Beach Bunny – Honeymoon [Mom + Pop 2020]
Chicago power pop as a jelly sandwich – two solid parts around a sweet and innutritious middle. 2.6/5
Dltzk – Frailty [DeadAir 2021]
P4k’s take was that this is an important work of “digi-core”, the latest in a long line of electronica combining dance-hooks with contemplativeness I first characterized as IDM due to its clear structure as listening music with bursts of the rave-noise that many festival attendees use to drown out 9-5 misery and flush their brains with chemicals – serotonin et al. But this is a creation of a seeming enby from northern Jersey whose life as a shut-in (not to mention locked-down) high schooler for the last two years definitely didn’t allow for any kind of festival reality, and as such has to function as the reverie of Porter Robinson worship that it is. Though it has its charm, it’s the kind of music that makes you want to like it, the inordinate length and bottom-heavy anxiety mandates immersion which depending on patience level could induce either friskiness or burnout. 3.6/5
Jazmine Suillivan – Heaux Tales [RCA/Sony 2021]
An EP, yes, so a formed vision but one not worthy enough to have been dedicated to that oh so Serious statement of Long Player. Only then it snagged the sometimes contentious, sometimes universal, and always inculcating designation of Album of the Year by one of America’s two big music-first publications. The younger and cooler one. Jazmine Sullivan has always been a great cantastoria and that’s never been truer than now that her take on S-E-X doesn’t just cascade and glimmer but proves complexly real too. Just take the title, with its French knockoff “Heaux”, there’s both a sense of humor and the very combination of dignity, sexuality, and pompous self-assuredness that that country’s people embody so fully it spills into parody in any Western depiction of them. Each is a quality that one of her songs and one of her friend-featuring Tales articulates, only to be deconstructed with admissions of understanding situations ranging from the hypocritical to the heartbreaking with such clarity that it’s clear how much of a humanist she is. 4.1/5
Soichi Terada – Asakusa Light [Self Released 2022]
Japanese skeletal deep trop-house man who previously composed for video games makes what a friend of mine with an MIS degree described as “perfect working music”, i.e. meant for the background. 3.5/5
Parannoul – To See The Next Part of The Dream [Self Released 2021]
Whether the unknown lead singer is a horribly self-effacing character or just some guy who really needs to go to therapy, the sounds are all unoriginal, which doesn’t mean bad. Downtuned shozegaze and off key singing is reminiscent of many bands in basements by people who will never achieve success and the standard trope by those bands and this one is to pile on layer after layer of noise in the evocation of the emotion of emotion – how painful it is just to feel. The subject matter is all unspecific, sung in Korean but with the translated lyrics on the Bandcamp they were first reported from: “The empires of each other keep their doors wide open/People who don’t know where to look, who do they vent their anger on?/I’m tired of it/I’m sick of it/Morning is coming/Tomorrow is coming” apparently goes one part of a 9:20 epic. Some real classic emo posturing, or bullshit depending on your perspective, conceptualizing the everyday of living an unremarkable twenty or thirtysomething life as a monumental struggle worthy of such song lengths as long as 10:00. Of course nothing is further from the truth even for those designated hikikomori, but it scratches some kind of itch, right? 3.7/5
Cosmic Hero 