083 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 25-04-2020

ALTER.NATION #83

Brendan Benson, Dead Ghosts, Hazel English, Other Lives, Wares, Lucinda Williams, Peter Oren, BC Camplight, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Macula Dog, Lorenzo Senni, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Adrian Younge, Azymuth

weekly favtraX 

2 5 - 0 4 - 2 0 2 0

"Freak Out"

Gifted power pop performer who also spent time, beginning in 2005, collaborating with Jack White in the Raconteurs.
Brendan Benson - Dear Life / Freak Out
Those familiar with Brendan Benson might know him for his role in the Raconteurs, the guitar-heavy rock band he started with Jack White, or for the striking solo albums he's been slowly releasing since the mid-'90s. With seventh solo album Dear Life, Benson actively explores beyond both the rock heaviness of the Raconteurs and, to a lesser degree, the power pop songwriting greatness that's defined his solo work... An amazing singer, Benson's ability to harmonize with himself is one of his many gifts as a songwriter. As with all of his albums, his understated vocal arrangements are one of the guiding forces on Dear Life. It's exciting to hear Benson take some new risks with these songs, but also a relief that he never gets too far away from the deft songwriting and pop sensibilities that he's been refining for all these years.

Raucous and lo-fi garage punk with an eclectic spirit from this Vancouver four-piece. Playing a soulful but stripped-down fusion of garage rock, first-generation rockabilly, punk, and lo-fi noise, Dead Ghosts are a band hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Conjuring a deliberately primitive and swampy sound with a psychedelic undertow, the group staked their claim with their self-titled 2010 debut album...
Dead Ghosts - Automatic Changer / You Got Away
Formed nearly a decade ago in Vancouver, Canada, the garage-rock group grew out of founders Byran Nicol, Drew Wilky, and Mike Wilky's desire to hang out, listen to records and play music. After the trio uploaded a few demos to Myspace--this was 2008, after all--a small punk record label from Iowa reached out and asked if they wanted to do a single... "When we started playing, we were just messing with recording, and generally goofing around. We had no vision at all... Playing a distinctive brand of swaggering, blues-infused lo-fi rock, the five-piece quickly won over transatlantic fans and scored fresh fodder for their lyrics with their punk-rock antics.

A singer/guitarist who fuses elements of dream pop, jangly folk-rock, and breezy indie pop into her observant songs, Hazel English relocated from her native Australia to the California Bay Area in 2013.
Hazel English - Wake UP! / Born Like
Following a handful of viral songs in the mid-2010s and a pair of EPs that landed her on Polyvinyl's roster, Wake UP! is the full-length debut of Australian ex-pat Hazel English... The resulting recordings still reflect core attributes that were part of English's music from the beginning: namely, a '60s sensibility, a knack for breezy melodies, and a touch of dream pop luster. Wake UP! opens with a swelling mixture of organ and guitar on "Born Like," a psychedelic pop tune that quickly settles into a midtempo bass groove shaded with broken guitar chords and rim clicks, as English addresses the other half of a harmonious relationship.

Stillwater, Oklahoma-based atmospheric indie rockers invoke names like Alt-J, Fleet Foxes, and early Radiohead.
Other Lives - For Their Love / Sound of Violence
The fourth full-length effort from the Nebraska-based indie rockers, For Their Love finds Other Lives in fine form, applying their moody sonic expertise to a spectral ten-song set that parses themes of self-worth and existential dread in an age of political, social, and economic turmoil. Commencing with the ruminative "Sound of Violence," a sumptuous bit of '60s-leaning orchestral pop that evokes the Wally Stott string arrangements of "Montague Terrace"-era Scott Walker, For Their Love was self-produced in Oregon's Cooper Mountain region in frontman Jesse Tabish's A-framed cabin, and the material mostly reflects that pastoral setting...

Uniting folk, punk, and synth pop into fiery, fearless anthems for outsiders, Wares is the project of singer/songwriter/guitarist Cassia Hardy. A fixture of the punk scene Edmonton, Alberta -- one of Canada's most conservative cities -- she honed her rebellious songwriting...
Wares - Survival / Tether
...Now, she sounds impatient to dive in and live her truth. There's more heft, more urgency, and, most of all, more volume powering Survival's outsider anthems. That might be because this time around, she's not quite as much of a loner: While Wares is technically still Hardy's solo project, this time she's backed by the live band that supported her during her 2018 tours. The megawatt energy of an especially inspired show ignites the punk and emo roots of Wares' music, harnessing those styles' power to unite misfits and express the kinds of outsized emotions that are essential to Survival...

