29-01-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

Aaron M. Olson / L.A. Takedown

29-01-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from recent past] # L.A. Takedown, Roine Stolt's The Flower King, Buke and Gase, Cherry Glazerr, The Wood Brothers, Hurt Valley, Lake Street Dive, Spencer Radcliffe, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Bahamas, FIDLAR, Courteeners, Cursive, Whyte Horses

M U S I C

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Los Angeles-based instrumental rock project equally inspired by Krautrock and '80s action movie soundtracks.L.A. Takedown is a cinematic instrumental rock project helmed by Los Angeles-based composer/musician Aaron M. Olson, along with a revolving cast of additional contributors. Inspired equally by prog/Krautrock as well as film and television scores, the group's music is equally suitable as a soundtrack for cruising through the desert as well as beach escapades.
L.A. Takedown
Bad Night at Black's Beach 2:50
L.A. Blue 3:40
City of Glass 5:18
from II 2017
Following a cassette on Burger Records and a self-titled LP consisting of a single 41-minute epic, II is the third release by Aaron M. Olson's L.A. Takedown project, and the first recorded with a full band. The group take their name from a 1989 made-for-television crime thriller, and they aim to re-create the soundtracks of that era, but of course it doesn't sound like an exact facsimile. The group twist Krautrock and prog influences into their sound, and the arrangements and rhythmic patterns are complex and a bit suspenseful, but they still have a generally easygoing, beach-friendly feeling. The full-band upgrade means that there's less of an emphasis on synthesizers here than on past L.A. Takedown recordings, and a much more fleshed-out sound...

Gifted prog rock guitarist is a member of the Flower Kings and Transatlantic. He is also ex-Yes vocalist Jon Anderson's collaborator. His distinctive guitar style combined David Gilmour's debonair midtempo, Steve Howe's sharp edges, and Frank Zappa's virtuosity. 
Roine Stolt's The Flower King
Lost America 9:50
The Alchemist 6:57
Rio Grande 7:49
from Manifesto Of An Alchemist 2018
With Manifesto of an Alchemist, guitarist/ vocalist/composer Roine Stolt looks all the way back to his 1994 solo date, The Flower King (hence the singular band name). His list of collaborators on this ten-song, 70-minute outing includes proper Flower Kings' members bassist Jonas Reingold, guitarist/vocalist Hans "Hasse" Fröberg, and Michael Stolt on bass and vocals, with Marco Minnemann (from Stolt's other collaborative project, the Sea Within) Max Lorentz on Hammond organ, Zach Kamins on assorted keyboards, Rob Townsend on reeds and winds, and Nad Sylvan on lead and backing vocals. Stolt claims that this is both a new and old album; most of these songs were developed from riffs, melodies, and arrangement ideas from more than a quarter-century of demos and notebooks grafted on to newly composed parts, most of which were created in the studio. Perhaps because of the treasure trove of older material he rummaged through, Manifesto of an Alchemist was completed exceptionally fast: it took only a month from first recordings to final mix. That quick turnaround time presents listeners with a clash of impressions. First, it is uncharacteristically "raw" sounding. The artist told an interviewer that, "A lot of the guitar work is actually my spontaneous 'demo' guitars ... I didn’t want to process ideas too much...."

Experimental duo from New York who use instruments and electronics they created themselves to make playful but challenging music. Playing unique instruments of their own design, Buke and Gase generate a sonic palette that's very much their own, rooted in the traditional functions of guitar and bass but thrown into different relief. Their songs, usually built from ideas generated during extended improvisation, mix fractured melodic lines and strong but jagged rhythms, generating a sound that's playful but also curiously alien.
Buke and Gase
Stumbler 3:26
Derby 2:30
Eternity 4:36
from Scholars 2019
If you remember Buke and Gase as that experimental duo who play the instruments they built themselves, you might want to adjust your expectations before listening to 2019's Scholars, their first full-length album after a five-year recording layoff. In their previous work, Aron Sanchez and Arone Dyer constructed their music around two instruments of their own creation, the buke, a large, six-string relative of the ukulele played by Dyer, and the Gass, a fusion of the guitar and the bass used by Sanchez. However, while both instruments are part of the mix on Scholars, this time around the duo have pared back on organic instrumentation and jumped deep into electronics...

