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Speedy J - Walkman Walkman Walkman, Rotterdam, NL artist Jochem Paap's first solo album in over 20 years, is a freewheeling, 20-track testament to his decades-deep studio skill and sonic versatility. From hours of jams Paap pulled together standout moments and moulded them into a mixtape-like narrative ranging from two-minute beat nuggets to full-tilt techno workouts and immersive ambient drops. The instrumentals here wrap you with a thick blanket of humming, harmonic waves with an electric emotional charge, journey through evocative blooms of melancholic, gritty pads and rugged, half-submerged tech funk, reach skywards with grand sweeps of dynamic, brilliantly rendered synthesis, and lurch forward with beatless swamp of synths. It keeps moving and covers a lot of digital ground, making for an apropos title. (15 May '26)  |
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OOIOO & Lightning Bolt The Horizon Spirals / The Horizon Viral This appears to be a split album with half of it dedicated to OOIOO and the second half to Lightning Bolt. When you find two artists that play well off one another, these sort of split albums can be magical. Case in point: Akron/Family & Angels of Light. This one? Not so much. OOIOO has two very long songs that are mostly high energy jumble of noise. The longer song repeats the same two phrases for 11 straight minutes. Lightning Bolt was also experimental noise, kinetic, frenetic jumble of drums and distorted guitar instrumentals. (24 Apr '26)  |
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Model Man Over Over is an EP of music assembled from fragments that were never meant to be found, let alone released, from UK artist Model Man. A leg and back injury that laid him up for a summer, and the discovery of an old laptop with some old recordings, started the journey towards this release. The result, ironically, is music for the dancefloor. Mix and sample heavy house designed to get you moving. Perhaps Model Man was making something to get him moving and help him get through rehab? It’s a good release. (24 Apr '26) |
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Charbel Haber May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable Charbel Haber is Lebanese musician, performer, visual artist and composer from Beirut. Leaving the war-torn area for Paris, the city inspired him with this release. It’s landscapes and colors become a little more vibrant as he matched them, in his head, to radiant melodies he had previously written. This release of eight ambient instrumentals, all with long song titles, sounds like a soft, muted fight between light and dark amongst reverb drenched guitar, church organ sounds, ethereal voices, and unsettling samples. The light shimmers, trying to break through, while endless waves of melancholia wash up against it, trying to drown it out. Paris is giving him hope, but his home in Beirut is still embroiled in conflict. You can hear it in this release. (24 Apr'26) |
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Helmut Content Creatures With this pop-rock release and his fourth album, Berlin-based Helmut wants us to embrace the “beautiful loser”, a figure that had nearly vanished in so-called late capitalism. He posits that in a present where even suffering is often instrumentalized and optimized for clicks like a competitive sport, his album sets a counterpoint. Listening to it awakens the desire to be enchanting losers again: useless, joyfully messing up, losing something beloved, having one’s heart broken, giving up a dream, sinking into beauty. We like the simple pop-rock songs here, most of which have a bit more longing in them than they do giddiness. Probably due to Helmut’s mournful vocals, which typically float over a simple programmed drum beat, interesting percussion, a moving bass line and some keyboards & synths filling in for what is typically the guitar in most rock songs. Think of it as a mellower version of Washed Out, or Synth Pop meets Yacht Rock without any catchy hooks or thundering choruses. “Je t’adore l’ennui” is our best in show on this release. (24 Apr'26) |
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deary Birding This is the debut long play from the London-based dream-pop trio that came into being during COVID lockdown. Immediately upon first spin of this, we’re thinking this sounds like a long-lost Cocteau Twins album. The comparisons are undeniable. No surprise then when we read that the first two members of the group quickly bonded over a shared love of Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, and MBV. The first artist they discussed at their initial meeting was Elizabeth Fraser, the enigmatic singer of the Cocteau Twins. As you might expect then, the album is drenched in multitracked reverb guitar with angelic vocals floating above and a big drum base holding it down. “Garden of Eden” is really the only song that doesn’t sound like it came off a Cocteau Twins album … and it’s the song we like the best. (3 Apr '26) |
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Courtney Barnett Creature of Habit New one from the Melbourne, Australia artist who now has a number of albums and years since we started following her with her 2015’s “sometimes I sit and think…” release. The deadpan delivery of seemingly more lyrics than will fit in a verse is still here, as is a very well-rounded musicianship and production. We sort of think of this as Australian Americana. Good music to listen to that’s going to go down as smooth as a Miller High Life after a long afternoon of yard work. “Site Unseen” is probably our favorite here, but none of the songs really jump out as significantly better (or worse) than the others. (27 Mar '26)  |
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Sanaya Ardeshir Hand of Thought Hand of Thought is the first full-length release by Indian composer Sanaya Ardeshir under her own name — introducing a parallel practice that exists alongside her work as electronic producer Sandunes. We think it’s a beautiful neoclassical release, featuring mostly piano, with the accompaniment of a bass guitar, some horns and other instrumentation in some pieces. It’s a nice piano music to piece to put on in the background while you work, meditate, nap or lay around. The album title is inspired by Kosho Uchiyama’s Opening the Hand Of Thought - a seminal work in the development of Buddhism throughout East Asia. (27 Mar '26) |
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Neurosis An Undying Love for a Burning World This is the is the twelfth studio album by American post-metal band Neurosis and their first album in 10 years, albeit with new vocalist Aaron Turner after domestic abuse came to light with the Scott Kelly. This one kicks off with a great vocal-only track in “We Are Torn Wide Open” then gets to some heavy, dark songs after that. Often with apocalyptic themes of isolation, anxiety, environmental collapse, and the search for catharsis. This pretty good dark metal. You can expect the growling vocals, heavy guitars and thundering bass and drums. But there’s also spots here that are a bit more meditative, slower and set the stage for the onslaught. (20 Mar '26) |
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Anna Calvi Is This All There Is? EP Four songs and four outstanding contributors: Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson, Perfume Genius, and Matt Berninger. Calvi is bringing it strong after her work scoring the final two seasons of Peaky Blinders and composing an opera with visionary director Robert Wilson. This release has the classic Calvi elements – sparse soft verses sung with the Calvi vibrato that explode into bigger than life choruses with driving bass lines, prancing drumming, 80s synth riffs, and plucked guitar lines moving you forward before the ship shows down again for the next verse. This time Calvi is joined by the aforementioned artists, letting each of their voice fill up the softer parts of a song while they tell their story in their own unique voices. We got a kick out of listening to Iggy Pop’s scraggly baritone on “God’s Lonely Man” back-to-back with the Perfume Genius’ delicate, fragile falsetto on “I See A Darkness,” our two picks for best songs here. (16 Mar '26) |
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Precenphix teichopsia The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania artist Ben Rabenold cites inspiration from artists such as Seefeel, Richard D James, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Jack Dangers, Björk, Coil, Scorn, Monolake and Autechre. They state the release is an amalgam of influence steeped in electronic music’s resurgence and prominence into the sonic landscape of the 1990s through the 2000s and beyond with a sound that ranges from IDM / braindance, glitch, ambient, dub, breakbeat, downtempo, industrial, modern classical, musique concrète and even score work. There are no ‘singles’ on the album. Rather, it is meant to be experienced in a single sitting. (13 Mar '26) |
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Simo Cell & Adbullah Miniawy Dying Is The Internet French producer Simo Cell and Egyptian singer, poet, producer and composer Abdullah Miniawy reunite to deliver this album. Cell has become known for his leftfield club music, twisting up adventurous rhythms and flamboyant production in pursuit of a perpetual freshness for the floor. His dubstep orgins sneak in on this release from time to time. Miniawy layers his Arabic lyricism and singing styles on top of a number of tracks here giving this release a The Club meets The Middle-East vibe. Playing to the theme of the release, the artists challenge you to set aside your social media swipe tendencies and dedicate time to listen to the entire release start to finish. (12 Mar '26) |
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Human Potential Eel Sparkles This is the solo project of Andrew Becker, former drummer for Dischord Records’ band, Medications and Brooklyn larrikins, Screens. It’s garage rock meetings a little 80s synth wave on ten songs here that are between 3 and 4 minutes long. On “The Sightseer”, Sparkles vocal performance sounds an awful lot like Jerskin Fendrix. Decent indie rock. (6 Mar '25) |
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Joshua Idehen I know you’re hurting, everyone is hurting, everyone is trying, you have got to trytbd Idehen is a British-born Nigerian based in Sweden. A spoken word artist, a musician, and a lover of long album titles. He has contributed poems to a number of Mercury-nominated albums from artists such as The Comet Is Coming and Sons of Kemet. Here he mixes his poems, often delivered in spoken word style, along with uplifting choirs, cozy samples and exuberant, sometimes house-tinged beats. This is pretty decent stuff. We can do without some of the new-disco tunes like “Don’t Let It Get You Down.” But we enjoy the spoken poems, especially the brilliant take on social structures describe in “Mum Does the Washing” and the advice to “choose a cat” in “Choose Yourself.” if you’re looking for some club music that is heavy on spoken word over some thick beats, give this a spin. (6 Mar '28) |
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Jogging House Bones Ambient music from this Frankfurt Am Main, Germany artist, this was made using Digitakt II, MS20, Cocoquantus, Solid Felt, Mood, Meraki, Bim & Bam and recorded in single takes straight to 1/4" tape. It’s very good background ambient in a neutral to slightly cautious, curious, melancholy mood. We are finding it perfect to listen to on a rainy afternoon while doing taxes. (4 Mar '26) |
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DeLoyd Elze Nellene DeLoyd Elze is making some pretty Americana / country on this release that features an alligator (or crocodile?) lazing in a backyard swimming pool. However, Elze is chugging through this working out of LA instead of Nashville, where it sounds like this album would originate from. It’s a nice, short release that should be on any playlist designed to be spun on a sunny Sunday backyard bbq where you’re drinking Miller High Life’s and eating well. (6 Mar '28) |
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Les Heures Bleues Circa Diem The trio Les Heures Bleues and Cypres Records, an independent music label based in Brussels invite the listener on a sonic journey to capture the cyclical course of the sun over about a day. Follow the rhythm of light as they play four sonatas by Tomaso Albinoni, each chosen and set in dialogue with different moments in the solar cycle – the gentle dawn, the intense brightness of the zenith, the enveloping warmth of the golden hour, the shifting shadows of dusk – and expressed through the richness of this Baroque music.Bandcamp calls it a “Dazzling modern classical with the lightest underpinning of medieval music, ‘Circa Diem’ is full of dancing flutes and violins.” (6 Mar '26) |
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Mitski Nothing’s About to Happen to Me Wow, Mitski is already eight studio albums into it? Live instrumentation, By The Land touring band, and ensemble arrangements - this one feels like a more mature Mitski on a lot of the songs. There’s still the angst-ridden yelling and banging on the loud distorted Les Paul in songs such as “If I Leave.” But if feels like that’s more the exception than rule … and in our point of view, the low points of the album. The song right after that, “Dead Women” as well as “Charon’s Obol” later in the release are beautiful songs with mellow melodies and orchestrations. “Rules” even has some swing and a Bourbon street clarinet to it. Great album. (27 Feb '26) |
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Gorillaz The Mountain This is ninth the studio album for Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz and let’s hope it’s their last. Don’t get us wrong, this is a pretty good album. It’s just that out of all Albarn’s musical vehicles, this one puts out the worst music. Which is a little surprising as Gorillaz enables Albarn to experiment with other sorts of influences – E.g. the Indian vibes on “Damascus.” We’re hoping that Albarn ends this so he can focus more time on his solo music, more Blur albums, more The Good, The Bad and the Queen releases and more scores and soundtracks. These other projects/bands put out amazing music. Seems the point of Gorillaz is less about the music and more about who is featured on the release. This one includes: Ajay Prasanna, Anoushka Shankar, Asha Bhosle, Asha Puthli, Bizarrap, Black Thought, Gruff Rhys, IDLES, Jalen Ngonda, Johnny Marr, Kara Jackson, Omar Souleyman, Paul Simonon, Sparks, Trueno, Yasiin Beyputs and posthumous appearances from Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, David Jolicoeur from De La Soul, Tony Allen, Proof, and Mark E. Smith. We dig most of these artists on their own, but they’re not helping Albarn make better music in our opinion. (27 Feb '26) |
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Final Gasp New Day Symptoms tbThe Boston-based rockers are getting their angst out in album, which sounds like one of the dime a dozen local hard rock acts you’d see slogging at it in some small, dark, cheap basement bar in a working class corner of the city like Hamtramck in Detroit. You know the band, long haired, jeans, black leather jackets, distorted guitars leading a bashing drums and bass rhythm section while the singer jumps between pained verses and angry chorus. The 5 or 6 sweaty male band groupies form a make-shift mosh pit in front of the stage, bashing into each other and slinging beers around frantically during the last song. Playing this at our next dinner party? Hell no. But go to that stinky dive bar, drink some beers and catch this show? Yep. (27 Feb '26)  |
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Milk for the Angry Hand Fed Fruit Very good stuff from this San Francisco band. It comes off a little twee pop, or rock lite. At its core it’s simple melodic 3 minute pop rock songs like the stuff The Beatles might have written in their early days. But there are some absolutely killer tunes here like “Chronicles of a Poster Child,” "Sons of Mighty May," and “Garlands of Marigold.” (27 Feb '26)  |
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Birds Weird Weather in Dystopia This is a three track EP from Birds, UK Born, Rotterdam based DJ, producer, performer and Feed The Void label owner. She calls her music genre fluid dance music and combines acid elements and classic Electro rhythms for diverse vocal driven tracks. It’s not really resonating with us that much. (27 Feb '26)  |
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Eliza Noxon Good Monsters with Bad Habits Fun fact: Noxon first gained recognition at age twelve with Hummingbird, featured on Orange is the New Black and streamed over eight million times. She is an Ojai, CA-based singer-songwriter whose music blends folk roots with indie-rock edge, exploring grief, identity, and the strange beauty of growing up. We generally like this girl, singer-songwriter sort of music. But the risk here is it becomes too Phebe on Friends in the coffee shop. Too simple with just an acoustic guitar and the same strum and too droning on about the singer’s relationship issues. This album comes a little too close to that edge for us, especially on songs like “Day After Day.” Most of the other songs are 90s Lilith Fair alt-girl rocker stuff. We do appreciate the changing time signatures from 6/4 to 3/4 on “One More Round.” (27 Feb '26) |
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Hen Ogledd DISCOMBOBULATED Discombobulated indeed. We feel discombobulated right from song 2, “Scales will fall,” (which, BTW is the best song on the release) as a girl with a UK accent starts cutting rhymes and rapping … but not to a beat and samples background that is your standard hip-hop fare, but rather some indie rock band playing an over eight-minute anthem. The Newcastle Upon Tyne collaborative project of artists Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington follow that up with more pieces that mix art rock, experimental, noise rock, baby nursery rhymes and storytelling, bleeps, blips, choir, and electronic folk in songs between 4 minutes and 20 minutes long. This is sort of like Tunng but with perhaps a more experimental bent. (20 Feb '26) |
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Hiroshi Ebina On Solitude Ebina is a Japanese sound artist creating electronic/ambient music. The artist’s third album for KITCHEN. LABEL unfolds as a quiet rebellion against hyperconnectivity. It is designed to be quiet and plays out mostly in an ambient sound with forays to new-classical, soft techno or house, and what the artist calls post-digital minimalism. This is mellow mood setting instrumentals that will provide a soundscape and is probably best played start to finish. (20 Feb '25) |
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Hemlock Springs the apple tree under the sea the apple tree under the sea is the debut album from Los Angeles-based alt-pop artist hemlocke springs. It’s a romp of well-produced pop and dance-floor songs. Assuming she has the appropriate skimpy attire and well-choregraphed troupe of dancers, we can see springs performing the half-time show of the Superbowl with “be the girl!” (13 Feb '25) |
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Charli xcx Wuthering Heights How do you follow up a hugely popular, pop culture defining album like BRAT? Apparently make an adventurous soundtrack for a blockbuster film. While the movie may be a period piece, this album, even with a heavy use of beautiful string arrangements in most of the songs, is very much of a modern-times pop culture vibe. If you otherwise know, we’re sure one would pick this out as a soundtrack just from listening to it. (13 Feb '26) |
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Servicio al Cliente Alien Tropical Alien Tropical is the second album by Servicio Al Cliente (Customer Service), the project of Colombian-born, Berlin-resident Juliana Martinez. When asked about Alien Tropical, Martinez pieces together fragments of memory: winter explorations, long road trips, navigating the highways and the heart. “I had been driving a lot at the time on the highway,” she recalls. “I depended on music I played in the car to manage my emotions and my thoughts on those long drives. Everything felt strange and unfamiliar on the highway, and I realised music was so psychological and my only tool to influence my feelings between highways and new places.” This seems more likely to be making an attempt to get spun on the dancefloor rather than your roadtrip playlist. It’s pretty basic stuff, same tone and beat over the whole song. Not that interesting to us. (12 Feb '25) |
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Twisted Teens Blame the Clown This is a lo-fi rocker from New Orleans garage-rock band Twisted Teens. It’s full of short catchy rock songs. We’re really digging the lo-fi aesthetics with straightforward simplicity a la Case Studies but with more of a punk rock feel here, sort of like early Clash. We’re really digging this one. “100 Bill is Gone,” “I Operate,” and “Circus Clown” made our heavy rotation. (13 Feb '25)  |
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Elfi Emo Deluxe This EP sounds nothing like most of the music we hear coming out of Berlin. With a straightforward guitar, drums, bass guitar and female singer playing three or four-minute, 4/4, verse-chorus-verse songs – and not a synthesizer in sight – this sounds like it should be coming from some band out of a basement in the Midwest USA. Then the singing starts, it’s all in German and you start to ask yourself, are we living “The Man in the High Castle?” Maybe all the good electronic club music is being made in Indianapolis now? Good album for non-fancy pop rock songs. “Am Kottbusser Damm,” with the ukulele strumming is our favorite pick here. (6 Feb '25) |
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MPTL Microplastics Sod In Heaven This is bad. Gravelly dude that speaks or yells at you. Very simple repetitive drumming - think bang on snare drum and floor kick together on 8th notes through the entire song. Distorted guitar and bass plodding out the same notes together. Banging on pots and pans. This is bad noise rock for very energetic long marches. We repeatedly got the “what is this horrible music?” refrain from other staffers when it was on in the office. That eventually transitioned over to a “why are we still listening to this?” question/plead. We ask ourselves the same question. (6 Feb '25) |
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Ratboys Singin' to an Empty Chair If you were a betting person, you’d mortgage the house and put the money on this band coming from Nashville or Asheville. However, despite having a very Americana mixed with indie rock sound, like the music coming out of those regions, these guys are from Chicago. Close enough, you’d perhaps argue. Fair enough, let’s call it Midwest (or MidSouthWest) Americana. A little power pop, some southern rock, a little americana country … the sixth studio album from Ratboys is a good one and showcases them at the top of their game. We’re filing this album next to Asheville artist Wednesday in our collection. (6 Feb '25) |
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Mandy, Indiana URGH These guys have been around for a bit, but this is their debut for the fantastic Sacred Bones, label. The Manchester four-piece embrace an industrial on the edge of metal vibe here and give vocalist Valentine Caulfield free range to use her voice as a distorted instrument and a weapon, oscillating between playful and eviscerating. This is kind of like Myrkur meets Trent Reznor. (6 Feb '25) |
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Abul Mogard In a Few Places Along the River There are three pieces on this EP, each lasting between 10 and 20 minutes long, of dark ambient stuff that was originally released digitally in 2022. Like the best dark ambient, this stuff feels like the soundtrack for a dystopian movie. Mogard meticulously experiments with analogue and digital instruments, slowly evolving harmonic fields of layered drones and spectral textures across the record. They are enhanced by reverb from Scotland’s Inchindown oil tanks, which hold the longest reverberation of any man-made structure, giving the music a haunting resonance and a sense of suspended space. This soft, disturbingly quiet soundscapes that take a long time to build up from, and release back into, dark silence. Great stuff. (1 Feb '25) |
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Marta Del Grandi Dream Life The Milan, Italy based singer-songwriter starts this album off on a good note with “You Could Perhaps,” probably the best song here. She wraps up political and social issue commentary in breezy pop songs. It’s a solid album. (30 Jan '25) |
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Geologist Can I Get A Pack of Camel Lights? Geologist is the nom-de-théâtre of Brian Weitz, instrumentalist, best known as a member of the experimental pop group Animal Collective. His hurdy gurdy heavy electro-acoustic texture to songs makes for a release of interesting instrumentals, that ping pong between dudes doing improv, post-rock, and droney middle-eastern space rock. We enjoy having this on in the background as we chug through emails. (30 Jan '25) |