A gifted songwriter with a strong and distinctive voice who became a roots music icon with her fearlessly personal body of work.
Lucinda Williams - Good Souls Better Angels / Man without a Soul
Lucinda Williams is incapable of sounding anything less than 100-percent engaged and sincere. Whatever she has to say, she clearly means it, and that more than anything else is the thread that runs through 2020's Good Souls Better Angels, her fourth album since she launched her own record label and took full control of her process of recording and releasing music. Cut mostly live in the studio with her road band -- Stuart Mathis on guitar, David Sutton on bass, and Butch Norton on drums -- these 12 songs play like a long stream-of consciousness journey, with Williams writing in blues structures that repeat certain lines like a mantra while her band either sneak up on the music like a ghost or howl with elemental, bluesy skronk (the raw, gritty tone of Mathis' guitar matches Williams' vocals for sheer ferocity...

Midwestern singer/songwriter with a deep, textured vocal tone that delivers contemplative, socially conscious indie folk. A singer/songwriter with a deep, textured vocal tone, Peter Oren weaves elements of country, blues, folk, and early rock & roll into his contemplative indie folk.
Peter Oren - The Greener Pasture / In Line to Die
A kiadás, amelyet "disztopikus farmomnak / telefon témájú albumomnak" neveztek, a The Greener Pasture az Indiana énekes / dalszerző, Peter Oren harmadik teljes hosszúságú albuma. Ez egy ugyanolyan társadalmilag tudatos második albumot követi, az antropocén. Míg ez a rekord inkább az éghajlatváltozással foglalkozott, a Zöldebb Legelő úgy véli, hogy fokozottan támaszkodunk az okostelefonokra, valamint a gazdálkodás, a környezetvédelem és a nagyobb politika bizonyos romboló tendenciáira. In keeping with the album's phone-related themes of isolation, Oren decamped to a cabin in the woods outside of Nashville to record it... Throughout, Oren sells his consistently smart, crafted messages with a resonant voice and presence that command attention -- like a quality folkie should.

New Jersey-born singer/songwriter combines sunny indie pop with darker lyrical themes that reflect his personal struggles.American singer/songwriter Brian Christinzio -- who performs under the name BC Camplight -- received widespread acclaim for his one-man band take on classic pop songwriting. Marrying well-crafted if quirky pop melodies with lyrics that often dealt with dark themes informed by his struggles with depression...
BC Camplight - Shortly After Takeoff  / I Only Drink When I'm Drunk
He may have returned to the U.K., but Brian Christinzio's post-deportation blues remain, as do his mental health struggles, which suffered further damage after the sudden death of his father. Fortunately, his sharp wit and gallows humor are in abundance on Shortly After Takeoff, the Philadelphian singer/songwriter's third album since relocating to Manchester, getting signed to Bella Union, getting deported, and eventually moving back. Working under the name BC Camplight, Christinzio writes literate, self-effacing, darkly funny songs about his personal life in a tone similar to Stephin Merritt or Father John Misty, though his pop savvy recalls the sophistication of Brian Wilson or Todd Rundgren, albeit with a maverick synth-punk streak...  Christinzio is a master craftsman in terms of song structure, building tension and discomfort only to provide a glorious uplift and rhythmic shift on the chorus of opener, "I Only Drink When I'm Drunk."...

Australian psychedelic collective with an intense work ethic and a wildly experimental outlook that reaches from synth prog to folk rock.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Chunky Shrapnel / A Brief History of Planet Earth
From the beginning of their career, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have been road warriors and over time have grown into a can't-miss live experience. Chunky Shrapnel captures the band in full flight over the European continent during the last part of 2019 and is made up of songs taken from various shows... The album ends with the epic-length "A Brief History of the Planet Earth," a jam that's spliced together from four different nights in four different cities and winds its way through trippy psychedelic riffs, flute solos, barely in-control guitar solos, and lots of crowd interaction. Chunky Shrapnel is a testament to the band's powers as a live act and is sure to make their fans happy...