070 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 27-01-2020

ALTER.NATION #70

Chromatics, Wolf Parade, David Bowie, Nicolas Godin, En Attendant Ana, Basic Plumbing,  The Wood Brothers, Jeff Parker, The Sufis, Caspian, Bohren & der Club of Gore, Chromatics

weekly favtraX 

2 7 - 0 1 - 2 0 2 0

"from TOY to TOY"

Glamorously heartbroken purveyors of evocative electropop.

Chromatics - Toy
Believe it or not, Chromatics released a new album last year, Closer To Grey. It wasn’t their long-anticipated (and missing in action) Dear Tommy, but it was very good, and the Los Angeles group is back with another very good new track today.
Their new single is called “Toy,” and it’s a characteristically cinematic and strobing song. “Tell me what I have to do/ ‘Cus I can’t stop thinking of you,” Ruth Radelet sings on it. “Tell me what I have to say/ ‘Cus I can’t go on living this way.” The band has also put out a stripped back “On Film” version of the track and an instrumental.

Canadian indie rockers who came together around the talents of Spencer Krug (Frog Eyes) and Dan Boeckner (Handsome Furs).
Wolf Parade - Thin Mind / Out of Control
It seems size does not matter for Wolf Parade. Multi-instrumentalist Dante DeCaro, who had been working with Wolf Parade since 2005, left the band in early 2019, leaving the original trio of Spencer Krug, Dan Boeckner, and Arlen Thompson to get along without him. But if anyone expected the group to scale back their sound as a three-piece, 2020's Thin Mind wastes no time in shutting down that thinking. Wolf Parade sound lively, passionate, and fully committed on these ten songs, with Krug's Bowie-esque glam-conscious vocals reaching to the third balcony and easily finding their target, as the arrangements suggest the great lost new wave album of the '80s...

The mercurial music icon widely considered the original pop chameleon and figurehead for countless musical movements.
David Bowie - Stay '97
“Stay,” of course, first appeared on Bowie’s 1976 album Station To Station. This new recorded was started during tour rehearsals at the Factory in the Dublin Docklands, and finished later for use as a potential B-side. Bowie wanted to update some of his older tracks so they’d sit alongside material from Outside and Earthling more comfortably live.

Composer/multi-instrumentalist, best known as one half of Air, who embarked on a solo career in 2015.
Nicolas Godin - Concrete and Glass / Concrete and Glass
Looking back on his career with and without Air, Nicolas Godin's beginnings as an architecture student become more and more apparent -- and not just because the first song he created, "Modulor Mix," was a tribute to Le Corbusier. A skilled use of structure and space is just as important to composing music as designing a building, and the weightless drift of his music is as much of a feat as a skyscraper that seems to defy gravity. Much like an architect, over the years Godin has built on his music's foundations while continuing to innovate. If Contrepoint's dazzling fusion of classical, jazz, Tropicalia, exotica, and left-field pop and the flawless '60s spy music homage of his Au Service de la France (A Very Secret Service) score felt like reactions to the iconic sound he crafted with Air, then Concrete and Glass is a welcome return to it. As its name suggests, Godin's second solo album is ultra-sleek and airy, in both senses of the word...

Parisian garage pop quintet fuses melodic songwriting with a fuzzy, lo-fi approach. Parisian indie outfit En Attendant Ana fuse strong melodic songwriting with a fuzzy lo-fi approach, splitting the difference between a garage punk aesthetic and pop sophistication.
En Attendant Ana - Juillet / Enter My Body (Lilith)
En Attendant Ana are a Parisian indie quintet whose tightly focused melodies and energetic attack are fused with a curious blend of harmonic sophistication and wild abandon. They first appeared in 2016 with a rather rugged lo-fi EP, followed two years later by the more refined full-length Lost and Found, an exciting debut that revealed a young band with heaps of potential. Jump ahead to 2020, when their excellent sophomore LP, Juillet, makes good on that promise. Fronted by singer and chief songwriter Margaux Bouchaudon, En Attendant Ana are primarily a guitar band, though they make good use of multi-instrumentalist Camille Fréchou, whose lofty trumpet lines add a distinctive finesse to the group's energetic post-punk meets indie pop arrangements...

