ALTER.NATiON
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, DISQ, Bristletongue, Lana Del Rey, Pistol Annies, boygenius, The Voidz, Thom Yorke, Open Mike Eagle, Forth Wanderers, Pllush, Mary Lattimore
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, DISQ, Bristletongue, Lana Del Rey, Pistol Annies, boygenius, The Voidz, Thom Yorke, Open Mike Eagle, Forth Wanderers, Pllush, Mary Lattimore
Selection from Stereogum’s 90 Favorite Songs Of 2018 list
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| Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever |
weekly favtraX
29-12-2018
Coming from Melbourne, air conditioning is presumably a very present concern for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. The band’s finely interlocking indie-pop grooves recall the old school underground rock of their Australian homeland and even more of their global neighbors in New Zealand. “An Air Conditioned Man” is very much part of that lineage, toggling between gorgeous guitar reveries and revved-up, krautrock, influenced rhythmic zone-outs.
Disq are Isaac De Broux-Slone and Raina Bock, two extremely cool teenagers from Wisconsin who make neat, smart, Midwestern power-pop. The pair — who count Weezer, Big Star, Todd Rundgren and the Beatles as influences — released their first album in high school... It’s an upbeat, chunky rocker that starts out plucky and trill but upticks into a clashing, reverb-drenched 21st century suburban breakdown... It’s an existential track, full of blunt expressions of adolescent lostness, darker than the bright melody and sometimes beachy guitars signal (“I feel busy/ I don’t know where to go/ Who do I know?/ I am not very sure”). Such passages skewer the nonstop communication that can sometimes just make us feel even more alone (“Looking below/ People aren’t very pure/ And again communication/ Takes me farther away”).
Bristletongue are a four-piece from Illinois fronted by L Morgan, whose aureate poetics bolster the group’s expansive compositions, which lie along the emo to post-rock spectrum. True to its title, the four songs on their debut EP, Femme Florale, are fixated on flower imagery, whether withering or blossoming or dying on the vine. It’s a thematic through-line that pays off well and matches the band’s music, with its many tendrils tied back to the singular root that is L Morgan’s impressive voice...
Lana Del Rey has released a new song called “Mariners Apartment Complex.” It’s a collaboration with Jack Antonoff... Del Rey started teasing their team-up earlier this year via a few sly Instagrams and earlier this month she offered up a preview of the song. It’s the first of two new songs that Del Rey plans on releasing this month — another one, called “Venice Bitch,”
During an interview with Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1, Del Rey said that she was working on a book of poetry that she plans to self-publish.
Lambert is one third of the country supergroup Pistol Annies, alongside Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley... “Got My Name Changed Back” is a giddy, exultant song about a breakup, and old-school pop-country snarl of the highest order.
Back in August, Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers, three of indie rock’s youngest and most exciting songwriters, formed the supergroup Boygenius... Recorded over four days at Los Angeles’ Sound City Studios in June, boygenius is beautiful, moving with the vulnerability of youth. Each track remains rooted in one distinctive voice...
“ALieNNatioN” has a truly horrible title, owing specifically to its liberal abuse of upper- and lower-case letters, and I went into the album expecting to hate the thing. Instead, it’s probably my favorite track on Virtue, and in many ways, the most straight-up gorgeous song ever recorded by Julian Casablancas. Compositionally, it kinda sounds like Pinback: that crisp architectural melody over the reggae-ish rhythm; the shift into dizzying angelic beauty on the chorus. But sonically, it could be a Metro Boomin’ production: the vast echo; the hard, sparse beat. It rules.
Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino will release his remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 cult horror classic Suspiria. Even though the film itself might be doing too much, its Thom Yorke-scored soundtrack is still something to be excited about — as well as the fact that the Radiohead frontman and his absolute look-alike Tilda Swinton finally get to be involved in the same project.
The Los Angeles underground rap veteran has just shared a new song called “Relatable (peak OME),” the first taste of his upcoming project What Happens When I Try to Relax... “When I get nervous, say something relatable/ I’m hella relatable,” Open Mike Eagle raps on “Relatable (peak OME).” “It’s too complicated for a quick explanation,” he explains in a statement. “It’s about a lot of things. It’s about expectations of form, anxiety, middle age and middle class. and that’s just the parts I know how to put into words a couple months after writing it.”
Album opener “Nevermine” is built around spindly guitar interplay that expands into a huge, glorious chorus, almost like the New Jersey combo’s instruments are constructing the foundation for a towering monument. It certainly sounds monumental, anyway, without being too showy about it.
Ava Trilling’s first words seem to be addressing an ex: “I am the one you think of when you’re with her, and what do you have? Nothing on me.” She continues from there with a drowsy detachment in her delivery that belies the intensity of the narrative.
Everything about Pllush’s debut album sounds massive. Take “Big Train,” the third single from Stranger To The Pain and, to my ears, one of the best things that the San Francisco band has ever done. That chorus is just so good, the kind of perfectly logical rush that still feels entirely unexpected at the same time. “Who’s gonna love me more/ When I’m crying in the middle of the night?” Karli Helm sings, each word slotting into place like a puzzle piece. “Lately I’m feeling torn/ ‘Cuz nothing ever comes out right.” The song tendrils out from that first hit, Helm’s voice gruff and reactive, as a chorus of singers builds in the background to a magnificent and booming conclusion.
The song’s about learning to love yourself before anyone else, realizing that you can’t reciprocate what you don’t have. It’s about the independence that comes with being on your own, the fight to stand on your own two feet without breaking down.
...from harpist Mary Lattimore. The song finds its drifting, airborne effect over the course of 11 minutes. Lattimore wrote this album during her stay at a seaside Northern California artist colony called Headlands Center for the Arts last summer, setting up shop in a barn with her 47-string harp by day and commingling with her fellow artists by night. With that knowledge in hand, the song’s ambient sprawl is definitely giving me mental pictures of fog rising over the redwoods.
Here’s some more context for you: Lattimore plays placid music with a deeply traditional instrument, but she’s also going on tour with Iceage this year...
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, DISQ, Bristletongue, Lana Del Rey, Pistol Annies, boygenius, The Voidz, Thom Yorke, Open Mike Eagle, Forth Wanderers, Pllush, Mary Lattimore
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