Macula Dog are an unabashedly strange, arty group from Queens, New York City who make mutated experimental pop which instantly brings to mind the Residents and Devo. The group refer to themselves as a "four-person electronic duo," as members Mark Brothers (Mark Matthews) and Bruce Brothers (Ben Mendelewicz) perform with mannequins (Matt Brothers and Ben Brothers) strapped to their backs.
Macula Dog - Breezy / Red's Corvette
Elaborately costumed, highly conceptual art-rock duo Macula Dog create mutated electronic pop filled with fractured rhythms and jarring sonic textures. While some bands try to write straightforward songs but can't help displaying the quirkier aspects of their personalities, Macula Dog go all in, making everything as weird and confusing as possible, because it makes sense to them, and they know there's someone else out there who gets it... "Reds Corvette" is the centerpiece, a sinister crime caper of a psychotic, Day-Glo-clad villain with a bounty of shrunken heads stashed away in the trunk of his getaway vehicle... The enigmatic duo dare their listeners to keep up with them and figure it all out, and their most tightly focused work to date is just as bewildering as anything else they've done.

Lorenzo Senni is an Italian experimental musician and visual artist best known for deconstructing the epic build-ups and ecstatic synthesizer arpeggios of '90s trance and hard techno, dubbing his style "pointillistic trance."
Lorenzo Senni - Scacco Matto / Discipline of Enthusiasm
...Dubbing his style "pointillistic trance," the avant-garde Ferry Corsten gradually breathed more life into trance's hollowed-out skeleton with his subsequent releases, adding more bass, counterpoint, and progressive song structures, yet stopping short of constructing full-on trance anthems.. These tracks are bursting with playful melodies, and they move far beyond the hypnotic repetition of Senni's earlier releases in this style, contorting rhythms into fantastic formations... On tracks like opener "Discipline of Enthusiasm," he punches up the triumphant melodies with sparks of distortion, and hammers sharp curves into the rhythms, making sure nothing becomes predictable...

As a member of A Tribe Called Quest, Ali Shaheed Muhammad played a pivotal role in the evolution of rap music throughout the 1990s, factoring in the development of the jazz-rooted, sample-based production approach that epitomized Native Tongues,
Adrian Younge is all-around talent with an uncanny ability to transform his obsession with late-'60s and early-'70s music into unique, impeccably made projects.
Ali Shaheed Muhammad / Adrian Younge - Jazz Is Dead 001 / Apocalíptico feat. Azymuth
Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad both have impressive resumes as purveyors of modern soul, jazz, and hip-hop. Younge, a bassist, keyboardist, composer, and producer, has scored films such Black Dynamite and collaborated with artists ranging from Philly soul legends the Delfonics to Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah. Meanwhile, Muhammad was a member of A Tribe Called Quest and has worked on various projects outside that group. Together, Younge and Muhammad formed the Midnight Hour, a versatile band that brought a modern edge to retro soul and jazz sounds...The lone long track on 001, "Apocalíptico", is a nine-minute long jam featuring the current incarnation of Azymuth, a Brazilian jazz-funk trio originally formed in 1971... While the purpose of 001 might be to pave the way for upcoming Jazz is Dead releases, the album exists nicely as a standalone example of where modern jazz has been, and where it could be going.

Brendan Benson, Dead Ghosts, Hazel English, Other Lives, Wares, Lucinda Williams, Peter Oren, BC Camplight, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Macula Dog, Lorenzo Senni, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Adrian Younge, Azymuth

049 ALTER.NATION weekly favtraX 18-08-2019

ALTER.NATION #49

Sleater-Kinney, Big Thief, The Hold Steady, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Thee Oh Sees, Here Lies Man, Bobby Rush, Robbie Robertson, Ikebe Shakedown, Madison Cunningham, Field Mouse, Jenny Hval

weekly favtraX 

18 - 0 8 - 2 0 1 9

"The Center Won't Hold"