Stripped-down indie rock with equal parts melody and melancholy from the former Veronica Falls drummer and Boys Forever leader.
Basic Plumbing - Keeping Up Appearances / Too Slow
Basic Plumbing is Patrick Doyle's second solo project. Boys Forever was his first, and their one and only album showed that the longtime bandmember (Correcto, the Royal We, Veronica Falls) had what it took to lead a group. It was a shimmering and tough guitar pop album that was indebted to grunge, indie, and noise pop, while showing off Doyle's angelic voice and excitingly melancholy songwriting. Basic Plumbing is a stripped-down and scruffier version of that, and Keeping Up Appearances strips away any of the minimal gloss of Boys Forever in favor of a rough-and-ready approach. Doyle handles guitar, drums, and vocals, Helen Skinner adds bass lines, and the whole album was recorded quickly and with hardly any finesse from the producer's chair. The guitars jangle roughly, the cymbal crashes sizzle into the red, Doyle's fragile vocal harmonies drift through the mix like distant birds, and the bass holds it together in nicely melodic fashion...

Acclaimed roots music trio featuring brothers Oliver and Chris Wood and multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix. A roots music trio featuring brothers Chris (upright bass, vocals) and Oliver Wood (guitars, vocals) along with multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix, the Wood Brothers bring a distinctive flair to their union of folk, blues, gospel, and jazz.
The Wood Brothers - Kingdom in My Mind / Alabaster
"Alabaster" kicks off Kingdom in My Mind, the Wood Brothers' eighth studio album, with a slow, thick groove, its swampiness a reflection of how the album originated from a series of studio jams. The band didn't enter the studio with the intent of recording a new album, but they were taken with the results of their recording, so brothers Chris and Oliver Wood shaped the improvisations into songs. Starting with a collection of funky rustic recordings wound up being a boon to the Wood Brothers, letting Kingdom in My Mind establish a vibe that's cozy, homespun, and just slightly slick. Chalk the polish up to how the group are veterans with a good sense of space and feel, a knack that they're pushing on Kingdom in My Mind over tasteful songcraft...

Highly versatile, prolific guitarist (and Tortoise member) who has collaborated with numerous jazz, experimental, and indie rock musicians.
Jeff Parker - Suite for Max Brown / Go Away
Guitarist and composer Jeff Parker made a name for himself first with Tortoise during the '90s, and then as an integral member of the experimental music scene in Chicago. He's made a career of jumping the dimensions between rock, soul, funk, and jazz. Unknown to all but his contemporaries and musician friends, he also pursued his intense love of hip-hop without recording any of it; that is, until he released The New Breed from his adopted home in Los Angeles in 2016... While that recording revealed his respect and gratitude for his departed father, Suite for Max Brown is titled for and dedicated to his very-much-alive mother. Produced by the artist and engineered by Paul Bryan, it is a continuation of the sounds explored on New Breed. It includes most of the same sidemen, though it's more a solo date than a band date, and its tunes meander and stroll through thoughtful, creative, loose-sounding compositions...

Nashville duo dedicated to reviving mid-'60s garage rock and psychedelic pop. The Sufis began their career dedicated to excavating garage rock nuggets and re-creating them in lo-fi, bedroom psych style. After releasing two albums that sounded like a cross between the Byrds, (the original) Nirvana, and the house band on Shindig, the duo added synthesizers, dubby post-chillwave psych, and smooth soft rock textures to their sound on a pair of albums that brought them up to date.
The Sufis - Double Exposure / Outta My MInd
The Sufis' fourth album, Double Exposure, follows in the same lo-fi, weird, and woolly bedroom psych footsteps as their previous album did. Only this time the duo have a much more focused and animated approach to the writing and recording process and punch their performances up just a touch. The sound might be oddly smooth and bathed in cheapo synths, warbly vocals, and drums that sound like they have an inch of water sloshing around inside them, but the songs are shiny and sharp as diamonds...