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Qasu A Bleak King Cometh Of this UK band’s album, the Quietus notes: “A pit of industrialised terror... Amorphous, evocative and detail-rich, and capable of blurring the line between dreams and nightmares to dizzying, frequently psychedelic effect. [Qasu] understand what makes black metal tick, but want to force its slippery substance into new shapes rather than be bound by expected norms." We’re mesmerized by how the drummer can work the kick bass drum. These are tunes where everything – drums, bass, guitars and the singer’s growls all blend together to form a wall of sound. (30 Jan '25) |
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Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon As of Now Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon is a Charlotte, NC artist who started in the music business by blogging about local rap and now is getting accolades from Pitchfork and other we known music sites. There’s hope for us yet :-) This release consists of seventeen hip hop tracks across 56 minutes. A good half dozen or so of those tracks have an abrupt beat switch mid-song to mix it up a bit. Otherwise, it’s sort of Ogbon rapping about stuff that’s familiar to him in his slightly higher-pitched voice which is often doubled with a monotone sort of moaned rap track parallelling the main verses. (30 Jan '26) |
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The Soft Pink Truth Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever? The Soft Pink Truth is the solo alter ego of Drew Daniel, one half of celebrated Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos. We’re listening to this release, scratching our heads thinking, what is this? It’s instrumentals, kind of like if vaudeville emerged in the digital age. There are exquisite arrangements and lush compositions, but they frequently float over a buoyant actionable bass part that we would sort of expect be used to keep viewers engaged in a silent movie. The craftsmanship and the international cast of collaborators from Turkey, Sweden, Italy, Spain and the United States that Daniel has working on this are top notch. They control a plethora of acoustic and electronic instruments that come in and out of the song like actors coming on and off stage in a play. The violins chirp as if they were in conversation. The harp pucks form the background to a mystery scene while strings swell and horns march in to move the action along. This is a soundtrack looking for a film. One that has romance, suspense, action, and drama. It’s fantastic, but we can’t help but thinking to ourselves, when we would ever listen to this? Perhaps the Wurthering Heights should have chosen this as their soundtrack instead of having Charlie xcx record something that doesn't sound like a soundtrack? (30 Jan '25) |
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Palo Canto Golden Runes The Budapest based, multicultural techno fusion formation and producer duo both aims to gravitate its listeners to their absolute higher self and implies to get infiltrated in their souls as an indigenous medicine, like the sacred smoke of burning palo santo. This is very good house that would work great in a club. It’s upbeat enough to get folks moving and also has enough going on from song to song to keep the people who are not on the dance floor energized. When we want to inject some energy into the lounge and get folks to start thinking about hitting the dance floor, we’d reach for this. (18 Jan '25) |
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Anton Anishchanka Krope Krope is a six-part conceptual album by Belarusian sound artist and producer Anton Anishchanka. Rooted in archival folk songs recorded between the 1960s and 2000s, it transforms fragile voices of the past into living, cinematic sound worlds. Created in collaboration with ethnographer Iryna Vasilyeva, the album weaves Belarusian traditional music with field recordings, acoustic instruments, and analog synthesizers. As The Quietus writes: "Belarus is not a place necessarily known for its transparency, which is why Krope feels like such an unexpected and extraordinary psychogeographic ramble around a country largely estranged from the rest of Europe." We find the writeups about this release more compelling than the music on it. (28 Nov '25) |
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Horse Lords & Arnold Dreyblatt FRKWYS Vol. 18 Extended Field We put this on as we start watching the MSU vs. UM hockey game. It’s our first experience with the Horse Lords, who have built an esoteric sound of their own, combining hard-driving rhythmic sprawls traditional ritual music, free jazz, and space age electronic psychoacoustic sounds. The quick pace of the beats in the first two songs match the pace of an exciting hockey game between the two best college teams in the land. By the mid-point of the second period we’re full on into the second song, the 12 minute long “Extended Field”. This song takes off, kinetic, frenetic, beat heavy free form improv jazz. Eight or nine minutes into it, It’s picking up pace just as the pace and intensity of the hockey game accelerates towards the end of the 2nd period. We’re getting to the end of the song .. .and the period and all hell is breaking loose. Bundles of nervous electrons delivered through the song seem to jump into my TV and energize the puck, as it rapidly goes back and forth across the ice. Boom, the 1-1 tie is broken with a goal by Michigan State. But the song keeps building energy, so do the Wolverines in trying to get one back. Just a couple minutes left in the period and everyone, everything is still on edge building, gong nuts until Boom – another goal by Michigan State. Fortunately for our nerves the period and the song end. A mellower song 3 from the 4 song album, and a the second intermission, eases our nerves. What a ride. (21 Nov '25) |
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Ismay Finding Lucinda We’re fans of Avery (ISMAY) so of course we’re spinning this one and are excited to see the related film Finding Lucinda. This album is the official soundtrack to that acclaimed film, the genesis of which stems from ISMAY setting off on a road trip to trace the roots of Americana music legend Lucinda Williams 6 years ago. The record includes covers recorded during filming, one with Lucinda's guitar and mandolin player Buddy Miller, and one recorded in the sheep barn on the Hellman family ranch where the journey began, and many of them recorded live. These songs are fresh takes on good ole timey Americana. What’s not to like. “Jackson” and “I Lost It” are our favorites here. (7 Nov '25) |
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Rosalia Lux Pitchfork notes that “the Spanish singer’s fourth record is a heartfelt offering of avant-garde classical pop that roars through genre, romance, and religion.” We’d note it probably is as much showtunes and theater influenced as it is classical. The end of “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti” going into “Berghain” was fantastic. We also love the idea of “Berghain.” That an original classical piece seemingly out of the mid-1700s can cut to a thoroughly modern piece mid-stream in a pop music context. We appreciate the theatrics, genre-crossing nature of this and the fact that this music which is on the radar of pop critics feels like it could have been written in 300 or 400 years ago. (7 Nov '25) |
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The The Autumn 2025 Releases The The released a number of singles and outtakes over the last year or so that they’ve packaged up on their website as the Automn 2025 Releases. These include the singles “Risin’ Above the Need”, “Slow Emotion Replayed,” a couple of songs Johnson wrote for his brothers film Odyssey as well as some others. We really like the female vocalist throughout a number of these songs, including on “Live & Let Live” and the excellent remix/redo “Slow Emotion Replayed”. Those two songs are probably the best of the lot. (7 Nov '25) |
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Danny Brown Stardust This is the sixth album from the Detroit rapper who is known for his experimental approach to hip-hop and his eclectic sound. A lot has been made about Brown moving away from substance abuse and about this album being made while he was sober and enjoying his life. The other themes around this album are the artist embracing hyperpop and the wide range of guest artists, appearing on 12 of the 14 tracks here. This is a grandiose production of big arena pop music that throws some emo rave, bubblegum pop, R&B, techno, and glitchcore elements in the music while Brown raps over it at 100mph with his relatively high-pitched tenor vocals. (7 Nov '25) |
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Hilary Woods Night CRIU We came to know Mrs. Woods via her 2020 release Birthmarks. However, that sort of experimental release playing around with Ai never really caught on with us. Thankfully that’s behind her now because this is a much better release. “Taper” is excellent song, with it’s almost David Lynchian mixture of melancholy mystery. The whole album is very, slow, gloomy and Lynchian actually. We think it could fit right in as a soundtrack for Twin Peaks or True Detective. (31 Oct '25) |
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Juana Molina DOGA We understand that Rosalia is the Spanish speaking artist du jour this year, but the brilliant Argentina-born Juana Molina chugs along with her eighth full-length and first release in eight years. As usual, it’s a quirky art-pop, electronic folk rock gem. Lots of staccato and weird notes put together with a Stereolab meets Jane Weaver sort of vibe. Like RA puts it: “like listening to the musical equivalent of a Wes Anderson film.” “miro todo,” “la paradoja,” and “indignant a un zorzal” have made it to our heavy rotation. (5 Nov '25) |
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Alexa Rose Atmosphere We were looking forward to this Ashville-based artist’s follow up to her fantastic 2021 release Headwaters. With musicians who’ve worked with Big Thief, The Weather Station, and Watchhouse helping here, we knew the craftsmanship wouldn’t be in question. With the studio sessions wrapped last year, Hurricane Helene hit Rose like it hit us – i.e., caused a lot of re-work. In Rose’s case, she re-worked some of the polished studio performances with takes from her cabin outside Ashville for a sparser, more intimate approach. We didn’t hear the “before” but we like the reworked “after.” We have “Promising What,” “Anywhere, OH,” and “Arms” on heavy rotation with our ABC (Americana, Bluegrass, Country) playlist. If these three hit with anywhere near the power of “Clearwater Park,” “Human,” and “Wild Pepperment” from Headlands, we’re in for a treat. (31 Oct '25) |
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Bruise Blood You Run Through This World Like An Open Razor Bruise Blood is artist and musician Mike Bourne, founder member of Teeth of the Sea and Hirvikolari. This is his debut album for this project. A strong 140bpm kick drum with some cut & paste samples of what sounds like something being teared starts us off. It only gets faster and more frantic from there, combining soundscapes of industrial techno over a beat that will keep you moving on the dance floor. The second half of the album, starting from ”Until the Sun Breaks Down,” (our favorite song here) shifts from the dance floor to the lounge with a post-rock and ambient vibe. "Glass Nine", the last song here closes us out with something that would have been perfect as a soundtrack for that old movie Body Double. (31 Oct '25) |
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Anna von Hausswolff Iconoclasts We were excited to see this new one from one of our “Northern European Winter Girls.” Mrs. von Hausswolff is a Swedish composer and organist that makes imposing, monolithic music, usually featuring old pipe organs, reverb-drenched droning rhythms, powerful, aggressive vocals. All packaged with creepy cover art. It’s hard rock for the new century where the guitar is replaced with a church organ and a beautiful young blond chica is the one yelling at you rather than some long haired white dude. Here, we think Anna has moved out of the old gothic church and into the arena. The production sounds very similar to her brilliant “Live at Montreux Jazz Festival” 2022 release, as if she was playing it all live. With almost half the album clocking in at over 7 minute songs, we understand how folks can get some listening fatigue. But there’s some new twists here that we really like as you get deeper in to the release: A softer side in “The Mouth,” more orchestration and expanded instrumental palette (we swear “Consensual Neglect” was influenced by Per Boysen & Costas Andreou’s unbelievably brilliant instrumental “Shine”,) and even some weathered old male voice popping up in “The Whole Woman” Turns out the ancient crooner is Iggy Pop. We have all of the aforementioned songs on our heavy rotation. (31 Oct '25) |
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The Weather Station Airport & Only The Truth These are a couple of outtakes from the Humanhood recording that didn’t fit with the narrative arc of that album, but that are really solid songs that stand well on their own. We’d say these are pretty classic The Weather Station / Tamara Lindeman songs: Tight folk rock musicianship backing Lindeman’s mellow, understated vocals sort of in the back of the mix. (30 Oct '25) |
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Damien Jurado Private Hospital Man this cat seems to be constantly putting out albums. Seems like there’s 2 or 3 of them ever year, almost all of it really good. Apparently, this is the fifth and final installment of the "Reggae Film Star" pentalogy, which began in 2023. We think a couple of these songs - ”Howard Morton” and “Vic Tayback” in particular – would fit right in on a BC Camplight album. That is a good thing. (30 Oct '25) |
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Perera Elsewhere Just Wanna Live Some This is the project of Sasha Perera, a London-born, Berlin-based award-winning producer, DJ, multi-instrumentalist, and trumpeter. Of the fourth album from the artist, Bandcamp notes: “Perera Elsewhere delivers another winner—stark, moody tracks built on booming rhythms, shadowy and alluring.” The music is often coined Doom Folk but the genre may not be too accurate unless you think of folk music as being sample, dub, beat and electronica heavy. Perhaps as “Fountain,” an organic, acoustic song may fit that bill. We were not fans of the first couple of listens – some of the early songs on the album turn us off. But we figured out that the release really start hitting its stride around song 8 (of 12) when it settles down a bit and gets more reflective. By song 11, “Post Everything,” you’ve got a moody, lonely sax playing on a dark NYC alley late at night. We love those types of songs, and like this one here. The closer “One Day” is a similar in vibe - dark, lonely Eno if he did dubstep type instrumental. We really like it. We played this one right after AraabMuzik and they were a great fit. (24 Oct '25) |
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Rafael Toral Travelling Light This Lisbon-based artist is making some ambient electric guitar led post-jazz. Featuring guitar slow picking over soundscapes created by organ, flute, saxophone, bass guitar, amp feedback and other effects, It’s slow, contemplative, takes time to unfold, and savors every sound as it goes. This is late night music setting the mood for a dark back alley in the seedier side of town in a film noir feature. (24 Oct '25) |
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Läuten der Seele Unterhaltungen mit Larven und Überresten The solo project of dark folk artist Christian Schoppik, RA does a nice job describing the album unfolding “as a haunting electroacoustic collage, looping fragments from vintage Heimatfilme, field recordings, and diverse instruments to evoke a surreal, dream-prone nostalgia.” The Quietus adds that “sampled voices and found footage drift in and out like a radio dial operated by a Ouija board.“ Yeah, there’s nothing that intersects with mainstream music here as it veers from WTF to unsettling. When there is a semblance of singing, like on the most sort of normal "song" here, "Letzle Lichter," it’s in a creepy German voice. While it’s not going to make our heavy rotation, we have to give this one a little extra credit just for being so interestingly unique. (24 Oct '25) |
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Spiritual Cramp Rude Bandcamp writes that “the San Francisco band's dub-infused punk n' roll gets an arena-ready update. emphasizing bold hooks, big charms, and beefy production.” This has basement feel vibes but in a well-produced package. At times it kind of reminds us of ska / reggae era The Clash. At other times, it’s more straightforward Green Day style rock. It’s a nice second album for the six-piece band. Should be a good show when the tour hits The Great American Music Hall during their SF stop. Although we were hoping to see them at a more intimate joint such as Thee Parkside ... but alas, these are all closing in SF unfortunately. “Young Offenders” is our best in show here. (24 Oct '25) |
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Lily Allen West End Girl I’m sure by now you know that the songs here are an “insider’s account of a tabloid divorce” as Bandcamp writes. We knew that going in but were a little surprised to hear just how much the album documented the specifics of the breakup. Ouch! We’ve always liked Allen’s pop sensibilities in her early releases but had not been paying her new celeb career much attention. This is a reminder that she makes really good pop music, now with a drama filled storyline that keeps you hooked. For a listen of the best tracks and an overview of the drama, spin “Tennis,” “Madeline,” “Pussy Palace,” and “Let You W/In.” (24 Oct '25)  |
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Vanity Mirror Super Fluff Forever The sophomore release for this duo who recorded it by passing tracks back and forth between each other in Toronto and LA, is, as Bandcamp notes, “A cabinet of bedroom pop curiosities full of Casio arpeggios, fuzzy melodies, and wistful jangle.” This is lo-fi pop rock with guy-guy harmonies, jangly guitars, simple bass and drum beats and occasional piano in the style of the early Beatles meets Apples in Stereo. “I Don’t Wanna Hold Your Hand” could be a B-side to the Beatles’ 1963 single “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” We shuffled this album with songs from With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, and Beatles for Sale and that playlist worked very well for a classic & new pop rock playlist. (24 Oct '25) |
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Carrier Rhythm Immortal Pitchfork notes “The Brussels-based producer fled the strictures of techno and drum’n’bass in search of a freer sound. On his astonishing debut LP under a new alias, he seems to rewrite the laws of physics.” This is dark ambient meets drum’n’bass made for a late-night Halloween evening listen (so, appropriate release date) in the lounge rather than on the dance floor. We slotted a couple of songs here this in our Dark Ambient playlist. (24 Oct '25) |
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Sha Ru Vibra Vibra This 6 track EP from NYC-via-Berlin duo is described as a heavy, body-shaking deep study of low-end vibration, energy, and movement. One can definitely hear the low-end here when listening with very good headphones, but this one is probably best experienced when feeling the bass coming out of a very large bank of subwoofers as there’s a lot going on at the lower end frequencies here. It’s a little similar to NYOS (also reviewed this haul) in that each group is a duo based in Northern Europe whose music has relatively less interesting stuff over their differentiator – bass and low tones here, drums with NYOS. Perhaps the two groups should collaborate? (24 Oct '25) |
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Silly Boy Blue goodbye matters Each song on this 5-track EP uses season titles (summer1, autumn, winter, spring, summer2) as a stage for a mourning process for the French singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Accordingly, the songs here are often quiet, sparse and reflective using mostly acoustic guitar, strings, and piano to convey the emotion. We think this is a solid listen. If you ever wanted to imagine Sigur Ros’ song (njósnavélin) done on an acoustic guitar with a female signing in English, give “spring” from this release a spin (24 Oct '25) |
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Majken Korus Bandcamp says: “This Malmö-based musician delivers a wild ride: Tricky, impossible-to-pin-down art pop with odd angles and slinking melodies.” We’ve been a little partial lately to artists that feature harp in their recordings (hello Weyes Blood) so Majken’s use of the instrument, along with acoustic guitars and analog synths, intrigues us. No single song here really stands out to us, but overall, this is a nice, well crafted release. (24 Oct '25) |
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Josi Miller 4 Stages of Sleep The debut album from Berlin-based DJ and artist Josi Miller is, as Bandcamp notes: “A hazy collage of breakbeat, downtempo house, and hyperpop.” The Quietus notes: ”The album is a journey through dream worlds marked by fear, panic, and healing, born from drug-fueled dreams, and combines breakbeat, pop, and electronica with shimmering vocals, analog synths, and soul samples.” They also note “the album is divided into four stages of sleep that alternate between melancholy, rave, and surreal soundscapes, described as powerful and fragile, club-ready and cerebral, beautifully melodic and daring at the same time.” We’d dig hearing “I see all my girls” at the club and have “Dreams are my reality” made our Dark & Interesting playlist. (24 Oct '25) |
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Lowli Window in the Woods Bandcamp notes: “Stark and beautifully haunting piano-based songs from this Irish musician that are alternately comforting and spectral.” Lowli is the music of Roisin Lowry, a composer and musician hailing from Galway, Ireland. Her music bears elements of neoclassical and dark folk and has been influenced by artists such as Agnes Obel and Olafur Arnalds, artists we really dig, so we were keen to dig into this one. “Interlude” and “Undone” are very Agnes Obel circa the Aventine album – piano, cello, violin, occasional female voice. Other areas of the album are very piano-lead neoclassical tunes, sort of Ludovico Einaudi-like compositons, especially “Lament.” Nice release. (24 Oct '25) |
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Earth Ball Outside Over There This stuff is a beautiful noisy mess of experimental metal meets improv jazz. Songs drone on with steady beating rhythms and simple steady bass while screeching saxophones, some spoken song words, guitars being thrown around, the kitchen sink, whatever, intertwine above it. No verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus here. More like louder, quieter, louder … messy, less messy, more messy … that guide you to how furiously and out of control you should be when nodding your head up and down. We love how the Quietus calls out the band’s “penchant for free-roaming instrumentals that don’t so much expand upon the main theme as plunder its village and torch all the domiciles.” No trying to cherry-pick hit singles here. This is music to put on start to finish and rage to. Your neighbors will absolutely hate you. (20 Oct '25) |
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CV Vision Release The Beast This is the sixth studio album from this Berlin-based artist known for his eclectic, experimental approach to electronic and psychedelic music. Northern Transmissions says the album “finds the sweet spot between psych rock, Detroit techno, fried synths, black metal and library music.” The Quietus says it’s music created by “an alien who has been tasked with back engineering lounge, exotica and late 60s style psychedelic pop music using only these mid-90s recordings for reference. So if you’d ever wondered what a mix of Jane Weaver, Hieroglyphic Being, Stock, Hausen & Walkman with David Axelrod producing would sound like, maybe it’s time to stop wondering.” We give it some kudos for creativity, but nothing here is a must listen for us. (24 Oct '25) |
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bloodsports Anything Can Be a Hammer Bandcamp notes: “Lo-fi noise rock with folksy instrumentation and a simmering slowcore underbelly from this scrappy Brooklyn outfit.” We hear a lot of mopey singing over standard rock band setup of distorted guitar, bass and drums played really loud. Minor keys give it some melancholy and some slow and contemplative parts between the otherwise heavy noise rock provide a little texture. “Rosary” is probably our favorite here. We’re not a fan of “A River Runs Through It”- dude slowly, repeatedly swiping his thumb down on the strings of an acoustic guitar while moping in the background. (17 Oct '25) |
