars and Nelson of the emo-pop group Discussing the Sun for CHIRP Radio this week. We talked about their new album Feel It All, how the band formed, the boundaries they pushed in terms of their creativity, and the significance of the album's lyrics. I'm still impressed with how much we were able to cover in such a short period of time. You can check the interview here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Discussing The Sun Interview

Feel It All is objectively great as an album and another amazing release from Lonely Ghost. Check it out below: 

Album Review: AJ Suede - Oil On Canvas

I checked out Oil On Canvas because the cover reminded me of a Memphis horrorcore cassette... It's not that at all. It pays to be wrong sometimes though. Oil On Canvas is apparently the third release this year from Seatle rapper AJ Suede and it's just kind of straightforwardly good. The self-produced album mainly leans into smokey, hypnotic repetitions of old cinema soundtracks and excerpts of jazz with an undertow of boom-bap to keep it apace. That's just the backdrop though- AJ's rhymes are at the fore. He has a gliding, verbose flow, that allows him to easily stack complex bars without breaking rhythm or a sweat. He's one of those MCs who it seems like words just emerge out, without any really exertion of effort on his part. It's the sign of a true master- a combination of natural ability and the practiced form of a martial artist who can turn you inside out and make it look as simple an unconscious of an act as pulling the tab on a can of soda (or whoop-ass in this case). Although, It's not like AJ is on the attack with Oil On Canvas as the mood of the album is closer to a hooka bar where you're carousing in beanbag chairs while submerged in purple billows of smoke, following conversations by ear because you can only really makes out the outlines of the people around you. As an aside, it smells good in there too! This is not something I can say about the symbolic space every rap album makes for itself (even one's I like!). A kind of a mix of sweet, but not overly sweet, oil and herb that really mellows out your situation. What I'm trying to get at here, is that this Oil On Canvas is a whole vibe and a minor masterpiece. 

Album Review: Mario Diaz de Leon - Heart Thread

Heart Thread is the first electroacoustic album released by the composer and educator Mario Diaz de Leon as himself, unaccompanied by a band of collaborators or the superfluous ego shield of a pen name. On it, Mario presents the listener with no more than two separate songs, "Heart Thread I" and "Heart Thread II," performed on synthesizers, woodwind timbres, and backed by electronic percussion. The songs adhere to typical pop music structures, which would seem unremarkable, except for the fact that each track is more than twenty minutes long. Mario is in no hurry to reach any kind of climax or resolve any predicted pattern, instead he allows the exaggerated length of the tracks to serve as an integration of abundance and religious myth-making. Pop music typically thrives on brevity and an embrace of a kind of scarcity, but Mario untethers his compositions on Heart Thread from the privations that would otherwise limit their expansion- allowing them to approach the infinite in a natural revelation of form. This deliberate protraction and grasp for the indefinite in acceptance of a boundless wealth of space further anticipates an encounter with the divine. By making space for the infinite mystery of the cosmoses, the album invites a conversation about the origins of our superficial reality and the intrusions of the unfathomable that protrude through it in a manner that is somewhat intelligible to human beings. I can glean all this from the music certainly, but it helps that the cover resembles a stained glass window made of intersecting and outwardly fanning waves of light- a picture of living and emancipated architecture submerged in the very fabric of the universe where the secrets of creation are threaded throughout the metamorphosis of it voluble DNA. 

Out on Denovali Records. 

Album Review: Cheem - Guilty Pleasure

Yo! It's Mick coming at you from the wild and windy streets of the Second City to bring you another I Thought I Heard a Sound album review. Now you know, as well as I do, that THAS is your number #1 source for hot news and scoops on blazing acts that are popin' off the subterranean charts! We are always there for the citizens of the Alternative Nation of these Unites States of Whatever! We prioritize fun and don't compromise on cool and always give you the straight dope on the cream of the crop. Or should I say, Cheem of the crop? That's right, today we are talking about Guilty Pleasure.

