21-12-2021 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX (2h 15m) [2019-2021] # Son Lux, TOY, Eerie Wanda, Rose City Band, Goat Girl, Benjamin Lazar Davis, Urlaub in Polen, Bradford Cox / Cate Le Bon, Lost Under Heaven, The Growlers, Pom Poko, Deap Vally, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Night Flowers, Desert Sessions
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Originally the post-rock project of composer/keyboardist/vocalist Ryan Lott, Son Lux grew over the course of the 2010s to include guitarist/composer Rafiq Bhatia and experimental drummer Ian Chang. Combining live instruments with computer-manipulated acoustic performances, samples, and Lott's strained vocal delivery, Son Lux's bold, dystopic sound often correlates with anxious lyrics about a fearful future.
Bodies 2:41
Warning 3:02
from Tomorrows II 2020
Son Lux released the first installment of their Tomorrows trilogy in August of a turbulent 2020. Fourth months later, and loosely reminiscent of the second movement of a classical symphony, Tomorrows II proves to be a relatively more hushed, introspective volume. Like Tomorrows I, it was recorded with group members and contributors separated in such far-flung locales as New York, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Budapest...
London's TOY borrow from shoegaze, Krautrock, and classic psychedelia to make pulsating, absorbing music.
Down on the Street 4:43
A Doll's House 3:35
from Songs of Consumption 2019
TOY started 2019 with one of their lushest releases and ended it with a study in minimalism. On the full-length Happy in the Hollow, they indulged in as many styles and sounds as they could pack into its songs, but on Songs of Consumption, they don't pile on layer after layer to keep things interesting. Both rawer and more electronic than any of their previous music, this covers EP finds TOY drawing on the evocative simplicity of vintage synth pop, minimal wave, and electro-punk as they reimagine songs by artists ranging from the Troggs to John Barry. Not only does the band have an enviable record collection, they know how to pick songs that challenge them. They begin the EP with one of their biggest departures: Their taut version of "Down on the Street" trades the Stooges' raw power for sullen synth rock with a cruise-controlled Motorik beat... The band gives Nico's "Sixty Forty" a makeover that's nearly as radical, miniaturizing its dark, rolling majesty into something more intimate but just as poignant... Their dedication to stripping these songs down to their bones yields especially fascinating results on "A Doll's House," where they translate the complexity of John Barry's composition with just a handful of instruments. Even when TOY returns to a more familiar sound, they do it creatively...
The Dutch band Eerie Wanda are led by vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Marina Tadic, whose warmly intimate vocals are paired with melancholy pop songs influenced by psychedelia (as on their debut album, 2016's Hum) or, as on their second record, 2019's Pet Town, sweet early-'60s ballads and rockabilly.
Pet Town 3:27
Rockabiller 3:32
Hands of the Devil 2:35
from Pet Town 2019
...There are traces of girl group sweetness, soda shop, rockabilly, and lots of Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town" in the sound Tadic and her mates create. It's quiet and peaceful, but never boring thanks to the richness of Tadic's voice and the power of her lyrics. There's a disarming directness to both the melodies and the words, and though one might miss Verhulst's pulsing basslines or the electric guitars, the unbroken mood Tadic creates is entrancing. .. Pet Town makes for the perfect record to calm down at the end of a typically bonkers day or as a brief respite from the storm during the middle of it. Tadic's vocals are endlessly soothing, the arrangements are comforting, and the warmth of the songs emanates from the speakers like gentle heat waves from a crackling fire. Stripping back from the already gentle sound of Hum could have been a step in the wrong direction' instead, it's a perfect evolution and a wonderful album.
After initially appearing as a semi-anonymous psychedelic country jam band, Rose City Band was revealed to be the project of Wooden Shjips/Moon Duo guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson. He worked with indie giant Thrill Jockey to reissue the band's 2019 self-titled debut after a self-released pressing quickly sold out. ..
Rip City 3:49
Rivers of Mind 6:34
Fog of Love 4:22
from Rose City Band 2020
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... Rose City Band is ultimately less about the songs, or even the jamming, and more about the muted, textural palette it stretches out on.