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plainhead You Are More Than A Thousand Words Bandcamp says: “Lithe clarinets and off-kilter drum loops make the German band's cozy bedroom rock a refreshingly unpredictable change of pace.” We say: Low softly sung, mumbly, mopey vocals in the back of the mix here - often repeating the same thing over and over make this a pretty uninteresting listen for us. There were songs (e.g., “Stars”) where a clanging repetitive pattern was loudly marched over the tune, which made it seem more like listening to an alarm clock than a song. (17 Oct '25) |
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operazioni REvolution This is the debut album for operazioni, the project for occupying the time of actress, visual artist, and musician Corinne Isabelle Rinaldis during the pandemic while the world stood still. The album moves through styles ranging from film scores to minimal music, jazz, chamber music, and even prog rock with the theme of nature infused within. The artists uses her vocals in a lot of different ways here -- breath samples, call and response singing, spoken word, grunts, background ohhs and ahhs -- and mixes it with other digital textures. Rinaldis recommends listening to this start to finish and we agree this is probably the best way to experience the release. (17 Oct '25) |
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Rural Tapes Oneiric Rural Tapes is the moniker of Norwegian composer and multi-instrumentalist Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen. On his fifth studio album, the artist uses his analog sounds from digital equipment know how to great effect, producing a dozen mostly instrumental songs that float between shorter ambient and field sample moments to Space-age French Pop instrumentals. For example, on “Lucid Dreaming,” we’re pretty sure the drum beat is one of the 7 pre-built options available via the clunky white knobs on mom’s 1970’s Hammond organ. “Flower Lab” sounds like some chill piece of a late 90s AIR release. “Retire the Fool,” with Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor sounds like a mopey, depressing minor key tune off a mid-aughts Mount Eerie or The Antlers release. While we think the shorter quieter songs such as “Woolgathering” and especially “Reverie” are best in show here, we’d urge you to perhaps start with “Lingering Souls,” featuring Gary Olson of Ladybug Transistor. This is probably the most accessible, straightforward dream pop song here. (17 Oct '25) |
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Jane Inc. A Rupture A Canyon A Birth Nice third full length release from the solo project for Carlyn Bezle, who performs with U.S. Girls and Ice Cream. Bandcamp writes: “A triumphant new full-length from Jane, Inc. takes her experimental art rock to the mutant disco.” This is some danceable synth-pop sounds with good use of 80s styles and an air of late 70s sounds—queue the Rhodes keys on some of the mellower tunes—and disco beats throughout. If you can’t get enough of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” give “what if” a spin. That song, and “Freefall,” are the tunes to get your dance groove on. (17 Oct '25) |
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Ex Colorado Ex Colorado 3 Bandcamp notes this as a “stunning work of exploratory krautrock from Argentine musician and producer José D’Agostino.” This has sort of gotten the moniker “dreamykraut” as sort of a dreampop and krautrock. We see more of a utopian community post-rock sort of vibe here. It’s easy and breezy, upbeat, upbeat instrumentals with reverby guitar plucking or piano plodding over swirling sounds. William Taylor's Modern Country doing 80s synth. Very Noveller sounding songs but with a fuller spectrum than just multiple guitar overdubs. Its a very enjoyable instrumental listen start to finish … and that’s really the way this needs to be enjoyed. (17 Oct'25) |
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Elysian Fields Swirling Flame First thought: been a while since we’ve listened to these guys, originally digging 1996’s Bleed Your Cedar. Second thought after we start the album: this is a completely different sound, when did they trade in the alt noir indie rock sound for neoclassical? We figured it out. Same name but not the same band. This version is from Australian electric viola artist Jenny Eriksson. She uses the instrument to create beautiful hauntingly Celtic meets classical songs. We’re told this is the perfect overcast Sunday cooking breakfast music. (10 Oct '25) |
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Aarktica Ecstatic Lightsongs Bandcamp says: “L.A.’s Aarktica sculpt magnificent art rock with no easy comparisons—sweeping songs with the scope of a Tarkovsky film” Aarktica is the ambient/atmospheric project of Jon DeRosa. The artist’s audio explorations span decades and include a wide- range of styles, straddling shoegaze and ambient, electronic and drone, and most recently immersed in deep, meditative sounds for cosmic journeys. Some of this, especially “Ecstatic Light Transmission” and “The Bird That Hides Itself” reminds us of fellow LA artist Noveller’s trippy guitar instrumentals loopers. Best in show here: “Destination Paradise” with Brit Warner singing. That’s in our Heavy Rotation playlist. (10 Oct '25) |
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Madison Cunningham Ace Bandcamp notes that “the California musician’s third solo album is quieter and less accessible than her past work, but sacrifices none of her musical sophistication.” We love the addition of woodwinds, strings, and some brass. We like her moving the piano forward in the mix. It’s good stuff. The vibe is sort of 70’s folk rock (the Joni Michell comparisons are there) meets more modern Americana. “Shore” made our Heavy Rotation playlist as we loved the verses of the song, despite the chorus being not so great. We feel that way about a lot of this album – great spots here and there but then the rest of it is sort of uninspired or tries too hard. Put the verse of "Shore" with the Chorus of "Goodwill" and the bridge of "Best of Us" and you'd have an incredible song. (10 Oct '25) |
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Larkin Poe Bloom + An Acoustic Companion, Vol. 2 Larkin Poe is the Nashville-based dynamic, easy on the eyes, sister duo of Megan and Rebecca Lovell, known for their electrifying blend of Southern rock blues and Americana music. Their latest album “Bloom” delves deep into personal narratives with universal themes of self-acceptance and individuality, and follows their 2024 Grammy-winning album "Blood Harmony." We agree with Bandcamp’s “country-rock scorcher” label here. Which is why this Acoustic Companion version of the album was pretty nice as it includes five additional unplugged versions of songs from the album. We loved hearing the rock it out vs. unplugged takes. We liked the scorcher versions of “You Are The River” and “Bloom Again” but preferred the unplugged versions of “Mockingbird” and “Little Bit,” all of which made our ABC (Americana, Bluegrass, Country) playlist. (10 Oct '25) |
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Atlas Maior Palindromair Austin, TX based experimental jazz quartet comes up with an interesting release, “informed by Jazz, Arab, Turkish and Latin American musical traditions,” writes Bandcamp. They continue “Atlas Major’s jazz is by turns mysterious and serene.” We agree, we’re hearing saxophone mixed with cello and some plucked ancient middle eastern percussion and string instruments. There is a lot of negative space here – quiet between the notes – and a very improv feel to it. Good stuff that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. (10 Oct '25) |
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Blawan SickElixir This is the second album for Blawan, the project for UK artist Jamie Roberts, whose obsession with rhythm began behind a drum kit in a metal band during his teenage years. He shifted gears into techno and dubstep while attending the West Indian Centre in Leeds. This release finds him expanding on a techno base to add elements of industrial, mechanical and glitch to his “syncopated sludge” as DJ Mag would call it. This release has gotten some good critical praise. It’s not our cup of tea. (10 Oct '25) |
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Yara Asmar everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much Bandcamp calls this “A beautiful new LP from Beirut’s Yara Asmar—compositions that slowly build in volume and texture, remaining utterly hypnotic throughout.” Most of the release is gentle mbira (that small hand-held wooden box with a hole, over which is attached staggered metal tines and that is played with the thumbs and fingers) plucking sounds over some ambient textures. These songs are nice, but probably not worth running out to buy the vinyl. The first and last songs here though are the gems of this release. The ambient backing gets more interesting on "Beirut" which features sounds from field recordings from home and more interesting accompanying instrumentation. (10 Oct '25) |
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NYOS Growl Bandcamp writes: “Finnish instrumental duo juxtapose dissonant post-rock with refined jazz fusion for an unpredictable, immersive listening experience.” This one takes some patience, an open mind and even then may still just be an acquired taste. A duo where one dude is the drummer means you’re going to get a lot of drumming in the mix. In this case, kinetic frantic manic drumming. Imagine giving a hyperactive 10 year old boy five sugar donuts, 4 lines of coke, 3 shots of espresso, a pair of drum sticks and putting him front of a full drum set and letting him rage on while dude #2 plays a repetitive, non-stop to the point of annoying, set of guitar notes over and over. We alternative between thinking, “man this is annoying as hell” to “wow, that drumming is spectacular.” (10 Oct '25) |
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The Antlers Blight This is the seventh studio album from this Brooklyn band led by Peter Silberman. Their 2009 release Hospice got us hooked. This one has many of The Antlers signatures – softer, gentler, slower, organic feeling melodies with understanded vocals singing about bleak subject matter and an occasional outburst. This time the topics are about the passive nature of destructive human behavior on the earth. It’s good stuff. “Consider the Source” and “Something in the Air” with an unusual for The Antlers 3/4 time signature – think slow bleak song played out like a waltz - may be our favs on this album. (10 Oct '25) |
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Black Eyes Hostile Design Pitchfork notes: “The D.C. art-punks return with their first record in over two decades, adding a new emphasis on dub grooves to their controlled chaos and righteous indignation.” This hardcore act was around in 2001 through 2004, putting out two albums during that time. After 20 years they’re back with Fugazi front man Ian MacKaye resuming his role as producer. In these songs, you’re likely to get some soft nice dub beats in the background as you’re getting yelled at by someone with a squeeky high pitched voice over the top. "Burn" is a rager, the best in show here. (10 Oct '25) |
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feeo Goodness Pitchfork’s says “The London singer embraces the darkness on her quiet and ominous full-length debut—it’s one of the most breathtakingly beautiful albums of the year.” This is spoken word or spoke-sung poems over an assemblage of drone, ambient, experimental electronics, improvisational music and minimalist soundscapes. “Days pt. 1” and some other tunes feels like they borrowed Sha Ru’s low bass guru. There’s a bit of a similar vibe to Sealionwoman here with the female vocs over minimalist, bass-heavy dark ambient backgrounds. “The Mountain” maybe showcases this the best and is our favorite here. (10 Oct '25) |
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Blindfolded and Led to the Woods The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me This technical death metal band from New Zealand hits all the usual notes – heavy, distorted guitars powering through bar chords and solos of fury, double-bass drum often used at full speed, and lead singer that growls and shrieks his way through each tune. Songs are moments that alternate between discrete guitar/bass/drums chug chug chug then all out wall of sound on the other hand. (10 Oct '25) |
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Jerskin Fendrix Once Upon A Time ... In Shropshire It’s safe to say Fendrix is a zone of interest to Hollywood, having scored the soundtrack to Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness and Bugonia. On his sophomore release here, Fendrix crafts a soundtrack to his past life growing up rural Shropshire, England. He recollects mundane things - gathering daisies for old crushes under the flower moon, drinking White Claw in the pub with his friends – while beautifully contemplating life, family, love, and death. The theme is UK realities, not some dumb American fiction. Musically, the holdovers from his electronica, Auto-Tune drenched experimental Barbie-pop debut album aren’t here. Rather this is the maetro at work, composing a score and performing it himself. It alternates between trilling pianos and rapidly excited falsettos reaching higher highs before they explode in the sky like an Oppenheimer creation and drift to earth amidst soft strings, sparce piano and Fendrix’s slow, low baritone explaining the anatomy of that fall. We’re filing this one next to C. Duncan and MF Tomlinson under “Sensitive Anglo Male Composers Who Go By Their Initials,” and adding “Mum & Dad” and "Together Again" to our Cinematic and Music to Cry to playlists. (10 Oct '25) |
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Madi Diaz Fatal Optimist This, the seventh album from Nashville-based singer-songwriter is considered to be the final chapter in her heartache trilogy. For us this, this very stripped down production – mostly featuring just Diaz’s voice and an acoustic guitar – has a very coffee shop, open mic night feel to it. If you’re sort of cringing imagining that visual, that’s also how we feel at times listening to the album. We’re passing on this one. (10 Oct '25) |
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Amaarae Black Star This is the third studio album by on-the-rise Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae. This one is start to end music for the dance floor, heavy on the beats and the autotune. While it’s not our cup of tea, it is well produced and has a sound that feels like it belongs on the big stage. (8 Aug '25) |
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Jay Som Belong This, the fourth studio album by American indie musician Melina Duterte and first album in six years, will likely get a good amount of attention due to Duterte’s soundtrack efforts and Grammy winning work with boygenius. It’s a well-produced and recorded album with a slight throwback to 90s alt rock feel. “Drop A” is our pick as best song here but nothing here really screams needs to be on Heavy Rotation for us. (10 Oct '25) |
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Joe Westerlund Curiosities from the Shift Sort of unbeknownst to us, we’ve listened to Westerlund laydown percussion under many guises – as a percussionist with acts such as Megafaun, Mandoline Orange, Califone, Watchhouse and The Dead Tongues – but this is our first experience with his solo albums. For him, solo releases mean meditative percussive music and sheer rhythmic patterns. This release of instrumentals - ideas originally germinating for a Califone project that didn’t materialize- begins with junkyard percussion and delightful bass splashes and walks that to an ending of surrealistic boom-bap of thumb pianos and shakers. Throughout, this is an album lead by percussion and beat. Instruments (flutes, woodwinds, violins, keyboards, etc.) fill in around the percussion, not the other way around. The percussive focus makes it very active ambient. Enoesque with energy. This is a very good album. If we were going to single out one song here to show off the release, it would probably be “Felt Like Floating.” (3 Oct '25) |
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Volk Soup 10p Jazz This is the debut from the Leeds-based six piece post-punk band that probably captures the mood of a busy Saturday night at the local pub. It's blistering songs that are brass-infused and packed with ruckus shouting, hollers and hoots from a packed room of guys and girls as the band freefalls through post-punk, noise rock, and disjointed rhythm. At about the halfway point through the album (or our night at the bar) we get a brief repreve with the tender “Holy Building Tourist” before catching our second wind. Abrasive and theatrical songs pick back up with sudden turns, fractured structures, and a chaotic sense of momentum that reaches its creshendo with the brilliant rager ”Spellbound by the Phallus” -- it's the Sugarcubes "F*ckin in Rythym and Sorrow" meets the Dropkick Murphy’s -- before settling down to the album (evening) closer, a mellow, introspective 8 minute last call "Meet Me By the Willow." This is going to be worth every minute of the "what the fuck are we listening to" verbal abuse that we know is coming when this pops up on our playlist during upcoming dinner parties ... unless the Woo Hoo girls are there. They would dig it. (3 Oct '25) |
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Agriculture The Spiritual Sound The Spiritual Sound is the second studio album by LA noise metal band Agriculture. It’s metal chugs, scorching guitar riffs, high pitched back-in-the-mix gravelly voiced screaming that is sort of more bizarrely whispered to you than shouted at you, aggressive playing of the crash and ride symbols and a drum bass beat that alternates between 110bpm and 340bpm. “Bodhidharma” is our pick of the release. (3 Oct '25) |
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Sirom In The Wind Of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper This seven song release of mostly instrumental music has three tracks that clock in between 14 and a half minutes to 19 minutes. This gives the songs some time to drone on and have plenty of instruments come in and out of the mix. Here’s what they got: violin, viola, ribab, qeychak, balafon, frame drum, chimes, fipple flute, banjo, three-string banjo, gembri, morin khuur, balafon, and various amounts of percussion. About two dozen instruments in all, some that are handcrafted. The band’s fifth studio album here is a great showcase for their roots-based, tribal folk music. At times listening to this album we felt like we were out at drumming down the sunset on Siesta Beach. When their droning beat gets going, it takes on a life of it’s own. (3 Oct '25) |
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Malibu Vanities This is the debut full-length release from Malibu, the alias of French artist Barbara Braccini’s ambient music project. The release feels like rainy day ambient to us. Its moody but not dark or night. Its organic, feels like it’s breathing – especially with the many hushed vocals and very low bass rumblings. It’s melancholy, cinematic. We’re almost looking forward to the next dark gray rainy Saturday when we can put this one on and nap on the couch with the cat. (3 Oct '25) |
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mildred mild The debut EP from this Oakland, CA band is a mellow slow … and well, mild … indie rock album. Pretty straight forward bass, drums, guitar, and dude singing with some harmonies affair that was recorded over the course of a couple weekends in the group’s living room. “Laila” is our pick for best on the EP but this is a release that, while not having anyone song jump out at you, is a consistent easy listen from start to finish. (3 Oct '25) |
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Cate Le Bon Michelangelo Dying We were excited about this one as we like the Welsh producer and composer’s past works – both her studio albums (this is her seventh) and her production credits with John Grant, Devandra Banhart, Horsegirl and others. While it was made post-breakup and is supposed to be an all-consuming heartache and a kind of exorcism, it comes off in typical Le Bon fashion: a little head held high pop. Buttoned up. Orchestrated but not orchestral. Basically, haute couture music. We have “Is It Worth it” in our heavy rotation. (26 Sept '25) |
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Jeff Tweedy Twilight Override Tweedy’s been around forever -- best known as the frontman, songwriter, and guitarist for Wilco, the Chicago-based band he co-founded in 1994 after the breakup of his earlier group Uncle Tupelo, and now with this, his fifth solo studio album. Wwe’ve never been big fans of the previous work, despite trying many times … you know, 'cause everyone loves Wilco. Some of his older, solo work is resonating with us though, including a couple off this release, including “Forever Never Ends” and “New Orleans.” Loved seeing him HSBG. (26 Sept '25) |
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Doja Cat Vie Vie (French for "life") is the fifth studio album for Doja Cat (born Amala Dlamini,) an American rapper and singer. Since massive Billboard topping pop acts are usually not in our diet of steady listens, we won’t add much here. But if you like that stuff, you’re in luck: Jack Antonoff executive produced this. You can probably spin any Billboard top 10 or Taylor Swift album and get basically the same stuff. If we needed to pick a favorite here, it'd be "Come Back". (26 Sept '25) |
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Geese Getting Killed NYC band Geese certainly does have a unique sound. At least enough to captivate critics, who are heaping praise on the band like they’re the second coming of 100 gecs. Cameron Winter’s always-present whiney baritone vocs, seemingly sung an octave too high, sticks out. As does the often frantic, kinetic garage riffs and instruments around him. This would be a fun band to see at your local dive bar. “Au Pays du Cocaine” and "Bow Down" are our favorites from this release. (25 Sept '25) |
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MICROCORPS Clear Vortex Chamber MICROCORPS is artist, musician and producer Alexander Tucker (Grumbling Fur, Brood X Cycles, Nonexistent, Charlemagne Palestine Time Machine Orchestra) exploring electronics, cello and voice. MICROCORPS focusses on modular systems, strings and voice manipulation, ranging from mutant beat exploration to granular frequency cut-up. We love Tucker’s 2018 album “Don’t Look Away” where he uses his baritone vocals in traditionally structured songs. He’s evolved though. With MICROCORPS the traditional song structure disappears and is replaced by experimental dark ambient techno. It’s not until you really listen to it that you realize that the instrument in the background creating the slightly agro soundscape is really Tucker screaming at the top of his lungs. There’s a lot to unpack in this driving, dystopian, scifi soundtrack, but another beautiful song such as “Objects” or “Visiting Again” off that aforementioned 2018 release? That’s not here. (19 Sept '25) |
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Wednesday Bleeds This one, the sixth studio release from the Ashville band seems to be getting a lot of buzz. Perhaps because guitarist MJ Lenderman saw some success with his recent solo release? This sounds like it might be good ole guitars, bass, drums, female singer indie rock, with a hint of Southern rock influences. But the songs here seamlessly shift between getting heavy on the distorted guitar and Karly Hartzman yelling her lines at you to going lighter with acoustic instrumentation and Hartzman’s vocals becoming more warbly and vulnerable. If you listened to “Wasp” and “Gary’s II” back-to-back you might be scratching your head wondering how the heavy metal band and the Appalachia folksy band ended up on the same album. We’re finding a little more beauty in the softer points of this release, such as “Elderberry Wine,” “Phish Pepsi.” And “Gary’s II.” It’s a very good album. (19 Sept '25) |
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Margaret Glaspy The Golden Heart Protector Brooklyn, New York artist Margaret Glaspy hit our radar as she is playing HSBG. Glaspy’s last album, 2024’s The Sun Doesn’t Think was pretty much a girl and her guitar affair. On this one she invites a cast of really good artists (Madison Cunningham, Andrew Bird, Norah Jones to name a few) to accompany her as she reinterprets songs by Wilco, Magnetic Fields, Lucinda Williams, Rufus Wainwright, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Blake Mills, and Nico. (12 Sept '25) |