Massachusetts-based post-rock unit in the vein of Explosions in the Sky and Mono. Caspian are an atmospheric, primarily instrumental post-rock band based on the East Coast of the United States. Their sound is cinematic in scope, alternating lush, melodic, and powerful guitars atop mellotrons and keyboards propelled by a forceful, imaginative rhythm section.
Caspian - On Circles / Division Blues
It's been five years since Massachusetts post-rock six-piece Caspian delivered the rightfully acclaimed Dust and Disquiet in 2015. On it, they reinvented post-rock's static modernism through composed and richly textured layers of instrumentation and sonic effects designed to enable spacious rhythmic and timbral experiments... Produced and engineered by Will Yip, the eight-song On Circles was cut in a Pennsylvania studio during the month of May in 2019. Yip intuitively illustrates Caspian's intent to find the invisible intersection between self-generated propulsive rock energy, seduction, and a trance-like penchant for reverie...  "Division Blues" adds cellos and violins as ballast for the wafting, bell-like guitars in a processional waltz time, swelling and shrinking bar by bar until the entire enterprise becomes a gorgeous squalling rock monolith...

German quartet inspired by many forms of metal, self-described as "doom-ridden jazz music." Dark jazz, doom jazz, and ambient jazz noir are just three of the (sub)genre terms regularly used to describe the music of Germany's Bohren & Der Club of Gore.
Bohren & der Club of Gore - Patchouli Blue / Verwirrung am Strand
In the nearly six years since German dark jazz outfit Bohren & Der Club of Gore released 2014's Piano Nights, drummer Thorsten Benning left the group. Rather than replace him, they downsized and became a trio. The remaining members, Christoph Clöser (compositions, tenor saxophone, vibes, Fender Rhodes), Morten Gass (piano, organ, engineer, producer), and Robin Rodenburg (double bass) perform Patchouli Blue as if Benning never left; the sparse, funereal percussion is handled by a synth and all three members. The more things change the more things stay the same in the Club of Gore's musical universe. Their tunes remain as sad as a burned-out house and as lonesome as a broke and crying drunk under a dim street lamp after closing time... Yet, as evidenced by tracks such as the single "Verwirrung am Strand," there is a nearly tender melodic sensibility wired into the music. This is not to say they’ve given up their trademark senses of dread or impending doom, but they've been de-emphasized in favor of a less foreboding state of stasis...

Beginning as a no wave band with an equally volatile lineup and sound, Chromatics evolved into one of the most influential electro-pop acts of the 2000s and 2010s.
Chromatics - Toy
Believe it or not, Chromatics released a new album last year, Closer To Grey. It wasn’t their long-anticipated (and missing in action) Dear Tommy, but it was very good, and the Los Angeles group is back with another very good new track today.
Their new single is called “Toy,” and it’s a characteristically cinematic and strobing song. “Tell me what I have to do/ ‘Cus I can’t stop thinking of you,” Ruth Radelet sings on it. “Tell me what I have to say/ ‘Cus I can’t go on living this way.” The band has also put out a stripped back “On Film” version of the track and an instrumental.
The band also recently released a 47-track (!) deluxe edition of Closer To Grey that included some alternate takes of tracks, remixes, and instrumentals of all the songs on the album.

Chromatics, Wolf Parade, David Bowie, Nicolas Godin, En Attendant Ana, Basic Plumbing,  The Wood Brothers, Jeff Parker, The Sufis, Caspian, Bohren & der Club of Gore, Chromatics

26-01-2020 ~ PREHiSTORiC:MiX ~ 33 pieces excavation finds from ancient sounds / before 1959

Lucille Hegamin

26-01-2020 ~ PREHiSTORiC:MiX ~ 33 pieces excavation finds from ancient sounds / before 1959   >>Lucille Hegamin, Sidney Bechet, The Georgia Melodians. Banda Municipal, Felix Camarano, Quinteto Augusto, Louis Armstrong, The California Ramblers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Missississippi Sheiks, Andy Kirk, Pepe Pinto, Charlie Lincoln, Gitfiddle Jim, Fred McMullen, Sexteto Habanero<<

Z E N E  /  M U S I C

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before 1959

A classic blues singer from the 1920's, Lucille Hegamin survived long enough to be recorded again in the 1960's. She sang in a church choir and locally before touring at age 15 with the Leonard Harper Revue.
Lucille Hegamin
The Jazz Me Blues 2:36
High Brown Blues 2:48
from Jazz Figures / Lucille Hegamin, (1920 - 1922), Volume 1
She was married to pianist Bill Hegamin from 1914-23. After performing in Seattle for a long period, Hegamin became one of the first blues singers to record... She toured with her Blue Flame Syncopators and later on led the Dixie Daisies. In addition to performing at clubs, Hegamin appeared in several Broadway shows in the 1920's...