South London's Goat Girl combine incisive social commentary with a sound that stretches from punk to country to electronic pop. On 2018's self-titled debut album, they set their frustrations about Brexit, sexual harassment, and relationships to a snarling mix of punk, country, and goth; when they returned with 2021's On All Fours, they didn't sacrifice any of their bite for the album's more expansive sound and viewpoint...
Jazz (In the Supermarket) 4:34
The Crack 3:12
Where Do We Go From Here? 4:14
from On All Fours 2021
Even for a young, buzzed-about band, the three years between Goat Girl's self-titled debut album and its follow-up On All Fours were notable. Along with more typical shake-ups like lineup changes (bassist Holy Hole stepped in for founding member Naima Jelly), the group endured guitarist/vocalist L.E.D.'s diagnosis of stage four Hodgkin's lymphoma and six-month course of chemotherapy. Happily, Goat Girl's second album reveals that they've only grown stronger together in the wake of these events. There's a greater feeling of connection and cohesion in these songs -- which makes sense, since they took a collaborative approach to songwriting this time out -- and their experimental and pop impulses are more clearly defined and cleverly integrated... Both nervier and more confident than their debut, On All Fours is a huge step forward from a band that's well-equipped to bring post-punk's legacy into the future.
Eclectic Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, arranger, composer, and producer Benjamin Lazar Davis has made his name as a valued collaborator as well as a skilled solo artist. With a talent for indie rock, pop, and folk sounds, Davis has created trippy but engaging music with Cuddle Magic and Okkervil River, and he's contributed to recordings by Kimbra, Lady Lamb, and Anna & Elizabeth, to name a few...
I Bet You're Fucking 4:11
Remember 3:09
from Benjamin Lazar Davis 2021
Arriving a year after the musically cosmopolitan Still Flying, a collaborative album with Bridget Kearney, multifaceted musician, songwriter, and producer Benjamin Lazar Davis dials back arrangements and stylistic variegation for his second solo LP, titled simply Benjamin Lazar Davis. With Davis deliberately reducing the presence of drums here to help draw focus to melody, the album still involves guest musicians like experimental drummer Ian Chang (Son Lux) as well as Kearney (Lake Street Dive), Joan Wassner (Joan as Police Woman), Alex Toth (Rubblebucket, Tōth), Mitchell Yoshida (Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros), and others. Working with first-time co-producers Luke Moellman (Great Good Fine Ok) and Lars Horntveth (Jaga Jazzist), he devises a spacious alt-pop that still makes room for off-balance textures...
With their mixture of driving Krautrock rhythms, ambient synth textures, and spiky post-punk, Germany's Urlaub in Polen built a reputation during the 2000s with energetic performances and a series of albums showcasing their tight studiocraft. Almost a decade after disbanding, the duo made a surprise comeback in 2020 with their sixth album, All...
Impulse Response 5:57
The Hunter 6:02
from All 2020
Germany's Urlaub in Polen has always been a hard band to pin down. At their core, they are a two-man guitar-and-drums unit, though both members also handle the myriad synthesizers and ambient electronics that shimmer and buzz through their hypnotic songs. Just after the release of 2011's Boldstriker, the Cologne-based duo of Georg Brenner and Jan Philipp Janzen called it quits, having logged a decade's worth of interesting albums that merged post-punk, Krautrock, and propulsive electronic experimentation. Reuniting after a nine-year gap, they return with their sixth album, All. If anything, the ten-song set feels even tighter than the band's earlier releases, paring away some of the harsh and cavernous sounds of Boldstriker and presenting a leaner, cleaner sort of minimalism that plays to their strengths... Overall, it's a pleasing amalgam of styles, paced with great care, suggesting that some time away from the project did wonders for Brenner and Janzen's creativity.
As the front person and principle songwriter for Deerhunter, Bradford Cox became an iconic presence in indie rock beginning in the late 2000s. Cox's mysterious and always captivating songwriting took Deerhunter from more experimental early sounds into more straightforward dream pop territory, earning critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base as they grew creatively...
Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon's distinctive voice and smart arrangements manifested as a dark, looming take on psychedelic pop over the course of multiple critically acclaimed solo albums, side projects, and production for others...