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Algermon Cadwallader Trying Not to Have a Thought This is the third album, and first in 14 years, from the originally from Philadelphia but now bicoastal rockers. The LP consists of winey, yelpy male vocals over late-90s / post-millennial emo rock with some guitars that shift between jangly and distorted power chords and straightforward 4/4 drumming that includes times where it’s bang, bang, bang on the snare and cymbal at the same time. (12 Sept '25) |
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Fruit Bats Baby Man This is somewhat different album for the Fruit Bats, the project of singer/songwriter Eric D. Johnson, who is the band's sole permanent member. The usual full, lush rich multi-layered recordings are pared back to a minimum here, being usually nothing more than an acoustic guitar or a solitary piano. Longtime producer Thom Monahan encouraged the artist to explore the full power and range of his voice, pushing his vocals forward in the mix. We loved the Bat’s last album, A River Running to Your Heart. But we’re not sure Johnson’s voice and singing are the strong points of the band. The songs here are nice, but nothing really catches our attention. (12 Sept '25) |
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Joanne Robertson Blurrr This is the sixth solo release from the Glasgow via Manchester singer songwriter. It’s often a spare, intimate ordeal of a girl and her acoustic guitar. One where you can hear the fingerpicking and strumming so distinctly that you can almost identify the guitar strings and make and model of the guitar. Pitchfork notes the release “… is spectral and breathtaking. It’s a mood record of immense solitude, beauty, and free expression—with a crucial assist from the cellist Oliver Coates.” We agree completely on the value of cellist’s contribution. Without that, it’s sort of like a girl and her acoustic guitar live from the coffeeshop with a lot of reverb. “Why Me” is best in show here. (10 Sept '25) |
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Saint Etienne International It’s a little hard to give this one, the group’s 13th and final album, an end-to-end listen without the weight of the trio’s history in the back of your mind. We took an intermission halfway through it to spin the group’s brilliant LP “Good Humor,” which we’ve still been regularly spinning since its release in 1998. The changes in production value and many special guests here give it a more modern feel, but underneath that there’s still the classy, worldly eclectic dance pop you’d expect. As Pitchfolk says: “the trio is determined to go out with a bang, once more mapping dance music’s energies onto tender feelings of longing, optimism, and nostalgia.” (5 Sept '25) |
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James K Friend This is the third full-length album from New York-based artist Jamie Krasner under her moniker james K. We’ve been enjoying spinning this one for a couple of months. Some songs on this release, for example “On God” or “Collapse” feel a lot like if we were listening to Lush back in the early 90s. Not only in sounds but also how the vocals are used less for communication than they are for setting an atmosphere. There’s also a late 90s trip hop meets shoegaze vibe in many of the songs. However this is more moody, ethereal and ambient release at times than any of those 90s bands. “N’Balmed” and “Rider” are our favorites from this release. (5 Sept '25) |
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Lucrecia Dalt A Danger to Ourselves The seventh album from Colombian-born Berlin-based musician is a nice one. Dalt has a great mixture of organic and robotic, of past and future. Songs are very rhythmic, acoustic and organic but with electronic accoutrements and mechanical underpinnings. Think Tom Waits Bone Machine. Negative space is used exceedingly well here, for example on “stellaformia”. So, no surprise to see fellow Spanish speaking artist Juana Molina (whose new album is also reviewed in this haul) as a contributor. There are a lot of similarities in their music. We suspect Spanish speaking artist Rosalia (another one whose new album is also reviewed here) will suck up most of the critical acclaim for best Spanish language album of the year, but this one would probably get our vote. “amorcito caradura” is a great little play on a traditional Mexican melody. “Caes” is another beautiful one that made our Dark & Interesting playlist. (5 Sept '25) |
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Suede Antidepressants Suede (or The London Suede in the US) and Pulp coming out with new releases within 5 months of each other? What is this, 1994? This is the tenth studio album for the English alternative rock band and first one we picked up in some three decades. We totally forgot that Justine Frischmann was/is the guitarist in the group. Thankfully she broke up with Damon Albarn and inspired him in his writing on the Blur album 13. That’s a brilliant album. While Blur (one of the original Britpop four with Suede, Pulp and Oasis) expanded their musical scope significantly with their release last year, here it seems like I’m still listening to something from the mid-90s. "Somewhere Between An Atom And A Star" is our best in show here. (5 Sept '25) |
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Water From Your Eyes It's a Beautiful Place This is the seventh studio album by Water from Your Eyes, the NYC-based American indie pop project of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos. The bulk of the album was recorded in Amos's bedroom then released through Matador Records. It’s a pretty much a pop-rock album with some interesting nuances, including some ambient soundscape (“You Don’t Believe in God”,) electronic experimental drone rock a la Stereolab meets Cornelius, and shifts in style between and within songs that keep it interesting. It’s a decent release. “Playing Classics” and “Blood on the Dollar” are our best in show here. (22 Aug '25) |
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Max Richter Sleep Circle The business side of media (you know, advertising to pay the bills) is often not so interesting – especially when the topic of music comes up in small talk and stale billboard toppers or classic rock bands are thrown out there. We’d like to think the creative side of the house would have more interesting recommendations than the media side, but we digress. So imagine our surprise when we’re having a nice industry dinner at Da Damiano in Köln when the topic of favorite artists comes up and my young dining companions actually mention interesting artists such as Ludovico Einaudi and Max Richter. This prompted us to spin “Sleep Circle”, the new release from Richter that marks the tenth anniversary of his landmark project "SLEEP." That project, like this release explore a hallucinatory trip into the hypnagogic state – the time period when the brain transitions between a state of wakefulness and sleep and the state during which the individual dreams. This is beautiful ambient classical music for sleeping and relaxing (4 Sept '25) |
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Amaarae Black Star This is the third studio album by on-the-rise Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae. This one is start to end music for the dance floor, heavy on the beats and the autotune. While it’s not our cup of tea, it is well produced and has a sound that feels like it belongs on the big stage. (8 Aug '25) |
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Water From Your Eyes It's a Beautiful Place This is the seventh studio album by Water from Your Eyes, the NYC-based American indie pop project of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos. The bulk of the album was recorded in Amos's bedroom then released through Matador Records. It’s a pretty much a pop-rock album with some interesting nuances, including some ambient soundscape (“You Don’t Believe in God”,) electronic experimental drone rock a la Stereolab meets Cornelius, and shifts in style between and within songs that keep it interesting. It’s a decent release. “Playing Classics” and “Blood on the Dollar” are our best in show here. (22 Aug '25) |
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Greg Freeman Burnover This is the second studio album from this Burlington, VT indie rock artist. Fans of Wilco or Chuck Prophet might want to give this a spin. It feels in the same sort of vein: rock songs that lean a little more Americana than they do pop rock or heavy rock and sung by a dude with a sort of shakey mid-range vocal register. We played Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and this album on shuffle and the uninitiated might have guessed they were all from the same artist. Which puts Mr. Freeman in some good company. (22 Aug '25) |
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Earl Sweatshirt Live Laugh Love Earl Sweatshirt (born Thebe Kgositsile) is an American rapper and member of the Odd Future collective who has become one of the most unique hip-hop artists of his generation, known for his introspective lyrics and experimental production. His fifth album here is mostly shorter songs consisting of nice mid-tempo heavy bass beats underlying 70s grooves or melodies seemingly sampled from 50s big band pop era recordings while Sweatshirt raps over the top with his flatline baritone. It’s a nice release. (22 Aug '25) |
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Hand Habits Blue Reminder Hand Habits is the project of Meg Duffy, a multi-instrumentalist who spent years on the road as part of Perfume Genius' live band and has several studio albums of their own - this one makes it six. We sort of think of Hand Habits as a perhaps little warmer, more approachable version of Perfume Genius. It tackles some of the same subject-matter around gender identity and has some similar song characteristics. But it’s probably softer and more cuddly than Perfume Genius. We have “More Today,” on our heavy rotation with our indie rock playlist, but this is a solid listen start to finish. (22 Aug '25) |
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Nourished by Time The Passionate Ones This is the second studio album from Baltimore-based musician Marcus Brown, who has previously spent years on the DIY circuit under aliases like Mother Marcus and Riley on Fire. The artist claims his sound is shaped by Baltimore's rich musical heritage where jazz, punk, indie, hip hop, electronic and R&B collide in raw harmony. We’re not big fans of this sort of mostly DYI R&B created with synths … and not like a classic Rhodes sounds here or there, but like fake synths substituting for strings, woodwinds or piano mixed with other random bad 80s synths sounds. (22 Aug '25) |
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Dijon Baby This, the second studio album from Baltimore artist Dijon, came about right after the artist became a father. Hence the title. It seems to be the darling of music critics this year with a contemporary R&B take that expands beyond the genre to include pop, some rock and modern digital elements. Perhaps the critics like his blending of traditional and digital. Or the mashups of soul vocal melodies with Drums n Bass beats and field recordings mashups. Or maybe because it’s music made by a mature man, not young man’s hip-hop. Whatever the reason, we suspect the moments of pained Prince-like rock shout-howls – for example, check out the song “my man” – certainly didn’t hurt in obtaining critical accolades. It’s not really the cat’s meow for us though. (15 Aug '25) |
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Alison Goldfrapp Flux We absolutely love Goldfrapp, the London duo of Alison and multi-instrumentalist Will Gregory. The seven studio albums they put out covered a ton of ground, everything from late night lush lounge listens to pack-the-dance-hall electro-pop hits – more often than not completely changing sounds from one album to the next. 2008’s “Seventh Tree” was our soundtrack through the late aughts and teens as we regularly traveled back and forth between SF and NYC. It’s arguably the most beautiful album ever written. So we were decidedly less thrilled, disappointed really, with 2023’s “The Love Invention”, Alison’s first solo album. This one, her second solo album, is warming her back up to us. But really only because “Sound & Light” and “Reverberotic” feel like they could have been on Goldfrapp’s 2005 release Supernature. They are fantastic songs. Attempts at more organic and lush songs here though fall flat. They are missing Gregory’s touch. Listen to “UltraSky” here then “Clowns” or “Cologne Cerrone Houdini” from Seventh Tree. No comparison. (17 Aug '25) |
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Chicago Underground Duo Hyperglyph Chicago Underground Duo is the long-running collaborative project of composer / trumpeter / electronicist Rob Mazurek (Exploding Star Orchestra, Isotope 217, New Future City Radio) and composer / drummer / mbiraist Chad Taylor (Fly or Die, Ghost Horizons, Silt Trio). Hyperglyph is their first album in 11 years, and 8th overall. This (as you might expect with a drummer being one of the duo members) is very frantic percussion driven experimental avant-jazz. The duo seems to pick up and use anything at their disposal to add new sounds to the session – tribal chants, electronic samples, blown-out horns, bells, spoken word, ambient sounds. They then have no qualms about going into the mixing room and getting heavy handed on now classic cut-and-recut production techniques. The result is jazz which gives you the feel that you’re in a New Orleans march, a Tuareg wedding, in the Native American call to war ceremony, or in a Egyptian market more often than the feel of a smoky, dimly lit club in Harlem. (15 Aug '25) |
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Racing Mount Pleasant Racing Mount Pleasant This is the second album from the Ann Arbor band that formed at the University of Michigan in 2019 and previously called themselves Kingfisher. It’s a nice indie rock album from a band that’s been compared to Bon Iver, Lord Huron and Black Country, New Road. We actually hear a lot of San Fermin type orchestrations crossed with the Tindersticks sort of plainly spoken male vocs. This works well on tracks such as “Emily” here, our top pick on this release, and “Your Old Place”. (15 Aug '25) |
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Leo Chadburn Sleep In The Shadow Of The Alternator The four longish (around ten minutes each) songs here playout more as a narrator reading out the contents a pamphlet or describing the content of some boxes accompanied by some ambient background music. For example, in “Magic Flora of the East Midlands” Chadburn’s soft, insistent voice first calls out common and Latin names of common plants and their historical use. For example: “St. John's Wort, Hypericum perforatum…to repel malevolent forces”. After going through about two dozen plants, he tells a brief story about monks discovering the creation of ale then goes on and lists about two dozen occupations, presumably for people in the UK in the middle-ages. A spiritual ambient music of synths and bells plays in the background. The background rhythm music for “Move Like a Freight Train” and the mechanical-like cadence of Chadburn mouthing out phrases such as “Move like a freight train, That motion you make, Covers hundreds of miles…” will have you convinced you are hearing and actual train going by in the background. This is not so much music in the traditional sense of a song, but it is an interesting listen. (8 Aug '25) |
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No Joy Bugland This is No Joy’s fifth studio album and first release in five years. The Canadian band makes sort of shoegaze meets 90’s alt rock with modern digital sounds thrown in. A more rocker and heavy version of Cocteau Twins or a more shoegaze guitar filled version of Black Moth Super Rainbow might be good ways to think of it. As with Wednesday, which we also reviewed in this haul, No Joy also throws in one song (“Jelly Meadow Bright”) of heavy metal screaming in the mix. Maybe that’s a thing now. Although the musical accompaniment in this song is very complex, interesting and decidedly non-heavy metal. Good release. (8 Aug '25) |
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DJ K Rádio Libertadora The back and forth between baby toy piano to tsunami evacuation instructions via loudspeaker to ear piercing bloodcurdling whistle in the first song sets the stage here. We feel that we’re one simple app away from anyone being able to hit a button to create a DJ K song: There’d be an interface to dial the bass drum beat to between 130 and 150bpm, second input would be a selector for your favorite alert signal: police siren, ambulance, Amber alert, alarm clock, etc. Third input would be favorite child’s toy: plucky piano, kazoo, shaker, toy laser gun, etc. Fourth input would be a selector for a public broadcast: preacher, evacuation instructions, call to prayer, political speech, etc. Fifth input would be a mic for you to give shout outs. The app would then slice these inputs together randomly. The app would automatically create a song title of between 3 to 5 words made up of 3 to 5 random characters, all capital letters. I think this app would be a lot more entertaining than this album. (8 Aug '25)  |
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Dale Cornish Altruism Of the London artist, The Quietus notes that Cornish’s ”sound fuses the snap and tickle of electroclash, and the grit and grind of Pan Sonic; plastic synth stabs and brittle rattlings punctuate his swaggering South London invocations, which often sit front and centre.” Those spoken vocal invocations draw on his experience of gender-affirming surgery making for some interesting subject matter. We would call this experimental club music. We’re not sure folks are going to be dancing to a lot of this. Even the high bpm pieces here don’t seem meant for grooving. There’s a lot going on here – broken dishes, rushing water, jackhammer like beats, Cornish’s surprising low, slightly off key baritone warbling over stuff – but it’s often discreetly placed on a minimalist canvas. It’s kind of stuff you’re consciously thinking, what? Nope. But then you find yourself unable to turnaway from this, like you're watching a bad accident on the highway. (8 Aug '25) |
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Sagittaire Coventry Suite Pt. 1 Coventry Suite Pt. 1, the experimental hip-hop and R&B project from Sagitairre’s Ivan Mairesse. He’s calling it “collision music,” borrowing the term from Bill Laswell who used it to unite artists from divergent sound worlds to create something unexpected. Mairesse does that here, a release that doesn’t feature his voice, but leans on others to sing, passing the mic to R&B singer Brynne Faler, soulful crooner Mellow Marcy, rapid-fire rapper brz, and the spellbinding Rebecca Ramirez. It largely works here. The downtempo closer “Kiss” may be the best on this release. (Aug '25) |
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Big Thief Double Infinity This is the sixth studio album for Brooklyn based Big Thief. Doesn’t seem that long since we were chatting with some mutual friends of the bands after Masterpiece, their 2016 debut. The band has done very well for themselves since, and this album should continue to trajectory despite having lost their longtime bassist. The album was cut with a live recording process, giving it immediacy and warmth. “All Night All Day” is the standout song here. (Sept '25) |
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Cass McCombs Interior Live Oak We had mixed feelings seeing McCombs pop up on the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass line up. He’s been on our radar since his 2009 release Catacombs, but while most of his stuff is well crafted and listenable, there’s not a lot we love about it. That’s how we feel about this release – “I Never Dream About Trains” is a good song, but the rest of it we can do without -- and about seeing him at HSBG. Yeah, that’s fine, but if there’s something better, let’s do that. Max Gomez, the review to the right here, is playing at the same time slot at HSBG. We’ll give them a spin. (Aug '25) |
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Max Gomez Memory Mountain Taos, New Mexico artist Max Gomez grew up absorbing country blues and folk influences in a supportive regional NM music scene where he released his 2013 debut album Rule the World on New West Records. This release, recorded over about a week in a makeshift studio in an old house in Los Angeles with producer Mark Howard (known for engineering and producing projects for Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, and others), marks his first full length since then. It’s a solid singer songwriter-crafted Americana folk record of mostly the singer, his Kris Kristofferson-like voice, and his guitar with the occasional accompaniment of a slide guitar and female singer.This is perhaps the performance we’re most looking forward to at HSBG. (Aug '25) |
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OK Cool Chit Chat Chicago duo Bridget Stiebris and Haley Blomquist Waller's first full-length LP written, performed, and produced entirely by the duo. This romps through some rock songs that show some punk energy, include in a couple of emotive minor chords in the mix, are sprinkled with a couple of more artsy/math-rock plucky guitar notes and girl-girl harmonies. It's a decent collection of punchy, pop-punk, which we imagine would be a fun show to see at The Kilowatt. Fans of Billy Carter should give this one a listen. (Aug '25) |
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Modern Nature The Heat Warps Cambridge, UK band adds a new guitarist pulls a little away from the free, open-ended approach they had spent the previous five years working towards, to something more structured. This results in a simple rhythm section backing a couple of reverb and tremplo heavy telecasters (we’d guess) slowing plucking chords around each other. Think Luna crossed with Low. A simplified Great Lakes Swimmers. It’s one step above slowcore. A little mellow and rhythmically droney, consistent, no surprises, but very nice music. (Aug '25) |
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Rene Najera Pained Life Minnesota-born, L.A.-based musician, mastering engineer, and co-founder of the Jungle Gym label Jared Carrigan records solo and in collaboration under a web of guises. René Najera is his longest running and most liquid. This release took shape from the seeds of a 2023 set prepared for a string of shows in Japan and later remixed, finessed, and expanded by a cast of collaborators. Like we believe most musicians should say, Carrigan calls the album a “memory book” – each track a snapshot of cities and sessions, filtered through a fusion of club smoke, mood house, psychic acid, and sunrise electronica. We spent a long time trying to figure out if this was ambient that wants to be club music, or club music that wants to be ambient. Beautiful soundscapes with incessant 160bpm drum beats over them are common. While we didn’t answer that question, the release caught our attention enough to warrant some good late night listens. “The Seasons” is our favorite off this album. (Aug '25) |
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Marrisa Nadler New Radiations We love that there’s a goth folk artist on the Sacred Bones label who comes from Nashville. On her tenth official full-length record Nadler’s lush voice and intricate fingerpicking are front and center. She layers Everly Brothers–style harmonies over somnambulic, dreamlike, lonesome soundscapes—fuzzed-out distortion, Hammond organ, and ominous synthesizers—that elevate her warm vulnerability with texture and atmosphere. “It Hits Harder” is our favorite from the release. (Aug '25) |
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Foot Ox A Lighthouse With Silver Dog Eyes Of this Portland, Oregon based artist, Bandcamp notes: “The long-running Portland act returns with a new record blending folk, country, punk, and experimental rock.” This is a well produced and well played of nice Ameriana songs. (Aug '25) |
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Pink Butler Can We Go Back Bandcamp says of the release from this Stockholm, Sweden group: "A crackling six-track EP that merges the freedom of jazz with the contemporary sounds of hip-hop and soul." This is well produced and delivered, but it's a type of music we're just not fans of. Vocalists ooh, ooh, oohing ad nauseam while the smooth jazz plays in the background. Not for us. (Aug '25) |
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AraabMuzik Electronic Dream 2 AraabMuzik is the project of Providence, RI based record producer and DJ Abraham Orellana, who gained prominence for his live performances using the Akai Pro Music Production Center drum machine, creating rapid, rhythmic drum patterns and melodies with samples. Seems there’s been some anticipation of this release since it originally saw light when it was leaked back in 2012 but pulled back due to sample clearance issues. 13 years later issue resolved and here we are. It’s good lounge friendly mid-tempo stuff with plenty of samples and some flashes of heavier or more rapid beats. (1 Aug '25) |
