Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You [4AD 2022] These four friends from all over – Texas, Indiana, Israel – and whom all attended Berklee College of Music in Bah-sten but didn’t meet or coagulate until moving to Brooklyn, typically make sparse folky tunes whose forthrightness and even keeled temperament always …
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The Front Bottoms – Talon of the Hawk [Bar/None 2013] Second time out and they’re more refined. Funnier too, and it’s not just the accordion coming in when he mentions French on the he’s-a-condescending-prick opener. It’s to that point Brian Sella’s little repetitions he does while singing have become not just semi-annoying space fillers, but …
Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville [Matador 1995] A middle-class suburban Chicago gal composes sharp and slyly critical guitar tunes aimed at the toxic and annoying men of the indie scene. What the sum total becomes is also a depiction of the kind of lives of young women who fuck and fuck up, with real …
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Columbia Records 2021 When Georgia’s own Montero Lamar Hill accidentally made America’s most successful song of all time in 2019 he did many things at once; in the immediate term he became a lightning rod because of his perceived lack of “country authenticity” (see: racism) and aided the effort to bring Nine Inch Nails back …
Yasmin Williams – Urban Driftwood [SPINSTER 2021] In terms of technique her guitar playing is genius and innovative; plucks, strums, and taps with the fretboard on her lap like it’s a keyboard since that made more sense to her. To label it just mood music is to do injustice to the long tradition of Southern …
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 https://open.spotify.com/album/6QZyKchQivUBTSMcoBmlPa?si=ODQ-HRqxSXCK3UzakEWrUw 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 …
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Wiki – Half God [Wikset Enterprise 2021] One third of the Ratking trio that broke down in 2016 with two others under his belt, Patrick G. Morales is the half-Irish Nuyorican repping Gotham with pride. His scene, for those keeping up with the lore, is the NY underground that idolizes MF DOOM which includes Navy …
Turnstile – Glow On [Roadrunner 2021] Don’t think about it too hard, these Baltimore hardcorer’s bread and butter is energy. Pulling from those late 90’s funk-metal bands who transitioned to reggae or alt by the turn of the millennium their biggest strength is their physicality – which here means the music’s ability to affect one …
Lucy Dacus – Home Video [Matador 2021] These reflections of Christian youth in the South show Dacus to be more of a clear-eyed memoirist than Julian Baker’s self-loathing diarist or Phoebe Bridger’s wan documentarian. That she’s also the one who isn’t afraid to increase her bpm to the point that it induces a groove is …
Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death [Partisan/Rough Trade 2020] It’s smoked out, stoned if you will, and so there’s more pleasure in the guitars’ textures and the rhythm’s syncopation that catches you off guard. Grian Chatten’s still concerned with television like his beloved poets of the 20th century might’ve also been, the difference is how …
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Cosmic Hero