ALTER.NATION #49 on DEEZER

Arguably the most important punk band of the 1990s and 2000s, with feminist songwriting matched by taut melodicism and jaw-dropping sonic complexity. 
Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won't Hold from The Center Won't Hold
Weeks before the release of The Center Won't Hold, Janet Weiss left Sleater-Kinney -- a departure that clouded the record's reception, suggesting that the drummer perhaps wasn't happy with the trio's decision to collaborate with producer St. Vincent on the 2019 LP. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker countered this perception by insisting it was Weiss' idea to work with St. Vincent, and the fact that the drummer is hardly buried in the mix suggests there may be no animosity among the various camps. Still, with Weiss' absence, the very title The Center Won't Hold seems prescient for the future of Sleater-Kinney, but it's also true the album is designed to suggest that the world is unmoored. In the age of Trump and Brexit, such a notion isn't far-fetched, and Brownstein and Tucker frequently allude to the roiling political tensions of the late 2010s, but they spend just as much of the record lamenting personal dissociation -- the alienation that arrives when too much time is spent time staring into tiny screens...

Brooklyn indie rock quartet steered by the vulnerable songwriting of singer/guitarist Adrianne Lenker. 
Big Thief - Not
Big Thief are really not fucking around. Instead of riding the wave of having released one of the most acclaimed albums of the year, they’re returning with another new collection just months later.... “Not” is a hell of a way to introduce that new album. After U.F.O.F.‘s intricate, meditative beauty enraptured critics and fans alike, “Not” is a roiling, fraying rock song, a totally different side of the band’s personality. Adrianne Lenker’s raw performance pushes her typically elusive vocals to their most ragged extremes; the band’s delivery is something like art school Crazyhorse; the whole thing is as desperate and cathartic as the bulk of U.F.O.F. was pristine and enigmatic. Big Thief have long been elemental. This time around, they’ve leaned deep into the fire.

Acclaimed and respected Minneapolis-bred indie rockers who boast a melodic, contemporary take on mid-'70s classic rock. 
The Hold Steady - Star 18 from Thrashing thru the Passion
Reconvening for a full album for the first time in a half-decade, the Hold Steady do sound a bit older on Thrashing Thru the Passion -- an evolution they do not attempt to hide at all, which is to their benefit. It's not so much that the group no longer crank their amplifiers until they bleed and push the tempo to the point that Craig Finn has to rush to spit out his words, although those are developments that are hard to ignore. It's that the Hold Steady seem so comfortable in their skin on Thrashing Thru the Passion that they allow themselves to fiddle with details in the margins. They let the pace slow just enough to allow themselves to deepen the colors and textures of their arrangements...

Australian psychedelic collective with an intense work ethic and a wildly experimental outlook that reaches from synth prog to folk rock. 
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Perihelion from Infest the Rats Nest
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have dabbled in heavy metal before; their masterpiece Nonagon Infinity was metal adjacent, and other bits here and there across the group's expansive and ever-growing catalog have hinted at their love for pummeling rhythms, massed guitar riffing, and fantastical lyrical conceits. On 2019's Infest the Rat's Nest, the band go full metal. Often working in a small version of the band under the direction of vocalist/guitarist Stu Mackenzie, they've made a heavy-as-molten-lead song cycle about the death of Earth and the colonization of nearby planets by those who can afford it. It's fast, loud, and gnarly with traces of Metallica, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and a number of second-tier British and American bands from the late '70s and early '80s who fused the energy of punk with the dual-track guitar solos, dystopian words, and riffage of early metal... King Gizzard aren't sugarcoating anything, either musically or thematically, and that makes for their most timely and political album yet. It's also one of their most musically compelling and impressive, too, and that's saying a lot.

Influential California combo that mixes wild garage-punk noise and unhinged psychedelic exploration with occasional bouts of prog and metal. 
Thee Oh Sees - Scutum & Scorpius from Face Stabber
Oh Sees' 2017 album Smote Reverser seemed at the time of its release to be just about as far as the band could push their combination psychedelic-metal-prog-jazz-garage sound before it might split into a million pieces. It was hard to imagine that John Dwyer and company could twist, fold, or mangle things any more than they were or that they could add more elements without capsizing the rollicking ship entirely. Face Stabber puts a lie to those preconceptions -- not only does the band take another step further out into space, they tumble through the abyss with an energetic fury that most bands can never conjure, much less one on their 300th album... Any band looking to play psychedelic music should look to this album (and Smote Reverser) to fully understand the possibilities that exist within (and far outside of) the style, and just how far a band with limitless imagination can go if they don't settle for clichés and easy answers, and push hard to make something unique and beautiful like the Oh Sees do here (and almost always).