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Nadeem Din-Gabisi Offshore This is the second album from the London-based award-winning lyricist, visual artist and filmmaker. His music is usually associated with the Alternative R&B genre, but it leans more hip-hop, afrocubism, worldbeat or even house than it does R&B soul. This is music made to get you on the dance floor. Din-Gabisi’s soft but strong baritone switches between rapping and singing over a background of strong grooves and beats. Fans of Bad Bunny need to give this one a listen. “I Land” is our favorite here. (1 Aug '25) |
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Soft Hearted Scientists The Phantom of Canton This is the ninth studio album for this Cardiff, Wales-based psychedelia indie rock band. We found them with their debut release which we loved for their ability to create extremely happy songs. The Scientists keep the formula pretty consistent here, crafting great psychedelic pop rock songs with a lot of folkish instruments (12 string guitars, dulcimer, wind chimes and such) and light, uplifting melodies that tend to do frequent tempo changes within a song to change up the energy. “Hello Hello” and "Wonder Girl" are the hits of this release. (18 Jul '25) |
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Jim Legxacy black british music The third “mixtape” by Jim Legxacy combines audio moodboards, emo guitar lines, Afrobeat drums, that same club-friendly booming digital bass drum combined with bass guitar that all the popstars are using nowadays, samples, periodic lush backing vocals, and the artist’s half singing and half rapping vocals to create an album that blurs genre boundaries. The album, indeed, even songs, often switch moods as they progress. Going from hip hop, afrocubism, dance club hit, cinematic ballad, even indie rock, as the release progresses. Couple that with song topics that cover a lot of emotional experiences the artist has recently been through, including the family health issues, the death of his younger sister and the artists own bouts of homelessness and no surprise this is finding a lot of critical success. We wouldn’t be surprised to see this release catch commercial success in the US. (18 July '25) |
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MF Tomlinson Die To Wake Up From A Dream As we were going through the some 60 or so new albums in this month’s haul, we hit this one and took a deep sigh -- ahhh yes -- and settled in for a magnificent journey. This is the third studio album from an artist who was the primary inspiration for our “Sensitive Anglo Male Composers Who Go By Their Initials” playlist (with C Duncan, William Doyle, but not ML Lenderman.) The London-based Australian composer produces ultra widescreen songs. Like he is shooting for a pop-culture hit but instead of creating The Hangover or Dumb and Dumber he creates epics like Magnolia, Crash, or Dune. The shortest song here is about 5 minutes. The longest is nearly 15 minutes. This is music for listening to music. Orchestral journeys to somewhere exotic … even if that journey is just electrons through your earbuds and in to your head as you ride the N-Judah home from downtown. (11 July '25) |
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The Worm Pantilde The Worm is the project of Amy Lawrence (they/them), a Cornish avant-folk musician, performance artist, and gardener. Pantilde is a historical fantasy project in the form of music and writing. The Worm, author and protagonist, finds themself in a parallel Celtic landscape populated scarcely by peasants living in a simple, early feudal community. At the time of the story telling a loud, cosmic bell is heard across the land by different people. Here, Lawrence plays cello, harp, recorders (there’s a lot of recorder used here), and percussion into this album sort of making a middle ages style folk music. We agree with Stereogum’s take: “avant-garde folk experimentation that is both charming and naive, creating a delicately off-kilter minimalism reminiscent in sound of Japanese kabuki theatre with open atmospherics, flute passages and subtle percussive intervals.” An interesting listen start to finish on a cold grey afternoon when you want to stay in and bundle up next to a fire and sort of doze off. (4 July '25) |
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Good Good Blood Little Sparrow Written in the throws of grief, "Little Sparrow" is an album of questions, of wondering, of wanting, of asking “will we make it through?” Featuring re-worked versions of previously released 'Flowers Bloom' and 'Forever Scars', each song was initially recorded at home, sparse arrangements of just acoustic guitar and vocals. “Flowers Bloom” is our pick for best song here. (July '25) |
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Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire Vol. 2: The Y.O.Uprint From Bandcamp: "Whether spitting over brash boom-bap or coasting over smoky, luxuriant jazz, the veteran Brooklyn rapper always hits the mark." We like his name a little more than his beats as nothing really stuck out to us. (July '25) |
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Alex G Headlights Pitchfork writes of this Philadelphia artist: “Alex Giannascoli upgrades to hi-fi dad rock and sails home with a major label debut worthy of the all-time indie graduations.” There’s a nice, looks like hand drawn image of a horse for his bandcamp profile image and this album features what looks like a hand painted image of Frodo waving his sword at the moon … and the album as some nice songs. (July '25) |
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Open Mike Eagle Neighborhood Gods Unlimited Pitchfork writes: "On his sly, artful new album, the Los Angeles-based rapper confronts an inhumane information society with determination to claw back a sense of self." These are some good rhymes against a backdrop that mixes up jazzy lounge with old media snippets and other samples as backdrops. "Michigan j. wonder" is our favorite from the release. (July '25) |
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Wet Leg Moisturizer Bandcamp writes: “The UK duo’s second album is a near-reinvention, an unbridled and clear-eyed testament to their songwriting chops that hones their vision and separates them from the pack.” We like Wet Leg. This release has some really good songs that have made our heavy rotation, including “pond song” and “u and me at home” (July '25) |
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Che Rest in Bass The second studio album by American rapper Che earned a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork. We can see some interesting elements here in this blending of rap/hip-hop with 808 synths sounds in more of an EDM or hardcore framework than RnB. Add in a vocal element that sounds like Michael Jackson's high pitched voice rapping with a good amount of autotune. Maybe some novelty there, but just not that enjoyable of a listen to us. (July '25) |
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Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band New Threats from the Soul This is the second studio album from Ryan Davis, a Louisville, Kentucky based visual artist, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, and it's a good one. You know immediately from hearing Davis' Mid-Western/Southern baritone warbling over some sweet Americana melodies that this is a good easy listen. The songs are long – 7 to 9 minutes each – providing plenty of room to get the steel pedal, banjo, harmonica, washboard, and every other instrument laying around the room in the mix, and giving Davis a lot of time to get his thoughts out there in their colorful details. This is all over our Country Playlist. (July '25) |
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Midnight Rodeo Chaos Era Bandcamp calls the debut album from these Nottingham, UK artists “Spaghetti Western-inspired psych rock with the dramatic sweep of a Morricone score and the lo-fi gristle of a "Nuggets" compilation.” Yeah, they can probably add a surf rock influence there as well. Sounds like this bunch of 20 somethings hit a recording studio deep in the Welsh countryside during an Indian summer heatwave and recorded the album as analogue as possible over 10 days. We suspect this band would be fun to catch at a live show. “Daisy” is best in show here. (July '25) |
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Mera Bhai Now I Need You We can see this EP from London artist Bhai being spun in the evening at Miami Beach night clubs. It is a nice high energy a mix of Tropicalia, disco, techno and 90s acid house. (July '25) |
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Cerrone & Christine and the Queens - Catching Feelings Catching Feelings Bandcamp says "The godfather of Italo-disco and the art-pop revolutionary come together for a French Touch-indebted EP that grabs you by the collar." This is a 70s style disco romp. If you want to get your Studio 54 vibes going, give this one a spin. (July '25) |
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Silent Titan Dream State Australian underground hip-hop producer Silent Titan returns with a hip-hop feast featuring a bunch of collaborators and beast which, in his words, "were created specifically as a canvas for lyricists to heavily explore their inner thoughts and their philosophy of the "Dream State" of sub-conscious process. We're digging the production qualities and backing psych jazz loops and lounge ready snippets. "Mindscape" is our pick here. (July '25) |
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Tanner York Welcome to the Shower Bandcamp writes: “Youthful, eccentric bedroom pop symphonies from an Asheville outsider.” Upon listening (and not seeing any images prior) we spent a lot of time trying to figure out if this was a female or male singing these sweet tunes over a jangly guitar in a decidedly lo-fi no frills production. There’s sort of a Monkeys like vibe to Lucky Me, which, in York’s quest for “Pop pop pop pop music!,”, he might like to be associated with. (July '25) |
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Hebi Katana Imperfection Of the fourth release from this Tokyo-based “doom metal” group, Bandcamp notes: “The … band apply the principles of wabi-sabi, a Japanese tradition meaning “beauty of imperfection," to their harrowing doom metal.” This is some raw stuff that I might call lo-fi hard rock rather than doom metal … so as to not ruffle the feathers of any true doomers as they read this from Northern Europe. Yume wa Kareno is the song to listen to on this release (July '25) |
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Lupe de Lupe Amor Bandcamp notes that dreamy, epic arrangements, surging dynamics, and brassy flourishes make the Brazilian post-rockers impossible to resist. This is not bad stuff. We sort of like how a number of songs here sort of stop at the halfway mark, reset, and go a different direction. But the EP is not anything we have a lot of Amor (to pardon the pun) around. (July '25) |
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Half Japanese Adventure Led by Jad Fair, these Uniontown, Maryland indie rockers have been around for a while now putting out albums. This one has a full sounding backing band behind Fair as he lays out pretty standard guitar, bass, drums, vocals indie rock songs, about half of which feature Fair singing – which actually is sort of like him talking with perhaps a little more emotion in his speech – over the music. It’s not bad. “Possibilities” is by far the best song here. (11 July '25) |
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Lord Huron The Cosmic Selector Before diving into this, we feel we need to pay extra homage to the band’s 2021 release Long Lost. That was the perfect album for us to have on heavy rotation for a week as we drove two lane roads along the Gulf of Mexico, through Texas hill country and the wide-open West of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada going from Sarasota to San Francisco. Fantastic road trip, fantastic album. So this one, the fifth album from the LA band helmed by Ben Schneider, has big shoes to fill. And it well, using a lot of the same moody, lonely Western vibes throughout. Our favorite here is “Nothing I Need.” (18 July '25) |
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Xeeland Master Builder Bandcamp says: "Pulsing drone, krautrock rhythms, and spacious textures make for an immersive and hypnotic listen. Pure head music for heads." In typical The Quietus style, they say "...an apt soundtrack for the quaking concrete of brutalist buildings...sometimes unexpectedly pleasant, sometimes rough, sometimes hypnotic, sometimes meditative, and sometimes bombastic." We like the hypnotic minimalist, on the border of dark ambient, drone coming from this Utrecht, Netherlands artist. Very good for late night headphone listening. (July '25) |
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Plume Girl Unnameable Glory Plume Girl is the alt-experimental solo project of Hindustani classical singer, composer, and Austin, TX based artist Sowmya Somanath. For her second full-length as Plume Girl, Somanath brings together Hindustani classical improvisation, ambient soundscapes, and experimental pop. We enjoy this release, love her traditional singing and got a kick out of hearing the Indian street sounds in the distant background of some recordings. We must admit, we were waiting for some of these songs to build up into a sort of Bombay Dub Orchestra-like perfect for the lounge release, but they stayed more in the ambient realm. This is in that same Hindustani neoclassical vein as Ganavya, who we reviewed (and also praised) in last month's haul. (July '25) |
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Keyone Sayonara Bandcamp notes: "Turkish-Belgian producer crafts lush hip-hop instrumentals that employ chopped-up samples sourced from rare Japanese records." We have Hotarukago and Sasurainouta on our Cinematic playlist, although the whole album could easily belong there. This is a must listen for fans of Isaintjames. (July '25)
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Sally Dige Holding the Sun Sally Dige ("Dee-Ah") is a multidisciplinary-audiovisual artist based in Berlin. Sally records and produces her own music and manages and creates every aspect of her creative work herself. The standout track on this release is her single Sow the Path. There are two versions here for you to choose from the poppy, synth laden original or the strings version, which we like a little better. (July '25) |
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Cleo Reed Cuntry The NYC artist writes that “This album is a ‘state of the cuntry’, if you will. An address where I respond to the chaos and hell-making that happens here. This album is very current, and I don’t think there’s any other time that I could’ve written it. It is a folk rap album, that tells stories of American labor, empirical agenda, and intends to hold space for the working class to understand the ways in which we have been exploited or have participated in the exploitation of others. It also deals with the body, particularly the Black Femme Body.” We are intrigued by this “folk rap.” The album has a unique sound that really works on her best songs such as “Women at War.” (July '25) |
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Wolfgang Perez So Ouco This is the third solo album from Wolfgang Perez, a half-German, half-Spanish songwriter, arranger, guitarist and sound artist from Essen, currently based in Cologne. It was produced from an 18-month creative residency in Rio de Janeiro while the artist went on a university exchange to study music composition and quickly found himself immersed in the city's rich musical landscape. We appreciate that this covers a lot of ground--pop, latin, bossa nova, experimental--often doing so all at the same time in the same song. If Cornelius was tasked to remix Gilberto Gil, we could imagine it sounding like this. "Nem Quero Asas" is our favorite song here. (July '25) |
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Far Caspian Autofiction Indie pop from Leeds, this one man band featuring Joel Johnston recording, playing and mixing everything himself features melancholy, mopey vocals song a little softly and jangling guitars. A little mopey and monotonous for us. We are not fans. (July '25) |
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Sound on Tape Price The debut album from Cleveland, Ohio electronic artist Marcus Alan Ward, AKA Sound On Tape, is an interesting mix of RnB, Hip-Hop, Gospel, Garage, and Jazz songs that the artist calls an exploration of Black American storytelling. This release covers a lot of territory; it's a very interesting listen. (July '25) |
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Lelo New Detroit Pitchfork says: "On his debut album, the Detroit rapper wrestles with his home scene's growing influence on mainstream rap. He offers a portrait of his city that's both loving and critical, grounded in stories that couldn't have come from anywhere else." We're listening to this at the same time that we're spinning similar artists from roughly the same genre, including Sounds on Tape, Open Mike Eagle, The Silent Titan and others. This one was probably the least impressive of the bunch. (July '25) |
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Olev Muska New Estonian Waltzes Estonian-Australian folk synthesist, composer and visual artist brings us some experimental folklore-glitch alchemy. We're catching way more digital glitches and electronic noises that we are Estonian traditional folk or waltzes. This is a chalk on the blackboard sort of no thank you for us. (July '25) |
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Patrick Wolf Crying The Neck This is the English singer-songwriter’s seventh studio album and first full-length release of new music since 2011. We weren’t familiar with his music before giving this a spin but it didn’t take too long to figure out this is sort of like an Ed Sheehan type artist. We’re not sure if he’s actually playing Wembley, but the music here is definitely Top 40, large arena rock show production. The cat also has some skills, incorporating quite a bit of instruments here, including the viola, Appalachian dulcimer, baritone ukulele, kantale and Atari computer in addition to the standard drums, guitar and bass guitar. He has a pleasant tone to his voice and an approachable popular style to his songwriting. It would not surprise us to see him at the top of the charts, if he’s not already charting … and if we gave two shits about looking at the Billboard charts. ”The Last of England” is the best song here. (13 June '25) |
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Haress Skylarks There’s a little theme this year of music from Shropshire, UK with Jerskin Fendrix’s “Once Upon A Time ... In Shropshire” also coming out soon (and reviewed here). This is the Shropshire yin to Frndrix’s yang. Long instrumentals with lots of room to drone on and explore themes of psychedelic folk are the call here. Think of it as the mellower, folksier version of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. As the band explains it: “The music here might be long but it never sprawls out of control. The telepathy present in live performance has been harnessed and used to carefully compose and arrange these four pieces … Inspired by found folk songs.” While it’s probably best listed to start to finish while the candles are glowing and the incense burning, our favorite here is “Skylarks.” It’s a song that, 7 minutes into it, features a choir of voices replicating the communal singing that has been the centrepiece of Haress live performances. We like the band call it “heavy. Not heavy as in metal, but heavy as in the Earth itself. (20 June '25) |
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Mary Halvorson About Ghosts About this jazz album from NYC-based Halvorson, The Quietus writes “About Ghosts is a masterclass in orchestration and pacing. Mary Halvorson perfectly balances all-out ensemble passages with quieter, more stripped-back moments.” To us this is a nice release of relatively standard fare jazz. Nice to have on in the background at a get together. Even better to go see live and enjoy with a cocktail. (13 June '25) |
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Cosey Fanni Tutti 2t2 East Yorkshire born Cosey Fanni Tutti is a musician, performer, artist and author who has been at craft for almost six decades. This album feels like a sountrack to Sin City or some other sci-fi or film noir piece. It starts with the action scenes – more energetic parts of the film. These are backed by quiet but persistent driving drumming and bass lines smothered in swirling atmospheric synth sounds that come and go amidst the artist’s deep throat singing. The latter half of the album drops the drums and bass and focused just on the atmosphere. This is great cinematic music. (13 June '25) |
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Pulp More Pitchfork writes “After 24 years, Jarvis Cocker and his baroque-pop band return to remind you, with rakish wit and horny wisdom, that your whole life is just one big coming-of-age saga.” While most Midwestern US kids were listening to Korn and Limp Bizkit in the mid- to late-90s, we were fully locked into Britpop. That’s when Pulp’s His ‘n’ Her’s 1994 release popped up on our radar and stayed hit heavy rotation with our CD player. We approached this release with the usual skepticism we apply to old rock bands resurrecting their careers, but we may end up liking this more than any of their releases back in the day. It seems some of the sharper edges have been taken off, especially towards the end of the release in songs such as “The Hymn of the North”, “Background Noise”, “Partial Eclipse,” and “A Sunset” which does some interesting borrowing from the 1970’s Coca Cola “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial. (June '25) |
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BC Camplight A Sober Conversation The seventh studio album from Manchester-based American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brian Christinzio, aka BC Camplight, is sort of a quasi-concept record as he confronting a shocking childhood abuse trauma while embracing sobriety. Quick note to self - don't offer to buy him a cocktail when we see him at his upcoming Hotel Cecil, Copenhagen show. We've loved BC's whimsical tragic-comedic musings over his intricate piano laden melodies since 2020's brilliant Failure To Launch, which we discovered right around the time we also discovered John Grant, whose similarities -- you know, US expats in UK, solo artists with histories of depression writing sensitive personal pop rock songs sung with big baritone voices and who don't shy away from writing ballads – are noticeable. This one has a lot of those same ingredients. We love "The Tent," "Bubbles in the Gasoline," "When I Make My First Million," and the closer "Leaving Camp Four Oaks" which we hope allows him to really leave that situation behind him. (June '25) |
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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Phantom Island Pitchfork notes: "The prolific Australian group lavishes its gently trippy compositions with orchestral arrangements. The results are often frustrating and overstuffed, but include occasional sparks of magic." We're coming to King Gizzard a little late – they hit our radar after having something like 20 studio albums already under the belt, this one makes 27 studio albums – but we like this and are not put off by the orchestrations. They continue to be, in our opinion, the best jam band out there - well, nod to Chris Robertson there too. (June '25) |
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Hayden Pedigo I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away Pitchfork writes: "On his most majestic and sincere record yet, the Texas guitarist plays with grace and power, evoking the gentle emptiness of the American West." Yeah, they are spot on. This is a very nice release. Another one that sort of reminds us of William Tyler's Modern Country with its Americana style guitar based instrumentals. We have "All the Way Across" on our Mellow Morning playlist. (June '25) |
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Bunny White The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God The debut album from Chicago-based artist Bunny White – actually, Baltimore-native saxophonist, vocalist, and pianist Marina White -- signals that we have our very own, Midwestern USA version of Lily Allen. Albeit catchy Lily Allen-like pop that also touches on of a hint of country, some bossa nova, and some old-timey ragtime melodies through a Lynchian, John Watersesque lens. We give this a +1 just for album title and matching cover art. This album is like a package of Peanut M&Ms to us; we can put it on and consume the whole thing start to finish with a smile on our face. Not sure we’ve satisfied our pangs for a savory meal while doing so, but we sure were happy. ”Coldesac” and “Con Artist” are on our heavy rotation. (June '25) |
