Ok if you’ve read this blog at all since late 2016, you know I’m a major Aldous Harding stan. After seeing her open for Deerhunter and being completely spellbound by her arresting form of performance (and songwriting), and ranking her 2017 album Party as my favorite album of that year and seeing her live five times now… yeah. It’s a thing.
Well – she’s back. She just released a new single (with two versions!) “Old Peel”, that she’s performed live in the past. I actually distinctly remember seeing this one live because she had grabbed a Rough Trade mug that she rhythmically hit with a drumstick throughout the song. It was always just the “mug song” to me. But this is another entry in her more “accessible” music, but it still carries the goliath weight of uncanniness her music inherently possesses. It’s marvelous. Please new album. OH – I did see tour dates coming in 2022. That’s something!
Alright I’ve already posted about the upcoming Izzy Johnson album, earth tones, coming July 2nd via Driftless Recordings, but the newest single “existing” warrants me posting about it once more. “existing” is a more upbeat slice of floating acoustic magic compared to their previous single “seeing”, but still containing just as much auditory magic, with flowing sheer ribbons of voice cradling steadily plucked acoustic guitar. A calming, auditory salve.
The track as a whole has a great pace to it, with additional instrumental and arrangement flourishes steadily joining the frame as the song progresses. One could even say that this track is an embodiment of the tweet format “open for a surprise”, as a flute-backed, lounge-esque breakdown opens up for the last minute of the song, laminating the feelings of free happiness that had been bubbling up around the track in the previous four minutes.
earth tones is coming via Driftless Recordings on July 2nd – pre-order the album HERE.
Digging back through my trove of downloaded delights lead me to this “ultra-rare” funk record from Nigerian group Disco Blaze, Jump Back!. If you’re in need of a good funkin’, these guys have you covered. You can find the whole album ripped on YouTube (of course), but I wanted to highlight a favorite of mine while going through it, a long instrumental ripper “Jump Back (Comm’ Of The Fireballs)”. It’s got some slick shredding action and a classic funk bassline. You cannot deny. Also love the homemade shot this YouTube channel chose as the pic for the video.
Been a while since I posted any individual tracks – sorry about that! Coming back at ya with a good one though – the new song & video from Michael Cormier called “Last Hurrah”, coming from his upcoming album More Light!! out June 25 via Oof Records + Dear Life Records.
You know I’m a big fan of an animated video and “Last Hurrah” has logged a notable entry in that canon. The main premise is a bar full of zombies having a raucous karaoke party, but there are two big twists, or reveals, that you need to stay buckled in for. Haven’t seen a video this creative in a long time. Music-wise, it’s some nice Americana-touched folk rock with gently soaring slide guitar in the background and minimal acoustic instrumentation in the foreground. I hate comparisons of course, but Andy Shauf’s The Party comes to mind first, which you know I love. Lyrically, we also know that the ennui of weak friendship and fleeting memories is a big plus for me, so this track nails it. Check out this dang song!
More Light!! is out June 25 via Oof Records / Dear Life Records – pre-order HERE.
Back at it again with another Recommended Albums. May 2021 was pretty solid with some great new releases, including two highly-anticipated ones from Daniel Bachman and Erika De Casier for me. Not much to say here honestly – listen to all these dang records. Hopefully more blog content this month. Sorry for the silence in May!
Lots of great albums in April 2021! Some really great field recording + ambient records, excellent futuristic R&B, warping post punk, promising dream pop, and just generally beautiful music. Hope you enjoy! And in case you’re new, each month I recommend 10 albums from the month and describe them in semantic, highly visual ways. A small anecdote. Hopefully you’ll listen or sample all the records listed here, but hopefully the little description whets your appetite.
Arooj Aftab – Vulture Prince [New Amsterdam] Spending a night stargazing in a scenic pasture, a blinking satellite passing overhead syncs with your relaxed heartbeat.
Ben Seretan – Cicada Waves [NNA Tapes] Small leaves of a houseplant on a windowsill sway gently after a big sigh.
CFCF– Memoryland [BGM Solutions] The world if the internet had been used for good instead of evil.
Claire Rousay – a softer focus [American Dreams Records] Attempting to remember what you did on the day aliens landed in your small hometown before they wiped everyone’s memories and returned to space.
Dawn Richard– Second Line [Merge] Being outfitted with cybernetic parts to become an augmented humanoid and then starting a romantic relationship with the android from Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” video.
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg [4AD] A J.D. Salinger novel protagonist escapes the story they’re bound to, hijacks a car and buys a house in the American southwest to live a life in peace.
Leon Vynehall– Rare, Forever [Ninja Tune] A post-apocalyptic timeline where all life on Earth has reverted back into its most ancient, microbial form amongst a harsh, ultra-futuristic crumbling metropolis.
Rochelle Jordan– Play With The Changes [Young Art] Trying to make your way home in a futuristic, neon-lit cityscape through underground pipeline raves, Akira biker gang fights and gravity-bending fashion shows.
Sasha & The Valentines– So You Think You Found Love? [Oof Records] Riding a horse at full clip on the edge of a beachside cliff, tall waves crashing below you as you hold up a majestic sword in one hand and a roman candle shooting off multi-colored heart-shaped fireworks into the air in the other.
SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE– ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH [Saddle Creek] Staying up for two full days watching unmarked VHS tapes from a dumpster, then hiking to the top of a wooded mountain and burying yourself in litter you collected on the way.