The Dealio: 

Cheem was formed in Connecticut in 2013. In the early days, they were playing sparkly, kinda mathy indie and emo rock and released their debut LP in 2016, calling it Making a Planet. They quickly follow it up a year later with the more ambitious Downhill which saw that band doing more '90s-oriented R'nB and '80s ska stuff. They've continued to refine their sound over the past six years, headed in a more pop direction while maintaining an undoubtedly underground edge. Their singles like "Skate Shoes" and the freshly waxed jam "Smooth Brain" mixed in more elements of hip-hop, soul, chiptune and reggae in transition to their current sound. Now, the five-piece band, which consists of vocalists Sam Nazaretian and Skye Holden (who also plays guitar), guitarist Gabe Weitzman, bassist Nate Porter, and drummer Sean Thomas, have released their third album Guilty Pleasure on the ever-delightful Lonely Ghost Records.

So what's this record all about? 

The Good: 

Smash cut! This record rules! Like, right off the bat, Guilty Pleasure slaps! The first track kicks off with this awesome and trippy electronic ska groove that dives head first into this big slamming funk rollick that's kind of like progy and jammy at the same and layered with third-wave emo harmonies and some rapid-fire rhymes. Cheem totally figured out how to maximize the physical impact of their grooves at some point and it makes tracks like the supremely funky "Snag" and "Clueless" feel like you're listening to them live - like someone has just grabbed you by the arm and dragged you through a moss pit to the front of the stage and now you can feel the air displaced by the band's amps jostling your hair. I can feel the total sonic boom of songs like "Pay2Play" in my sinuses and its there shacking loose decades-old mucus, and numbers like "Emerge" are a major rush, with many ups and downs and spring-loaded variations on hip-hop flows and soulful flavors of rock that it's like if someone turned Incubus into a Six Flags roller coaster. Guilty Pleasure has some respectable nuance, too- like on "Cheem Szn" where the band threads up vaporwavey parts with body-bagging reggae rock riffs, brash backpack'n rhymes, and falsetto emo-y melodies in a way that's weirdly delicate but still has a ton of forward momentum. Elsewhere, Cheem keeps it nerdy chic by adding NES beats to the pop-punk powerhouse of "Overload" and then gives many of our beloved indie/emo tropes and standbys a salty-sweet Oysterheaded makeover on the juicy "Mango." S#!t do I need to say more?!? NO?!? Well, it bares repeating. This record rules!

The Bad: 

Duuuuuude, I'm trying but I can't find any. Maybe if you don't like to enjoy your life you might have a problem with this record. I could see someone trying to sideline this album with labels like "mall-punk" or other weird made-up insults, but that's just stupid. Don't be like those people. 

And, the Guilty: 

Ok. If I'm being honest, there is some stuff on Guilty Pleasure that might make people cringe. There are turn-table scratches here and there, that when paired with rock riffs, might trigger some people's allergies. There is a lot of rapping too. Which gate-keeping fools want to segregate from rock music for some reason. Also, Cheem shouts out Kenny G on "Cheem Szn." Which some people will take issue with for sure. But it's in the context of a song that is about not letting people sway you with their unfounded biases on what's "yuck" and what's "yum." I think Cheem's point is made. Don't let critics or culture vultures get between you and a good time. Also, Kenny G has a cameo on the last Imperial Triumphant album. So that settles it. Kenny G is cool now. Deal with it! 