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Annahstasia Tether From Pitchfork: “On a striking debut LP, the Los Angeles musician’s intricate acoustic arrangements and intimate lyrics attest to the strength of her vision; the nuances of her singing speak to the singularity of her voice.” There are some heavy hitters in the list of the albums producer’s - folks that have worked with Frank Ocean, Lana Del Rey, Cassandra Jenkins, and Liv.e in the past. The production in these soulful, poetic folk songs is every bit as masterful as Annahstasia’s distinctly resonant vocal performance. Beaming torch songs are really not our thing, but we can see this release picking up a number of year end accolades and awards. It’s very well done. "Villian" is our pick for best song on the release. (June '25) |
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Nick Leon A Tropical Entropy Pitchfork notes: “The exceptional debut album from the Miami producer captures the lively, menacing, and sensual sounds of his home—a dembow pop record made for those muggy, electric nights.” We also like this release, but have a little trouble slotting it into any regular listening patterns. It’s sort of ambient meets techno. Glitchcore and break beat over RnB. Relaxing music you can’t relax. Hyper beats delivered in a way that that’s difficult to dance to. That said though, the production and craftsmanship here is top notch. (June '25) |
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U.S. Girls Scratch It Pitchfork writes: “On her most immediate and accessible album yet, Meg Remy trades the ’80s electro-funk of Bless This Mess for ’60s country tinged with Nashville and Vegas, embracing all her contradictions with gusto.” To us this sort of seems like a torch song singer working with an Americana band doing a song written by an indie rock songwriter. (June '25) |
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The None At Hope / In Civic Pride Two songs here from London-based rockers The None that we'd probably categorize as sort of punk metal mashup--which we find interesting just because of that alone. The band calls the release "a stark collision of unfiltered noise and striking melody. Equal parts chaos and craft, THE NONE's sound channels the edges of post-hardcore with the weight of something more introspective." (June '25) |
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Jess Kerber From Way Down Here Bandcamp is saying "haunting folk music with echoes of Mazzy Star, Neko Case, and Florist." We can see a more Americana version of Mazzy Star here. It's a nice release, but nothing really stood out for us. (June '25) |
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Low End Activist Superwave EP UK artist Low End Activist twists grime and dubstep structures to gnarly, tweaked soundscapes indebted to dystopian sci-fi and social realism. Combing back through his archives of samples and stems, he piecing together tracks with a sharp, surgical intent and stop-start dynamics that often have moody, eerie atmospherics amidst the clicks and crunches. Not necessarily something we'll have on heavy rotation, but a pretty solid release. (June '25) |
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S.G. Goodman Planting by the Signs Pitchfork writes "On her third album, the singer-songwriter depicts her Kentucky home with tactile clarity, populating her roots-rock songs with wry observations of small-town life." While we think there's nothing here to really love, there's a lot to like in this mellow Americana release. "I'm in Love" and "Michael Told Me" are probably the two best songs here. (June '25) |
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Lorde Virgin We usually find one or two songs we like off a Lorde album, but on Lorde’s fourth album, a return to the digital, physical sound of Melodrama we’re not finding a lot that we’re liking. (June '25) |
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Gelli Haha Switcheroo This is Gelli Haha's first full-length album, featuring 10 tracks melding alternative dance, disco-pop, and surreal humor. This is not our cup of tea. (June '25)
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Meggie Lennon Desire Day We find there are usually a couple of really catchy tunes on Montreal, Québec artist Meggie Lennon releases. This one is no different, we're digging "My Best Self" and "Vicious Cycle," both of which have the lush arrangements and occasional synths backing an indie rock female singer with a soft voice that at no time will ever be accused of oversinging a song. But her best songs throw a minor key in the melody to twist it up and make it catchy. (June '25) |
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a.s.o. A.S.O. We enjoyed reading about Trip-hop's recent comeback in recent email from the Times' The Amplifier. They offered up some nostalgic 90's tracks as sort of a primer on the origin of the genre: Portishead, Sneaker Pimps, Cibo Matto, Thievery Corporation, and of course Massive Attack's "Teardrop." Of course, these were all regular listeners for us back then (and still are on "tunefilter-pary-chill" playlist Spotify playlist). This release was offered as part of the new wave of trip-hop. We wholeheartedly agree. This completely fits the vibe-and has us wondering, where was this music for the last two decades? (June '25) |
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Whitney's Playland Long Rehearsal Long Rehearsal is a three-track, single-sided 7" EP marking the San Francisco band's first recording as a four-piece ensemble The EP bridges jangle-pop and crunchy '90s alt-rock, featuring Inna Showalter's vocals over introspective, emotionally charged lyrics. We think 90's style twee pop – sort of Allo Darlin', Tullycraft or even other bay-area local band from the 90's The Orange Peels .. .only with bright girl vocals. (June '25) |
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Peter and Kerry You, Me and the Moon This release from UK songwriting duo Peter and Kerry is getting folks putting it in the same vein as Belle & Sebastian, Fleetwood Mac, and Yacht rock bands. We're thinking poppier versions of a little more recent bands such as Phoenix, Peter Bjorn and John, maybe even MGMT might be a better description. This is a good pop album that likely won't piss off too many people when you pop it on. (June '25) |
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Cain Lineage The producer and musician originally from the Highlands of Scotland who used to be a professional bagpiper continues his percussive-driven, house and experimental electronic with hints of "Celtic" music thrown in. We find the music the best when the Celtic roots show through more than the club music, but that's few and far between - For example, portions of songs such as "Ruthven.". The songs with other Celtic influences sound more inspired by Bombay Dub than what we'd imagine traditional Scottish music sounding like. A lot of the second half of the album sounds like the soundtrack for the 80's film Body Double. (June '25) |
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Zimmer90 Makes Me Wanna Dance We're off to Cannes for the Lions Festival of Creativity and these cats are playing at one of the beach parties. So we thought we'd familiarize ourselves with them ahead of time. This is falcetto singing sparklely pop rock that will probably be perfect for evenings on the beach. (June '25) |
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Lyra Pramuk Hymnal This is the sophomore album from Berlin-based, American multidisciplinary artist Lyra Pramuk – vocalist, producer, composer, DJ, performance artist, and astrologer. This is a tech savvy release where Pramuk does a lot of sampling, cutting and pasting of her own voice and throws it into a mix that typically includes an orchestral score with strings and some synths in the background. While the release is broken down into 14 songs, typically about 2 to 4 minutes each, this is not typical traditional song stuff. Think of it more as mini-three-minute snapshots of how the artist can use her voice in an experimental way. While the “songs” may have an orchestral ambient background to them, they are very much disjointed and non-relaxing pieces, which throws you off guard a bit. “Ending” is our favorite on this release. (13 June '25) |
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tbd tbd tbd ( '25) |
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Lyra Pramuk Hymnal This is the sophomore album from Berlin-based, American multidisciplinary artist Lyra Pramuk – vocalist, producer, composer, DJ, performance artist, and astrologer. This is a tech savvy release where Pramuk does a lot of sampling, cutting and pasting of her own voice and throws it into a mix that typically includes an orchestral score with strings and some synths in the background. While the release is broken down into 14 songs, typically about 2 to 4 minutes each, this is not typical traditional song stuff. Think of it more as mini-three-minute snapshots of how the artist can use her voice in an experimental way. While the “songs” may have an orchestral ambient background to them, they are very much disjointed and non-relaxing pieces, which throws you off guard a bit. (13 June '25) |
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tbd tbd tbd ( '25) |
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Laura Cannell LYRELYRELYRE LYRELYRELYRE is the 11th solo album from Laura Cannell, the UK based Composer, Performer and Improviser. Cannell calls upon an ancient Lyre that was buried in the epic landscape of the Suffolk Coastline to sound once more. The six-string lyre is an ancient instrument that is sort of harp crossed with guitar looking thing. Around fourteen hundred years ago, fragments of one of these made from maplewood, gold and garnet stones was hidden in a ship and buried on dry land. There it remained until 1939 when it was unearthed from the burial mound above the sea meadows. The Sutton Hoo Lyre is one of the most iconic ancient instruments ever found, is thought to be the property and resting place of an Anglo-Saxon King. Playing on a copy of this 7th century instrument, Cannell makes a modern reimagination of music lead by this instrument and accompanied by haunting bass recorders, a double reeded crumhorn, and modern digital recording techniques. This is a recording where the story about the music is more interesting than the actual recording for us. (30 May '25) |
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Lavinia Blackwell The Making The Quietus notes that “a hint of 1970s folk-rock becomes the dominant mode with The Making, Lavinia Blackwall’s second album under her own name since the end of her previous group Trembling Bells ... This is a Top Of The Pops, verse-chorus-verse version of 70s folk, and it’s an absolute delight.” We’d agree with the 70’s folk rock categorization. We might add, not unsurprising from this Glasgow-based artist, that there’s also a hint of Celtic roots in there. It’s sort of like if Jane Weaver and Julian Cope had a kid, this might be the resulting offspring (Blackwell even looks like Weaver.) We also agree that the release is a delight. We may be nominating Blackwell, along with Weyes Blood, as most likely to carry the torch of Carly Simon, Carole King, et. al., in these current times. A strong album. (30 May '25) |
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caroline caroline 2 The aptly named second studio album for the eight-piece band from England expands on their debut's use of repetition, slowness and space to include elements of folk-, indie- and post-rock. They are still innovating and exploring sounds, notably by switching between – or just overlaying – different versions or styles of the song in a single mix. For example: layering the original demo back on the final production (When I get home), immediately dropping out of a post-rock bliss version of a song to cut to the acoustic folk version (U R UR ONLY ACHING), and having half the band record the song in a folk style while the other half of the band does it in a chamber pop style (Coldplay cover). They also get the very busy Caroline Polachek to join them on “Tell me I never knew that." This hard work and novelty has paid off in accolades from the critics. For us it is definitely an interesting listen, but not necessarily better. (30 May '25) |
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Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko Hildergard The liner notes by Heinali, start with "When a Russian missile struck the ground not far from my studio in Kyiv …” Yeah, this is not going to be light bubblegum pop music fare here. Boomkat does a great job describing it: "Adapting two compositions by Benedictine mystic Hildegard von Bingen, modular synthesist Heinali and vocalist Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko bring ancient wisdom into the present, using Ukrainian folk techniques and synthesized medieval polyphony to reflect the past and transcend the trauma of war. Overwhelmingly affecting - and deeply singular - music." The two ~20 minute songs here come from music of the church. Spiritual, made for God and the saints and delivered in an amazing ancient Eastern European vocal performance all the while the low, mechanical machine of war drones on in the background. Powerful stuff. (30 May '25) |
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These New Puritans Crooked Wing This is the fifth studio album from the Essex English art rock band consisting of the brothers Jack and George Barnett. It’s a flat-out beautiful album. As Stereogum writes about the release, it’s “spiritually situated and pastoral … equal parts gorgeous and oddly sacral, with many of the compositions focusing on organ, piano, choir and bells.” The expressive vulnerability of Jack Barnett’s vocals are given plenty of space and time to breath in the mix, becoming a signature for many of the songs. When he’s joined by Caroline Polachek in Industrial Love Song, cinematic magic happens. This is quiet, adult music for reflection and solitude. These New Puritans are new to us. So on a recent Saturday night, we gave this release our first listen, start to finish, while we spent the evening in the kitchen drinking wine and making great food. The music was so good, we replayed the album start to finish two more times while we finished making dinner. (23 May '25) |
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Stereolab Instant Holograms On Metal Film As noted in The Quietus: “In recent years, Stereolab have become something of a household name, often quoted as an influence on bands like Vanishing Twin or The Orielles. But in a way that feels almost playfully in spite of this cosy familiarity, Instant Holograms On Metal Film explores textures and melodies inspired by disco, techno and lo-fi electronic music from the 1970s and 80s. Don’t get me wrong, [this album] preserves much of the classic Stereolab sound, retaining that motorik, locked-in feel. Their palette is so much more rhythmically dense, adventurous and even cinematic, however.” Well said. If you’re looking for that classic Stereolab song here, give “Le Coeur Et La Force” a spin. (23 May '25) |
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Billy Woods GOLLIWOG The NYC hip-hop artist says he tackles topics other artists wouldn’t dream of. From our listens, he’s covering folks dying, family trama and the like, often backing the tunes with spooky sounds and creepy samples such as a woman crying and news accounts of CIA torture. The beat and background are kept a bit to a minimum to make sure the rhymes are hitting. The artist likens it to a black carnival pitched in a muddy field overnight, empty rides whirring and clattering in the dark. We see that. He has also assembled a good chunk of collaborators on the production credits, including The Alchemist, Kenny Segal, El-P, Preservation, Sadhugold, Shabaka Hutchings, DJ Haram, and Saint Abdullah. (9 May '25) |
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The Bird's Companion A Place Outside of Time From Bandcamp: "Another winner on whitelabrecs, Casey van Wensem builds hushed symphonies from gentle piano and barely-there acoustic guitar." This is nice new classical, mellow piano music. Something you might imagine them playing at an old folk home - and we say that in a respectful manner. Spin this on a rainy Sunday afternoon when you can lounge around and read a book or relax. (17 May '25) |
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Jennifer Reid The Ballad Of The Gatekeeper Reid, a Northern England broadside ballad singer known for her renditions of 19th-century broadside ballads and industrial folk songs. This album consists of 11 songs of the artist singing about classic folk songs for the people topics in her Lancashire accent, mostly unaccompanied by any other instruments. It’s just Reid and her singing just as if it were done in some candlelit pub in Northern England in 1885 or so. Except the subject matter here expands beyond scorning dingy 19th century industrial work environments to cover modern day topics. Give this a listen while reading the lyrics for best effect. “When the rivers rise, so must we” is our best in show here. (21 May '25) |
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Billy Woods GOLLIWOG The NYC hip-hop artist says he tackles topics other artists wouldn’t dream of. From our listens, he’s covering folks dying, family trama and the like, often backing the tunes with spooky sounds and creepy samples such as a woman crying and news accounts of CIA torture. The beat and background are kept a bit to a minimum to make sure the rhymes are hitting. The artist likens it to a black carnival pitched in a muddy field overnight, empty rides whirring and clattering in the dark. We see that. He has also assembled a good chunk of collaborators on the production credits, including The Alchemist, Kenny Segal, El-P, Preservation, Sadhugold, Shabaka Hutchings, DJ Haram, and Saint Abdullah. (9 May '25) |
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Elijah Jamal Asani as long as i long to memorise your sky This release is, as the Quietus writes: “a collection of nature recordings, with birdsong, rainfall, the gentle buzzing of crickets, and swished streams elegantly dovetailing with more human interferences: zither, wind chimes, wooden blocks, small bursts of padded synth, and softly fingered piano. These sounds were captured by Asani during one of the sixty nights that he recently spent in the Grand Canyon.” We find it to be nice soothing ambient music. (2 May '25) |
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Milkweed Remscéla The folk music duo G and R put together this album rooted in the prelude tales of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, an epic of Irish mythology, filtered through the language of Thomas Kinsella's 1969 translation. The music here is very rustic folk stories told by chants and singing, bells and tribal drums, pluked kalimba and banjo. It then gets a digital production that seemingly ads more lofi to the already lofi instruments. A crackling, grainy, almost warbling playback makes it sound like an early 1900s find of lost recordings. A trove of traditional celtic folk that migrated into Appalachia before being recorded in field. An interesting listen. (2 May '25) |
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Watchhouse Rituals Another one that hit our radar due to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The Chapel Hill, North Carolina duo of Andrew Marlin & Emily Frantz.started their careers over a decade ago playing coffee shops and local restaurants around North Carolina until they built up an audience large enough to sell-out shows at legendary venues like Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium. They’ve earned a reputation for creating music that “redefines roots music for a younger generation” (Washington Post). We like their very easy listening Americana tunes with lots of picking and guy-girl harmonies. Our favorites are Shape, Rituals, False Harbors, and In The Sun. We’ll be laying out the blankets at Hellman Hallow, sipping some beer and whiskey and catching these guys play. (May '25) |
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Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke Tall Tales Pritchard and Thom Yorke from Radiohead/The Smile team up on a record that is surreal and strange. Since 1997’s Ok Computer, we’re pretty much down for most any release Thom Yorke is a part of. Yorke’s vocal approach is so distinct, it’s not hard to lump The Smile as just a Radiohead extension. This one is a little different though. While some songs do give off a Radiohead vibe when Yorke is singing – e.g., “The White Cliffs,” or “This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice” – there are plenty of other moments when Pritchard is singing or there’s no vocals and the music drifts off to far-away from Radiohead land. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but may take some repeated listens to warm up to. (May '25) |
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I'm With Her Wild and Clear and Blue This came on our radar as the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2025 lineup was announced. Listening to this release, we can absolutely imagine these guys -- singer-songwriters Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins – up on the Rooster Stage (or wherever they’re placed.). The group’s debut album garnered much acclaim as their single, “Call My Name,” took home the 2020 Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song. This album brings luminous harmonies in mostly mellow traditional folk song packages. Our favorite on this release though is the knee-slapping, fiddle and mandolin dueling “Find My Way to You.” We look forward to hearing that one live at HSBG 2025. (May '25) |
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Watchhouse Rituals Another one that hit our radar due to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The Chapel Hill, North Carolina duo of Andrew Marlin & Emily Frantz.started their careers over a decade ago playing coffee shops and local restaurants around North Carolina until they built up an audience large enough to sell-out shows at legendary venues like Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium. They’ve earned a reputation for creating music that “redefines roots music for a younger generation” (Washington Post). We like their very easy listening Americana tunes with lots of picking and guy-girl harmonies. Our favorites are Shape, Rituals, False Harbors, and In The Sun. We’ll be laying out the blankets at Hellman Hallow, sipping some beer and whiskey and catching these guys play. (May '25) |
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Kira Hummen Her Legacy We were drinking some beer in Düsseldorf not too long ago, wandering around, taking in some of the local culture. Fast forward a couple of months and this EP from Düsseldorf-based artist Kira Hummen comes across our in box. It blends nuanced folk, indie-rock, experimental and art-pop elements, featuring sensitive arrangements that emphasize pauses, layered harmonies, cello, and synth textures. A lot of ingredients we typically like, yet we're not vibing with the songwriting and songs here. (May '25) |
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Goddess Goddess Recorded under the moniker Goddess and released via Bella union, this is the first studio album from London based artist and Savages' drummer Fay Milton. It's a strong debut release, consisting of ten tracks blending dream pop, post-punk, indie rock, and electronica. It has songs like Shadows that are a little more moody rock a la Lana del Rey but then jumps to Fuckboy, a raunchy anthem that sounds like it was written by Megan thee Stallion and executed by M.I.A. (May '25) |
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Vioflesh Nostalgia Bandcamp writes: "Killer industrial-edged songs from this Chilean group with snaking melody lines that are both hooky and harrowing. Fantastic!" We like this, 80s industrial vibe as well. Imagine Sisters of Mercy with a female singer. (May '25) |
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Moin Belly Up Avant-garde rock from a UK trio comprising Joe Andrews, Valentina Magaletti, and Tom Halstead of Raine, this EP revisits the band's minimalist, experimental sound, featuring jazz-influenced rhythms, hypnotic percussion, looped vocal samples, and precisely layered textures. We're not to crazy about it. (May '25) |
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Anja Churchill Children of the North Bandcamp: “The artist and producer channels grief and generational trauma into traditional Swedish folk contoured by strings, keys, and steel guitars.” This is a nice, concise release of 5 songs for 56 SEK. KofD from the Exciting Sounds of Savo Audio Consortium was walking around the tunefilter offices when this came on. She gives it a thumbs up. We have Wake Up Soldier on heavy rotation. (May '25) |
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The Vernon Spring Under a Familiar Sun This is the third long play from The Vernon Spring, the solo project of British composer and producer Sam Beste. It's mostly piano-led instrumentals that fuse some electronics in the background, coupled with some soft vocals at times, to create elegant, empathetic music. It's a decent rainy Sunday afternoon listen. Mustafa is perhaps the best song here. (May '25) |