A major figure in early jazz, outstanding clarinettist, only soprano saxophonist of consequence for decades, made melodically rich and emotional music.
Sidney Bechet
Wild Cat Blues 3:01
Blind Man Blues 3:11
Achin' Hearted Blues 2:58
from In Chronology - 1923
Sidney Bechet was the first important jazz soloist on records in history (beating Louis Armstrong by a few months). A brilliant soprano saxophonist and clarinetist with a wide vibrato that listeners either loved or hated, Bechet's style did not evolve much through the years but he never lost his enthusiasm or creativity. A master at both individual and collective improvisation within the genre of New Orleans jazz, Bechet was such a dominant player that trumpeters found it very difficult to play with him. Bechet wanted to play lead and it was up to the other horns to stay out of his way.

By the mid-'20s, the Edison phonograph record company had long since abandoned its founder's curmudgeonly policy regarding jazzy entertainment, and the label's catalog was peppered with titles by Mal Hallett, Joe Herlihy, B.A. Rolfe, Frank Winegar, the Piccadilly Players, Oreste & His Queensland Orchestra, and the Georgia Melodians, a sturdy little Southern unit that left about 27 titles for posterity.
The Georgia Melodians
Wop Blues 4:02
Savannah (The Georgianna Blues) 3:40
Red Hot Mamma 3:47
from Wop Blues (The Complete Edison Recordings - New York 1924)
During its three-year existence, the band's lineup included trumpeter Mickey Bloom; cornetist Red Nichols; trombonists George Troupe, Herb Winfield, Charlie Butterfield, Al Philburn, and Abe Lincoln; an unidentified tuba handler; banjoist Elmer "Merry" Morris; pianist Oscar Young (who in 1911 had come to New York from Ohio with vaudevillian Ted Lewis); and drummer Carl Gerrold. Though really led by Hutchins and Intelhouse, the band operated under the nominal leadership of violinist Charles Boulanger...

Banda Municipal - La budinera 2:51
Felix Camarano - Germaine 3:02
Quinteto Augusto - Un petit programa 3:20
from The History of Tango - Anthology of Vintage Recordings (1908 - 1925), Volume 2
Argentine tango
Argentine tango is a musical genre and accompanying social dance originating at the end of the 19th century in the suburbs of Buenos Aires [1] and Montevideo. It typically has a 2
4 or 4 4 rhythmic time signature, and two or three parts repeating in patterns such as ABAB or ABCAC. Its lyrics are marked by nostalgia, sadness, and laments for lost love.

069 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 22-01-2020

ALTER.NATION #69

The Growlers, Rose City Band, Facs, Aoife Nessa Frances, Holy Fuck, Marcus King, Courteeners, Pearl Jam, Cursive, Mr. Elevator. Deserta, Laume

weekly favtraX 

2 2 - 0 1 - 2 0 2 0

"Die and Live Forever"

Self-described "Beach Goth" outfit specializes in surfy, California indie rock. Based out of Los Angeles, California, indie rockers the Growlers emerged in the early part of the 2010s, employing an atmospheric blend of reverb-laden surf rock, country-folk, and classic rock. 
The Growlers - Natural Affair / Die and Live Forever
...On Natural Affair, The Growlers (led by singer Brooks Nielsen and music director/guitarist Matt Taylor) advance their swampy DIY aesthetic into a sturdier, synthier, dancier sound, bolstered by Nielsen’s finest lyrics to date: social commentary, rhymes, and ruminations on the pleasures (and perils) of modern love. Self-producing the album, they worked with Topanga Canyon friend Kyle Mullarky (Allah-Las, Little Wings) to craft early versions of the songs, then with engineer Ivan Wayman (Father John Misty, The War on Drugs) and mixer Dave Cerminara (HEALTH, Weyes Blood) to bring a new level of polish and continuity...

Mellow and textural cosmic country jam band led by Moon Duo member Ripley Johnson.
Rose City Band - Rose City Band / Fog of Love
Mysterious and calm, the debut album from Rose City Band rolls in slowly like the morning fog. Produced by Moon Duo/Wooden Shjips member Ripley Johnson, the project filters the softer side of the Grateful Dead's jammy explorations through a gentle, spaced-out haze. Where other late-2010s disciples of Garcia and Weir sometimes reworked the Dead's amped-up boogie rock tendencies, Rose City Band's self-titled debut leans more into the moments of soft, cosmic elegance that sometimes arrived deep into lengthy space jams...