L.A.-based quartet founded by Chico Mann that melds West African rhythms and harmony to hard rock's riff-based foundations. 
Here Lies Man - Iron Rattles from No Ground to Walk Upon
A product of the feverish creative minds of Antibalas affiliates Marcos Garcia and Geoff Mann, Here Lies Man began in 2017 as a hybrid of West African rhythms and '70s stoner metal riffing... The introduction of "Iron Rattles" further expands the group's sonic palette, setting the pace with an electric kalimba rather than a blown-out guitar riff. The colorful compositions, analog production, and foreboding synth interludes make the mini-album some of Here Lies Man's most captivating material.

The king of the contemporary chitlin' circuit, known for his raucous and red-hot mix of soul, blues, and funk. 
Bobby Rush - Slow Motion from Sitting on Top of the Blues
Bobby Rush cut his first single in 1964, when he was already 31 years old, and 55 years later, the man is not only still making music, but he still sounds like a credibly raunchy love man at a time when most folks his age can hardly be bothered to get up off the couch. The swampy funk that was a major part of Rush's musical personality in his salad days is in short supply on 2019's Sitting on Top of the Blues, but his gift for grafting together deep soul and barroom-ready blues is as strong as ever, and the rough insistence of his vocals connects when he wraps his voice around his various tales of women trying to get the better of him (at least when he's not busy trying to get the better of them). The vibe of Sitting on Top of the Blues is laid-back but not lazy...

The chief songwriter and lead guitarist of the Band, who later moved into film (acting, producing, scoring) and a solo career. 
Robbie Robertson - Let Love Reign
...He’s shared “I Hear You Paint Houses” from it already, which was directly influenced by the story that The Irishman is based off of, and today he’s sharing “Let Love Reign,” a track that was inspired by the Beatles.
In a statement (via Rolling Stone), Robertson said: “Some people think John Lennon’s dream about love and togetherness went up in flames. I think that’s wrong. It’s everlasting. There was something a little naive about John Lennon going around singing about peace, but in that period young people celebrating love and peace helped end a war.”

Horn-driven seven-piece band from Brooklyn crafts instrumental funk in the Afro-beat and psychedelic soul tradition. 
Ikebe Shakedown - Not Another Drop from Kings Left Behind
New York septet Ikebe Shakedown play what they refer to as "cinematic instrumental soul," which amounts to a thick, steamy brew of retro funk, psychedelic rock, and soundtracks ranging from Spaghetti Westerns to blaxploitation flicks. The group's compositions almost always include galloping drums and hand percussion, hot horns, and simmering organ, along with additional touches such as surf guitar licks and string arrangements. Kings Left Behind is their fourth full-length, and the first taped at Hive Mind Recording, a Brooklyn-based studio built and operated by two of the band's members, bassist Vince Chiarito and saxophonist Michael Buckley. Compared to the group's past efforts, Kings Left Behind doesn't seem to utilize quite as much echo or other trippy effects, and it seems a bit classier and more sophisticated...

Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter with sophisticated jazz, folk, and country influences. 
Madison Cunningham -  Pin It Down from Who Are You Now
In the two years between debuting her jazzy, nuanced folk-rock songs on the self-released Love, Lose, Remember EP and presenting her full-length Verve debut, Madison Cunningham was invited to tour with the Punch Brothers and Andrew Bird, perform on Chris Thile's public radio show, and guest on albums by the likes of Bird, Matt Redman, and J.S. Ondara. For the unacquainted, the allure of her textured voice and sophisticated guitar playing is evident on said debut, 2019's Who Are You Now. Also apparent are songwriting inspirations that range from Joni Mitchell and Jeff Buckley to Fiona Apple...

Rachel Browne-led indie rock outfit who sharpened early shoegaze influences into a catchy blend of fuzz and jangle. 
Field Mouse - Skygazing from Meaning
Over the course of their first half-dozen years together, Field Mouse shifted away from early shoegaze influences toward a more streamlined guitar pop that still echoed with some of the shadowy quality of dreams. Any momentum was interrupted, however, following the release of 2016's Episodic and, more importantly, the outcome of that year's presidential election. The band essentially went on an unofficial hiatus, partly to focus on their personal lives but largely due to bandleader Rachel Browne being too demoralized -- and self-conscious about the place of art in the circumstances -- to write. After two years away from music, Browne was inspired by looking through some of her old poems and reached out to band co-founder Andrew Futral. The resulting Meaning makes an effort to find perspective and support structures in uncertain times...