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Nicole Lawrence Time In Love "A scorcher! Fans of early Heartless Bastards, take note: The latest from Nicole Lawrence is a bluesy, smoldering delight" writes Bandcamp: By the album cover, we thought we were going to get some Janis Joplin-style rock and roll. This is slow moving blues rock, anchored by big fuzzy guitar solos and or steel pedal guitar and Lawrences' vocals, which surprisingly ring clear and bright at the front of the mix rather than matching the reverb drenched grit and gravel of the lead guitar. We think the slightly peppier, Americana songs like When I Get Home or the slower No Station work best with her vocal style. (May '25) |
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Amy Millan I Went To Find You "Dynamically boundless, sentimentally rich folk by a celebrated Canadian singer and guitarist, also of Stars and Broken Social Scene" says Bandcamp. We pop this, the third of Millan's solo albums, but first since 2009, on and the first song "Untethered" immediately hits us as a modern, indie-folk version of "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac. That's probably the highlight of the album for us though. The rest of it is a fine recording. But it's no Honey From The Tombs, her brilliant 2006 debut solo release. Ironically, lost river diamonds, an ambient piece of falling rain scapes may be the best song here. (May '25) |
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Gazella Vias The second album from the five-piece ensemble from Valencia, Spain blends electronic, downtempo digital work with shoegaze, psychedelia, and '90s post-rock influenced analog instrumentation. The album was self-produced by the band, who did a knock up job of it, but they seem to have made the decision to treat the vocals more as another instrument and pushing it down in the mix rather than featuring Raquel Palomino's Jenny Hval-like vocals. Overall, this is a very nice album and probably best listened to in its entirety rather than for any single song. But if you were to single out one song here for best in show, it's the opener Volver. (May '25) |
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Kilynn Lunsford Promiscuous Genes This is kind of weird stuff. Pitched as a mix of post-punk, dub, art punk, and pop - we'd throw a heavy dose of experimental to that description. Multi-tracked spoken word over rhythmic drumming. "Nice Quiet Horror Show" both in listening to the song as well as the title probably describes the music pretty well. But if you listen to that and still don't get it, take a gander at that album cover again in more detail. might be the as the If there was going to be a quirky M.I.A. "Paper Planes" style breakout, that might be "Disney Girls." If there was a, "Hey, That's Totally Normal Music" award issued for songs on this album, that would be "Saddest of Dreams." This might be one of our favorite albums that we don't have any songs on the heavy rotation. It's an adventure. (May '25) |
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Taj Mahal & Keb Mo Room on the Porch Recorded across multiple studios including Stu Stu in Franklin and Addiction Sound in Nashville, this is the duo's second collaborative album following their 2017 Grammy-winning debut TajMo, the release showcasing a warm blend of blues, folk, jazz, and country. It's a fine release listening to on the porch on warm summer days. (May '25) |
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Sinemis Farewell Bandcamp writes: "Channeling political dissent into powerful experimental techno, the Turkish producer's debut is dancable protest music for turbulent times." We think it's more dark ambient than dance floor, but it's good stuff. (May '25) |
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GIGI FM Virgo Space Acid From Bandcamp: "The Berlin producer commemorates the Year of the Snake with an irresistible grab bag of techno, dub, and ambient." We think this is pretty good stuff and would have a great time digging this in a Berlin club in the early hours of the morning. (May '25) |
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Home Is Where Hunting Season From Bandcamp: "Florida emo band expand into country and Southern rock on their highly catchy third LP, produced by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Joyce Manor)." Southern rock with some emo vocals is probably a pretty way to describe this album. Mechanical Bull is our pick for best song on the release. (May '25) |
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Sophia Kennedy Squeeze Me This is the third album from the Baltimore-born, Hamburg/Berlin-based indie-pop artist and it's beautifully quirky. The production uses Kenney's dual vocal styles—a commanding low register for almost spoken word sung moments that can spin up into a higher pitch just-on-the-verge-of-torch-song style perfectly, creating a lot of negative space to draw you in. The times between those quiet girl and her piano or Juna Molina-esqe plucky percussion moments are filled, but not overfilled, with all sorts of digital sounds. The songwriting here as a sort of Cate Le Bon style precision and crispness spitting out eccentric songs that run the gamut from danceable pop-single (Rodeo) to cinematic soundtrack (Upstairs Cabaret). While there's no individual song that blow my mind, this album as a whole is a great listen. (May '25) |
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ganavya Nilam Bandcamp says "The new record from the NYC-born, Tamil Nadu-raised artist is deeply spiritual, rich and moving." Boy, you can say that again. Two songs into the album and we're captivated, it's outstanding. We need to dig deeper. Co-produced by Nils Frahm (if you forgot him, go back and listen to "Ode" off 2015's Solo to remind yourself why you live life) at LEITER Studio in Berlin's Funkhaus complex. Song for Sad Times and Not a Burden are the highlights on a release that's perfect for late night listening in its entirety. (May '25) |
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Wave District Take Our Keys Away Bandcamp writes: "Pop punk from L.A. with a tendency to stray into looser terrain, blending elements of ramshackle indie rock." We can hear some Green Day-like vibes here without songwriting or hooks that are as catchy. (May '25) |
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Liftin Sprits & DJ Persuasion Transmission 96 From bandcamp: "An electrifying collab LP between jungle pioneer Liftin Spirits and DJ Persuasion, who was influenced by him." This is a nice release. Some good techno and drums and bass here. (May '25) |
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Ty Segall Possession Bandcamp: On his latest, Ty Segall delivers a batch of instantly timeless rock songs, immaculate in composition & execution. We think this is an all-around solid rock and roll album. Shoplifter, Possession, and Skirts of Heaven are all nice, rocking songs. (May '25) |
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Maia Friedman Goodbye Long Winter Shadow Bandcamp: "The New York artist, also of Dirty Projectors and Coco, showcases bespoke chamber pop brimming with textural warmth and spiritual energy." Yeah, we like this. It's in our wheelhouse. Mellow female lead, strong songwriting, good pedigree. We have "Vessel" on heavy rotation. (May '25) |
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The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus Rumours of Angels In case you were sleeping during their first 40 years--or perhaps not born yet--this is a reissue of a compilation album that spans a good amount of ground – from 1990 to 2015ish. Besides having a fantastically catchy name, the group is known for their fusion of folk, sacred music, industrial, and ambient sounds. Their work incorporates Christian imagery and draws inspiration from Eastern Orthodox traditions, creating a "unique and contemplative listening experience." Imagine a lot of This Mortal Coil with some additional lugubrious heaviness a la Anna von Hausswolff and a little Akron/Family covering rhythm on tribal drums. "She Moved Through The Fair" is our pick for best song here, but this is probably best listened to start to end for the mood rather than any one song. (May '25) |
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Sophia Kennedy Squeeze Me This is the third album from the Baltimore-born, Hamburg/Berlin-based indie-pop artist and it's beautifully quirky. The production uses Kenney's dual vocal styles—a commanding low register for almost spoken word sung moments that can spin up into a higher pitch just-on-the-verge-of-torch-song style perfectly, creating a lot of negative space to draw you in. The times between those quiet girl and her piano or Juna Molina-esqe plucky percussion moments are filled, but not overfilled, with all sorts of digital sounds. The songwriting here as a sort of Cate Le Bon style precision and crispness spitting out eccentric songs that run the gamut from danceable pop-single (Rodeo) to cinematic soundtrack (Upstairs Cabaret). While there's no individual song that blow my mind, this album as a whole is a great listen. (May '25) |
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Ezra Furman Goodbye Small Head We flagged this one because Bella Union is a fantastic label and we're going to listen to everything they put out. While we're relatively new to Chicago artist Ezra Furman, she is not new on the scene with this being her tenth studio album! She describes it "an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples." Like Youth Lagoon, this is also a release where the vocal can sound like they're coming from either a male or a female at different times. (May '25) |
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Now Now Does The Trick From bandcamp: "Stylishly shabby power pop from San Francisco's ever-fertile neu Paisley Underground scene." This stuff has a lo-fi feel to some of the twee pop coming out in the late 90s and early 00s mixed with a little early 60s la la la type songs. This would be a fun band to see at the Kilowatt or Thee Parkside. (May '25) |
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Coffin Prick Loose Enchantment Recorded at his home studio, Pancho's Dome, Coffin Prick's -- the moniker of Los Angeles-based musician Ryan Weinstein—latest album features eleven tracks that blend experimental rock, art-pop, and electronic elements. We like this album, mostly - but we realize that may be due more to how much it reminds us of Brian Eno's Another Green World than the song writing here. When Prick sings here, it's in a very Enoesque deadpan vocal style, double tracked and dripping with reverb. The instrumentals are pretty good here as well, incorporating field recordings, with many layers of synths and sounds to create journeys that run the gamut from slightly annoying to meditative. Weinstein collaborated with artists such as Steven Brown (Tuxedomoon), Alejandro Salazar-Dyer (Rincs), Kathy Lea (Soft Location), John Herndon (Tortoise), and Aaron Fernandez Olson (LA Takedown) and we suspect there might have been Talking Heads and other 80s synth band influences in that group. While we can't say we're going to be spinning a song or two on our heavy rotation, it's a very interesting album that we have no problem listening to. (May '25) |
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Only Now Timeslave III From Bandcamp: "Berkeley's Only Now drops 11 explosive tracks—absolutely volcanic dance music that grabs you by the shoulders & shakes you." We're trying to imagine the dancing that will happen to the bleeps, blips, screeches and scratches here. This is a bunch of really annoying jittery sounds that had our inner voice immediately thow up a "nope" not even a minute into the first song. When tunefilter HQ was on Pacific at Polk, weekend nights around 2AM we would hear the sound of clanking bottles through our open window as the bars and restaurants that shared a light well at the rear of the building emptied their trash cans full of recyclables into a giant hard plastic bin. Imagine that sound plus add one of those old fashioned buzzer alarm clocks going off and that's close to the experience of listening to this album. By the nineth indescript song of sharp, annoying experimental glitchcore noises, that inner voice was begging it to stop. Then came "Eyes White, Vision Inside," the tenth song on the album. The beeps and blips had subsided, and while there was still an annoying current of static running over the track, just hiding beneath that shroud was an interesting haunting old-timey Indian melody. We began to enjoy it. The second half of the album continued to evolve with a heavy glove of dark ambient trying to squeeze and smother the life out of the glitches and give us some redeption. (May '25) |
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Elsie Lange The Normal Discontents From bandcamp: "The Melbourne artist combines slackened guitar tones and dreamy vocals with stirring, R&B-inflected instrumentals." While nothing is really popping out with us here, this is a decent little Sunday afternoon listen. "Mend" is the best tune on this album. (May '25) |
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Car Seat Headrest Scout From bandcamp: "The first new record from Car Seat Headrest in five years, self-produced by Will Toledo, roars back with an expansive, emotional sound." To us it sort of sounds like Car Seat Headrest is growing up into big arena rock band. We think "Lady Gay Approximately" – probably the most unlikely song on this album to be played at an arena rock show – is the best in show here. (May '25) |
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Joy Moughanni A Separation From Habit This is the debut album from Lebanese musician, producer, and sound engineer Joy Moughann. It’s a very interesting experimental ambient release that blends archival tape recordings, electronic manipulation, and sonic collage. At the core of the album are recordings made between 1975 and 1985 by the late Georges Tarazi, which Moughanni repurposes to interrogate Lebanon’s ongoing crises. What’s happened to the country in the past, how it echoes what happening to it in 2024, and how people cope are themes of the release. Tapes of an old war, repurposed and mixed with recordings of the current war make a recording that, as Moughanni puts it, is “cathartic … where distorted textures and fragile melodies mirror the turbulence of loss—unstructured, uneasy, and inescapable. It is a meditation on breaking free from ingrained responses to crisis, urging listeners to sit with difficult emotions, if only for a moment.” (25 Apr '25) |
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Rainy Miller Joseph, What Have You Done Miller is a Preston UK-based artist at the forefront of UK electronic music, loosely spinning around the axis of storied Salford club The White Hotel. The release sort of reminds us of a digital cousin to The Antler’s Hospice in its ability to shift between lows and highs, include whispered spoken words and ringing falsettos, and in its bleak subject matter and outlook. Like that album, this release is probably also best listened to start to finish so the entire painting can be taken in together. In this case, that includes the slower cinematic noir soundscapes as well as the parts that include the ubiquitous big booming club-friendly bass drum/guitar and autotuned singing that picks up the tempo, energy and drama of the piece. The painting will be a little cold and lonely on a dark rainy evening… sort of like the album cover artwork and the artists first name we suppose. (2 May '25) |
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Jenny Hval Iris Silver Mist Hard to believe this is already the ninth studio album for Hval, the Norwegian artsy, experimental recording artist. We’ve been big fans since day one when her music inspired us to create our moody, Early 2010s Northern European Winter Girls playlist. We thought this, and her other most recent releases, may become a little more accessible now that Hval is on the 4AD label. In some cases, they are. For example, once you get past the weird, one minute long intro to ”I don’t know what free is,” the song opens up to a very approachable pop rock piece. However, there are still the traditional Hval quirky bits all over this thing. Pieces where she is just speaking / narrating / singing / humming over some background noise. Or bits sounding like they are grunts from a thick jowled pug (we have first hand experience in recording some of that.) (2 May '25) |
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Maria Somerville Luster The Galway, Ireland artist makes a sleepy ambient, drone post folk, and sort of mellow indie rock tunes. There’s usually the artist singing in her hushed, breathy reverb drenched vocals over some atmospheric synth sounds, with some drums, bass guitar and maybe a guitar, organ, some uilleann pipes and other stuff as well. Always atmospheric synth sounds in the background though. It’s a very nice listen. (24 Apr '25) |
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Bb Trickz 80s Bb Trickz is a Barcelona-based rapper who first caught attention on TikTok in 2022 when her videos started to gain traction, and when her 2023 debut single "Missionsuicida" went viral on the app. Charli xcx included some of Bb’s Spanish lines on the remix of “Club Classics,” so she is mingling in good company. This release has 8 short tracks. The entire release is just 11 minutes long. It’s TikTok-like snackable songs that are easy to consume and in the Bad Bunny / current contemporary sound. (8 Apr '25) |
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Real Lies We Will Annihilate Our Enemies The third album from London electronic duo, the euphoric and uplifting synth-lead rhythms combined with British-accented spoken word delivery have folks comparing these guys to the Pet Shop Boys. We think it’s geared more for the dance floor than top of the pops though. Think Jarvis Crocker without the yelps singing against high bpm synth-wave. “WWAOE” is our pick for best song here. (16 Apr '25) |
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William Tyler
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Jolie Laide
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Broncho
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Tamara Qaddoumi
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Lea Maria Fries
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Linying
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Sleigh Bells
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DJ Koze
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Lucy Liyou Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound WIthout Your Name The San Francisco artist originally made these songs when in college 6-7 years ago. At that time, they were about finding love and acceptance from their parents as a closeted transgender young adult. As they were revisited for this release, those feeling found a new space. No longer about the love and support from the parents, but from a loving partner who is moving away. This album explores those themes with half-whispered, half-sung vocals amongst a spare musical backdrop of ambient sounds and the occasional piano. These are somnolent torch songs delivered by and for folks on a lot of oxy. (21 Mar '25) |
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Kinski Stumbledown Terrace The Quietus are lumping this Seattle band in the Post Rock genre, albeit in the “light-hearted” section of post-rock. You throw a couple of 6 to 9 minute long songs on your album of mostly rock instrumentals and you’re going to flirt with that genre being thrown at you. And while the 2 minute long “Experimental Hugs” sounds like a Seattle grunge band channeling Green Day, the almost 9 minute instrumental “Slovenian Fighting Jacket” with its five minute minimal starting riffs that lead to chugging Godspeed You! Black Emperor type riffs is textbook post-rock. And while we weren’t so sure a ”light-hearted” section of post-rock did indeed exist, the acoustic-based “Her Absence Feels Like a Presence” is probably the best evidence for that. (7 Mar '25) |
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Eiko Ishibashi Antigone Ishibashi is a composer who did the scores for the Ryusuke Hamaguchi films Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist. This is her first traditional album with songs with lyrics and singing since 2018. Here she works with her partner and frequent collaborator Jim O'Rourke and a handful of others to create a significant, ambitious album. As you might expect, the craftsmanship here on both the musical ability and production is outstanding. The songwriting is also unique and interesting, with just about no verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus stuff going on. The songs sort of float on a mellow jazz meets orchestral backbone with Ishibashi’s Japanese accented vocals gently going along for the ride. It’s a very strong release. We would really love this release if it weren’t for Ishibashi’s vocals, which seem to be a little flat to us, and because it veers a little too close to soft jazz at times. (28 Mar '25) |
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YHWY Nailgun 45 Pounds YHWH Nailgun is a four-person experimental rock project based in NYC. This recording, their debut, is a cacophony of sounds The Quietus says of the release: ”Like a straw-weight boxer, though light on its feet, it packs maximum intensity into its flurry of jabs and hooks, ferocious jackhammer drums providing frantic backing for deranged howls and blowtorch guitars. It is a dark and punishing experience, and yet every now and then comes a burst of light that feels all the brighter for the juxtaposition, a soaring ascent upwards on the back of a transcendent blast of synths. (21 Mar '25) |
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Los Pirañas Una Oportunidad Más de Triunfar en la Vida These guys are a Colombian Avant-Latin experimental supergroup that, we think, are creating psychedelic, space age, mariachi surf music. Imagine taking a good ole Mexican mariachi band, giving one of them a strat with mini fender reverb attached to his back, the reverb and echo turned up to 10 and the guitarist only able to pluck staccato notes. Another member has broken snare drum around his neck with a cowbell and crappy crash cymbal attached to it. He keeps a frantic beat. There’s a dude with a sousaphone playing the bass line mimicking the guitarrón (bass) player. Don’t let any of the sing, but put them in a garage a couple of blocks from the beach in Ensanada, give them a ton of blow and let them go at it. “Con mi burrito sabanero voy directo al matadero” is our favorite here. (7 Mar '25) |
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Hesse Kassel La Brea This is the debut album from the sextet from Santiago, Chile. The Quietus writes that the band: “take their cues from the breadth of the post rock and post hardcore arcana while fashioning their own niche explosive execution. Throughout, you can hear echoes of the heavenbound crescendos of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, skeletal sketches of Spiderland, and the scorched earth firestorms of Swans.” We think that’s the right ballpark. The songs here are long – around 6 to 12 minutes – providing plenty of time for the more mellow passages to slowly build up energy, tempo and volume before releasing. They also include some instruments such as piano and sax that you might not expect to hear on an album from a band being compared to GYBE or Comets on Fire. It’s a well-crafted album and should be an enjoyable listen for folks interested in this type of music. “Yo La Tengo,” the 12 minute closer, is our best in show here. (1 Mar '25) |
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DJ Python i was put on this earth This five-track EP from Queens, NY artist DJ Python, the alias of DJ and producer Brian Piñeyro, takes a slightly different direction than his typical blend of reggaeton rhythms with ambient and deep house elements, featuring softer more ambient sounds with a hint of trip-hop that would be more appropriate for the lounge than the dancefloor. “Besos Robados” with Isabella Lovestory on the vocals sounds very turn of the century Massive Attack. Little wonder it’s our favorite on the release. (Mar '25) |
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Masha Qrella
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The Lewis Express
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8ULENTINA
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Crush of Souls
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Sharp Pins
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upsammy
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Saba and No ID
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YHWH Nailgun
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Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
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Hekla
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Sven Laux