Now, like we always do, and have always done on I Thought I Heard a Sound, we're going to rate Guilty Pleasure according to our scientifically calibrated metrics in three separate categories: Originality (3 points), Performance (3 points), and Over All Coolness (4 Points):

Originality: 

Cheem combines a lot of different parts of '00s emo, '90s alternative rock, and various shades of classic and underground hip-hop and R'nB. They do this while giving some very respectful nods to contemporary internet trends like chiptune and internet-based electronic music projects released primarily to Bandcamp and Soundcloud. This is all familiar stuff that we've heard a million times over, so I'm tempted to give Cheem a 2, but the way the band puts it all together is like nothing I've actually heard before. Because of that, they've earned a 3. Also, Guilty Pleasure's lyrics are really direct and uncompromising. The band says some stuff in these songs that I know people have felt about the industry and conversations surrounding music for a while, but very few people have actually come out and said. That takes guts and I'm giving them an extra +1 for it. (Score: 4)

Performance: 

Guilty Pleasure sounds great! Ultra sharp with no flabby edges. The band definitely tightened up their sound between this release and their last and clarified their vision of what they want the band to be too. It's really impressive! Props to Kris Crummett for the mastering as well. He's done work with Issues and Dance Gavin Dance in the past and he was a good match for Cheem's style. I think Kris gave this record the polish it needed to shine and helped us hear the band in a way that they always intended to be heard. (Score: 3)

Coolness: 

Cool is a relative term, but not when you're having fun. When you're having fun, nothing else matters.  What's cooler than having a good time? If you answer anything other than listening to Guilty Pleasure, then you're wrong! (Score: 4)

So let's do the math. 4 + 3 + 4 gets us a final score of 11 out of 10 in 3 categories... Woah! What the f@#k! That's never happened before. I'm going to have to recheck the tallies here. Hmmmm... 

....

.....

Ok, the recount is over. I was right the first time. 

Total Score: 3-11

Final Take Away: 

Well, with that score, you could say that Guilty Pleasure is certified fresh! The FREASHEST, in fact, since it has our top score of the year. Cheem have really stepped up their game from past records and combined many different kinds of music that some might think shouldn't go together, but now we know totally do. Cheem's proven this fact! Guilty Pleasure's very existence dabs on doubters. And thank god, because the last thing the world needs is more negativity. BTFO with all that! 

Final Final Take Away: 

Guilty, or not, this record is an absolute pleasure. 

Another banger from Lonely Ghost 

Album Review: Anna Butterss - Activities

Activities is Anna Butterss's debut LP. The Australian bassist living in the United States has made her bread playing with some truly notable personalities in the worlds of indie rock and jazz (most notably, Aimee Mann and Makaya McCraven, but others you'd probably recognize as well), but has somehow managed to skirt around the subject of a solo release for almost a decade. It appears to be sheer happenstance, that while tinkering in the studio with Colorfield Records runner Pete Min, she determined to make a change. Something she was doing that day opened up the possibility to her that she could make a record that she'd be proud to put her name on. I don't know what tipped the scales, but whichever muse put their thumb on the pan is owed our thanks. Activities is an eclectic record with a clear sense of purpose but no conclusive limitations on its definite form. Its essence is stable while everything around it rotates and recombines into novel and fascinating constellations, while each song makes best use of Anna's gifts to convey its message without needing to invade the territory of its siblings. This structure might not seem particularly important to point out, but the fact that Anna allows each track enough elbow room to unpack itself as undisturbed kin means that you're going to be encountering several, discrete phenotypes of her genius, all blossoming independently off of the same stalk-like multiform flora in a dazzling spectacle of ingenuity. This dedication to cultivating the aesthetic potential of her flourishing vision allows for a steady Universal Beings-esque intangible voyage like "Entrance" to be followed by the kosmische wired, neon-irsed anomaly "Super Lucrative," and then transition into the patiently interpretive and cooing beckoning sway of "Doo Wop" without the album losing its balance to the centrifuge of its competing gravitational pillars. Just as fascinating as these prior examples, a track like "Number One" will draw a ley line between wavering chamber pop futuristics and apertures of Mid Century jazz exhibitions above a microsegmented percussion line that rolls with momentum in rapid succession like the legs of a cybernetic centipede, while later, elevated compositions like "Blevins" can be found coasting along the perimeter of the Earth's atmosphere, high on pure rich oxygen and mesmerized by the miracle of the cosmos, and yet, it is no inconvenience when "Do Not Disturb" lassos you back from Elysium with shifty lines of intrigue infused hard-bop bass. Activities is an album of many diverting paths, none of which are wanting for content, proper orientation, or ultimate destination. 