This Norwegian singer/songwriter crafts thoughtful, uncompromising music under her own name as well as Rockettothesky. 
Jenny Hval - High Alice
Jenny Hval songs tend to get stuck on a phrase. With a more conventional songwriter, you might call this a chorus, but she has always made these recurrences sound like incantatory thought loops. On “High Alice,” the second single from The Practice Of Love, that phrase is “must be drawn to something.” Hval switches between points of view, so that they, we, I are all tied together in their collective search for definition.
She frames this search through Alice In Wonderland fabulism; we follow Hval through the looking-glass as she is drawn to these familiar childhood peculiarities: the queen, the clock, the ocean. Hval says this High Alice is “sketching out her rabbit hole,” drawing in shades of her own being. “We all want something better,” she sings, her music floating deeper and deeper into the subconscious.

Sleater-Kinney, Big Thief, The Hold Steady, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Thee Oh Sees, Here Lies Man, Bobby Rush, Robbie Robertson, Ikebe Shakedown, Madison Cunningham, Field Mouse, Jenny Hval

019 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX 03-02-2019

ALTER.NATiON #019

Le Butcherettes, Strand Of Oaks, Gauche, Hand Habits, Better Oblivion Community Center, Brutus, Vampire Weekend, Makthaverskan, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Masaki Batoh, Unloved, Cherry Glazerr

weekly favtraX

03-02-2019

Le Butcherettes - nothing/BUT TROUBLE from bi/MENTAL
Le Butcherettes is a band out of Guadalajara, Mexico, and are currently based in El Paso, Texas. The band consists of: Riko Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar), Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez (bass) and Alejandra Robles Luna (drums). Le Butcherettes are lead by their firebrand lead singer, Teri Gender Bender (Teresa Suarez Coscio). Gender Bender is the center of the hurricane, and she keeps everything around her swirling with chaotic precision. Her voice is a work of art. When she sings, she sounds like a revolution.
Le Butcherettes’ last three albums were produced by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (At The Drive-In, The Mars Volta) on his own record label. Now with a new home, Rise Records, Le Butcherettes have brought in legend and icon Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) to draw out a new and creative sound. Harrison both tightens and stretches out the guitar runs, and emphasizes the thump/thump/thump rhythm that Robles-Luna delivers—providing the intense immediacy needed for each track. Harrison handles Gender Bender in the most effective way possible – he stays out of her way. Harrison allows Gender Bender to tap in and bleed out her soul like an open vein...

Strand Of Oaks - Weird Ways
My Morning Jacket backing up Tim Showalter on a Strand Of Oaks record is such an inspired idea that I almost can’t believe it really happened, and the first song from that album lives up to all that promise. “Weird Ways” showcases so much of what makes both these bands special. Showalter has a gift for melodies that soar like wounded birds triumphantly returning to the sky; his hooks worked wonders when Strand Of Oaks was still a humble folk-rock project, and they sound even more spectacular in the context of ragged-glory arena rock... Showalter has talked about how he almost quit music before MMJ’s Carl Broemel coaxed him back into the game. Throughout “Weird Ways,” he reckons with that turnaround. “I don’t feel it anymore,” he laments at the start. As the music begins to swell up around him, he remembers the value of “what you make and the people you’ve loved,” and soon he’s facing down the prospect of getting back to work: “Grind your teeth and cut off all your sleeves/ A few good riffs and a sticky bag of green/ You said before, ‘It’s not as bad as it seems/ A grownup kid gets to live out all his dreams.'” By the end, a melancholy euphoria comes roaring across the ceiling, and he’s successfully converted his own redemption arc into the stuff of legend.