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Puce Moment
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Whatever the Weather
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Franc Moody
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Arny Margret
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Hamilton Leithauser
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Fust
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Ingrown
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Zoe Mc Pherson
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Pale Blue Eyes New Place bandcamp: "The UK outfit unfurl stunning, slow-rolling psychedelia soundscapes with flickers of '90s Britpop and shoegaze." We're definitely hearing the 90s alternative in this one. Songs like "The Dreamer" seems like they could have come directly from Ocean Blue or Trashcan Sinatras. (Mar '25) |
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Lucy Dacus Forever is a Feeling From Pitchfork: "On her new solo album, the songwriter and Boygenius alum makes an impassioned, all-in gamble on love. So why does the music feel hamstrung by caution and daintiness?." We're also not particularly blown away by this. (Mar '25) |
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Split Moon More Clouds More Stars From bandcamp: "Hypnotic, syrupy space rock with anthemic choruses and even bigger riffs." We're okay with this stoner rock release. (Mar '25) |
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SOFY Another Day In Paradise From bandcamp: "The London artist bursts out the gate with an anthemic indie-pop record buoyed by bright tones, summery hooks, and crisp percussion." When you've gotten your fix of Sabrina Carpenter and Chapel Roan but are still looking for more, SOFY is for you. (Mar '25) |
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Summer Pearl
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Vil
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Unknown Mortal Orchestra
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Velvet Bloom
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Liv Solveig
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aya
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Perfume Genius
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Japanese Breakfast
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Water Margin
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Jeremy Bradley Earl
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Balthvs
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Good Block
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Jim Ghedi Wasteland Ghedi's fourth solo album feels like it jumps a bit from big arena rock band with dramatic string arrangements to late night session at some Irish pub on in the middle of nowhere. "Newtondale/Blue John" and "The Seasons" anchor the pub sessions, going from the dancing and fun-filled jig to a bar closing singalong. We like these songs here. Even the big electrified rock band pieces have a feel of the ole country to them given Ghedi’s thick accentd (21 Feb '25) |
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Marie Davidson City of Clowns The sixth studio album from this Canadian electronic musician follows similar patterns to her previous ones. High energy, electronics forward songs that support Davidson’s unique sung spoken word style delivery rule the roost here. This is music for the clubs that, at times tries to cross over to more pop context. At least the songs are pretty much all at 4 to 5 minutes long. We’ve liked some of Davidson’s past work, especially when it crossed over to more of a pop-rock vibe. This one is probably not something we’re going to listen to too much though. (23 Feb '25) |
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Fennesz
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Jules Reidy Ghost/Spirit Reidy is a Berlin-based artist making guitar music. Most of the songs here have some sort of background soundscapes: sampled textures from cellos, trombones, the Berlin S-bahn, or what-have-yous; ethereal vocals; maybe some percussion. But the star of the show is the music from the guitar in all its different forms: fingerpicked, strummed, alternate tunings, harmonics, plucked strings above or below the neck … fractal guitar figures. That said, the guitar is, a bit strangely, not front and center in this guitar music. It’s mixed in well with the rest of the soundscape, which sort of tricks you into thinking this will be a mellow, reflective meditative album. It’s not. It’s quiet but fragmented, shattered shards of something you didn’t hear crash and break but of which you can feel the uncomfortable jagged edges. (21 Feb '25) |
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Yo La Tengo
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John Glacier Like A Ribbon Wome to the debut album from John Glacier, a London-based rapper, poet and producer. Her beats are simple repetitive bass lines and mid-tempo bpm drumming fronted by some glitches and mood setting samples and synths while the artist delivers flat and unaffected, fast but not furious rhymes. Glacier seems like she’s had an oxy cocktail before stepping up to the mic here on this one. Which makes it a potential nice listen in that late night hour where you’re coming off the dance floor, hitting the chill room but not yet ready to go home yet. (14 Feb '25) |
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Meagre Martin
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Ichiko Aoba
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Moundabout Goat Skull Table This Irish rooted experimental mantic music from the duo of Gnod's Paddy Shine and Phil Langero (of Los Langeros, Damp Howl and Bisect) was formulated after they did a roadtrip through the many stone circles, pillars and passage tombs in the Irish Midlands. It starts with, perhaps what can only be described as a spoken word and audioscape piece that likely served as an accompaniment to some sort of sacrificial ceremony conducted by candle and moonlight. From there the album picks up to more ”song-like” structured recordings featuring acoustic guitar and primitive rhythms until it crescendos at the last two songs, two 10 minute trance drone pieces. This is music for late night Pagen rituals. We enjoyed the whole album, and love Blood On My Blanket. But we know there’s going to be a collective WTF are we listening to when this pops up on playlist in mixed company. (14 Feb '25) |
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Richard Dawson End of the Middle The Newcastle upon Tyne based progressive folk musician is known for his ambitious and eccentric songwriting. Most of this is guitar playing and singing with relatively simple bass and drums accompaniment recorded in a very flat, direct way sans reverb and effects. Like you’re in the living room with him, his guitar and small amp, a bass, a small, couple piece drum set and his warbly somewhat awkward voice as it frequently goes into falsetto. Very little production. However, with Dawson, the music isn’t necessarily what you come for. The stories in the songs are where “it’s at” apparently. According to the Quietus, he is a master at creating and becoming characters and becoming the narrator of complex, yet instantly familiar stories, which he unwinds layer by layer and where everyday events are both what they seem and something else, depending on the listener. “More than real” is a magnificent song. (14 Feb '25) |
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Paraframe
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Optometry
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Tophouse Practice This Missoula, MT band, currently relocated to Nashville, is playing Hardly Strictly Bluegrass so we thought we’d give them a spin. Good stuff here. Fronted by wistful vocals, rich harmonies, and a tapestry of folk-rock instrumentation—violin, banjo, piano, electric guitars, so what genre does the band classify themselves? Folk? Bluegrass? Rock? Irish? Pop? We’re hearing all of the above. We can imagine “In Don’t Wanna Move On” being played in a large arena … if folk was played in large area. “Run” has some mean Southern Rock meets Appalachia sound and is our favorite from this release. Definitely worth catching at HSBG. (Feb '25) |
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Jason Bieler And The Baron Von Bielski Orchesta The Escapologist Forget the break beats, bleeps, blips, ambient soundscapes, samples and all the other musical inventions since the 1980s onwards, this is Rock. Driving drums, crashing cymbals, distorted guitars, blazing solos, straightforward 4/4 beats. What sort of rock? It borrows bits from many rock genres: we hear some T-Rex influences, late 70s hard rock, 80s hair bands, Metallica, even an arena rock ballad and sections of some prog rock thrown in there. Folks expecting music from this century may ask you to turn it off at the dinner party. (Feb '25) |
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Squid
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Charlie Needs Braces
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Panda Bear
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Youth Lagoon
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Sharon van Etten
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Horsegirl
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Oklou choke enough Lindsey@nytimes liked Oklou’s new single (Viscus) with FKA twigs--which we agree was nice--so we decided to spin her lastest full length. “Wow, this is nice” was our first impression with this debut release from Oklou -- the moniker for French musician Marylou Mayniel, originally from Poitiers and based in London. It’s a mature release for a first long play, that gives songs space to breath, blending downtempo, ambient synth textures, rhythmic pulses, lots of French horn, haunting vocal effects and hints of Billboard-friendly pop vocals. Being a little selfish, we hope she doesn’t get involved with Big American Music. We can just see them over producing this for big arenas. We’re spinning “thank you for recording” and “family and friends” on heavy rotation. (Feb '25) |
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Manic Street Preachers Critical Thinking This band has been around so long that we remember sitting next to a cute alt / punk type girl when we were in class at Michigan State and she had a patch of the band on her jacket. We made a mental note then to keep tabs on this band, but never really go into them other than a song or two. If they had an edge back in the day, that’s largely been filed away at this point. But they are still rocking … this one listening like it’s big alt-rocker designed to be performed in an arena. "People Ruin Paintings" is our favorite from this album. (14 Feb '25) |
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Hush Kids Gorgeous Thing This is a four song EP from Nashville artists and friends Jill Andrews and Peter Groenwald. This seems to be sort of a side hustle as each are in the middle of their own successful professional music careers. But they hit with some fantastic very dynamic guy-girl harmony acoustic pop folk songs. We have “Only Human” on heavy rotation. (30 Jan '25) |
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Maria BC Marathon This is the third studio album for Maria BC and her second one for Sacred Bones, a label that has a knack for finding bands that are a little esoteric with maybe some darker tendencies in their music. This one is very much in the Sacred Bones wheelhouse – lonely girl with ethereal singing over a single guitar plugged into a Twin Reverb slowly doing some strums. Maybe there’s some ambient synths, simple drums or percussive beats and samples in the background. It’s sort of like if Tunng, Jon Hopkins and Jane Siberry got in a room, drowned out a bunch of opioids with some alcohol and decided to do some recording. We like both the meditative parts of this as well as the little more energetic instrumentals. (27 Feb '25) |
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Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience) Decius is a supergroup for Fat White Family's Lias Saoudi, Trashmouth Records' Luke and Liam May, and Quinn Whalley of Paranoid London and Warmduscher to craft their mutant house music. It’s a non-stop dance party with this release, a, as Stereogum puts it, slippery amalgam of Chicago house, Detroit techno, acid house grooves and sleazy electro-pop. We can definitely imagine grooving to “We Care Our Flamboyance As A Warning” at 3AM. (31 Jan '25) |
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OsamaSon Jump Out The third studio album by the American rapper OsamaSon is a collection of a lot of short songs, one and a half to two and a half minutes long, that feature autotuned, fuzzed out warbling hiphop over some deep bass, moving 808 beats and other colorful samples thrown in there. While it’s received a lot of good critical acclaim, it’s a bit too repetitive with 18 songs all blended and moddied together to grab too much of our attention. (Jan '25) |
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Whiskerman American Hell Pt. I The local rag (SF Chronicle) writes of the local (Oakland) band: “Whiskerman sounds like a gospel and soul band that can make you feel like raising your hands in the air in praise of its talent.” Nice description. At their louder moments, they absolutely sound like they’d be tearing up the juke joint or revival tent on the outskirts of town in a rip-roaring session. Check out “The Master” on this one to get an idea of what we (and the SF Chronicle) mean: fast giddyup drumming, guitar o full of tremolo, fiddle a fiddling, guy and girl belting out the lyrics. We look forward to catching this one live, but we also really like the bands more mellow moments with the guy-girl harmonies as well. (28 Jan '25) |
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France Destino Scifosi France is a power trio consisting of Yann Gourdon on hurdy gurdy, Jérémie Sauvage on bass, and Mathieu Tilly on drums. The band is celebrated for their distinctive fusion of Krautrock, psychedelia, folk, and drone. Stop for a second and go ahead and re-read that. Yes, you hear correctly. Hurdy gurdy-led swirling instrumentals of hard, loud, droning experimental psychedelia folk rock. Wow. Further, it was recorded live at an outdoor amphitheatre in a valley in Southern France. It gets better: There are only two tunes here, each 20 minutes long and droning and squeaking like a loose radiator belt and the camshaft clanking on your 1970s Duster as you take a 120 mile long drive down an abandoned interstate in the dead of winter. Here’s the interesting social game. Put this one on the dinner playlist and time how long before someone loses their shit: “Oh, Hell No.” We’re laughing just thinking about it. Because, between you and I, this stuff is fantastic. Enjoy alone, late at night and loud when you need to scare people off and get a lot of work done. (31 Jan '25) |
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Olivia Wolf Silver Bullet Wow, we're really proud of Olivia. Nice job, we love it! Looks like the move from SF/Sonoma to Nashville has paid off. We were looking forward to this release since we drank some whiskey with her and Taylor McCall at HSBG 2023, but were admittedly confused as 2024 seemingly brought more Instagram photos than music. But boom, album drops in Jan 2025 and it's a beautiful country rocker. There's steel pedal right next to Hammond B3, crunchy guitars next to banjos. Rockers right next to beautiful ballads like "The Veil", our favorite on this release. One of our tunefilter colleagues is hearing some Shania Twain. Way different than lil sis Avery's sounds with Ismay, but it looks like the talent runs deep in the family. Which, of course we long-time HSBG attendees and fans of Warren Hellman already know. (17 Jan '25) |
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Rose City Band Sol y Sombra Sol y Sombra is the fifth studio album from Portland Oregon (as you would expect) band Rose City Band and it’s a good one. Good ole West Coast Americana (yeah, we’re coining that sub-genre right here and right now) that leans more towards folk -- with a small touch of jam band -- than it does country rock or pop. Sort of the same vein as fellow Left Coasters Vetiver, Whiskerman, or perhaps Logan Ledger before he split from the Bay Area to Nashville. West Coast Americana is mellow, slow rolling, plenty of sunshine and steel pedal, and Dead influences. It’s the exact stuff you want to be listening to sprawled out on a Mexican blanket sipping some Bulliet Bourbon and chasing it with a Trumer Pils in Hellman Hollow, which is exactly what we’ll be doing at HSBG while these guys play. Updated: did that, it was FANTASTIC. "Lights on the Way," "Radio Song," and "Seeds of Light" are our favorites here. (21 Jan '25) |
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Kathryn Mohr
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Daneshevskaya
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The Weather Station
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Tunng
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Ethel Cain Perverts Ethel Cain is the stage name and alter ego of Hayden Silas Anhedönia, a Tallahassee, Florida-based American singer-songwriter and producer. The first two minutes of the opening 12-minute-long track starts out with an old scratchy rendition of the Christian hymn “Nearer My God to Thee” – perhaps a nod to Cain’s deeply religious upbringing – then it goes dark. The darkness so thick you can hear it. Slow, somber sounds crawl out of the darkness over the remainder of the song and of the album. We like how The Quietus describes it: “Perverts feels like a challenge to the large audience Ethel Cain amassed with 2022 debut studio album Preacher’s Daughter. Intended as a standalone release rather than a true follow-up album, Perverts is a nine-track EP of experimental drone, ambient and slowcore. Interested in mood and texture over traditional pop song structures, it unfolds patiently, with protracted periods of borderline silence, over the course of an hour-and-a-half. It’s a boundary-pushing work that, depending on the listener, could be considered either powerfully engrossing or deeply alienating.” Sign us up! “Punish” is a beautiful piece. (8 Jan '25) |
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C Duncan It's Only A Love Song C Duncan's fifth album, It's Only A Love Song, showcases the Scottish composer and musician's signature romanticism through lush orchestral arrangements and cinematic compositions. Drawing inspiration from artists like Scott Walker and The Carpenters, as well as film scores by Michel Legrand and Leonard Bernstein, Duncan crafts a collection that evokes the grandeur of classic Hollywood musicals. Alluvium, his previous album and his first release for one of our favorite labels, Bella Union, blew us away. We sort of didn't know what to make of it. This isn't really indie rock, it's not pop and nowhere near RnB. It comes off at times like show tunes, but not really. Maybe what the big band orchestras' playing to the dinner party crowds in the 40s and 50s might do if that was still a thing today in a musical vocabulary that now has synths and samples. We loved Allumium, which perhaps created a little too high of expectations for this one. Perhaps it's also due to the album title, but the "love song" sort of campiness seems to come on too strong here at times. (Jan '25) |
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tbd tbd tbd ( '25) |
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Diane Coffee With People Diane Coffee is the solo project of Shaun Fleming, who previously played drums for Foxygen. It took us a good amount of time for the artist and his 2019 debut release Internet Arms to fit in with us. Breezy pop rock songs sung in a high-pitched, almost falsetto, vocal register and backed with cheesy 80s synth sounds with an almost try to hard to be a pop hit production effect for us. There was a lot of hard-pass thoughts going on with that 2019 release – and with this one too – before we realized that there are some songwriting gems on both albums. On this album, we’re liking “Song for David” and “Corrina From Colina.” (29 Apr '25) |
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Julia Jacklin PRE PLEASURE We’ve been fans of the Melbourne singer / songwriter since 2019’s release Crushing came out. This release follows in the same vein: singer with a beautiful, venerable voice over relatively simple acoustic songs. There’s not too much of the band thing, drums, bass, etc. going on here. Mostly Jacklin with some simple instrumentation. At her best, that simple formula is brilliant. Case in point: Good Guy off the Crushing album. That was so good, we made her a music video featuring the Big O (RIP). No song here gets to that high of a high, but “End Of A Friendship” is a good one. (26 Aug '22) |
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tbd tbd tbd ( '25) |
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Ane Brun Songs 2013-2023 This was another artist that came up in conversation over an fancy ad industry dinner at Da Damiano in Köln (yes, for DMEXCO, scroll down and read our Max Richter bit.) We have to say, we loved our dinner guests, and their music recommendations, that evening. Brun’s recent release Benjamin (From the TV series ‘Etter Benjamin’) was fantastic and is on our heavy rotation. To dig deeper, we pulled up this one up from the Stockholm-based, Norwegian singer-songwriter. This compilation album marks Brun's second decade as a recording artist, following her previous career-spanning compilation Songs 2003-13 released ten years earlier. It’s very good, adult contemporary style, music that would have fit in perfectly on a playlist spun during that dinner. “Fingerprints” and “Don’t Run and Hide” are our favs on this release. (May '23) |
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Agness Twin Turn to Gold This four song EP was mostly a product of the 2020 pandemic but took didn’t materialize until after Agness Twin, the musical project of California based artist Elisa Ovrahim, wrapped up their 2023 US tour backing Vinsantos as he open for Love & Rockets. Ovrahim’s style is reminiscent of early 90s alternative music mixed with a little dark folk. Vocal layers, enigmatic ringing guitars, chattering piano all arranged with modern elegance. The artist suggests “In the dark” as the standout single, but we think the two moodier closers “Ice Caps” and “The Flood” that play on the same hypnotic bass and guitar riffs that remind us a bit of something we might hear from Vetiver – at least until Vinsantos comes in on the piano. (May '24) |
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Modern Studies Cassandra Busy year for Modern Studies as they put out there second release of the year. Although they call it an EP, it has eight songs, so pretty LP like as far as we’re thinking. This one is pretty standard from the Scottish band – mellower indie rock that doesn’t stray too far off path. No synths, no programmed drumming, no horn section, no strings and orchestrations. There are some samples in the background for a bit of a moody ambience, otherwise it’s just guitar, bass, drums, guy-girl singing. The songs have a solid drone-like structure, but none of them are much over three and a half minutes, so we’re not post-rocking here. Nope, just good indie rock that break up solid drone verses with very beautiful girl-guy harmony led choruses. Good stuff. (Nov '22) |
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Modern Studies We Are There The sixth long play from this underrated Scottish band is very much like their previous releases. Although it isn’t as solid as 2018’s Welcome Strangers – which we think was a brilliant release – the mellow indie rock is very much in the swimlane of that, and their previous releases. Straight forward indie rock that borders on slowcore on one side, hints at drone space rock on the other side but never goes too far down either side. But, as always, the star here is the guy-girl harmonies as they tackle almost all songs together singing in almost a deadpan style but perfectly in synch. It’s Hush Kids-like, albeit with a more mopey song set, in how well the guy-girl harmonies work here. “Wild Ocean” is the best song here. (Feb '22) |
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Vinsantos A Light Awake Inside A new friend recently brought us to a pop-up art show and musical event in a venue on a sketchy alley off the Tenderloin in SF. Boy did we get a treat seeing Vinsantos, Agness Twin and our friend performing live in a very intimate, candlelit space and getting to mingle with them afterwards. We like Vinstantos the person as much as we like the artist’s dark cabaret theatrical music. We love “Vertiga Before the Pride” and especially ”Anger Makes Me Mad” off this album but were blown away by seeing it performed live on a grand piano in this wonderful space. (Dec '09) |
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Broncho
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