Out on Colorfield Records.

Album Review: Fake Palms - Lemons

Michael le Riche's latest album with his project Fake Palms is titled Lemons. If you've ever had a bad day, bad week, or a year that wasn't your year, it's probably not hard to guess why. Spiritually and sonically inspired by sweaty, snotty and incorrigible punk records from the '70s, it's a no-shit rock record with a flare for the prophetic and dramatic. While the hooks rollick and heel-kick in the fashion of an Undertones single, there isn't any escaping the sour notes that the album is steeped in or avoiding getting tangled up in its twisty, inverted guitar work. Michael maintains a peculiar breathy poise throughout the album, divulging lyrics that wax on the weight of obsession, compulsion, and the manicules of human desire in a calm, conversation shout that is mature and sober in the face of the steady tension exerted by the off-axis wheeling of broad but agile grooves. I'm struck by the nearness with which some of the chords here come to overlying with the drab and ruminating etchings of Preoccupations, or the dark mystery of their earlier incarnation, which shall not be named, and further, how these dreary dream riffs are methodically messaged open to expose their sweet interiors. Most of all, I'm impressed with the exuberance of Lemons, in the same way, I was stunned and drawn in when I first heard the bold jangle and wry carousing restraint of Parquet Courts- it feels like a fresh start, a kind of clean break that is still somehow familiar and contiguous of its antecedents. It's a record that rises from a place that clearly knows an acute kind of sadness but which nonetheless possesses a powerful optimism. Such is the nature of human beings. When life bears bitter fruit, replenish your spirit by turning them into a satisfying rock record for all to enjoy. 

 Freshly squeezed by Hand Drawn Dracula.

Album Review: King of Heck - Kingo

Kingo sounds like it came together pretty easily, with minimal resistance- like it just flowed out of the band. I don't really have evidence I can cite for this conjecture, but it is undoubtedly, an easygoing LP. The debut album from Joel Kirschenbaum's newest project King of Heck resembles the kind of music you might overhear friends playing together on a porch of a campus townhouse on a cloudless, late spring day sometime after exam week. Carefree, loose melodies spill out into an atmosphere of lazy sunshine, plumes of cheap cigarette smoke, and an ambiance of harmonious fellowship. Joel's guitar work is simultaneously sharp, pliant, and percussive, strumming his instrument like he's playing a washboard, with its corrugated plates bending at his touch like a loose bundle of violin strings and producing an uncanny sense of suppleness. Somewhat at a remove, his voice and singing style on the Kingo occupy separate spaces altogether, hanging out in opposite corners of the room, suspended in refrain above the rest of the groovy, stoner garage mix, observing and probing, searching for each other as they sense their way through pillars of dignified rock excellence and grazing flurries of left-field ingenuity. It is a record with many phases and sparks of character. Sometimes it feels like Kingo is dialing into Phish, other times it is kicking up dust with ZZ Top, elsewhere it gushes with juicy joy and lof-fi goodness a la Apples in Stereo, and still, it never feels out of play when Joel cell-shades in cartoon voices as you might expect during one of Dan Deacon's improvisations. On their first outing, King of Heck finds their due place in the freedom of the moment- not constrained by their past, and certainly not overly concerned about a future that will surely forge its own course.  

Get it from Counter Intuitive Records. 