Gauche - Conspiracy Theories
The best punk songs can be built out of almost nothing: a singular feeling, a seething and focused rage. “Conspiracy Theories” is that kind of song. There are only a handful of words to it, but each time they’re uttered you can taste the bile behind it.
The track comes from a source of frustration in the DC music community — namely, that pizza place and venue Comet Ping Pong has become the center of a fringe theory that has resulted in a constant state of anxiety and fear for those that work or go there. “Conspiracy Theories” is an effort to shake all of that tension off, a wriggling wave of a song centered around a universal fuck you. Gauche has a strong pedigree — its members include Priests’ Daniele Yandel, Downtown Boys’ Mary Jane Regalado, and Jason P Barnett — and that means the song is tight and controlled, a circle of anger that invites you in, that cannot be silenced.

Hand Habits - can’t calm down
“What if I can’t calm down, and I don’t have that in my bloodline?” Meg Duffy worries on “can’t calm down,” the newest song from the upcoming Hand Habits album placeholder. Just as they pose the question, the anxious riff that snakes through the song’s verses breaks into a jangling sigh, Duffy’s voice intertwining in lovely harmony with Land Of Talk frontwoman Elizabeth Powell’s. Hand Habits’ music takes friction and pain and doubt and turns it into something profoundly comforting. And here, they contemplate the toll of “ancestral damage,” ingrained patterns of learned behavior that cast a long shadow over all of our future relationships. Can we ever break free of the cycles of trauma that shape us? There are no easy answers, and they don’t pretend there are. But on “can’t calm down,” the very act of trying becomes a thing of great beauty.

Better Oblivion Community Center - Dylan Thomas
Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers’ new collaborative project Better Oblivion Community Center is a gift endowed to a very specific kind of music fan. It’s a sick but welcome joke. Though they’re from different generations, the two songwriters mostly traffic in music that is depressing bordering on existential, funny and sad at the same time. Both craft lyrics that are hyper-specific streams of consciousness, and the best songs on Better Oblivion Community Center sound like two people jumping down one another’s throats — urgent and unkempt, totally in the moment.
“Dylan Thomas” best exemplifies that collision of ideas and energy. It’s named for the Welsh poet who died at 39 and was a legendary alcoholic. The protagonist they’ve developed is an alienated individual exhausted by the play-by-play headlines of today’s age and seeks out escapism in all of the wrong places: the bar, a pricey silent retreat, other people. In this song, everything is a stand-in for a certain truth, one that is just beyond the protagonist’s grasp. “The ghost is just a kid in a sheet,” Oberst and Bridgers sing, alluding to the cover of her breakout album Stranger In The Alps...

Brutus - War
Brutus’ new LP, Nest, opens with a song called — for real — “Fire.” Nest’s album-announcing advance single is called “War.” Now, if you’re gonna lead with shit like that? If that is how you are introducing yourself to the world? Man, you better be 100% ready to back it. To bring it. You cannot be fucking around. The first words out of Stefanie Mannaerts’ mouth on “War” are “Our world/ It’s gone.” She sings the line with enough focus and force to shatter glaciers, asserting in no uncertain terms: Brutus are not fucking around...The whole thing just gets heavier. It’s a breathtaking, heart-stopping, truly visceral piece of music. The song’s title comes in when Mannaerts sings the line, “Unleash your war.” Hear that? It is a challenge. If you want war? Baby, you got it. Brutus are ready. If you want fire? Man, it’s already lit. Brutus are bringing it. Right fucking here.

Vampire Weekend - Harmony Hall
“Some songs are essays, other songs are haikus,” Ezra Koenig told Rolling Stone in an interview previewing Vampire Weekend’s new 18-track opus Father Of The Bride... Whereas the five-minute “Harmony Hall” reads as a statement of purpose for a songwriter who’s been silent for the better part of a decade.
Vampire Weekend songs tend to be multilayered creations: refusing to be confined by genre, refracting big-picture epiphanies through personal experience. Thus “Harmony Hall,” a lament about the resurgence of anti-semitism in America’s “dignified” power centers, finds its shape through links to Koenig’s own life. The title refers to a dorm at Columbia, the Petri dish in which this band was cultured. The chorus repurposes a lyric from one of Koenig’s old songs (you call it lazy, I call it intertextual). The music calls back to his old affection for Paul Simon and ornate instrumental flourishes. You could not mistake this song for anyone else...

