Lambrini Girls – Who Let The Dogs Out [City Slag 2025]
Bristol-based (British version of Provincetown, MA) two piece zoomer riotgrrrl punk pulling from the UK’s rich tradition of anticapitalist Oi sing and scream and joke about the queerness and neurodivergence that make them up with just as much joy and rage as they write about finding community in the face of overwhelming patriarchal odds. There’re lessons but it’s hardly didactic, with song titles like “Big Dick Energy” “No Homo” and “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby” how could you even call it subtle? And Phoebe Lunny who is the lead singer and guitarist seems to be just the triple threat she presents themself to be, funny, catchy, and noisy. 4.2/5
Open Mike Eagle – Brick Body Kids Still Daydream [Mello Music Group 2017]
For the first time his whole is greater than the sum of his parts, rather than a collection of tracks there’s a sense of conceptual unity because the themes – memory, gentrification, family in the face of urban decay – have thirtysomething father Michael Eagle in a state of mourning as he reflects on the destruction of his grandmother’s apartment in the Robert Taylor Homes he grew up in. That grief brings an emotionality out of him that is subtly enhanced by his humor and intelligence instead of merely deflected by it. His great subject since Art Rap dropped back in 2010 has been some variation of the anxiety over the loss of humanity in the face of “progress” whether sociological or technological. And here the stakes hit so clearly that it’ll shock just how viscerally he grieves. You and your friends may be starving artists, Facebook may be making people stupid and polarized, but what happens when the bar you always called safe is shut down? What happens when the radio you knew your grandmother kept in her closet is gone because there’s no closet? Or building? Or the way Mike’s voice breaks a little bit when he mentions an exposed coil? 4.4/5
Sharp Pins – Radio DDR [perennial 2025]
Shiny love songs. Shiny shiny love songs. 3.0/5
First Day Back – Forward [Self released 2025]
Braid is old, then it’s new again. But as someone who needs their emo to be catchy and to articulate a vulnerability not immediately obvious, it’s kind of dumb. 3.2/5
This is Lorelai – Holo Boy [Double Double Whammy 2025]
Tuneful, melodic, and much brighter than when they were first recorded, Nate Amos gives a 26 minute sugar rush. 3.7/5
(“Mouth Man”, “Name the Band”)
Billy Woods – Today I Wrote About Nothing [Backwoodz 2015]
His subject matter is an unfocused id and his mouth is a tempering supergo, so what he puts across is grief about grief and dread about dread. 3.4/5
(“Borrowed Time”, “Lost Blocks”)
Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love [Warner Bros 2025]
How many lives has the man born Thebe Kgositsile lived? To the public that knows him by his d.b.a. name Earl Sweatshirt we’re in arguably his third phase – first was the Odd Future days and runup to his banishment to Samoa, second was his return to America and all the layered depressive verses packed onto those first two albums. This third era kicked off in earnest with Some Rap Songs, Earl’s first record made after establishing connections with the NYC underground circles that included billy woods, MIKE, Navy Blue, Standing on The Corner, and wiki. If that record was Earl’s grief album coming to terms with the death of a father who abandoned him in America as a child to restore Black voting power to South Africa’s nascent nation, then it was also marked by short songs, murky and mushy production, and bars that were so insular it was like reading fragments of a diary of someone long since lost to history. It was the most inaccessible he’s ever been.