Album Review: µ-Ziq - Lunatic Harness (25th Anniversary Edition)

Lunatic Harness is the fourth LP from Planet Mu owner Mike Paradinas aka µ-Ziq. It originally saw wide release on a subsidiary of Virgin in 1997, but has resurrected and reissued earlier this year along with Mike's My Little Beautiful and Brace Yourself EPs as a 25th Anniversary box set. It was an educational listen for me. I wasn't into dance music in the '90s so going back and indulging on of the classics and trying to understand how people must have thought about it during the era it was released in is was a fun and worthwhile exercise for me. Without elaborating too much, I can definitely see how this album made an impact on people. It's sequenced in a way to produce an all-encompassing, but genuinely, light mood and a tangible sense of environment. After listening to modern renditions of drill and breakcore that hazard towards making a more blunt-force impression, this is certainly a welcome and mature deviation in approach. A departure that obviously wasn't lost on audiences of twenty years ago and which retains its poignancy to this day. Historical retrospective aside, I personally enjoy Mike's aesthetic direction with the project. The beats and grooves sound polished and intricate, with a silty, space-aged tone that makes you feel like you're exploring a desert planet, with an unexpectedly mild climate, being chased by playful dust devils as you dowse for water and search for signs of a bygone alien civilization. Very charming and delightful stuff. I'm glad I dropped into the zone that it inhabits. 

Available from (of course) Planet Mu. 

Interview: Jordan Reyes

Image by Katherine Squier

I had the pleasure of talking with experimental artist and American Dreams label head Jordan Reyes this week for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series. It was a little spooky conversing about his  new album Everything Is Always given the psychological turmoil that it comes out of and the mortal fear that inspired it, but the topics are perfectly suited to the season and I'm glad that this interview dropped in time for Halloween. You can listen to the interview here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Jordan Reyes Interview

Jordan will also be playing a release show on Nov. 4th at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. You can listen to Everything Is Always, out on American Dreams below:

Album Review: gammaGIRL - The Cult of Flesh and Blood

It's the night before Halloween in the US, and if you're not listening to gammaGIRL's The Cult of Flesh and Blood, then you are not properly prepared for the holiday. There are dark forces at work in this world. Spirits who will turn you into a flapping bag of skin at a glance. Monsters on the prawl, starving and hunting for fresh souls to devour. Maybe you can't feel the battle for survival being waged around you, or perhaps you've already lost, and resigned yourself to your fate. I hope neither is true for you. It would be better if we lived in a world without fear, but alas, such a hope is less potent than the exhale of a daydream. If you must hear the battle cry, my wish is that it resonates within you with the present and ever-enduring cry for preservation that being a living body is the pure and inalienable distillation of. This demand for life and autonomy in the pursuit of one's own ends is often conveyed very physically through heavy metal/hardcore punk, emotionally through emo, and spiritually through electronic dance music. As it were, gammaGIRL's The Cult of Flesh and Blood is the unity of all three. The album unleashes its first of many immodest but indisputably defiant summons with the ripping "Scream (Bloody Murder)," a gory, monstrosity that opens at a rushing pace, like an avalanche of lava and enmity spilling down the side of a mountain, before settling into a surfy, Code Orange-esque, discordant arrangement of wiggling, tentacle armed grooves and werewolf girl howls. The following track makes use of a deep-fried drum machine pattern as the crusty floor for an aggravated, supersaturated and seriously danceable bass groove that thunders above a stratum of desolate crying souls and their arid, longing whispers. "Sister Killer" combines the distorted jungle conflagration of Atari Teenage Riot with the melodramatic whip and lamentful holler of My Chemical Romance as it splashes unconcernedly in a fit of pain and ecstasy in an open pool of glowing toxic waste and running, black eyeliner. The mood becomes more personable and inviting with "Gay Sex Collective," where MidWest powerpop grooves hook up with MidWest emo buzz-chords out back behind the dumpsters for an explicate, adult encounter. Dreamy shades of the Cure emerge through the drizzling streaks of the dark and dripping crimson clash of "Fake Blood," and the intertwining of moments of Glen Danzig's vocal inflections into the unrepentant and decadent spoils of what is essentially a horror punk version of an Elliot Smith song on "Potter's Field" is a trick worthy of a High Priestess of a witch's coven. Sometimes to defeat monsters, you have to become a different kind of beast altogether, and on The Cult of Flesh and Blood, gammaGIRL is, without a doubt, a new kind of monster, one that fights the best way it knows how: by singing its revenge in to the night. 