Makthaverskan - Onkel
At this point, you pretty much know what you’re going to get from a Makthaverskan song when you hit play. The Swedish crew has been pumping out towering dream-pop songs for a decade (!) now, but they consistently work at such an elevated level that they can pull from the same bag of tricks over and over again and still deliver. “Onkel,” the B-side to their latest 7″, has everything you’d want and expect from Makthaverskan — a soaring vocal melody, a jangly intensity, a crystalline finish. And here Maja Miller uses those sunny components to scrape at the confusion and darkness of loneliness and uncertainty: “I’ve had too much to drink/ And no one’s here with me,” she wails. “Where can I go?/ I just don’t know/ I’m so alone.”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Cyboogie
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have always known how to boogie. They already have a song called “Cut Throat Boogie” and another called “The Bitter Boogie.” But now, they’re doing a different kind of boogie. They’re doing the “Cyboogie.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have never known how to sit still. The Australian goon squad released a ridiculous five albums in 2017, ranging from freaked-out prog-psych to pastoral jazz-folk to hard-charging garage-rock. And yet “Cyboogie,” with its tongue-in-cheek novelty sci-fi flair, still feels different from anything they’ve done before.
For one thing, there are no guitars. Five of the band’s seven members play synth on the track. The result is a monstrous seven-minute electro-glam groove that sounds a little bit like Daft Punk singing about a depressed robot over Tame Impala’s “Elephant.” If you’re not sold by the 50th vocodered “BOOGIE!,” I just don’t know what to tell you.

Masaki Batoh - Devil Got Me from Nowhere
After three albums in two years with his psych quintet the Silence, ex-Ghost musical guru Masaki Batoh returns to his solo roots for Nowhere, an album on which he wrote all songs and played all instruments...  "Devil Got Me," is a wonky, psychedelic, slide-guitar blues in Japanese; the Skip James and Robert Johnson feel here is unmistakable...  Nowhere is Batoh's most provocative yet accessible solo album; its otherworldly strangeness is uncompromising, but somehow welcoming because of its deep focus. Its many textured ripples, fissures and psychic pathways resonate long after its playing timer expires.

Unloved - Devils Angels from Heartbreak
As striking as Unloved's mix of '60s pop and cinematic mystique was on Guilty of Love, at times their debut album felt like a soundtrack in search of a story -- which isn't surprising, considering that two-thirds of the band are respected composers for film and television. In BBC's spy thriller Killing Eve -- to which they contributed Guilty of Love tracks as well as a virtual album's worth of previously unreleased music -- David Holmes, Keefus Ciancia, and singer/songwriter Jade Vincent found their perfect project. The show and its brilliantly unhinged hitwoman Villanelle reflected Unloved's postmodern femme fatale vibe perfectly, and allowed them to push their boundaries with mercurial tracks that made the most of their seductive, dangerous sound. Unloved's evolution continues on Heartbreak, an album that presents the most skillful balance of their pop and experimental sides to date. With savvy, they kick things off with some of their catchiest songs.

Cherry Glazerr - Daddi from Stuffed & Ready
The winding path of Cherry Glazerr's evolution began with bandleader Clementine Creevy writing strange and often juvenile songs as a teenager and just several years later had moved through phases of quirky garage grunge to arrive at the cold, polished sheen of third album Stuffed & Ready. Always centered around Creevy's increasingly dark musings, each album has upped production and more accurately dialed in a re-creation of '90s grunge angst. The muscular power chords and hyperconfident thrust of 2017's Apocalipstick were a far cry from the spooky songs about grilled cheese sandwiches and house pets that the band started out with, and Stuffed & Ready pushes further in the direction of '90s-modelled loud-soft alt-rock. Nowhere near the garage punk outbursts or naïve pondering that earlier versions of Cherry Glazerr reveled in, the ten songs here use gloomy guitar blasts and mid-tempo rhythmic attacks as a steady framework for the distant, angular moods of Creevy's songs. The tracks that stray most from this formula are the most interesting. "Daddi" laces its eerie verses with synth arpeggios, ticking drum machine hi-hats, and manipulated vocal samples, with Creevy's ghostly vocals recalling early Blonde Redhead before exploding into huge choruses...

Le Butcherettes, Strand Of Oaks, Gauche, Hand Habits, Better Oblivion Community Center, Brutus, Vampire Weekend, Makthaverskan, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Masaki Batoh, Unloved, Cherry Glazerr