Ripley Johnson

Dark, propulsive post-punk trio formed from the ashes of Chicago's Disappears.
FACS - Teenage Hive
Chicago noise-rock experimentalists FACS continue to churn out stunning new albums at a prolific clip. Last year, they one-upped their 2018 debut Negative Houses with the tense, pulverizing Lifelike. In 2020 they’ll be back again with LP3. Titled Void Moments... FACS are especially skilled at creating a sense of building pressure within their songs via dynamic, pummeling rhythms and layers of droning noise. It allows them to sound ominously loud in a unique way, violent but without the release that comes from cathartic riffs or breakdowns. They just get you swept up in the claustrophobia until you can hardly breathe... According to the band’s Brian Case, the song “is about not defining yourself so that other people can understand you. The evolved consciousness I’ve seen with my son and his generation/peer group regarding gender, identity, and human rights is the only hope for the future and informs all of Void Moments, which is ultimately an album about facing who we are.”

Dublin-based singer/songwriter who blends elegantly rendered folk with light psych flourishes. Aoife Nessa Frances is an Irish singer/songwriter based in North Dublin whose haunting and sometimes experimental blend of indie folk and lightly psychedelic pop is dramatically conveyed by her lush, dark-toned vocals and elegant arrangements
Aoife Nessa Frances - Land of No Junction / Heartbreak
A pastoral, dark-hued collection of gently psychedelic folk-based songs, Land of No Junction is the debut album from Irish singer/songwriter, Aoife Nessa Frances. Based in North Dublin, Frances cut her teeth in the mid-2010s as one-half of the shoegaze duo Princess before setting off on a more organic solo path a few years later. Beginning with an almost freeform approach, she slowly began honing a group of songs that intertwined abstract imagery, personal introspections, and subtle evocations of the natural world. Teaming up with collaborator and co-producer Cian Nugent, she formed a nimble and musically sympathetic ensemble which began refining and recording the material at Dublin's Oxford Lane Music Society studio over a period of a year-and-a-half...

Toronto-based electro-rock ensemble who perform using vintage synthesizers and unconventional instruments.
Holy Fuck - Deleter / Luxe
Toronto electro-rock group Holy Fuck have managed to hone their junk shop aesthetic into a surprisingly coherent form of warped pop music. Following the excellent 2016 full-length Congrats and the more dance-oriented companion EP Bird Brains, the band sharpen their focus even further on 2020's Deleter. Like their previous albums, this one was born from impromptu jams and sketches at rehearsals and soundchecks. At this point in their career, the group's chemistry is so strong that the music seems to naturally flow from them, and they've never sounded this tight before...

Ace guitarist who won a following with blues and jam band fans before honing his talents as a vocalist on his first solo album.
Marcus King - El Dorado / The Well
... Because together Auerbach and King make an impressive team. Auerbach is a prolific producer (I’m officially worried he’s not getting enough sleep), with a distinct perspective. While some producers melt into the background of their artists’ work, Auerbach takes a more collaborative approach, sharing some of himself in the tracks. That works well for King, giving him strong songs on which to focus his considerable vocal energies. The end-product is tunes that often sound like Turn Blue-era Black Keys with a better vocalist...

Manchester indie rockers with an alternately jangly and bombastic sound. Hailing from Manchester, indie rock quartet Courteeners received regular comparisons in the U.K. press to the leading lights of three previous waves of Mancunian Brit-pop: the Smiths, the Stone Roses, and Oasis. 
Courteeners - More. Again. Forever. / Heart Attack
Emerging from a dark and uncertain period following their 2016 effort, Mapping the Rendezvous, Manchester favorites Courteeners returned triumphant with their sleek, boundary-pushing sixth set, More. Again. Forever... At a tight ten songs, More. Again. Forever. is near perfect and not a song is wasted. Yet, rising above the pack, a pair of highlights demand special note... For a band that is beloved on home soil but often gets lost in the crop of late-2000s U.K. exports, this catalog highlight is ample evidence of artistic greatness and proves that, even after the darkest of days, beauty and light are on the horizon.