Album Review: Jeremy Cunningham / Dustin Laurenzi / Paul Bryan - A Better Ghost

A Better Ghost is a collaboration between drummer Jeremy Cunningham, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi, and producer and bassist Paul Bryan. The album evolved out of improvisations shared between Jeremy and Dustin, with Paul being invited on board to give the project a little more definition once the bones had been set in place. The result is a rather sturdy, firmly demarcated and thriving germination of sound. Paul's bass playing adds compelling depth to the tracks, which lends a needed third dimension to the concentric nature of the work. The tracks are often comprised of structures that begin with a bebop groove and curve outward from this core, gaining dimension as they rotate and bloom in motion while retaining the rythem of their central pivot. This staged and progressive orientation lends to A Better Ghost a dramatic kind of gravitas and an epicness in scope reminiscent of filmic representations of the antiquity from the Mid 20th Century- rising in a hallowed grandeur without giving over to pomp or vainglory. It's not often that a bop groove or sax wail reminds me of tall stone pillars and expansive, detailed mate paintings of ancient lands, but I believe that it is the ever-growing and expansive nature of these compositions that invokes in me these associations with romantic epics. The tracks are somewhat humbled by the insistent coloring of warm-toned synths that Dustin has interspersed throughout these tracks, providing for forward-leaning veneers and margins of overlap with post-rock in the vein of Tortoise or a more subdued Trans Am. The most impressive part of A Better Ghost is the manner in which it is able to absorb energy and inspiration and grow sustainably and gradually from cleanly defined loci in a way that doesn't push against the incredulousness of the listener's ego, but rather anticipates and providers room for one to lose themselves in an arena of transfixing depth and ever-broadening horizons without losing the anchoring sensation of feeling one's soles planted on the ground. 

Out on Northern Spy. 

Album Review: Rich Jones & Iceberg Theory - Smoke Detector

Rich Jones is an MC with a perfect MidWest vibe. Maybe somebody won't think it's cool that I said that. Maybe they think the MidWest corny. Well, they're wrong for feeling that way. We do grow a lot of corn out here, but that's beside the point. What I mean, is that as a lifelong MidWestern, I feel like I know this guy well. Like personally- even though we've only technically met once. He's a proud creature of his environment, a part of the country that appreciates earnestness, respect, grind, and personableness. As a result of coming up here, he's a passionate, clear-spoken dude, with an appreciation of history and the people who helped him flourish over the years, and this bares out on his latest LP Smoke Detector. The album has this incredibly warm and shaggy feel to it, cultivated in part through producer Iceberg Theory's deliciously '70s selections- recreating lounge, yacht rock, and disco beats, not as they were, but as you remember them from the plush rumpus rooms and finished basements your parent's friends kept well into the '00s- stocked with ancient liquor bottles, lined with sunken couches, and inhabited by one, impractically large, wood-bodied record players as their centerpiece. Out of this bouillon of intoxicating and tactile reminiscence, Rich's calm, almost sing-songy cadence rises like a white dove above the clap of a surly tempest. Elevated and without a care. You might mistake him for being bulletproof in this state, but it's actually your own conscience that prevents you from doing harm to something so pure. Put down your guns and stretch out your hands. Pray you can rise to his level. When Rich raps, his delivery is coolheaded and confident, slipping through the gaps that form between a tightlipped grin and a crooked smile, polishing and clawing out juicy bits and profound afterthoughts like a toothpick tip running through a gum-line after a pricey steak dinner- the smell of blood on his breath and sense of satisfaction in the air. He shares in this feast with old heads and perpetually hungry MCs like the refined mutant maestro Curly Castro and Defcee with his deep, steady rowing rhythm and flow, as well as irrepressible upstarts like the down-to-earth enigma, Semiratruth. I'm glad he elected to call this record Smoke Detector, because if you follow your ears, you'll find that there is not a single track that is not red hot! 

Rising from FilthyBroke Recordings.