Canto! 4:16
Constance 6:03
from Myths 004 2019
Cate Le Bon produceri szerepe a Deerhunter 2019-es albumán, a Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? az album kísérletező hajlamaiban és organikus, mégis távoli feldolgozásaiban egyaránt hallható. A Le Bon saját 2019-es sztrájkja Reward-ja ugyanolyan egyensúlyt mutatott a dalszerzés és a produkció között, amely elmosta a kíváncsiságot és a zavarodottságot. A Le Bon és a Deerhunter's Bradford Cox közötti kreatív barátság új formákat ölt a közös EP-n, a Myths 004-en...
Lost Under Heaven (aka LUH) is the sonic and artistic consummation between ex-WU LYF vocalist Ellery James Roberts and Dutch artist Ebony Hoorn. Known for their edgy, atmospheric post-punk sound, the duo emerged in 2016 with their debut Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing...
Come 4:07
For The Wild 6:34
from Love Hates What You Become 2019
Lost Under Heaven's debut, 2016's Songs for Spiritual Lovers to Sing, was the sound of Manchester-bred singer/songwriter Ellery James Roberts and Dutch singer/songwriter/visual artist Ebony Hoorn having fallen in love and willfully drowned themselves in artful sonic euphoria. With their sophomore album, 2019's cathartic Love Hates What You Become, the couple rise to the crashing reality of living in the wake of that love and the realization that simply finding your soulmate doesn't fix your life, your emotional health, or the world around you. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton and Swans drummer Thor Harris, Love Hates What You Become is a devastatingly affecting album, built deftly around the duo's yin and yang vocals with Roberts' tortured, throaty yawp coolly contrasted by Hoorn's flat, Marlene Dietrich-in-Doc Martens delivery. The songs are hugely anthemic in the punk tradition of Patti Smith and Nick Cave. ..
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...
Natural Affair 3:38
Foghorn Town 3:16
from Natural Affair 2020
The follow-up to 2016's party-starting City Club, Natural Affair sees the Growlers continue to apply coats of glossy paint to their punchy blend of surfy guitar rock and '80s-leaning synth-pop. Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas helmed the band's last effort, and while he sits this one out, frontman/producer Brooks Neilsen follows his lead with a tight 12-song set that pairs studio snap and sizzle with the sleek, deep-water grooves that the band has been honing since making the leap from lo-fi "beach-goth" to psych-tinged pre-dawn funk. This time around, Neilsen and guitarist Matt Taylor are joined by longtime Growlers touring members Brad Bowers and Richard Gowen, along with Circles Around the Sun‘s Adam MacDougall and Dan Horne, and the band just clicks...
Norway's freewheeling Pom Poko combine their jazz school training and experimental leanings into equally sugary and explosive music. Inspired by math rock, post-punk, West African music, and weird pop bands such as Deerhoof, the group introduced their loose-limbed, playful style on 2019's Birthday, then emphasized the contrast between their meticulous compositions and chaotic performances on 2021's bracing Cheater...
Cheater 3:46
Danger Baby 3:57
from Cheater 2021
After charming fans of freewheeling indie pop with their debut Birthday, Pom Poko get even more rambunctious and ambitious on Cheater. Though the COVID-19 global pandemic prevented the band from road-testing these songs the way their constant gigging let them refine their debut, their second album still reflects their growing experience. Pom Poko sound looser and more cohesive on these spiky fluorescent outbursts, and the way they turn the bits and pieces other bands wouldn't think of putting together into swift, dazzling collages is truly impressive... It's not every day when a band makes a second album that's more thrilling than their debut, but Pom Poko aren't an everyday band. Their tricks are always in service of their songs on Cheater, and their excitement about the possibilities of their music is utterly contagious.
A rock & roll duo from California, Deap Vally deliver a primal mix of hard rock stomp, glam rock swagger, and greasy blues riffs, like the White Stripes colliding with the Black Keys after time traveling to the 1970s and back. With just guitar, vocals, and drums, the group manage to sound full-bodied while possessing a deadly sense of cool, a healthy degree of sonic punch, and a deadpan sense of humor in their braggadocious lyrics...