The prototypical Seattle grunge band, with a driving sound and a long run as one of the most principled and hard-working groups in rock.
Pearl Jam - Dance Of The Clairvoyants
Pearl Jam took their sweet time making Gigaton, their first album in almost seven years, and they’re taking their sweet time rolling it out too...
Now they’ve finally delivered the lead single, “Dance Of The Clairvoyants.” On Twitter, Jeff Ament writes, “‘Dance’ was a perfect storm of experimentation and real collaboration… We’ve opened some new doors creatively and that’s exciting.”

Challenging indie rock outfit with literate lyrics and an angular post-rock sound. Growing from emo beginnings into a far more refined and intricate beast, Cursive's oeuvre expanded over more than 20 years of constant development. Formed in Omaha, Nebraska in the mid-'90s as an unambitious project between friends,
Cursive - Get Fixed / Horror is a Human Being
In fact, some of the songs on Get Fixed were born out of the Vitriola sessions. Since forming in 1995, the Nebraska rock outfit has found frontman Tim Kasher performing with a rotating cast of bandmates. When he reunited with the project’s founding drummer, Clint Schnase, it sparked a bout of creativity that led to last year’s effort and a number of unused songs... “Also, sure, the absolutely fucking bonkers fist fuck this world has been getting with its pathetic, greedy rise of nationalism; yeah, that’s been driving me to put pen to paper as well. You feel like you’re getting pushed around, you want to push back. Not that we’re driven solely by political frustrations, not in the least. But as to the excess of songs as of late? Current events have certainly left their grimy fingerprints on some of the music we’ve written these last few years.”

Organ-led psych-pop outfit from Los Angeles with a trippy, lo-fi sound. From their beginnings as Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel (a Donovan reference,) the guitar-less California band later known by just Mr. Elevator delved deeply into the sounds of psychedelia from the strutting punk of the Doors to the dreamy haze of Pink Floyd to the sunny trippiness of a thousand paisley clad unknowns.
Mr. Elevator - Goodbye Blue Sky / Love Again
After two albums of keyboard-driven psych rock that shone like the flash of a paisley scarf on an overcast day, Mr. Elevator's third album Goodbye, Blue Sky is a much gloomier listening experience dominated by washes of synths, Tomas Dolas' downcast vocals, and melodies that don't just pluck at the heartstrings, but give them a big twang instead. It's a big change from the group's previous work, but Dolas guides things with the same questing, inspired (and guitar-free) approach as before and the results are as thrilling as a record that sounds too sad to get out of bed can be...

The project of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Matthew Doty finds the sweet spot between synth pop and shoegaze.
Deserta - Black Aura My Sun / Be So Blue
With Black Aura My Sun, Deserta's Matthew Doty shows off his knowledge of several decades' worth of shoegaze and synth pop as well as his skill at reinterpreting those styles in ways that are familiar, but never boring. Much like Lust for Youth, Deserta excels at creating almost uncannily perfect recombinations of iconic sounds... As epic as the album gets, it's never heavy handed or obvious, and its breeziness makes it easier for Doty's listeners to get swept away with him. Black Aura My Sun is a promising debut, and anyone with a fondness for this kind of dreamy sound should find a lot to enjoy here.

The stage name of New Zealand electro-pop singer/songwriter Kim Pflaum. New Zealand's Kim Pflaum, aka Laumė, makes evocative, '80s-influenced electronic pop that combines lyrical hooks with arty atmosphere.
Laume - Waterbirth / Spells (Oedipusi)
The full-length debut album from Kim Pflaum, aka Laumė, 2020's Waterbirth, finds the New Zealand-born songwriter embracing a thoughtfully blissed-out mix of early-'80s-influenced soul, house music, and synth-based pop. It's a sound she first explored under the name Madeira on her 2016 EP Bad Humors, and to some degree before that as a founding member of the indie pop outfit Yumi Zouma. She has also collaborated on similar electronic-oriented projects with artists like Boycrush, Swimgood, Zimmer, and others, all of which worked to inform and broaden the scope of her own music...

The Growlers, Rose City Band, Facs, Aoife Nessa Frances, Holy Fuck, Marcus King, Courteeners, Pearl Jam, Cursive, Mr. Elevator. Deserta, Laume