Been sharing a lot of dream pop here and look – I’m not stopping. Recently seen some friends (specifically a few TX-based ones – you know who you are!) posting about Austin band Sasha & The Valentines and their debut album So You Think You’ve Found Love?, which I can confirm as a non-Texan, is very good. The incredibly basic, borderline criminally simple thing I can say is “the lead singer sounds like Victoria Legrand from Beach House”, so I’m gonna go further than that. The band employs some of the shimmering, dreamy textures that Beach House do, but push their sound into other directions like surf and 80s pop as well. On one song it’s catchy, on another it’ll be blissfully bendable. I was entertained and enjoyed the whole thing. Another fairly basic comparison would be Caroline Rose and her use of cheesy synths alongside real revved up guitars and spirited vocals.
There are good shreds of many different pop acts present here in Sasha & The Valentines, alongside their own obvious and unique charms, all comprising as one of the more promising indie pop debuts of the year. Here’s my hopes for this record + band – it either gets picked up for review late in major publications, it sneaks on a bunch of honorable mentions lists with big blogs (or a dark horse for a mid-list 2021 mention) and then the band kicks ass on a sophomore album in the future. Who knows. Honestly I’m surprised a certain TX-based blog hasn’t posted about them yet? Hopefully soon! I sense some great things in the future and I can’t wait til touring resumes so I can see them in NYC.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been crafting up a suite of dreamy, smeared out playlists made for fantasizing about dizzying nights out while staying in every day. Lots of these playlists are made from disparate tunes from random nooks and crannies of the internet, old and new. Sometimes I find some private press groove thing that I can’t take my ears off of. This new George Arturo Calendar record, Paradox, out now via Stereochip Records, reminds me of those homespun, lo-fi synth testimonials I’d discover through heavy internet digging. The majority of lyrics are in Spanish, the synths are woozy, the bass is buoyant and flexible, and the whole thing warbles and bends like it’s being broadcast through a lost VHS tape found in a dusty, abandoned discotek.
If you dig the hazy pop of the moment or of the obscured past, don’t let Chicago’s George Arturo Calendar’s Paradox slip through your fingers.
Friends of the blog and resident Canadian noise nerds AIM LOW just dropped a new EP Broken Sundial, with each part recorded separately during quarantine. A classic feat of this modern age. When I previously shared music from the band, they were slinging oppressive, all-consuming slabs of discordant guitar noise and more. This time around they’re approaching “song” territory (holy moly), with reference to classic slowcore like Bedhead or Codeine, even including a Guided By Voices cover.
The song I’ve chosen to feature here is the opener, “Hypertensive Crisis”, is a slow-burn ride into the mouth of a volcano, with the song slowly amping up in chaotic guitars and ominous noise while a spoken word piece is read in the background, including a stanza by e.e. cummings. It’s not the most seasonal music of right now, but as a wise scholar once said, “Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days” – those mistakes can sometimes lead you to ego-pulverizing slowcore, laying down with the lights off in the dark, with only the din from your headphones to comfort you. And that’s ok. AIM LOW are here now.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring attention to the upcoming SPELLLING album, The Turning Wheel, coming June 25th via Sacred Bones. I really enjoyed her 2019 album Mazy Fly, and got to see her perform at Trans-Pecos here in NYC. Remember shows?
Anyways, her sound before has been pretty insular, pretty indoorsy in a way that suggests cobwebs are laced over the front door and the drapes are nailed tight over windows. This new song “Boys From School” sees SPELLLING (aka Chrystia Cabral) busting down those doors, letting forth a dark smoke into the world. The gothy nature expands with neo-psychedelia, as fat, Bay Area-reminiscent fonk synths rumbling underneath a swirling orchestra of horns, ripping guitar and triumphant piano. The haunted mansion that was Mazy Fly is imploding due to a cataclysmic new spell, letting forth a new confidence and reckoning to those that scorned Cabral in the past. It rocks. I’m obviously being dramatic – it’s what I do. In short, it’s a bold new step for SPELLLING’s sound and I can’t wait to hear the full LP.
You can pre-order The Turning Wheel (out June 25th via Sacred Bones) – HERE.
A stream of consciousness music blog, active since 2010. Established in Ann Arbor, MI, currently in NYC.
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January 9: Dry Cleaning – Secret Love SAULT – Chapter 1 Winged Wheel – Desert So Green
January 16: A$AP Rocky – Don’t Be Dumb Jana Horn – Jana Horn Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Tragic Magic SASSY 009 – Dreamer+
February 6: Beverly Glenn-Copeland – Laughter in Summer Daphni – Butterfly Fabiano do Nascimento – Aquáticos Joshua Chuquimia-Crampton – Anata Mandy, Indiana – URGH Puma Blue – Croak Dream Ratboys – Singin’ To An Empty Chair
February 13: Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights Colin Stetson – Nethering Danny L Harle – Cerulean KMRU – Kin The Olympians – In Search of A Revival
February 20: Altin Gün – Garip Apparat – A Hum of Maybe
February 27: Buck Meek – The Mirror Fabiano do Nascimento – Vila GENA – The Pleasure Is Yours Gorillaz – The Mountain Gus Englehorn – The Broken Balladeer Heavenly – Highway to Heavenly LB aka LABAT – Feel So Good Around U Maria BC – Marathon Mitski – Nothings About to Happen to Me Nothing – a short history of decay Shane Parish – Autechre Guitar
March 6: Hater – Mosquito Natalie Jane Hill – Hopeful Woman Scout Gillett – Tough Touch Shabaka – Of The Earth waterbaby – Memory Be a Blade
March 13: Alexis Taylor – Paris In The Spring Colleen – Libres antes del final Crack Cloud – Peace and Purpose Cut Worms – Transmitter Kim Gordon – PLAY ME The Notwist – News From Planet Zombie Ora Cogan – Hard Hearted Woman
March 27: Fcukers – Ö Holy Fuck – Event Beat José González – Against the Dying of the Light Robyn – Sexistential
April 3: Arlo Parks – Ambiguous Desire Makthaverskan – Glass and Bones Sunn O))) – sunn O)))
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