Perfuction 2:56
Phoenix 2:57
from Marriage 2021
Now that two-piece rock bands are no longer considered an anomaly, high-energy duos are expected to have ready answers to the question of how you keep things fresh and change up your sound when there are only two instruments to contend with. Deap Vally, consisting of guitarist and singer Lindsey Troy and drummer Julie Edwards, showed they knew how to deliver primal, stripped-back rock on their first two albums (2013's Sistrionix and 2016's Femejism), and their third full-length, 2021's Marriage, finds them expanding and exploring a bit after firmly establishing their template of straightforward hard rock with a side of blues and a dash of glam. Through the magic of overdubbing, Troy has added several extra layers of guitar on most of the tracks here, as well as multiplying her half-breathy, half-sneering insouciant vocals into massed choruses and casual but passionate harmonies... Though Deap Vally have found new ways to dress up their music on Marriage, at their core they haven't changed that much -- this is still a smart, powerful rock band with sharp wit and an abundance of well-deserved confidence -- but the added details and textures make a difference, and this music points to a more interesting future for them than one might have imagined after Femejism.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's sense of unfettered sonic exploration makes it easy to mistake them for a long-forgotten relic of the psych explosion of the 1960s. With a far-out sound that, at times, feels barely held together, King Gizzard evoke the eclectic rock experimentation of Frank Zappa's early work with the Mothers of Invention, the anything-goes feeling of the Flaming Lips, and the demented glee of a random, obscure '60s group plucked from a Pebbles compilation as they follow their musical flights of fancy wherever they might lead...
Minimum Brain Size 4:18
Some Of Us 3:52
from K.G. 2020
Over a ten-year span spent releasing an album every few weeks (or so it seemed) King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard never repeated themselves, always pushing forward and trying new things whether it was lengthy jazz excursions, gloom-and-doom synth prog, or thundering thrash metal. That changed some on 2020's K.G., where the band revisit the approach used on Flying Microtonal Banana, the group's 2017 album built around the avant-garde sounds of their custom-made guitars and altered instruments. Stuck in their various homes during the global pandemic, the band gravitated toward the unique instruments and built a batch of songs using their non-Western tunings and tones. Unlike that album, though, where that almost felt like a (mostly successful) gimmick, this time the guitars are more fully integrated into the songs...
Indie pop quintet Night Flowers cast a warm spell of dreamy guitar pop and dulcet boy/girl vocals that result in a wistful, romantic sound. Based in London, but with Northern English roots and an American singer, the band rode a steady stream of singles and EPs in the mid-2010s to critical acclaim, both in the U.K. and Japan...
Night Train 4:38
Merry-Go-Round 2:25
from Fortune Teller 2019
Awash with wistful, romantic lyrics and breezy guitar jangle, London's Night Flowers made a winning impression on their 2018 debut, Wild Notion. Greg Ullyart, Chris Hardy, Sam Lenthall, and Zebedee Budworth originally formed the band in Humberside before moving south to the capitol where they recruited American singer Sophia Petitt to complete their lineup. The sound they make together flirts with the misty borders of dream pop, but ultimately plays like a cleaner and more straightforward take on classic indie pop. Guitarist Ullyart shares some of the lead vocals with the dulcet-toned Pettit, making for some amiable interplay and sweet harmonies. Appearing a little over a year after their debut, Fortune Teller is Night Flowers' second full-length and sees the band shifting even more toward a mainstream sound with clear, full production from drummer Budworth and arrangements that fall somewhere between soft rock and the more earnest side of '80s college rock...
The seeds for the revolving door lineup that Queens of the Stone Age has become famous for were originally sown in another related project, the Desert Sessions. Dating back to the ‘80s, guitarist Josh Homme and his pals would throw what would become known as "generator parties" -- consisting of live music played for a bunch of friends out in a secluded part of California's Palm Desert, the electricity for the amplifiers being supplied by a power generator...
Noses in Roses, Forever 5:33
Something You Can't See 3:26
from Desert Sessions, Vols. 11 & 12 2019
Josh Homme always meant to get back to the desert, it just took him nearly 16 years to do so. Homme never officially put his Desert Sessions project on ice, but Queens of the Stone Age kept him busy, as did domestic duties, so the call of the wild remained muted for year after year, until the collective finally returned in 2019 with Desert Sessions, Vols. 11 & 12. Time changes everything, including the tenor of the Desert Sessions. Where previous excursions into the arid netherworld relied on overpowering volume and nocturnal menace, Desert Sessions, Vols. 11 & 12 is concise and colorful, a blast of madness and mischief...
2020
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