That inaccessibility has been at the forefront of everything he’s done since, including this, his latest in a long line of sub-30-minute Long Players. Most of the songs run under two minutes with no hooks and one verse, packed like an overfilled suitcase and casually recited. It’s like when a 10-year-old is asked to read out in class but to get it over with and seem impressive they think to just read as fast as possible. You lose the relatability that Earl put over on his early career. The moments that the songs make are fleeting, like you’re constantly waking up from a dream, with sports references and small scraps and tidbits of words about progress or one-upmanship rhyme schemes that’ll tickle the old heads and those for whom technical flourish and discussion is the point of hip hop. Only it’s not very fun is it? Sure sure “jiggy brick layer like Jay-hov breaker breaker” and “Wally Walker out the bottle drinkin” tickle the pleasure centers but without telling anything to the listener other than Earl’s got a lot of inside jokes and nothing as catchy or communicative as a “Chum” or a “Faucet”. The compositions are clearly built very well and with care, and his production has only gotten brighter if not lighter, culminating in that three song run at the end where his focus moves from the frustrations of his past to the potential of the future. Though I wish there was more to glom onto this is Earl Sweatshirt given by Earl Sweatshirt, outgrowing his sad-boi fans. 3.4/5
MIKE – weight of the world [10K 2020]
Now aged 22 and living with the death of his mother, the artist born Michael Jordan Bonema in Jersey but who spent most of his childhood in London creates a version of his artistic vision that’s both potent and tangible. His production is some combination of smoked out jazz electronica with surreptitious African influences and vocal samples looped into chopped beats. Half DOOM and half Sweatshirt he’s a mushmouth with a grizzled baritone that is as in love with substance abuse as either of his heroes and seemingly in love with depression even more. For example: “To get a verse in, I got to get to hurting’ a bit”. 3.8/5
AKAI SOLO – No Control, No Gravity [Break All Records 2025]
Late 20’s or early 30’s Akai Solo is a Brooklyn rapper firmly rooted in the tradition of the New York underground that typically lets thoughts roll off the MC’s heads while eschewing elements as tempting as hooks or live instrumentation emphasizing performance first and foremost. But he’s got charm, charisma, and some serious rhymes; “posture/doctors/who shot ya” goes one scheme on the outset. Which only helps in how, with a little bit of close listening, he reveals that his method of smoked out street poetry is more than cerebral or catchy, it’s fun, a quality that’s been sorely missing in a scene where depression is the usual subject. In order, there’s five chestpuffs giving way to three recitations that reveal an emotional and political core that most rappers try to hide until the end, and then five more that split the difference to go out on. 4.0/5
Snocaps – Snocaps [Anti 2025]
After their time as P.S. Eliot in their youth the Crutchfield sisters moved out of Alabama and went their separate ways musically, mostly. Allison moved to Philly and started the meet-the-moment Swearin’, creating emo influenced indie rock just as the city’s scene started to hit terminal velocity while Katie formed Waxahatchee which has gone on to become the most important woman led indie rock band of the last 10 years and who had Swearin’ as her backing band more than once. And so now having regained a sense of footing in their 30s the twin sisters come together with MJ Lenderman (on both guitar and drum duties according to Wiki) to give us even more of the good stuff, jaunty and ecstatic pseudo-confessionals that contain more melancholy than they let on even lyrically. It’s front loaded, nothing quite tops “you’re sorry that we ever stopped/Hanging out”, and Allison’s voice is a touch flatter than Katie’s, you’ll be able to tell which is which. But they evoke that ephemeral feeling that you can know yourself so clearly after the pangs of capital ‘s’ Struggle have been worked through. 3.9/5
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy and the Poor Boys [Fantasy 1969]
Sure, it’s the one with “Down on the Corner” and “Fortunate Son” but it’s also somehow another step closer to musical self-actualization from a band that’s kept progressing over 4 records in under a year and a half. The only reason you’d know “Midnight Special” wasn’t an original is because no one writes about trains and prison like that anymore. As music it’s a muscle flex and comfort for the soul even if Fogherty’s politics are still out in front. Though back then it was trendy to be pro-worker and anti-imperialism. 4.2/5
The Mountain Goats – Transcendental Youth [Merge 2012]
John Darnielle’s project insofar as it relates to his songcraft has been the excavation of difficult emotion in trying times. His short stories about West Texas, his aural novels about toxic couples, meth head community, and his own reflections on his abusive childhood stand tall in his catalogue for their ability to express his inner turmoil in ways that inspire hope and tragedy for those able to handle his loud nasally voice. He was raised in San Bernadino but has lived in rural and suburban areas that most Americans would consider flyover country as he eventually put a band together whose rhythm section of Jon Wuster and Peter Hughes matched his frantic strumming and gentle piano playing, and now with the additional flourish of brass he seems to have reached his final form. His songwriting itself has shifted away from those more narrative driven concepts to one that evokes feelings more directly; everywhere there isn’t a sign of hedonistic self-destruction in the name of existence “Play with matches if you feel the need to play with matches” comes the acceptance of its ending, “I will be made into a new creature”. On my favorite, a person having a severe crisis is described like a dying gladiator and right after the chorus comes a perfectly timed piano chord to denote life in the face of hopelessness. I mean, could you do what he does? 4.2/5
Gorillaz – Gorillaz [Parlophone 2001]
Because Blur on some level required input from three other musicians who saw the project as equitable it only made sense that Damon Albarn would reach out on his own, the twist was making some cartoons about it, though they’re irrelevant except insofar as you buy into the kayfabe backstory. As music it’s the rap/rock/techno mesh of the late 90’s with more dub (melodica) and obscure movie samples, anxiety that’s pleasant on the ears and melodic even if a little thin. For the youth who found themselves in it, many are in creative fields who hope to inspire others with their work too. 3.8/5
Cosmic Hero 